A Secret Pony for My Family (It's Rocket)

This is a multi-week post since we have missed a few weeks.

On the week of the 18th the following things happened:

On Tuesday the 20th Timmy, Gideon, and Mike went fishing with Grandpa Mike while everyone else went to have a girls night with Grandma Sheila. The boys had a fun time trying to catch fish, and then eating some gelato while the girls all made lots of deserts and had fun.

On Wednesday we did another activity dudes where we talked about family history and told stories about our families. Mike told about how Grandpa Yoder milked the cows for his adopted grandfather, and how it got turned into a movie. We watched the movie on YouTube.

We also put the roofing material on the new kids play-shed that week and got the skylights installed.

The kids finished up their acting class on Friday they did their final showcase. They performed a small musical, some acting games, Babylon stories and an opening and closing song. The kids had a really fun time at acting class, and they want to do it again next year. They did really well at the performance and we enjoyed it a lot. As of yet the teacher hasn't gotten us the movies of the play, so we can't post them, but I keep badgering her, so eventually we expect her to cave.

Immediately after the showcase we left for the Brown family 2023 family reunion. It was on the Oregon coast. The grandparents rented a house and we spent a week seeing the sights and spending time together.

The drive was pretty uneventful. The kids were good, and we split it into two days of driving so that we could sleep in a hotel with the Plastows after the first day. We listened to audio books and there wasn't much fighting at all.

We spent a lot of time on various beaches, The kids were excited to find fossils of shells, crabs, star fish, and many other fun things. The boogie boarding was pretty good for those who were brave enough to go into the cold water (Rea was very brave, and had a lot of fun boarding with Petra.) We also saw some really cool tide pools, seals, and whales in the ocean.

Butterfly Princess loved the sea anemones the best. She liked poking them and watching their mouths close up.

The grandparents paid for each family to make a glass ball at the glassblowing shop, and Sara, Tim, and Gideon somehow all ended up making a ball each. They turned out really good, and they are all happy to have them.

Mike got some people to play games on a few nights, and we played Coup and X-Com. 

We also went for a small hike in the woods near to the end of the trip. We found some pretty awful tasting blackberry lookalikes. Mike has never had such sour blackberries before, and the leaves were a little bit different than normal blackberries, so we are not sure what they were, but since they looked like blackberries and there is nothing poisonous in north America that looks like a blackberry we were certain that they were ok to eat.

We also found these weird plants that were clusters of flowers growing straight out of the ground. Timmy also climbed partially up a fallen tree.

Despite Butterfly Princess losing her shoes somewhere in the car we had a fairly uneventful trip home as well. We listened to the Golden Compass and the first Incorrigible Children book.

Saturday the first through Monday the 3rd was mostly trying to get the house back in order and stuff like that, however on Tuesday was Independence Day, so we had a small get-together with the Plastows and Caitlin and Sal's family. We shot off some fireworks and the kids played legos. It was fun.

Wednesday the 5th was activity dudes again, so we ran a mile and played various tag variants. It was well-received.

On Thursday Alison and the kids went paddle boating at grandma's house. They named the paddle boat The Tern, after the bird.

Timmy also wants to write about the play date that he had with Dimitri (and Logan). He says: "We played lots of Minecraft and lots of fun things." It is cool that he has fun with his friends playing games, and they were singing the weirdest song (to the tune of 'All Star'):

Somebody once told me the world is macaroni
So I took a bite out of a tree
It tasted kinda funky so I spit it at a monkey
and the monkey started punching me.

5000 years later the monkey was Darth Vader
and he threw his light saber at me
missed me by a meter and hit Justin Bieber
and a police man started chasing me.

Alison and the kids also went to nature group again for the first time in a while and had a fun time.

Finally, Butterfly Princess changed her name again, and now wants to be called "Rosie-Bess."

Also, she came up with the title to this post.