The Ground Mines and the Bees

Two weeks ago on Monday the girls went to Owl Camp. I'll camp is a activity that is put on by the library for kids who enjoy Harry Potter.

Owl camp was really cool -they did a bunch of classes where they learned about ocean animals and electricity, and about herbs and they learned how to read tea leaves. They also did 'common room' where they did crafts, games, and trivia.

They liked the teacher that was supposed to be Snape the best because he got into character the best. Rea was in Hufflepuff and they won the house cup and some free books.

For the last two weeks we have been at the Poulson's house since our house is still under construction. For the first bit things were fairly normal (or what passes for normal at this point of time in our lives), however, last week was the Poulson family reunion, so we had all of the Poulson's over for the week.

The cousins all had a lot of fun playing together every day, and Mike worked out of Grandpa Mike's office because every room of the Poulson house was full of people the whole time.

One of the places that we went was the butterfly museum at Thanksgiving point. The kids had a lot of fun looking at the butterflies and catching them on their fingers and learning about various insects. 

Since Andy and his family was in from Bishkek they also gave us a small rocking horse toy and a bee that they had hand felted both were very cute. Strangely enough this is not the first time that the polson's have given us a bee.

Last Thursday was the Fourth of July, and in the evening we all went to our house and lit off fireworks. We invited all the Poulson's over and the kids helped light them off. We all had fun and we even found some fireworks that are very similar to the Bestest Crackering Ballz (sic) which we used to love so much. The new ones are called Ground Mines, and they blow up just as large and loud as the former fireworks, so we are glad to have found a new massive cracking ball type firework.

The last two times we came over to look at the construction progress things have not been moving along very quickly. They found cloth wrapped wire, so they have to replace all the cloth wrapped wire out of the whole house. They will need us to move things out so they can access all of the walls, so we have boxed up most of the things and are waiting for them to get us a container to hold our stuff.

We planned to move the stuff out of the house Saturday, because the container was going to arrive Friday some time, but Saturday came and the container was not yet here, so we packed and packed more and more boxes, but by the end of the day we still hadn't gotten the container.

Grandma Sheila and Papa Mike came and helped us out a ton and then bought us more boxes and tape and pizzas, so we are really happy they showed up. 

Today so the Poulson's are gone again and we are alone in the Poulson house for this week. The Waters invited us to live at their house if we need a place to stay, so if the construction goes on interminably we might end up there some time.

As a final point, when Grandpa Mike was out in Michigan he discovered a rock that looked like a moai head. It looks super cool and he offered it to Mike so that Mike will be able to remember that he wants to go to Easter Island someday.