First Day

First day of school for my junior and eighth grader. Time is flying! 

Arch Nemesis

 I never knew I could hate something quite like I hate the little turd of an armadillo that lives in our yard. He wakes up each evening and tries to figure out how to piss me off for the following day. Usually it involves using his tiny cone shaped nose to root around for grubs right under anything freshly planted. He'll leave piles of uprooted hostas in his wake that I shuffle around replanting each morning. I find it absolutely infuriating. 

I started doing research on how to catch the little turd and found that they can be caught with live traps but it's difficult because you can't bait a live trap. They have to just be "funneled" into them using boards. Once an armadillo finds a wall it will travel down that wall so this works for getting them into cages, in theory. 

I found his lair out in one of the perennial beds. A giant basketball sized opening gave it away. So during the day I took several old boards and surrounded it and put the live trap as the only opening. It took two days but I finally found him curled up sleeping in the live trap one morning. I was ecstatic, even doing a little dance. 

I put him and his cage in the back of my truck and covered him with an old towel and we went for a nice 20 minute drive south where I found a nice dirt road on a stretch with no farms or house and lots of trees and a stream. I told him it's a much nicer place to live and good luck. He scurried off and I felt a relief that perhaps my gardening days would be more peaceful.

Or so I though. Two days later more hostas strewn about. No I don't think the original armadillo made his way back, I do think there was more than one. So now I have to go about figuring out how to catch another one. I'm nearing the point of having Sean sit outside in a chair with a rifle but I hate the idea of killing one. They are kind of cute in a strange way. My sister said they looked like a pig in a shell. 

Oh well.

VBS

 I try to help out each year with vacation bible school at our church. My role has gotten smaller over the years which I'm fine with. I used to teach the arts and crafts and it was a big job and now I take pictures for the daily slide show that they show the kids at the end of day. It's fun and much less stressful. This year they asked if my kids would want to have small jobs as well and they agreed. Max got to be the puppet that interacted with the leader who did the songs  morning. They had a little skit each day. He did a fantastic job and really got out of his shell while voicing "Mickey" in a high pitched voice. It was fun and the kids got into it as did the adults that were blown away that Max was the puppet. 

Wesley helped out in the audio/visual booth. He make sure all the mics were on and at the right volume and made sure the correct slides were up on the screen. He did a great job!

 

The theme was space and I couldn't resist adding these pictures. Crazy kids!

 

Happy Birthday Wesley!

Wesley turned 16 today! He's a big kid now and I'm super proud of him. He's a great student, has some good friends and does all sorts of activities at school. I can't wait to see where he goes in life. 

He and his friends Matt, Teddy, Tyson and Alex went golfing at a new venue in town where you whack golf balls off a ledge for an hour while hanging out. It looked fun!

 I got his school pictures in and couldn't help but do a comparison with his kindergarten picture vs his junior year picture. 

This and That

Sean found a new project that he's pretty excited about. It's a Torro Dingo with a blown motor. He got it pretty cheap and plans to gut it and turn it into an electric Dingo. I know I'd use the heck out of it cleaning animal pens outside.

 

It was a beautiful day so we took the kids to the nature center about an hour away. It's really a pretty place for a hike and we all enjoy it.

I tried a new vine this year called Thunbergia or Black Eyed Susan vine. I planted four little seeds and have this six foot tall vine. I'm sure it would cover the house if given the opportunity. I wish it would have bloomed more but I'll try it again next year in a different location.

I find Kevin to be very photogenic. He likes to lounge around sleep in a sorts of different positions. Kevin just turned three years old.

It seemed to get hot really fast this summer...quicker than normal. Which made us look for fun things to do inside rather than outdoors. We hadn't been to a local museum in a few years so we loaded up and spent the day inside.

I'm just throwing this in here because it made me laugh. Sean was clearing out some projects and sold a skid steer that he decided he didn't want to work on. Our skid steer didn't have enough lifting power to load the project skid steer onto the customers trailer so the customer (who looked like Santa) jumped on the back to give it more weight. It worked! They got it loaded and no Santa's were harmed.

I added a small water feature up by our front door since I was missing the sound of running water after we filled in the old koi pond. I added a couple of small goldfish to eat any mosquito larvae and a water lilly. One day I was diving home and stopped short after spotting a heron hunting in my tiny water garden. Pretty sure it got my two goldfish....darn heron. 

I'm still quite obsessed with hostas and am in the process of adding quite a few more to the gardens this summer. I've run out of shade around the house so I've decided to create a long hosta garden out in the walnut grove. Luckily its not all fenced in for the goats so I've got at least one row to plant in. Have I mentioned I love hostas?

Pacific Coast Highway

 One of our stops on the Pacific Coast Highway was seeing the city of Astoria, OR. It's north of Cannon Beach about half an hour. We talked to our hotel clerks and they said we needed to go see the Astoria Column so that's where we headed. It's just what it sounds like, a giant column that has a large spiral staircase going to the top. At the top there are great views all around the town and the beautiful Astoria Bridge.

A bunch of Corvettes were parked up at the Column, Sean enjoyed talking to their owners.

There is a hiking trail off of the parking lot to the Cathedral Tree.

We didn't make it far on the trail as our legs were tired from climbing the hundreds of steps.

 The movie "Goonies" was filmed in Astoria so we headed up to see the house. Apparently many people make the annual trek to see the "Goonies House" and there were about 12 people there photographing it. 

We stopped in Hammond to see the Wreck of the Peter Iredale. She ran ashore in 1906 on her way to Portland to pick up wheat. It was neat to see the bones of this ship while it's still there. It's in Fort Stevens so there are many trails and bike paths throughout.

We headed south on the 101 and stopped at the Devils Churn at Cape Perpetua. Our youngest child was tired of getting out of the car at every stop so there will be very few pictures with Max. In Max's defense, we stopped a lot! It was absolutely beautiful country.

We kept heading south on the Pacific Coast Highway and entered the Samuel H. Boardman Scenic Corridor near Brookings, OR. It's a 12 mile stretch of the 101 that has some of the most beautiful coastline in the world. It's breathtaking. This was nearing the end of a long day of driving so we were all pretty tired but we still managed to pull off on every view point. I wish I had a full day to explore this 12 mile stretch. There were hiking trails everywhere and boardwalks down to photography points. It was the highlight of the trip for me.

It was SO windy that day!

We continued on our way south into California and stayed the night in Crescent City. We woke up and walked around the bay taking pictures of the boats before making our way into
Jedediah Smith State Park to see the giant redwoods. 

 

Battery Point lighthouse in Crescent City.

Fun bike stand.

Our cute rental car.

Thanks for tagging along on a memorable trip down the Oregon Coastline. I can't wait to go back again sometime!