I Found Them!

 The missing pictures from Great Wolf Lodge, Concord, NC have been found!  Jenna was all into the Magiquest game this time.  It kept her busy for hours and she didn't even finish ALL the quests!  We had to MAKE her leave after defeating the dragon.

 Slaying the dragon, with a little help from Dad!

 The dragon, just before he died!

Great pic of TWO of the kids!  Here, Jenna is mad because we are leaving and her quests are not completed!

NO pictures from inside the water park since they are all way to dark. You'd think I could figure this out as often as we have  been to the GWL!

Great Wolf Lodge and a Quick Trip to DC area!

Hmm.  Cant find any pics from Great Wolf.  We did go there for 2 nights for vacation this year.  Shawn had 2 weeks off, but didnt really want to go anywhere else.  So my friend Julie, from San Antonio who now lives in Kansas, was passing through the DC area the following weekend.   I decided us girls would go see her and hit the American Girl store in VA also.

                                           Jenna and McKenna, this year's Girl of the Year

                                    Is that a shopping bag or Santa's sack on Jenna's shoulder?

 The Virginia branch of the Air and Space Museum

The girls have no idea how impressed they should be!  Actually seeing a space shuttle!

Some weird statue thing in the parking lot of the Air and Space Museum.  Guess its suppossed to make the $15 parking fee worth the price?

Anna, Megan holding Emily, Jenna, Alyssa and our awesome power ranger Patrick!

Weird July Fourth

July 4th was weird this year.  I say that mainly because it fell on a Wednesday and no one seemed to know how to handle it.  Make it a FIVE day weekend?  Take off just Wednesday?  Take off the entire week?  And as a result, all the festivities were smaller than usual.  The pic above is from the Whispering Pines Fourth of July parade.  It was HORRIBLY hot.  Shawn and I did take the girls and drove them in the parade. All 12 cars.  And of course there was lots of candy to throw.  Gabby Wood, Beth Bazinet and Jenna.

After the parade, we had ice cream in the park, with most of the rest of the Whispering Pines residents that were in town.

Later that evening we went to the Harness Track over in Pinehurst and watched the fireworks.  No rain this year, so that was a good thing.  But the bad thing was everyone had to work the next day, so no one was celebrating too much or staying out too late....

Shawn's gone...Lets get a new pet!

We seem to have this habit of getting new pets when Shawn is gone.  I promise, only 1 was done on purpose...the dog.  Yes, I got Alec a best friend when he was missing his Dad so badly.  Yes, I put the dog in a crate in the laundry room while we went to soccer.  Yes, Shawn came home, changed clothes in the laundry room, missed seeing the dog, and joined us at the soccer game, where another Mom asked him what he thought about the new dog.  OOPS!

And then came Patch and Snowy.  The sister calico cats.  We had told the kids we would get them kittens for an "around Christmas" gift. Shawn happened to be gone when we found them in November.

Now on to Lucky's story.  Ironically,  I had decided we needed a third litter box for Patch and Snowy.  So, I ordered it from Amazon about midnight one Wednesday night in September.  I kid you not, the NEXT morning at 615am, Alec sits down at the breakfast table and says, "Mom, there is a white cat at our back door!"  I said, " Are you sure?" as I walked over to the door.  Thinking surely Alec was imagining things this early in the morning.  But no, sure enough there was a teeny, mostly white kitten on the deck.

Now, you have to understand, our deck is a second story deck and the set of steps that lead to it from the ground are steep and have quite a number of steps.  Not sure how this 1.75lb 6 weekish old kitten got up them. I am sure it tool her most of the night.  I walked toward the kitten and she came up to me.  So, of course, I picked her up and brought her inside.  She wasn't terribly dirty and she had NO fear of TJ.  I felt surely she belonged to someone and must have escaped.  The big kids got ready for school quickly and as soon as it was daylight enough, I sent them outside to find the owner, who surely must be looking for their kitten now that it was light outside.  HUH.  Joke is on me.  There is no one out looking for a lost kitten.

By this time, Patch and Snowy had discovered the kitten, too.  They were NONE too pleased that she was in the house.  As a matter of fact, they went out on the deck and sat on the rail and the grill and refused to come back inside for 2 days.  Jenna and I had to leave for school, so I put the kitten in a crate and fed and watered her.  And off we went about our morning.

Long story short, Jenna claimed the kitten as hers.  Jenna needed a best friend, so the kitten got to stay. Jenna would sit on the sofa and hold the kitten for hours at a time.  I am talking we went to a soccer game for almost 2 hours and came back and she was in the same place, holding the sleeping kitten.

We named her Lucky, cause she was lucky she found us and lucky I let her stay!  She is a sweet kitty and loves attention.  She also loves to bite my feet to wake me up in the morning.  For quite awhile, I would not leave Lucky with the other cats alone in the house.  They were THAT nasty to her.  It has taken about 9 months, but the other cats seem to have accepted that she is staying and that they have to be nice to her. Patch will actually play with her for a few minutes.  Snowy still just tolerates her, which is funny, because of those 2 cats, Snowy is the nicest one....to humans!!  Tj on the other hand adores Lucky.  They play and wrestle together.  Lucky will groom him and then bite him hard! He yips and runs away and they comes back for more.

Lucky does have one bad habit....She goes outside and runs away for days at a time.  We joke that she has gone back to the place she came from or that she has another family.  The first time she did the disappearing act, she was about 4 months old.  She got out between my feet as I let the dog in.  We made posters, knocked on doors, Jenna stayed home from school and cried her eyes out.  Of course this was January and we had 2 really cold nights, like 25 degrees each night.  Yep, she was out for both nights.  Finally we put out some very stinky tuna on plates around the yard.  Something made me get up and look for her (once again) out the back door and sure enough, there she was!  It was 530am, but I still went and put Lucky in bed with Jenna and woke her up, though she does not remember this.  And when Jenna really woke up at 7a her first questions was "Did Lucky come home yet?"!!  Too funny.  These days when Lucky gets out, she still is gone for 36-48 hours.  But she comes home around 10pm each time, clean and hungry.  Still not sure where she goes.  As long as she comes back, I guess its okay.

First day with Lucky

First day with Lucky

  

Lucky says maybe she made a mistake coming to live here.

Jenna tells Gigi and Deaux about Lucky

A new toy?

Can you see the HATE in Patch's eyes?

Think she is really enjoying this?

Yes, she really sleeps with Jenna

Holidays with a "toddler" again......

You did buy this tree toy for me, right?

Snowy has NO clue Lucky is below her.  When she figured it out, we had a major cat fight on our hands!

Lucky attacks TJ

This was when Lucky came home from her first run away!

Lucky endures being put into crazy costumes, being shoved in stuffed animal house and countless other forms of almost abuse....but she still loves us!  We never did figure out where she came from.

Pantene

Jenna's hair has gotten ridiculously long.   Maybe if she were older, I would not call it ridiculous.  But, she can barely wash, brush or put it up alone.  After a recent 2 day sleep over with a friend, it took me over an hour to brush out all the rats nests!  

We had talked to Lauren, our hairdresser, a few months ago about cutting Jenna's hair for donation to the Pantene version of Locks for Love.  But Jenna chickened out at the last appointment.  So,  this hair cut appointment, Jenna was still unsure, but thought she wanted to do it.  I told her to go back with Lauren and surprise me!  Lauren called me back just before she "trimmed" it!  Jenna does not look too happy in this photo.

 

 But after it was done, she was all smiles!

 And here she is after, with freshly dried hair.  As I thought, she has really enjoyed the attention from everyone noticing her hair cut and complementing her on doing such a nice thing with her hair! Now she says she is growing it again for donation.  I really love it the length it is now, since she can take care of it all by herself!

 

Excuses

Below are all of my excuse for not keeping the blog up to date in the month of May....

Jojo, Ella and Joey came to visit for a long weekend.  Alyssa and Jenna happened to be having sleep overs that weekend.  It was Alyssa's birthday sleep over.  Yes, we took 10 people to Di'lishi, the new fro yo place in town.

Ella and Jenna took a long kayak ride, with TJ, to check out the Candian Geese on the island.

Snowy, feeling pretty relaxed on the deck.

A rainbow at the intersection of Niagra-Carthage Rd and Camp Easter Rd after soccer practice.

A bunny munches on Shawn's newly planted grass.  All you can eat salad bar, I guess!

Watching Carolina Polocrosse Club championship tournament at the Harness Track in Pinehurst.

Longleaf Academy Awards Ceremony

   Right after Alec's graduation ceremony, we left for Jenna's award ceremony at Longleaf Academy.  This was a new school this year for Jenna.  It took until Christmas for her to really stop complaining and protesting about the new school.  She really had a great year academically and has made several new friends from school.  

     Jenna received an award for the most activity hours earned outside of school.  We (and of course I mean Lisa) kept a journal for 15 weeks of any activity she did outside of school.  I really think 5 hours a week of horseback riding gave her a huge advantage, but i double checked with the PE teacher on how to record her time (ie include brushing, tacking etc time or not).  She won the trophy for best sportsmanship and the envelope is $25 for the activity award.