WOW! That's some weather! (and save our world through the eyes of a child)

The mild and dreary climate of the pacific northwest has been rebelling. Heavy rains followed by massive flooding. Unusual lowland snow and widespread power outages. Then yesterday, sixty five mile an hour winds (or more) that have brought the entire Northwest to it's knees. Ok, I think we need a break, otherwise my children will be going to school until July!

We lost one tree in our backyard with the snow and now numerous branches from the wind. The kids and I hid downstairs by the gas fireplace staying warm while the trees on the south side of our house hammered against the bedrooms. Too scary to stay upstairs last night!

All is well for us now. We are fortunate compared to many family's though that lost their homes, cars or worse yet, loved ones and will spend days waiting for the power to be restored. When the cable came back on this afternoon I had to send the kids to their room to play because my eldest son was in near tears watching the newscast, bless his tender little heart. He immediately asked if they were going to take donations to help the families that had damaged homes.

On that note:
My little philanthropist. ((Big soft Mommy smile)) We could all take a lesson from the generosity of children. In the last two weeks Boo has raided my wallet twice for all the spare dollars and coins he could find. Once to help the flood victims of the last storm that are still in desperate need. The second for food donations at the library and Wednesday he happily waddled off to school with a twenty pound backpack of canned goods pilfered from the pantry for his school food drive. Between wanting to write conservation initiatives ("I am going to make a law...") saving the seals or helping the needy and wanting to take in a foster child we have finally found a middle ground. We donate to the aquarium, make generous donations to the local food drive and give our coins to buy school supplies for foster children. Next on the list is compact fluorescent bulbs to replace all of our regular incandescent bulbs in an effort to begin doing our part for global warming. I have to be honest here. I have a generous heart but I do not know if I would do ALL of those things without my little ecologist and humanitarian prattling on in my ear. LISTEN TO YOUR CHILDREN. There are times when they are smarter and more generous than you find the time to be!

Blissfully not blown away at the foot of the cascade mountains.

Read the fine, fine, fine, fine, fine Print!

My wonderful husband just bought me a new cell phone. (yea for me) A cute little pink razor phone. A fancy little contraption with more bells and whistles than I will ever need but the opportunity for my phone to ring the theme song to "Fraggle Rock" makes me smile. I decided against using the text messaging feature (no thank you to your expensive little bundle packages) as I am home more often than not and don't think I would use it.

Ok, I may be the last person on the planet that knew this but just in case you are as obviously technologically incompetent as I just found myself to be, I will let you in on a little business scam....

We buy cell phones.
I say "no we don't want text messaging".
They say "well if you decide that you do, it's ten cents for each message.
I say "Thanks" (I'll probably never use it. I never give it another thought.)
By the time I get home I have received three text messages. The key word here is RECEIVED.
I may not WANT text messaging, I may not SEND any text messages but that does not keep complete strangers from text messaging me.

Here is how it played out.

I call dumb cell phone company.
Incompetent customer service rep tells me "just text them back and tell them not to text you."

"WHAT?!? So now, instead of thirty cents, I will pay sixty?" You see, you are charged when they are sent to you and when you send them out.

"Well yes, that is true."

The conversation goes no where and I hang up in disgust. (By the way, the little filter program they have online does not help with them all.)

I have now received two more text messages. Grrrr.... I am being cell phone spammed!!!!! Is there no justice in this world?!? Ok, calm down.

I call dumb cell phone company back.

They say "well if you want to buy our text message bundle for $4.99 a month for EACH line you can cover yourself.

"HAHAHAHA" I am going to have an accident, laughing in hysterics. "So what your telling me is I either PAY unknown monetary amounts because you have no way of blocking the service on the phone OR I PAY you X amount of dollars a month to protect myself. Either way I have to PAY. How convenient. Isn't that kind of like Blackmail? Is this the Giant T Mafia???

"Sorry, I cant help you. I don't know what to tell you about the filter, you will be charged for each text message you receive or you can buy our bundle for $4.99 a month for 400 text and 400 picture messages. That is all I can do."

We go round and round and I hang up in disgust again.

So there you go, there is no justice in the world. There is no magic fix. They have you over a barrel. Why would you make a phone that cant be disabled for the services that you don't want? I can either pay or take my phone back.

SO, if you are one of those people sitting around sending little spam messages all day long (who are probably members of the T Mafia in disguise whose yearly bonus is based on the number of text messages that the company carries in a year.) with advertisements, bad poetry or stupid jokes to people you don't even know, YOU ARE BAD PEOPLE. BAD, BAD, BAD! Those of us who have tight budgets simply can not afford your inconsiderate habits. Go find something better to do. Go make some friends! Buy a dog.

AND to the little teenager that must have had this phone number before me... "Thanks" you have six messages on my phone. Your friends say "WHUZUP?", "Where ya been bro", "R U in the crib?", "Where the party" (nice grammar by the way) and several other things that I am far to lady like to type but I make the recommendation that you call your lady friend back before she tells all your "buds" some things you probably don't want her to say.

And to the T Mafia... I WON'T be recommending you to ANYONE! ((giant raspberry))

The Kite

My husband says this is one of our "BEST" stories from this summer....




It was a perfectly wonderful and sunny morning. We (our whole family and my parents) headed out to Jetty Island by way of it's adorable little ferry to take advantage of the last summer weekend run of the year. We had picnic coolers, buckets, blankets, kites, sunscreen and snacks galore. We sat on the open top of the Ferry and took the five minute ride across the river to the long sandy beaches of our playground for the day.




Once settled into our "perfect" picnic spot with all of our gear laid out on the table we were off to explore and scare the flounder by walking for miles on the shallow out tide with sand squishing happily in our toes. We swam, splashed, played sea Frisbee and built sandcastles. Shad had my kite up to the end of my string before I could blink and we took turns walking up and down the waters edge with it. We had decided even before lunch that we would be coming back the following day. Childhood summer days like this are few and far between. This was a summer moment to cherish and make last as long as we possibly could.



As I said, the day was splendid. The boys were playfighting in the sand. Boo ran towards the table and like Young King Arthur he plucked the excalaber driftwood sword out of the sand by the table and turned to run after his brother. But wait, "oh no!" what is that??? The end of my kite string with it's bright pink plastic handle had been carefully placed beneath the sand by my thoughtful husband, wedged under the driftwood sword. "bop bop bop poof!" It skipped three times, went up the small sand dune hill, caught a perfect updraft and magically flew right over two very large birch trees soaring into the great blue skies. A count of three and it was gone from site.



"Wow" I said to my father "Can you believe it missed the trees?" I turned to a broken faced son who looked like at any moment I might strangle him to death. "I am soooooooooooo sorry Mommy!!!!!" he stammered, "I didn't know, I didn't mean too, I am really really sorry, I will buy you another kite, please don't be mad at me?" What could I do? I walked over, hugged him, told him not to worry that I would have been tempted by that paticular piece of wooden swordsmanship myself and that accidents happen and not to let it ruin our day and for goodness sake "GO PLAY!" So I sat back down at the table with my father and took a few moments to reminisce about the life of my beloved kite. I bought that kite right after Shad and I started dating. It has been carted around and packed around and moved around a thousand miles. Oh well, at least it had a romantically tragic ending. Carried through the skies to unknown lands on a perfect summer breeze.




The rest of the day went so well that we actually traded in our return ferry tickets for later ones. No one wanted to leave that day. Worn out, happy and sun kissed we packed up and got ready to head home. Walking the sandy trail to the ferry while watching T drag seaweed off of his aqua socks I happened to glance up. "Hey! No way! Look!" Up there, far far away was my kite, floating against the clouds. We all stopped to look and it was confirmed by mutual consensus. There was my kite. Now, it had been far to long in the day for my kite to be simply hanging out in the breeze. By now it should have been in Canada or the Cascades or something. "I wondered if it got stuck on something in Everett?" I asked. We all took our seats on the upper deck of the ferry and wondered aloud at the improbability of it all. As we crossed the little river, Shad laughed and said it would be funny if it was stuck in the parking lot. "It has to be further than that because it looks so little" I said. The closer we got to the ferry dock the more we realized that it could indeed be in the parking lot. "Look!" said Shad, "I can see the string! It can't be that far if I can see the string. "I don't see any string, your nuts" I said.

"Wait, look at the fishing dock!" he pointed. I looked over at the fishing dock and couldn't believe my eyes. There amidst the hopeful fisherman and crabbers was a bright pink plastic handle wrapped around the edge of the dock. "no way..." It couldn't possibly be mine. "I am sure that there are more than one pink handled kites in the area" I stated. "One that looks just like yours?" said Shad. My mother knows what a baby I am and said that she would go check it out with me. So we dropped our load off to the men and while they dragged the kids towards the vehicles my Mother and I headed towards the dock. "Excuse me..... by any chance was that kite found this afternoon?" I expected for the little group of people to look at me like I was from outerspace but much to my surprise they started to laugh. I then received a very broken English story about how they found an extremely funny kite that hovered right over the river be-bopping (ok they didn't say be-bopping) across the water, the pink handle skipping like a stone on the waves. It went directly toward the fishing dock and a young woman simply reached out and took hold of the handle and just as simple as that, caught it. They said it was quite a site to see coming from the island. "Thanks!" I said with a HUGE smile as she gestured for me to take it. My mother was laughing and I was grinning like a Cheshire cat. I just could not believe that I got my kite back. On the way to the car I brought it in. I almost hated to see it stop its flight for the day. I couldn't wait to show Boo though. "LOOK!" I shouted, holding it high. "IT WAS MY KITE!" "Whew" said Boo. I gave him a big hug and kiss and Shad and I told him that he had given us the best memory and story of the entire summer. We all laughed and laughed all the way home...