{Hoh Rainforest}

This last weekend my brother Andy and his family came over to Seattle and we got the pleasure of having them stay at our house. It is always nice to have company come, we loved having them. On Saturday we wanted to do something fun and interesting so we headed over to the Olympic National Forest and more specifically the Hoh Rainforest. We did however pick a day that it was rainy and misty the whole time but I guess what can you really expect from a "rain"forest!!? It was still beautiful and the rain did let up so that it was more of a mist than anything. We decided to hike one of the smaller trails and the kids had a blast. We put the two youngest babies in the double stroller, which Andy trudged along with. The trees and growth was amazing. We also spotted some interesting creatures, like slugs, which the kids got a kick out of. After we hiked the nice trail we headed off to the beach to get even more wet but oh how the kids loved it and it was so beautiful too. Those pictures are coming up.

{Hilarious}

I realize by posting about this I will appear to be an old decrepit, senile and out of touch woman, but I have to do it anyway. I am well aware of the technology that abounds in the world of today and most of it I use and use it well. I can pimp my blog, send/receive and attach documents to emails with the best of them and many other very savvy technological things. But I must confess I have never sent a TEXT message in my life. Ok I take that back. There was this one time my niece typed something for me and all I had to do was push send so she could show me how to do it. It was on her phone and I don't even think I know where to find the texting option on my phone. I don't even have texting on my cell phone plan (yes I do have a cell phone but only as of about four years ago). It isn't that I don't find texting neat or useful or sometimes really convenient. I just figure that if I have the time to text I have the time to talk and so I prefer to do it that way. Well I guess I find myself out of touch with how things are these days because of my lack of texting skills. For instance as I listen to my brother who just returned from his mission or my nieces and nephews talking about dating, I find that the dating scene is a whole new arena. Largely in part, I believe, to texting. I find myself sounding like an old person warning kids about the dangers of letting their texting skills do all the work that their interpersonal relationship skills should be doing. I have even had a couple of eye rolls and the "it's ok you are just too old to understand" looks from these youngsters. Like I said before I have no problem with texting but when kids text each other when they are sitting right next to each other or they text each other for hours on end instead of calling and talking to each other I see that as a problem. I recently just read a really funny and oh so appropriate blog post from a guy who talks about this very same thing. Dating and texting in today's world. He can write far better than I can so I will direct you to his blog and you can get a chuckle just like I did. The blog is called "The Craig Report", he is a father of six kids and a pretty hilarious writer. You can find his post here. So I would like to see what your take is on texting!! Are you a "I text all the time, way more fun", or a "Only occasionally, when I know I can't talk", or a "only in an absolute emergency will I" text kinda a person? Let me know where you stand!!!

P.S.

When I pushed spell check before I published this post, each and every time I used the word "texting" it highlighted it as misspelled and didn't give me any options for how it should be spelled. Maybe I didn't used the appropriate texting slang shortened version. I don't even have a clue as to what it might be!!! For heaven's sake I just learned what LOL meant like six months ago!!

{Hmmmm?}

So the girls have a habit of coming down to our bedroom in the middle of the night to sleep on the floor. A long time ago we banished the kids to the floor if they wanted to sleep with us hoping that it would be a deterrent for them coming to our room. Our bed just isn't big enough for Ryan, I and even just one kid. Well it really hasn't worked with the girls because they would rather come and sleep on our floor than sleep in their own beds. Well one night both the girls came to our room at I don't know what time. When Ryan got up to get ready for the day and I got up to use the bathroom and then to promptly go back to sleep (it is too early to think about staying up) this is what I saw on the way back to my bed. I don't know how Lauryn thought that was comfortable but she slept like that until about 8am. So not only does she like sleeping on the floor instead of in a nice, warm bed but she would prefer to be under the bed as well. Crazy girl.

{Man Cub}

The term "man cub" is a normal phrase with my family. We say it in reference to a boy usually young in age and small in stature but not short on testosterone. With the number of kids in my family there is no shortage of evidence that little boys and little girls are different right from the get go. When Wyatt was tiny, probably just able to sit up he was put on the floor with his cousin Tivi, who is only two weeks older than him. There was an array of toys to play with including blocks, cars, babies and other random things. Tivi was playing with the baby, loving on it giving it slobbery kisses, basically honing her mama skills at a young age. Wyatt was playing with the other toys for a while but then decided as young babies do that he wanted what someone else had. So he took the baby that Tivi was loving on and immediately started pounding it into the ground and thinking it was the funniest thing ever. Boys and girls are different, plain and simple!! Well while I was in Idaho visiting family I saw another example of little boys being little boys. Meet Teancum, my older brother's youngest child. If there ever was a child who exhibited more "man cub" like tendencies it would be this one. I found him outside playing with a stick as if it were a gun. Now to clarify my brother and his wife did not sit down and teach this little guy what a gun was or how to old one or anything of that nature. My brother does own guns and shoots them and so just in watching his daddy he has learned what a gun is. Teancum was off on a hunt and when I stopped him and asked him to show me his gun this is what I got. So adorable I think, not because I think young children running around pointing pretend guns at things is cute, but because I love seeing these little beings acting and behaving as little boys. So I couldn't resist capturing a Man Cub in training. These little boys of ours come hard wired to become men and the drive to build and fix and protect is second nature to them. I love his little face and how he holds the stick and how serious he feels about his little gun!! What a cherub!!

{Sometimes....}

......when life seems too hard to handle and you want to give up, try looking at it from a different perspective. It might just make things look better!!!