Well, the visit to the mountains to see Mike's grandparents over the holiday weekend was really fun. I took the kids to a mine where we got a tour. In the process, we saw bats of the endangered species variety, a rattle snake, a hard rock mine museum (more info), and relics of the gold rush in California.

We really wanted to go to the river, but the river was very fast, very cold, and very high. I didn't have life jackets for the kids and I wasn't going to bring the kids to the river without them.

We went to a craft fair -- with about 8 booths, but I had one of the best smoothies ever at the same time. I got the hokiest purse ever because that's all they had, but I also got some awesome woven place mats with chile peppers on it. Wheeeeee!

Russell started acting weird yesterday -- he fell asleep face first in strawberry pancakes! We frantically drove him to the emergency room here. It turned out, that he'd accidentally taken his sleeping meds and not his regular meds, so by 4PM, he started to come out of it. By that time, however, plans for a bbq with friends were cancelled, so we came home and made hot dogs, roasted corn, and ate sliced watermelon til we were stuffed.

Yesterday, we went to fireworks in the smaller of the two cities around us and I was really enjoying the sense of the small town flavor. I guess because the kids were amazed at the fireworks which were short-lived and which were just not that spectacular to me. I've seen them shot over the San Francisco Bay, so I'm getting jaded in my old age, but I really enjoyed their pleasure. We had every intention of getting ice cream afterwards, but the 31 flavors place had closed early! Of all the nerve! ;) We got some shakes at a fast food place instead and came home and crawled into bed.
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We've been trying to make sense of our disheveled house today. If you find any way to hevel our house, it'd be great if you emailed us.