What a "sparkling" good weekend. . . . :-)

Being out of work is no fun and sadly some other issues have arisen that maybe way hard to get rid of if not impossible for a long, long, time. I am sure that will come up later but for now - let's just say that "stress" is a normal part of my day.

As this weekend began (2d - 4th of July) the kids and I decided to spend sometime visiting with my parents on the second before heading out to Adrian. This was really wonderful for us to do but the "visit" ended up being nearly the whole day as Jacob wanted to ask a ton of questions about what things were like when I "grew" up. My parents still live in the same house and when I was a kid growing up it was wonderful. We had a creek behind us and Lake Erie is less than a mile away so we were surrounded by fun.

Jacob became fascinated with the creek for some reason on the 2d and wanted to know what all the rocks out in the water were. I explained to him that they were the "left over" dam that we used to build when I was a kid at which point he wanted to know, "how" do you do that. Instead of trying to "explain" it with words I simply decided that we would "build" a dam. This was awesome and so much fun as we caught crayfish, found some freshwater clams and even caught a young trout in my shoe!



While building the dam we also came across a "young friend" in way of a little Raccoon that "stumbled" into the area pretty confused. I was a bit worried about it being rabid so we kept the kids at bay and I was able to get it flushed into a cage. The kids enjoyed seeing it close up but after a while we released it away from the house - safe from danger for both the Raccoon and people.



I was amazed at how quickly 12:00 noon became 7:30 and after a dinner of pizza and a swim we decided that it was time to make the hour drive to Adrian.

The kids were asleep once we arrived so it became an excursion of carrying them in to bed.

The rest of the weekend we spent swimming, playing with "speedy" the turtle, playing the Wii, and simply enjoying each other's company. Knoah was the most excited about holiday with the fireworks and all but it was so much fun to see Jacob and Hannah help Knoah with the sprinklers. Knoah was most exited for the "green" colored sparklers as that still seems to be his favorite color.

Monday afternoon came too quickly for me and taking them to their Mom's was something that I wished I could postpone for a good three or four more weeks - but - guess not :-(. We ended the weekend with a fun cooking class and make a homemade "mac n cheese" pizza that the kids took with them for dinner.