Bandon Animal Safari

We decided to take the family on one last trip before the summer was over. We went down to Bandon Animal safari. It is about 5 hours away quite a drive but well worth it. We had such a good time playing with animals we would normally never get to touch. We got to play with a 9 week lion cub, a 10 week black leapard cub and a 4 week siberian lynx. We got to hold /play with a few other you can see from the pictures.

Coupons, Coupons, Coupons

For the past 2 1/2 weeks I have been a coupon clipper. I have never really go out of my way to clip coupons, but with our grocery bill of $350 every 2 weeks it was getting out of control. I found this site www.thegrocerygame.com and have started stockpiling a 3 month supply of food. There is a fee but it has paid for itself already. We almost have our stockpile good for 3 months. My freezer if full which it has never been. The kids are doing cold lunch this year. So with all the sales on snacks, juice boxes, peanut butter I am stocked up for almost the whole school year. My goal is to get our grocery bill down to $70-80 dollars a week. Boy I wish I had found this site years ago. Check it out you migh find it useful too.

Silver Falls State Park hike

Today we decided to go for hike at Silver Falls State park. It is a 7 mile hike with 25 waterfalls along the path. When we got there it was slightly misting, typical day in Oregon. We started out our hike. By the time we hit the 1st mile into it, it was raining quite hard. We all looked like drowned rats. It took us a hour to hit the first mile mark, we made stops along the way to look at the waterfalls and take pictures. We were so wet that we decided to call it a day. Unfortunetly we had to hike back. I got a few good pictures. Will definetly have to go back on a dry day and finish the whole hike. I could have spent hours there taking pictures.

South Falls

It was raining so hard by the time we got to the North Falls

that it looked like it was foggy.

Lower south falls

School clothes shopping

My least favorite chore of the year is done. Me, Kaitlyn and Stephanie went and did school clothes and supply shopping today. 6 hours worth. Cody hates to go clothes shopping so he told me to buy what ever. We got all the school clothes for $601 and $80 dollars for supplies. Not to bad when I had budgeted $3oo per kid. Our school used to have us pay $30 dollars per child and they would purchase the supplies. But this year they did not offer it because to many parents would say they would buy then not pay for them. It was so much easier when all I had to do was pay $30. But at least it is done.

Camping trip

We went on our first camping trip of the summer. We left after work on wed. Got to camp around 9:30pm. I forgot how unforgiving the hard gound is. And how even the smallest rock can feel like a big boulder in your back. We went on a little hike and walked through the forest. Around noon we decided to set up to have a little target practice. While we were setting up Kaitlyn picked up a metal pipe that someone had used to shoot at and split open the meaty spot below her thumb. It looked like it needed a few stitches. So we tightly bandaged it, packed up camp and headed down the mountain. By the time we got to urgent care it had closed on its own and they just use super clue to close it. The kids were bummed that we had to cut our trip short so we are planning on heading back up on wed. afternoon. By friday we had to doctor up her cut as it split through the super glue. But we had fun for the most part. I forgot how peaceful being up in the mountains is. Here are some pics of our trip. I love taking nature photos.

Cody, Kaitlyn, Stephanie

Kaitlyn's cut after we re-bandaged it

dragonfly

dragonfly

local wild life

view of the camp site

dead stump

forest

view from our tent door

wild daisy

4th of July celebrations

We had a pretty good 4th of july. The weather was colder then normal. It was only 70 and was a little windy. My Mother in Law has a park behind her house. So we got out our lawn chairs and watched the other people in the neighborhood light off illegal fireworks. By the time they were done the kids were only slightly interested it lighting off the fireworks that we had. Each year their interest gets less and less. But overall I think everyone had a good time.

I tried to get some pictures of the fireworks, these were the

best I could get.

Kaitlyn, trying to jump on the pogo stick,

she just couldn't quite get the hang of it

Cody up in the pine tree, I knew he was part monkey

My nephew Steven standing in the middle of a pine tree.

Backyard fun

Yesterday we decided to get a pool for the kids for the summer. There were predicting a heat wave for the coming week so it was going to be HOT. So we set up the pool yesterday. We started filling it around 6pm by 10pm it still was not full. It took 2 more hours this morning to completely fill it up. Cody and Kaitlyn have been having a blast. They have been in it most of the day. It is currently 100 degrees. Don't look at all the weeds. We have yet to put the yard back together after having to tear it up to fix the septic system 2 summers ago. Someday I will get it back together.