The Skunk

I have thought of nothing but skunk for the past 14 hours. So much so that I completely forgot the Bachelorette finale was on!!! hahahah. Backing up about a month ago, Kelly had told us she saw a skunk wandering in to our backyard, so we knew they existed around these parts, but we started really smelling a lot more skunk this past week and then last night I came in our house and smelled it a lot. I looked around the perimeter of our house and noticed one of the grates that covers our basement window wells had a hole, and sure enough, a small skunk was stuck at the bottom of it.

We could see it through the basement window and it was fairly small, and actually kind of cute. I called a whole bunch of people and found out more than I ever wanted to know about skunks - but that basically I should try to give it some water. So I did, by removing the grate, which fell in to the hole, startling the skunk so it sprayed (not on me), and then I lowered a huge bucket of water in which in hindsight could have probably drowned the skunk. Anyway, the skunk must have used the grate to climb out last night. Either that, or it burrowed a hole and is under our house (I prefer to think that's not a viable option).

I could barely sleep last night - our house smells like skunk and I had vivid dreams all about the skunk. This morning, anxiety-ridden, I checked the basement window and the skunk appeared to be gone, thank goodness. So I got to work dumping bleach in to the window well and then a mixture of hydrogen peroxide, Dawn, and baking soda that Ev and another friend told me about. Our basement smells SO bad. Like I keep thinking a skunk is going to pop out of there, it smells so pungent.

Here it is in the corner

This is the well it fell into

In much brighter news, VBS started last week! Kids still love it!

A nice Lao lunch with Kel and Nel!

As luck would have it, our boys have met some friends just a few doors down with 5 kids. They went boating together on the Bonds' boat on Sunday and met again that night to go biking, and again yesterday to play at our house and go fishing at Ferry court (next door). So nice to finally have some friends that are this close, geographically.

End of July

Christian's bball camp had these little journals that they fill out at end of camp. It seems that "being nicer to brother" is big on his list. I only wish he implemented these goals a little more readily....

Walla Walla lunch with Kerrie!!! Was so nice to see her. We visited Bledsoe wineries for a wine tasting, and then we had a delicious lunch at Brasserie Four.

Olin wanted to squeeze my cheeks, and Christian wanted to 'doctor up' the photo

Picking peaches at our neighbor's house. I also took this photo to remind myself Olin had his first 3 Rivers competitive league soccer scrimmage today. They lost 11-0 and he got hit in the face with a ball, hard. Poor guy. He played goalkeeper the second half and although the score might reflect otherwise, he made a few really good stops! I was proud of him.

Bread #19 - Doughnuts

Doughnut holes. They were fairly tasty.

We dipped them in cinnamon/sugar (Christian above) as well as chocolate (Olin above)

Peach cobbler. I am counting this as bread #20. I'm pretty much counting any baked recipe (that I've never done before) because I am finding that 40 breads is much harder than I had anticipated!

Lulu lunch with "cousin Stuart"! He's actually Jeff's cousin so he's like 2 times removed, and not by blood, but he's basically a cousin. haha. Was a lot of fun. Olin came too.

Christian Playing BBall, Dimple Returns, Tetherball, Olin-days

Matt Kincaid thought Christian might want to join his basketball camp, so he did a week of it and I think he really enjoyed it. He said he "learned how to shoot a ball". hahaha. I don't think that's an exaggeration - I don't think either of the kids know how to dribble or shoot properly.

Another fire on the way to Seattle last weekend.

A nice note. A couple months ago Olin comes in and goes "order up for Melanie and David!". We were like why did you say David, and Olin said that's what babz calls himself at restaurants. hahahahah.

Glass class at Barnard Griffin. They love it!

Bread #18 - popovers. They are fairly eggy and milk filled. Decent.

I was the most excited member of our family when the tetherball arrived. The kids were definitely excited but lost a little bit of interest when they realized they weren't that good yet. I love tetherball. 

Olin Days. We've had quite a few days together this week while Christian has been in basketball camp and I've found that he is really easy to hang out with and funny.  I took on him on seriously about 12 errands on our first day and he did not complain at all. 

We have the randomest patch of strawberries in our backyard. Olin picked one for me.

The dimple returns. I always knew he had one (below at 3 months)

Portrait by Christian. haha.

Summer of '19

Summer of '19 has been great. I thought we'd have all this downtime and nothing to do all day but it hasn't felt that way. We've had just enough trips to not get bored, and the kids have had a good amount of various activities, sports, or camps. I think I actually reached a decent balance this year...for once!

Tiny typer

Ran out of regular seating at Richland chess camp

Chess Camp (round 2. They said this chess camp was ok but they did say they preferred the chess/badminton camp in Bellevue)

Blonde, or at least as blonde as I'm going for now. It turned out a little lighter than I anticipated but I think I'm ok with it for now.

Matching shoes. (His & hers. haha.) We copied Ev per usual.

We love Husky night at the Mariners. 

This time Mal & Ev came!

Light link rail was super convenient. BTW Mal is now 5'8". Also, they gave these little Edgar Martinez figurines out at the game. That was fun.

Ali Wong with Dae! Sheng Wang, her opener, was so funny. Ali was funny but no funnier than I was expecting is the best way to put it.

Dad and Grandma Joanne! They spent the week taking in the Seattle sights and we all joined them and squeezed in to the condo Saturday night. :) Was a lot of fun.

In line at Le Panier.

He was working on this tooth (#Q) all weekend. Dae finally tied some floss around it and Olin walked around gently wiggling it for about an hour before he finally pulled it hard enough for it to come out. His first tooth he took out by himself.

Proud! Also we went to the Sounders/Timbers game Sunday night. It was a great and close game and Timbers won 2-1.