Camping with Five

We had a great Independence Day weekend. We escaped the desert heat and headed up to the mountains a couple hours west of here. It was Fiona's first camping trip and I think she had a great time. She helped set up the tent, supervised the cooking and just generally looked cute.






We went for a nice hike through the mountain meadows. The weather was perfect and the scenery was gorgeous.



Apparently the wildlife agreed because we found a rattlesnake who had come out to play. He's the squiggly black thing in the picture. Ev lifted the boys up to view it from a "safe" distance. I think he and I have slightly differing definitions for that, but that's probably because I would have preferred to be about a mile away.



Ev and Trevor went mountain biking later that afternoon while the other two and I relaxed in the campsite. We read books around the campfire, talked about animal footprints and all sorts of other fun things. The campground was very quiet, so we had a peaceful, relaxing holiday. I think we'll have to go camping again soon!

Notice something missing?

"Hmmmm....something feels not quite right. It's like there's something missing. I can't quite put my finger on it. Wait a minute, there is something missing. What happened to my mountains?" That's exactly what I thought when I went outside the other afternoon. While everyone else was having snow- my sister in MI had 5 inches, my parents had a dusting in VA and even my old neighborhood in NC had flurries- our skies were full of something a little different. Dust. So before I ran inside to shut all the windows, I snapped this picture. As the crow flies, those mountains are only a few miles away. So this dust was pretty thick. The bad news is that I didn't realize what had been happening, so by the time I got all the windows shut I already had a little layer of desert sand on everything in my house. Here's your investment tip for today- dump your whole portfolio into Endust stock. My usage alone is going to make it sky-rocket! Oh, just for reference, this is what my view is supposed to look like.