Still Doing Summer

We are in our final week of swim team, finals are this Saturday. It has been such a great first season swimming for my three youngest. We have friends on the swim team that are from the same orphanage in Liberia as my kiddos. They came home within a few weeks of each other in 2006 and 2007. It's nice to have some time with them. (Tori was still in CA for this picture).

It's kind of humorous how many pictures I take that are Elijah and several African female adoptees.

Other than swimming, I am desperately trying to organize different areas of the house. I feel like I'm always doing one zone, but four others wait. Since we have a fairly usable shoe room now, I banned shoes from the front porch. We've been lucky to not have a lawsuit the last eight years by a delivery person, since I order almost daily from Amazon and then they are forced to deliver the packages on the front porch amidst shoe mountains while dodging a yapping Pomeranian.

As I cleaned out different shoe areas, I found two baskets of last year's flip-flops stashed up on the top shelf in the laundry room. Alei has happy to see her African flip-flops but most of the rest went either in the garbage or the Goodwill bag.

I am still battling the guineas in the garden. They have learned to fly over the electric fence. It appears to only be the younger white flock. I ordered a powerful Super-Soaker to spray them, (from Amazon to be delivered to my now shoe-free front porch). If traumatizing them with a large water gun doesn't work, the white flock is getting sold to an Amish contact I already have!

Here are my small tomatoes I picked for my salad yesterday; the guineas only seem to bother eating the large ones. The small purple ones are so good; once again, I bought them because they were mis-marked at the greenhouse but this time it is a mistake I'm happy with.

It just wouldn't be a normal summer without at least one dumped kitten. This is dumped kitten #3 that Alei has brought home from CVS. This time, she didn't have to dig it out of the dumpster, she just had to drive to the store and then another hour to bring it to us late at night. I was getting in the shower when I heard my cell ring. I didn't answer it and I heard the home phone ring. After JD ignored it, his call rang. Those are the moments that I start to panic a bit because the first horror thought I always have involves my teen drivers. When JD answered and Alei said, "I really don't want to talk to you about this", there is generally a stray something involved. I have taught my kids well in this area, just as my mother taught me. This is a super sweet kitty; I named her Socks. We are not planning on keeping her, as it works well with JD as long as they get re-homed. Once we keep one, JD is going to be less accommodating to our fostering. (We do have about 5 cats that are named, etc, and we feed another 5 daily in the barn.)

Baby Socks

JD has traveled a lot this summer, so this week the kids and I are packing up and going with him for a few days; hard to resist when the hotel on the beach is paid for my the company. Later in the month, I am going to visit my favorite baby - I like to believe he has been waiting for his MiMi to go to the beach with him.

                                                                                                              Jenny