Last Chaotic Day of the Summer?

I'm hoping that today was the last day I will experience massive chaos for the summer.  Trip for two to Children's for a mini check-up and research in the form of an ultrasound of Mr. B's liver, a common ailment with CF patients and they are trying to determine genetic or conditional factors, so they're checking healthy patients to see what they find.  Turns out he was supposed to have an empty stomach for 4 hours prior to the scan, and although he didn't eat breakfast, he had medications in the morning and his night feed kept pumping until 6:30 or so.  At best, he had 2 hours free of food prior to the test.  Granted, the thing pumps the feed at a whopping 75 mls an hour, which is about 1/3 cup an hour.  Woo.  Hopefully it won't negate any of the findings.

Miss E needed to do a lung function test and check her weight.  She had lost about 5 lb. at the last appointment, and this time she gained about 3 lb. back.  WOOO!  She also improved her lung functions back to 100%, although she HAD been well over 100% in tests previously...we need to keep working on compliance with medication.

Racing back to town for driver's ed seemed like a futile effort given the distance and the time parameters, so we broke for lunch after a quick trip to the book store.  After picking up a half-dozen new books, we zipped over to a favorite sushi place.  Ben and I had a few plates of goodies, and Emma had as many plates as he and I combined.  We razzed her a bit and the chef was stunned at the amount of food she put away.  TEN PLATES?  Yep.  We're going to have to do a financial background check on her future dates.  She's not one of them salad-eatin' chicks.

We wandered back home for a bit and Cammie came home for lunch from her Girl Scout meeting.  They discussed doing their first Cadette badge, "New Cuisines".  This includes making a dish from another country, making a dish from another region of the US (think "Southern Home Cookin'"), a dish from another time period (welcome to "Take a Thousand Eggs or More"), cooking a dish that 'makes a statement' (whatever that means!  OK, I looked it up--they want you to make a home made version of a processed food, or make a dish from a cookbook and replace ingredients for religious, health or allergy reasons), and share your dishes on a 'culinary tour' by hosting a potluck party.  Since my younger kids love to cook, and the other scout, Miss J., is from a 1st generation East-Indian family, they have this one in the bag.  As part II of their meeting, my co-leader took the girls on a grocery run to an Indian grocery store and an Asian grocery store.  Cammie came home with a few new things to try cooking at home.

Ben, on the other hand, learned how to make grilled cheese sandwiches for himself.  I showed him *once* how to do it, and the next time, he made a perfectly grilled sandwich.  I had to get a picture of it.  Look at the golden color on this thing!  He also microwaved a scrambled egg for a little extra protein.  Look out, Gordon Ramsay!

As I mentioned before, I volunteered to make beads for the An Tir Lampworkers Guild, taking on the Kingdom of Drachenwald and the Kingdom of Trimaris.  These strings of beads will be given to the Royals of these two kingdoms at Pennsic War at the end of July and beginning of August.  Bekah helped me make about 1/3 of them, but I finished the rest of the beads the other day.  Some of them turned out really cool...I'm so excited about making more for myself or to give out as teacher bribes for Ithra.  They don't cost a lot and they're a lot of fun!  I can also put some onto Gypsy Caravan's table to sell, I suppose.  I know he doesn't normally sell that kind of jewelry, but he does carry other necklaces.  Maybe I could work something out with him.

I found out about a cool Geocaching challenge that was set by the Washington State Parks to visit as many parks in a year as possible.  More than 100 state parks have had a special cache hidden, and once you find it, you stamp your passport with the stamper provided (each one is unique, so you can't just stamp it with anything and fake it).  If you make it to 50 parks, you can submit your passport and receive a silver commemorative coin.  With 100 stamps, you get the gold coin.  Of course, I'm getting in on this half-way through the year, so I'm missing out on some travel opportunities, but also limited on cash and time.  I finally made it to my first cache at St. Edward's Park in Kenmore.  It took far too long to find it--the GPS took us in entirely the wrong direction several times.  I should have listened to my Geo-senses and gone right to that funky tree that Ben was climbing all over.  After we finally got our stamps, we finished following the trail around and found this very cool tee pee constructed out of sticks.  Ben climbed right in and this demanded a photo.  There are at least 8 parks located north of us (more, if you leave the mainland or travel to the peninsula or go farther afield), so I hope to take a day or two and get a bunch of them, and I hope to take the opportunity while traveling a bit this summer to pick up a couple more.  Looks like there's 7 or 8 along I-90 alone.  If we get a chance to stop at all these, I'll be giddy!

We'll see how long I can hold my breath, right?

Chances are, I'll only get to 25 or 30 at most.  But it would be fun to try for 50.  Just cause.

Tomorrow I hope to clean out those beads of all the bead release and then sew a binding on a king size quilt.  Karate in the afternoon, but I don't have any plans to leave before that.  Yey!