Cat Bite

I get home from work today and take one look at Noah's face and knew something was wrong. Apparently, he had just been bitten a bunch of times by our cat.  

Ben and Emily were in the rooms on Zoom calls for school. Noah does his school at the computer in the living room. He heard Prim screaming, literally screaming. He ran in the other room. We have a cat tree by the window and she got her foot stuck in the cord and was hanging upside down freaking out. Noah picked her up to and got her paw freed. In the meantime, she bit him numerous times. 

 The cat was screaming so loud that Ben and Emily thought it was just Noah being loud and annoying and neither of them even came out.  Ben couldn't believe that it was the cat screaming and not Noah.

This bite on his arm was by far the worst. The wound on top was deep and bleeding a lot. His finger was totally swollen. He's a little allergic to cats, so he was swelling up fast.

 

Poor guy had about 2 minutes to tell me what happened and he had to get on a video call for school. As soon as it was over, he took a shower and washed all his wounds. I got Neosporin on them and got them bandaged. Then, Dakri tells me that cat bites get infected easily, especially if they are deep like Noah's. Oh great. So, we did a teledoc conference call with some doctor from our insurance. It was so nice and easy. She said she doesn't think he needs stitches and prescribed him an antibiotic. The one deep wound could probably use a stitch, but we'll see how it does. 

 

As fate would have it, he already has a doctor's appointment scheduled on Wednesday for his 11 year old shots. It'll be good that they can check it out and make sure he's fine.  

 

Oh yeah, the cat's just fine.  

Sedona

One day in June, we took a trip to Sedona. Sedona is a place a lot of people have on their bucket list. Me, I've been there lots. Pam used to live there, so I would visit. Then, Pam and I would spend a girls day every 6 weeks driving up there, shopping, hiking, getting our hair cut. It was fun. Sedona is always beautiful, and we did something I've never done this time. So, I got a whole new perspective.

We did the Sedona airport loop trail.

First you hike up a big hill for a great view.

Doesn't this picture look like it could be from the 70's? I don't know if it's the lighting or the shorter shorts, but it so gives me a 70's vibe.

Then, the hike continues all the way around the airport. I had never even been to that area before and the view was amazing.

It was hot. Very hot. We had to stop several times to rest and hydrate.

Now, the thing to do is stay and watch the sunset. So, we had pizza in the parking lot and then watched the sunset.

It totally reminded us of when we saw the sunset at Haleakala in Maui.

Unfortunately, there weren't any clouds. Clouds make a sunset amazing. But, it was still pretty and a fun getaway for the day.

Bullpen

I somehow missed blogging about our entire summer. Maybe Covid just has me feeling blue since we missed our usual big trip to Idaho and Canada. Maybe I'm working 50-60 hours a week and up at 3AM most days. Maybe it's a bit of both. But, we actually did have a good summer. We tried to do fun little trips with the kids so that it wasn't a total boring summer.

We've heard of this place called Bullpen forever and have always wanted to go. It's not that far from here, maybe an hour drive, but it's down a crazy dirt road that we probably had no business taking a mini van. But, we did anyway, and we are darn glad we did. 

When you see a bunch of green trees in a valley, you know you've found lots of water. 

We had heard from friends to head the opposite direction of the main place and you'll find an area all to yourself. It was about a 20 minute hike. We found a great spot with a rope swing and nobody was there. It was lovely. The kids all practiced being tarzan.

We were advised to bring some inner tubes and it was so nice to float around.

I wish there was a place on this wall somewhere to jump off, but it wasn't deep enough.

Here's Noah and Clara swimming back from the little beachy area.

We hung out there for several hours and had lunch. But, we all decided we needed to see the main spot with the cliff that everyone jumps off. So, we hiked the mile back to the car and then another mile the opposite way to get to Bullpen.

And here it is... It was more crowded than this, but it wasn't awful.

Noah jumped off the little ledge. Since we aren't able to jump off the pier in Canada this year, this was the next best thing.

Emily jumped in.

Ben's turn.

But, of course, my kids wanted to go higher, so the jumped from almost the top. David didn't want them to do the top since someone had said it hurt their ear drums. So, here's Emily and Ben jumping.

Then, Noah had to do it. Emily was so sweet and helped him up there.

It took about 5 minutes of deep breaths and false starts, but he finally went for it.

I was so glad he did it. I know him and I know he would've regretted not doing it later. 

The kids jumped and played. I jumped too! 

It's so green and pretty here. You forget your in the middle of the desert.

It was such an awesome day with our friends. We loved it and can't wait to go back. 

First Day of School

Well, I went from Ben's graduation to the first day of school. I guess it was a boring summer. We did take some trips and I have to post them sometime.

As for now, here's the first day of school in 2020 during a pandemic.We are doing online school until October.I'd rather my kids be in school, and so would they.But, the school district made this choice, so it is what it is.

Emily seems to be having a blast. Way too much fun for the first day of school. It's very structured and they have to sign on at certain times and whatever. Emily has a really tough year with lots of honors classes, so I'm hoping she can get ahead with doing some schooling at home and not having to fit in time for color guard.  She got all set up in my bedroom, so she has lots of space.

Ben's first day of high school didn't go how I hoped it would. But, again, it is what it is. He'll do great though and adjust. He has to take PE, and basically, they'll have to turn the camera around and do the exercises. We'll see how that goes. Oh well, he's lucking out right now because it's 100 degrees out.

Noah has a similar schedule as the 2 high school kids. He has an awesome homeroom teacher and we did a drive thru meet and greet with masks on the other day. It was weird.

Overall, I know they'll make all this change work and do just fine. In the grand scheme of life, this is merely a blink of time. They are good kids. I'm happy with have lots of space and computers and they can all do their own thing. Oh, and very grateful for unlimited data! 

Ben's Graduation

Ben's school typically doesn't do a big to-do for 8th grade graduation. They have a quick assembly that parents can come to. No cap and gowns or anything like that. But, each kid does get called and they get their graduation certificate. That obviously didn't happen this year with Covid. But, they had a drive-thru parade and the kids got to say goodbye to the their teachers (from their care) and they got their certificates and shirt for high school.  They also took a photo of each and every kid and posted them on Facebook! 

Ben got his report card and had all 100%, and one 97%. Homeschool work was optional really, So, they could do the work and improve their grade from third quarter or they could do nothing and they'd end up with the same grade as third quarter when all this happened. Of course, Ben diligently did his work every day, and he went from straight A's to um, straight A's.

 

We're super proud of him, and all of our kiddos. This year didn't end how we wanted, but they rolled with it.. To celebrate, we went to Olive Garden! It was our first time eating in at a restaurant in months since everything has been take out only since March. It was so nice.

 

Now, Ben's on to high school, where we know he'll do great things!

Wolf Creek Falls in Prescott

We had another fun adventure a few weeks ago. We trying to do weekly outings to keep the kids from getting bored and incredibly depressed that everything they were looking forward to got cancelled.

So, we headed out early to a hike at Wolf Creek Falls. We had to head down a dirt road for far too long before we realized we went too far. Turned around and we finally found the trailhead. It was kind of behind us and unless you were looking backwards or traveling the other direction, you'd never see it.

In any case, we got out and got walking. It was a gorgeous day.

 In about a mile, we came to this small water area. Now, this is where most people stop. But, we knew from a Facebook post that more water and a waterfall was further down. So, we soaked up this pretty view for a few minutes and pressed on.

 The trail got super steep, like sit on your butt and shimmy down a little at a time. It was kind of scary, but that's all part of the adventure.

 We finally reached the falls. There wasn't enough water for swimming, but you could definitely get wet under the falls.

 

The kids were all screaming and laughing as the water was so cold. It was great.

 We didn't notice any rainbows while we were there, but then looking at pics, there were rainbows in some!

 

Here are the Moms!

The "littles" as we call them found a rock slide.

 More pics of us...

 Cool photo of the falls, sun and a jet.

The hike out wasn't as bad as the hike in and we all made it back in one piece.

It was such a pretty day, and I'm so glad we have friends to go explores places with.