I am so proud of Samantha. She read an entire chapter book in one afternoon. She started reading at Grandma's house, read in the car on the way home and sat right down on the couch to finish. I am so thankful that she enjoys reading.

After kids night at Skyline last week Samantha and I went over to Kelly's house. Kelly and I sat on the front porch and talked while the kids played in the sprinkler. Kelly gave me some green beans. Purple green beans. They are about the color of eggplant but taste exactly the same.

On Wednesday John worked his regular shift (3pm to 11pm) only he worked over just a bit and didn't get home until after 12am. He had just fallen asleep at 1:30am when the phone rang. He had to go back in to work to investigate a crash. He was there until 6:30am. He came home, took a shower and had to go right back in to work Thursday 8am to 4pm. Poor John.

On Thursday I went to the thrift store and found a bunch of great books for Samantha. They had all the paperbacks 8 for $1.00. Then I met Cindy at The Mad Greek for dinner. It was good to see her because I hadn't realized but I hadn't seen her since Lindsey's wedding. It had been really hot all day, in the upper 90's. But when we came out of The Mad Greek it had cooled down significantly and then a while later we had a big storm.

On Friday the internet at work was acting up in an awful way so I was forced to find somewhere else to work. I opted for the coffee house in town. Boy was I glad for this week to be over. Work had totally stressed me out to the point where I actually cried in my boss' office. It was one of those where you feel the tears coming but you can't do anything about it. And, it wasn't one particular thing but more the result of frustration from a bunch of things. I know people love Fridays and hate Mondays but for me it really is the opposite. The end of the week is so stressful for me. But, last week is over and it's a lovely stress free Monday.

On Friday Samantha went bowling with Kelly and the kids. She got 2 strikes and broke 100 as well as coming home with information to join a league. She was also excited because she has discovered the correct bowling shoe size that doesn't give her blisters. After bowling our family and the McA's met at Bob Evans for dinner. We had 2 booths, one for the kids and one for the adults. Then after dinner we all went Geocaching. By the time we got to the site it was dark but we tried anyway. We found the exact spot on the GPS but we were in the woods and couldn't see real well. The kids had flashlights but we couldn't get them to hold them still long enough for us to see anything.

At 8am on Saturday morning John jumped on the big bed where Samantha and I were sleeping and said he wanted to go back and try to find the cache we missed last night. We spent the entire day geocaching. First we went back to the park but we still couldn't find it. Then we went all over the city finding caches. In all we found 7 and couldn't find 2. Along the way we discovered several new areas of town, a new park and re-visited areas we had forgotten about. When we got back home we all were tired and took a nap. Around 7pm, after the cat poop incident which I will tell later, we went back out to see if we could find the cache at the covered bridge that we had not been able to locate when Samantha and I went with Kelly and the kids. John's set of fresh eyes didn't help, we still couldn't find it. We stopped by the McA's house and visited with Bob and Noreen, Kelly's parents. The McA's were out bike riding and geocaching at the park. Noreen mentioned that she saw a WebKinz panda bear. The funny thing is that Samantha has mentioned that she has too many WebKinz. John told Rose. He hated doing it because he didn't want to hurt her feelings. And, it's not that we don't like her buying presents for Samantha it's just that she has so many WebKinz already.

So, the cat poop. On Saturday john mowed the lawn. In the front there were 3 piles of cat poop. (Note: we do not own a cat.) I thought I could get out there and clean them up before he mowed over them but I was too late. Right as I got out there he had stepped in one and was cursing. He had mowed over the other two as well and the whole yard smelled awful. Oh, it was so bad. We have got to do something about these stupid stray cats. There are 3 or 4 of them and they are down right nasty. When I was rolling up the hose after washing the poop away I got a big whiff of cat pee from behind my hydrangea bush. Ugh!