Raccoons, Caterpillars, Butterflies & the Beach

The title pretty sums up the last two trips to Bear Lake this Summer. Two weekends ago Ryan took the kids up to the cabin and met up with his sisters to do the big opening (cleaning etc). While they were up there they discovered an unnerving scraping sound coming from under the bathroom tub. Apparently is sounded like something was trying to claw it's way through the bathtub walls. So, Ryan's sister called an exterminator and after removing the panel, they found a family of 4 raccoon's living under the tub, along with lots of other rodents and pests. And it seems they had been there for quite a while. Lovely. It's made for some fun and exaggerated story-telling on my children's part. Finley swears he saw a raccoon stick his claw up the bathtub drain while he was taking a bath (after throwing up in bed). And it gets larger, bigger, pointier and scarier with each telling of his story :)


The annoying pests even chewed through four main cabin electrical wires, so we had to have that fixed. $2000+ later it's all fixed and though the thought of all that money being spent on raccoon removal & damage control, it's much better than having them still there. We are very grateful they didn't chew through the cabin walls and really wreak havoc inside like they did to two of our neighbor's cabins a few years ago. 


We went back up this past weekend for Father's Day. On our way up we stopped in Perry for some Maddox chicken (a must) and some fresh fruit from the roadside stands. 5 lbs of fuji apples for $1? Seriously folks - so cheap. The Rainier cherries not so cheap, but so delicious. Well worth the money! 

Tired, hungry, and a bit impatient ....

Satisfied.

At the cabin thankfully the raccoon's were gone, the area thoroughly cleaned, bleached and re-sealed by the exterminator, but there is apparently one more raccoon (the mother) that is trying to get back into the space. So there were traps set up to catch her (and any others). It didn't stop us from enjoying the lovely weather.


The water level is high again so there is no chance of there being any beach by our cabin this year. So we drove up to North Beach on Saturday and played in the sand and clear, cool water. It was lovely. 

After too much sun we headed back for dinner and a camp-fire in the yard. Ryan is quite the campfire builder and in no time we were roasting yummy marshmallows and making smore's with his second cousin's from next door. It's fun having a cabin surrounded by Ryan's aunts & uncles and cousins as it usually means there are other kids up there for our kids to pal around with. There was lots of trampoline jumping going on :)

Berlin showed off her hula-hooping skills all weekend long - she has become quite the super-duper Hula-Hooper and loves to show off anytime she can. She would try new tricks, like arms inside, around the neck, head covered in a blanket, holding a pretend microphone and singing while twirling, and of course hoopin' in the water. She even added levels, one being slow, four being super fast.

Above is a video of her twirling away on the beach.

Berlin will fiercely defend her reign as supreme hula-hooper in our family. We each took turns and I am not so bad myself, but when she saw me do it she immediately pipes up that she was still the best and I was only second best. Yes dear, we know :)

Sunday we got up and went on a morning hike. There were tons of butterflies everywhere. 

 

Afterwards we came home, relaxed, did rocket balloon races, had lunch, cleaned, then came home. It was a short, but fun weekend. So glad we have Bear Lake to go to in the Summer.