We went hiking somewhere new this weekend – the James T. Slavin Conservation Area Park. Mom says living in Spokane is like being on a long vacation because there are so many great places to hike and explore.

There were so many birds to hear and see!  There were cheeps and tweets and squwaks and quacks and much more!  We saw an osprey dive down and catch a fish!

Look at these awesome pink flowers growing right out of the rocks!  On this hike we discovered a fun way to make chocolate peanut clusters!  Here is the recipe: Mix up a plastic ziploc bag of your favorite trail mix with peanuts and raisins whatever else you like and add chocolate chips. Put the ziploc baggie in your backpack. Then go hiking when the temperature is near 90 degrees. Look at the trail mix during the hike but don’t eat any. It would be a big chocolatey mess!  Come home and bring the backpack in the air conditioned house with the trail mix in it. The next day you will have peanut clusters!!

Also in the news is that we got our sprinkler system going!!!  Mom says this is the best invention EVER!  We got the programming all figured out so it runs automatically but we still like to go out and run it manually to see the sprinklers pop up and down and water the different zones in the yard.  It is fantastic!!! Plus we get to play in the sprinklers yayyyy!

OMG!!  Today mom brought home a new cat!  It is not a foster we adopted it and this is his forever home now!  Here he is hiding under the bedspread.  He is feeling a little shy but he is very sweet and loves having his face scratched.  He is 15 years old!  His previous guardian died and so he was in an animal shelter here in Spokane.  He had a sister too but she was very sick and died while at the shelter that is very sad.   We are going to take good care of this kitty and spoil him and give him the best retirement home ever.

Before mom brought the new cat home she spent the weekend fixing up the guest room where he is staying.  This way he has his own private room while he gets used to us. This photo of the guest room may not look like much but you should have seen it before!  It had neon blue paint and butterfly mirror stickers on the walls. We have not picked out a name for the new kitty yet.  The name he came with was Tiger but that is my name!  Also it is the name of Margo’s cat so it would be way too confusing.

Oh Boy!  Today we hiked somewhere new – Fish lake Trail!  It is a long trail so we did not make it to Fish lake but it was a great day anyway.  We met Darrell and walked with him for about a mile. He is from Louisiana and told us all about the wildlife there like alligarators  alleygaters  gators with big teeth and swamp snakes like water moccasins. He was super nice and handsome and his friends call him Cajun. 

We saw lots of interesting rocks like this.  If Auntie Darcy were with us she could tell us all about them.  We looked for fossils but did not find any.

Then when we got home we saw that someone left us this amazing hanging basket on our doorstep!  I think it is from one of our super fantastic neighbors.

Yesterday we were doing errands and right in the middle of the city was this really great park with yellow sunflowers as far as you could see!

Last week we had dinner with our awesome friend Vivian !!  We have not seen her in months so mom and Vivian spent hours yakking.  We were at a restaurant I LOVE restaurants! Vivian is really nice and funny and beautiful.  It was a great week!!

This weekend was the famous Spokane Bloomsday 12K (7.46 miles) race! Elite runners  and wheelchair racers from the US and even other countries come to Spokane for this.  We volunteered to help at one of the water aid stations !!  Here we are setting up.

The barrels of water are filled with a fire hose !!  OMG !  There are about 50,000 people in the race. That is a lot of people and they are almost all thirsty.

Here we are passing water to the runners!  We filled about a zillion cups of water.

We had to work hard to keep the table filled for these nuns. Almost everyone wanted to get water from them.  They were really nice and very beautiful too!

There was an awesome band playing near us.  It was a great day!!