Our weekend was pretty mellow around here. For us, anyway. Except for one bathroom incident, but more on that later. Jack had Hunter up, so he was fully occupied. Mitch took the boys on a long hike, his first since his accident. He's still sore today. He also spent a lot of time working on the neglected tree house and patching the holes in the walls that the kids have made since we moved here. I took the youngest three to the Coupeville Wharf Festival, because you can never have enough festivals in Coupeville, apparently. This one had a pirate theme, and I thought Henry would love it. He did love the idea of it, but when Captain Jack Sparrow and Davy Jones started a sword fight while talking to him, he tried to climb up the back of my legs. But the girls were already glued there. Then, there was a clown tragedy, in which a clown made a heart-shaped balloon for Grace and you would have thought he had ripped out one of the pirates' still beating heart and handed it to her, the way she freaked out. All of the terrors of the Wharf Festival were easily erased by a trip to the ice cream shop, as usual.

Yesterday, I worked on clearing the blackberry brambles and stinging nettles from behind the basketball hoop, because I'm tired of the kids playing basketball and coming in complaining of bleeding arms with angry welts. Big babies. Now I'm covered in bleeding arms with angry welts. I did find four missing basketballs, however.

It's strawberry and cherry season here on Whidbey. From that sentence, I bet you can tell I'm about to talk about the bathroom incident. Olivia was complaining of a tummy ache, and then she disappeared into the bathroom. Usually, she's a quick pooper, then she backs out of the bathroom, spreads her cheeks at the nearest adult, and shouts, "AM I DONE?" Well, she had been in there for a good 10 minutes when I heard her yell, "We're out of wipes!" Alarm bells rang and I hustled to the bathroom. How is it possible to hang upside down from the ceiling and rub your poopy butt on the walls? Mitch had shower duty and I cleaned the bathroom. The end.