Catching up on the news

Thursday I took Joshua "hiking." It was getting late in the afternoon so we took a local hike up the San Juan Creek. We started off in the creek but didn'’t stay there long because it got too wet and I didn't want to get my new hiking shoes wet. We tried to find a way out to the horse trail on the north side of the creek. This was tricky cause of the undergrowth and we had to make our own path through low scrubs and small trees. It was quite an adventure. We finally climbed up the bank and got out on the path. We were walking east on the trail when Joshua saw a coyote about 100 feet in front of us. The coyote probably got scared by all our noise in the brush. He headed off east on the trail loping along but moving pretty quickly. We didn't see him again but were excited to see a wild animal so close to home. Joshua really wanted to cross the creek so eventually we had to get our feet wet. We ended up crossing the creek -- walking through the water 4 or 5 times. We hiked east for about 45 minutes and then headed back. We came back in the creek bed. It was a rough walk cause the creek bed is sandy and gravely. But it was fun to be out and to really break in my shoes.

Friday Joshua and I had our regular movie and pizza night. Our DVD player just broke, but we can still watch VHS tapes. Of course you can'’t rent VHS tapes anywhere so we went to a local thrift store that had them on special for $2. We found some great kids videos and got 4 for the price of 2 rentals at Blockbuster.

This morning we were planning to head to the FSEA Rocket Competition. I have worked for Future Scientists and Engineers for 9 years and this is an annual event for us. To learn more, check out our web site at www.fsea.org. Joshua loves the rocket competition and we had invited some friends from school to meet us there. So it was very disappointing when Joshua woke up at 4:00 a.m. sick. He spent the entire morning vomiting, so we stayed home.

This afternoon my mom was heading north after a quick trip to San Diego and offered to stop by to watch Joshua so I could get out of the house for a break. It was wonderful timing. I was able to help send off the team of 16 from our church who are headed to Malawi on a work trip. To learn more about this you can go to this web site: http://www.scpres.org/misc13366.asp. I was able to go on our church'’s first trip last year so it is wonderful to see the vision being passed on to another group of people.

Home now and Joshua is eating a cracker --– his first food of the day. Hopefully this was just a 12-hour bug and he'll be back to his old self by tomorrow.

Sheryl