July in a Nutshell

I'm going to have to just sum up the month of July in one post, so that I can catch up again. So many things have happened, and I just haven't gotten around to posting about them.

At the beginning of the month my brother Colby and wife Cindy and son Lehi came to visit us for a couple of days. It was their first time coming to our home in Washington. Unfortunately, I wasn't feeling very good while they were here so we didn't get to do as much as I would have liked. I didn't even feel up to giving them the tour of our house and tell all that we had done on it so far. We also never got in the pool, even though it was hot. While Curtis was at work, I took them to go check out a park in Richland off the river. We did buy a cool treat from some vendors at the park. Then the girls had fun posing for pictures.

We planned to go to Nampa for the 4th of July weekend, so we drove together with Colby and Cindy. Our family, their family, and Stillman's family all stayed at our grandma's house for that weekend. Colby had also brought Stillman's family their new puppy from Utah. Stillman couldn't bring the puppy to Brigitte's house because he needed vaccinations still and Michelle's mom's puppy had had parvo and died the previous year and had been in that yard. Parvo can still be transferred even after that long, so they did not want to take a chance. The adults all met at Top Golf in Meridian on the 3rd to surprise our sister, Melissa for her 50th birthday. That was the first time I had ever been there and it was fun. Colby and Cindy only stayed one night with us at grandma's house before heading home on the 4th of July to be with the rest of their family. They did go see the new Jurassic World movie with us the morning on the 4th before hitting the road. The movie wasn't that great, but it was still fun to all be together to watch it. Tamara's and Stillman's families and grandma were there also.

Most of our family, including our dog Milo went over to Melissa's almost finished new house to watch fireworks across the valley. Charlotte and Alice went to Tamara's house to do fireworks with cousins.

Top Golf

Our group

Milo meets Brinkley (Stillman's new pup). They had so much fun.

Jack and Brinkley

Their view is amazing!

Tamara and me

Fireworks with the Floyds for our girls.

Milo and Brinkley. They had fun playing.

The following weekend, the girls and Curtis and I went on a river rafting trip for his company's summer activity with the Clarkston office up north of Clarkston on the Grand Ronde River. There was one spot where the rapids were big, and some people tipped over and even lost their boats (a canoe) and oars. Fortunately, they were able to recover almost every item that was lost. In the end, I think the only things still missing were a couple of croc shoes. We were using the kayaks that my parents gave us this summer and inner tubes. I was on one kayak with Alice tied to a tube behind me. Curtis and Charlotte were tied together. We were lucky enough not to tip over. When we got out of our boats on the shore in the rocks Curtis spotted a baby rattlesnake. He and another lady decided to go ahead and kill it because we didn't want to chance it biting anyone, especially the kids. Things didn't go quite as planned and we ended up going to Stillman's to eat some food instead of doing it at the river, because it was getting late. Not as many people were able to stay so they had a ton of food. We stayed the night at Stillman's house and went home the next day.

The girls enjoyed seeing Brinkley again.

On Tuesday, July 15th, Garrett had his heart catheterization in Spokane. The catheterization was done to get a closer look inside at the blood vessels and get pressures for the blood flow. We drove up the evening before and stayed the night with Curtis's aunt Vicki and her husband Jeff. We started the day with a stress test and then his cath. We were gone the entire day. Everything went well. The doctor did add about 10 tiny coils to close off two collateral vessels to help relieve the pressure of blood flow since his blood pressure was a little higher than they would like to see. After the procedure, he needed to lay flat for about 4 hours and then they wanted him to walk around and make sure he wouldn't bleed out before he could be released. It was after 10pm by the time we got back to Vicki's house. We stayed with them that night and then went home the next morning. He didn't have any bleeding to worry about. They do this procedure about every 10 years, but he hadn't done it since his last surgery at 3 years old. So, we were a little overdo apparently and didn't even know it.

Doing the stress test first.

Ready for the heart catheterization.

The view from the hospital room.

Jack went to FSY in Moscow this year and finally got to be roommates with his cousin Jayden. I drove Jack over to drop him off and Curtis picked him up at the end of the week. They had a great time.

Our friends from Nampa came to visit again, the Hayes' family. The kids had a blast swimming in the pool. The adults got in as well, but Chrystal and I both thought the water was too cold, so we didn't stay in long. I love that we get to see them at least once a year.

We had our activity day swim party, and the girls had a week of swim lessons to finish off the month of July. And during that last week a cat showed up under our back deck. It looked dirty at first and like it had a scratch or something on its eye. I wasn't sure if it could be sick either, because it seemed to have watery eyes as well.  It wouldn't let us get close and would hiss. After giving it some food and walking away, it finally started to realize that we weren't going to harm it. When we got to the point where we could finally pet the cat and pick her up, we took her to our vet. Fortunately, this cat had a chip and they called the family, who was very happy to be reunited with their kitty. We didn't know if it was boy or girl until they scanned the chip. It was a girl. And they didn't live far from us. Just up the street. My girls and even Garrett were secretly hoping that we could have kept the cat. It was a cute cat, but I don't need any more pets! I'm really glad we were able to find her home.

Driving to the vet's office. Charlotte let her out of the kennel, and she got comfortable on her lap.