Missy has been going to Cowgirl day camp at Presby this week, which she loves. We were lucky; they had a cancellation so a space for her opened up. Beth and I finally took the kids to see "Kung Fu Panda" Friday night, which we all really enjoyed, even though some of the fighting parts scared the kids. Saturday we all went out geocaching, heading out in the direction of Etna Green and Bourbon. We didn't find one we were looking for, but did find a nice park and playground that the kids really enjoyed. Saturday we had a Katie day so Beth and I went to dinner and to see "The Happening," which was dumb.

The kids are coming off an especially busy week. Monday through Friday was our church's VBS and they also had a "Kids Quest" day camp thing at preschool. Space Camp was the theme. The space part of it was basically making space-oriented crafts and pretending to be astronauts and such, mot really the NASA version. So they were going to Space Camp in the mornings, and VBS in the evenings, all week. I was driving one of the vans for VBS, but Beth wasn't working, so we went out to dinner a few times with Virgil and Sherri. We had Chinese more then anything. Beth and Sherri also went to a play at the Wagon Wheel (the Wizard of Oz) Wednesday so Virgil and I went and checked out the Train Shack in town after dinner. Saturday was Beth's and my anniversary and Alex's first chance to go to camp at Michiana Christian Service Camp (they call the day camp for the 5-year-olds "First Chance Camp"). A bunch of deacons were working at removing two of the large stained glass windows in the church afterwards and I helped; we accomplished in a couple hours with free labor what the best outside quote wanted $25,000 to do. The windows were easier to remove than we were expecting; maybe we should take more down. Anyway, afterwards Beth, Missy, and I went to Fort Wayne to go to Toys R Us and then go look at some pop-up campers, but it started pouring buckets while we were eating lunch, so we wound up only looking at a couple (which we decided later were out of our price range) before packing it in and heading home again. I was worried that Alex would be getting rained on all day at camp, but when we picked him up (he was sleeping in the van when it came back) we found out it hadn't rained up there hardly at all. He had a great time.

Tonight the softball team lost (again) to the same team that beat us on opening day. I myself was 2-for-2 at bat, with some hard hits, but had a horrible day in the field, most notably because I misplayed a long fly ball and couldn't...quite...reach it in one inning, then did it again a few innings later, when the ball glanced off the top of my glove and over the fence. With the bases loaded. Embarassing.

Today is Missy's 4th birthday. Things were much more low-key here than for previous birthdays. We visited the library and got Alex's bike tire fixed, and Laura, Thomas, and Ben visited here for the weekend, coming down from where they were visiting in Michigan. They arrived Saturday; we had a Katie day so she babysat while the grownups did some shopping and had dinner. Today we had bagels and a small party - just us at home - for Missy. She got some good stuff... a fishing rod, Sorry game, magnifying glass, some clothes, etc. Then we went to Fort Wayne to go to Chuck E. Cheese's, which seemed like much more of a rip-off than I remember. Alex hit a couple of 50+ ticket jackpots, so we had 287 by the end, which was enough for 2 bouncy balls and a little plastic ring for Missy. At T'N'T we'd've had enough for 2 bags full of crap. Anyway, since today was Father's Day, Ritter's had a special going on where the fathers got free ice cream so we went. We were going to get ice cream and then go see "Kung Fu Panda," but while we were waiting in line a huge driving thunderstorm blew up. Beth and the kids went back to the car when the sprinkling started but the rest of us were caught and had to shelter under the overhang. It was absolutely driving rain and the overhang was not much shelter. So the 3 of us were pretty wet by the time the ice cream was ready, and we decided to skip the movie. Laura and Thomas left Monday morning.

My back is much better and I was 2-for-3 with a good solid hit and a couple nice catches in an exciting softball win tonight. We won on a walkoff homer. I would have batted next; I had dreams of hitting the winning RBI or something. But this was good enough.

Virgil called and came over this evening, kind of out of the blue, to help me do some fixing up on the lawn tractor. We figured out how to level the mover deck (it was cutting really screwy) and got new blades (they were about as sharp as marbles).

Beth and I had a garage sale this weekend. The Churchills and the Thomases put a lot of stuff together with ours so we had a bunch of junk in our garage. I took Friday off to tend to it. We did a steady business, but it was so windy we kept having to chase clothes around and pick up the display stands that had blown over. We made close to $400 altogether, selling a lot of clothes, toys, books, videos, and junk. Big ticket items that sold were the old swingset ($60), Missy's crib ($50), Alex's crib ($85 - funny story 1), Alex's bike ($10); other noteworthy items were the old garage door opener (funny story 2), both of the old trikes, and kids clothes. We bought 4 big cases of pop to sell (we could quadruple our money by selling it for 50 cents a can) but only 4 cans sold all weekend. Don't know why. Virgil and Sherry brought over tons of old kitchen stuff from his late father's storage spaces (he was a pack rat) and sold nearly all of it. Sunday it was really slow, but steady, all day, so I worked on (and completed) the assembly of the kids' new swingset / slide while the sale went on.

Funny story 1: a large group of Hispanic men, only 1 of whom spoke English, came over to our house late Sunday afternoon (sale was over on Saturday), asking if we still had the crib. The offer/counteroffer process went $100, $70, $90, $80, $90, $80 (his final offer), $85 (my final offer, accepted). The one who spoke English was asking if I had the measure for it. I got out the tape measure and told him how big it was on all sides. He looked confused. I must have too. He asked for the measure again in a minute or so. I told him yes, I had the measurements and told him again how big it was. Finally I realized he was asking for the mattress. That I did not have, as it was worn out when we put the crib away and it went in the trash long ago. He looked at me like I was ripping him off.

Funny story 2: A guy bought the old garage door opener for $5 but needed to leave it here and go home for the truck. Apparently the truck was unavailable because he returned later with the same car. He put the accessories in the car, then picked up the opener, rested the front of it on the passenger side view mirror, and then got into the back, holding the motor end up by hand outside the rear passenger window. Off they went like that. I hope they didn't have to go far.

Anyway, Sunday afternoon we went to Wal-Mart and got Alex a brand new bike which fits him much better, and got Missy a new big kid booster seat just like Alex's. By evening the front tire on the bike was flat as can be and would not hold any air at all. So, we need to get that fixed because Alex was very disappointed.

The other day Beth and I were moving things around in our garage to get ready for a garage sale this coming weekend, and I pulled a muscle in my lower back pretty badly. Well, not badly, but it is sore. Tonight, We had another late softball game tonight, and I was not on. I was 1-for-3 with a weak infield hit. I blame the sore back. We did win the game, though. We should have mopped the floor with the other team but it was only something like 5-3.

Beth and I took the kids out to Tokens & Tickets to celebrate their completion of another year of preschool. It's a bummer thet school is over for the summer; they love it so much. Anyway, we all played some games at T&T, bought some trinkets with the tickets we won (all of which I hope make it into the trash very soon) and went out to dinner at Shoop's. Saturday we got moving early to head on out to Shipshewana and Elkhart to look at some used campers (Memorial Day weekend got us in the mood to look for one again). Ewing's had surprisingly few, none in our price range, but they did waste our time showing off ones we couldn't afford. That was a bust so we headed to Elkhart and checked out a couple different places, again, none of which had what we were looking for. Sherry had told us about a popup for sale on someone's front lawn in town, so we swung by to look at it, it looke nice so we called the owners to see if we could come take a closer look. Katie was babysitting, so after she came over we went and looked. Nice. A 1996 model, very good shape, only 2 1-inch tears in the canvas, lots of room, well laid out, 2 queen beds, easily towable with the minivan, $2600. Beth and I talked about it over dinner at Mad Anthony's and decided to make a decision tomorrow. Then we went to see the new Indiana Jones movie, which was disappointing. How unfortunate that the franchise had to be dumbed down. Sunday we made the decision to pass on the camper. Neither one of us were that excited about it, for no reason we could really tell, other than we just didn't feel it was right. Not sure why.