June has been a busy month. I'm actually catching up on this update much after the fact, so there are things I undoubtedly forgot about. The month started out with a Cub Scout campout, the first weekend after school ended for the year. It was at Ouabache State Park this year, and for the first time included some new recruits who just finished kindergarten, and plan to start with cub scouts in the fall. Overall we had a good time, but there were some struggles with how to plan the time, and our buddy system was too rigid...some of the kids got sick of being with their buddy constantly. But we did get some nice hiking in, from the campsite to the fire watch tower (one of only a few remaining CCC towers from the 30s) for an expo by the local Indian tribe (including a tomahawk throwing demo, which I and a few scout participated in)  and some recreation of the War of 1812. Then the rain started, but fortunately it wasn't too hard or too long. It's just one overnight, and overall I thought it went well, until a few days later when I heard about one of the moms complaining (livid was the word I heard) about how her son was treated by the other boys. Someone was making stuff up just so they could be mad, is my take, but we happened to be at the library at the same time during the following week to watch the transit of Venus, and I spoke to her for a while about it. What she says happened, I never saw happen, and she wasn't there. So anyway, she was mad, and she was going to be mad, and then she was mad because 'nobody's going to do anything about it' so that's that. Don't look for her kid in cub scouts in the fall. Anyway. Ray the intern was back again for the summer at church (!!), so on the 7th we had him over for dinner and took him to Yamato. Missy's birthday party was the following Friday. We had a bunch of little girls over and took everyone out to see "Madagascar 3," then home for cake and ice cream and party games and jumping on the trampoline. Imagine 10 9-year-old girls jumping on a trampoline singing "I like to move it, move it" after the movie. The next day was a graduation open house for one of the teenagers at church who has no room for one at his place; we set up the large canopy from the camping group at church in the backyard and they provided the cake and drinks. Following that was VBS week, also the reason that Missy's birthday party was early. Also during that week we had to have a plumber over to fix the downstairs toilet because the flange started leaking whenever it was flushed, and of course when he got it all taken apart he said something like 'whoever put this in didn't know what they were doing.' Apparently it was never put in right around the tiles, and he doesn't know why it didn't leak a lot worse a long time ago. Anyway, he was knee deep into that work almost all day getting it put back together right. Then the following week we picked up a virus of some sort on the laptop, which had us out of commission for a while. It was one of those that shows a nasty screen, then pops up windows about how your computer is infected, and can't run, and you can fix the problem with this downloadable antivirus software for only $40. Otherwise, your computer is locked up and can't run, and your files all look like they're gone. All a scam. I paid for a remote access computer fix service, but was reeeeeeally unimpressed with their service after several days of getting little attention and them not fixing the problem, so I bought AVG instead later in the week, got the laptop to the point where I could recover and back up the digital photos, and did massive brain surgery. Wiped it all out. Reinstalled windows. Started over. THAT helped a lot. Alex went to Cub Scout day camp the 20th-22nd, this year without rain. Beth and I had our 20th anniversary this month, and celebrated by dressing up and going out for dinner at Noa Noa. That weekend we had a bunch of friends over for a cookout to celebrate and exchanged our anniversary presents (diamond earrings for her, a painting of a sailboat for me). We also took the kids to see "Brave" over the weekend. They did the Good News Caboose VBS the last week of June, and I closed out the month with the Ta-Ta Trot 5k in Plymouth, which was incredibly hot. Especially for 9 am. It started late, and by the time I finished, it was darned uncomfortable for running. First the wet heat of the woods by the river, then a bare asphalt road with the sun beating down, and puddles still on the ground from yesterday's rain. Plus, I messed up my tracker app and didn't get it. Officially, my time was 26:30.