Marine Layer and Mountain Lions!

Oooooo. Woke up to another marine layer morning! And it hasn't burned off yet. This means it is slipper weather. The cool, moist, ocean air (you can even 'smell' the salt and seaweed) coming in the windows. We don't close the windows, because it will warm up later on so you want as much of the cool air in as possible, but you do need to grab slippers for the morning and a light sweater or something. When it burns off it is so interesting to watch it being 'sucked' back out to sea and see the distinct line of blue sky and fog.

There was another mountain lion sighting at 11:30pm. We actually had one walking along our path in the backyard in '04 around 7am. Christine saw it out the living room window and started yelling. She thought it was a big dog at first, which how would that have gotten in to our fenced yard? No, the mountain lions easily hop the fence. Yes, believe it or not, even here in SoCal I live in 'critter country'. We have mountain lions, coyotes, rattlesnakes, bobcats, bunnies, mice, rats, ants, bugs, deer. Pest control service is a MUST! For the most part we just need to be 'aware' and they keep to themselves. We did have to change some landscaping early on as we realized we were feeding the deer with our plant choices! And the bunnies just LOVE our garden. We have to start with established plants or grow them from seed indoors first and then plant them. They seem to leave the established plants alone.

We have back to school night tonight for Christine. I have to say, I love how technology works these days with communication between parents and schools. They have this neat edline site that lets us know everyday what the homework is, the status of my child in each class, and an individual email address directly for each teacher. We had none of that with the other kids. We had to wait for report cards and progress reports to come in the mail. They have had daily planners since 3rd grade to record all their assignments and calendar due dates and make a plan to get it all done. That wasn't even heard of in my day, or even 10 years ago with her older siblings. It's a GOOD thing!