New Mexico is a State?

My house was getting a little crowded with art projects and perfect spelling test from my children. My mother in law had an old file cabinet she was no longer using. Now it is mine. Anyway, she cleaned it out, and sent it over to me. There were some folders still in there and I came across a newspaper clipping that I find amusing. I am not sure of the exact date, probably 12-13 years ago judging by the info in it. Here it is.

"Albuquerque, NM- What's just below Colorado and between Arizona and Texas?
The answer, New Mexico, wasn't easy for the Atlanta-based Olympics ticket office, which insisted the state wasn't even part of the country.
Wade Miller encountered the geography gaffe Tuesday when he tried to buy Olympic volleyball tickets by phone and gave the agent his address in Santa Fe.
"She put me on hold, then came back and said she couldn't sell tickets to someone who lives outside the United States. She said I needed to call my own national committee." Miller said.
Half and hour later, Miller was still trying to prove New Mexico has been a state since 1912.
"I asked them, 'You've never heard of Los Alamos, where they did all the atomic testing? It's right next to Arizona, underneath Colorado, next to Texas and Oklahoma, there is a state called New Mexico,'"Miller said."'We have a big city called Albuquerque.'"
The woman's supervisor was equally clueless.
"She told me, 'Sir, New Mexico, old Mexico, it doesn't matter I understand it's a territory, but you still have to go through your nation's Olympic committee.'"
Not until Miller asked for the tickets to be mailed to Phoenix where he also has a home, did he get some satisfaction.
Scott Anderson, managing director to games services for the Summer Olympics, promised yesterday that the mix-up won't happen again.
"Obviously we made a mistake,"Anderson said, " and we want to apologize the everybody out in New Mexico."

There are many thoughts that come to mind after reading this story. I find it funny and disturbing at the same time. What has our educational system come to? No wonder we can't compete with the rest of the world.

To be a woman

I am glad I am a woman. To have been blessed with the ability to express emotions, to sympathise with others. To grow life within me. To be able to watch sappy movies and cry during them, if I wanted to. To have to power to heal a scraped knee with just a kiss. To be strong beyond strength. Women's intuition. To be a mother. And so many other reasons that are inexpressible. But sometimes, at three in the morning, and I have to go the the bathroom and sit on that cold, cold seat, I wish for a second that I was a man!

Sick puppy

When I was pregnant with Ashley I had a very weak stomach when it came to certain foods. Even the mention of sardines by Arnold would send my stomach twirling. So I have sympathy, but find it also quite humorous, for my baby Gabriel. Last night, after spending the afternoon outside chewing on grasshoppers, our puppy got sick and threw up. All three of my children where standing around her arguing who was going to clean up after this mess. Gabriel kept looking at the mess, which really wasn't very much. Then completely out of the blue, he gagged, and then he threw up! So now I have two piles, quite small piles, of mess to clean up. The girls are really grossed out at this point, so guess who got the honor of clean up duty? Poor baby, but for some reason the whole situation made me laugh. Maybe because everyone else was disgusted, and the whole thing didn't phase me at all.

Tagged

Well since I got tagged twice, I guess I will think really hard and find 7 random facts about myself. Thanks Lin and Alicia.

1. I have only lived in 9 different states since my birth, and passed through or visisted 4 others. That means I only have 37 more states to visit, I don't plan on moving anymore. I want to see all 50 states. From there the world.

2. I follow directions. Completely. There is nothing that comes with instructions that I do not follow.

3. I like bananas, but HATE banana candy or pudding.

4. I am compulsive about finding things. Like this weekend, Breana couldn't find her school book, wasn't even sure if she brought it home, but I tore the house apart looking for it. I can't wait for her to come home today to see if she left it at school. If she didn't, heaven help this house.

5. I want a bigger garden next spring. With a real watering system, not a sprinkler.

6. I miss going to the gym. I loved running and sweating, and having sore muscles. At home I just can't find the motivation to do it:(

7. I am very frugal, dare I say cheap? But I will not buy generic peanut butter.

I don't know 7 people who blog on here, so here are the few I do know:
Sasha, I haven't been around you in a long time and want to know you better again.

Jamie, you were just a little girl when I last saw you, now you have kids of your own, so tell me about yourself.

Katie, my cousins wife who I know very little about.

So thats it.

Things I've learned

While sitting in the freezing cold early yesterday morning I was thinking how much I hate to be cold and I have learned that I'd much rather be hot than cold at least until summer rolls around. Then I'd rather be cold than hot. Here are some other things I have learned over the years:

70 degrees in January is much warmer than 70 degrees in July.

You shouldn't honk at skunks when they are crossing the road.

Desitin comes off of fabric, like a couch for instants, with Dawn dish soap, applied full strength. Not hot soapy water, like one might assume, it must be applied full strength. By the way, it is really fun for a two year old to "paint" the couch with said Desitin.

Marshmallow can be roasted over an electric stove using a fork, but should first be removed from fork before putting in ones mouth. Burns on lips hurt!

Unrelated children, when spending enough time together, will begin to act like siblings.

Telling a four year old it's better to give than receive is useless.

Eggs will not cook on a sidewalk, even if it is 120 degrees outside. They will however attract a lot of ants, and are extremely hard to remove once they are sun dried onto concrete.

Please and thank you are not a foreign language and will be understood by everyone, and can be spoken by even the youngest of talkers.

Low temperature glue guns do work as well as hot glue guns, and don't burn.

It is important to remember when going for walks that as far as you have gone, is how far you must turn around and walk back.

Plastic reptiles and spiders MUST be put away every night before bed. Even plastic snakes will scared the good gollies out of me when walking around in the dark.

Children don't care if you sing the right words to a lullaby. They will sing the wrong words along with you.

Halloween temptations

I made two mistakes this week. First I bought halloween candy that I liked. Second I opened the bag, just to put it in the bowl. You maybe able to figure out the rest.

Cow Bells?

We have one neighbor, to our north. Our south and east is nothing, and I mean nothing, but a big empty field until you get to the river. Sunday morning Breana woke up bright and early, happy to inform me that there were cows in the field. Her Sunday morning entertainment, watching the cows, and when I say watching what I really mean is trying to scare them

into running off. The dog are more than happy to assist her in her attempts. These cows do not scare easily, so Breana gives up and comes inside for waffles. The dogs do not give up. They run wildly back and forth up the length of the fence barking their scariest barks, not to scary considering they are cocker spaniels. Eventually the cows move on and the dogs come in.

Story over, except when I take them out at 10:00 pm for their pre-bed potty break. The cows have returned, glad that I watered all these weeds for them over the summer. How kind of me. Really meant to just water my grass. Anyway, the dogs go crazy, because now it is dark and they can't really see the cows, only hear them moving around outside the fence. I am ready for bed, the dogs are ready to protect me from the beast beyond the great fence, or at the very least, show everyone how big and brave they are. They refuse to listen to me, so I am running around the yard, in the dark, in my PJs, barefooted. Not happy. I finally convince them to at least bark from the back yard. And I go to bed. I guess the cows left, or the dogs gave up, and when it was quite, they came in.

No cows yesterday, but again they were out this morning. Only one difference today, the dogs showed no interest. I guess cows aren't a threat to our home after all.

The rose buse

Before
After.

The rose bush. It was to big. Now look I have a side yard. It only took 3 days and countless cuts to chop down. I took a hand saw and by the sweat of my brow began the pain staking task of cutting each limb off one at a time. It was not easy. Getting to the base of that monster was a challenge. And I did it all by myself. Yeah me.
So the story goes like this. My daycare kids liked to go behind the bush where I couldn't see them and I didn't like that. I had been talking about removing it for months, maybe even since the first time I saw it almost a year ago. You couldn't see around it and it would grab you as you walked by it. I love plants and flowers, but this thing was too much for it's own good. Plus the flowers didn't even smell like roses. If they had I may have had to keep it. In any case all that remains is a stump. Which will probably start growing back soon if I don't do somthing more with it. I think I will need a stronger shovel.

And then there was 1

After much trying and heartace, all but one of the puppies have died. I guess it just wasn't meant to be.

Puppies

So I am an irresponsible pet owner and neglected to get my dogs "fixed". Now my puppies have puppies, which wouldn't be a big deal if they were not brother and sister. But they are and they did. And it probably would have been ok if my female didn't have a birth defect, a hair lip. In any case, she had 4 puppies on Monday night, 3 with hair lips, 2 with double hair lips, 1 is perfectly normal. The 3 cannot nurse, and I have taken on the duty of bottle feeding them. One died last night:( Not of starvation, but because of the hair lip milk was able to get into her lungs through her nose. Her breathing became very raspy and she wouldn't eat, then just before I fell asleep I found her dead. The other two are very small compared to there normal sibling, and I fear greatly for their lives. I am greatful for the sake of my momma dog that one will live, she is a wonderful mommy. I have been debating the logic of keeping these 2 alive and wondering if it would be nicer just to put them to sleep. But my heart keeps telling me to just give them a chance. What if some one had given up on my dog when she was a puppy? So I have decided to just give them a chance. I will do my best to keep them fed, and hopefully the milk will stay out of their lungs.
Something to be learned in all of this, stop procrastinating and do what needs done. If I had, all this could have been avoided. So I am tired, puppies need fed at night too. I feel like I have a newborn again. At least they will be able to eat solid food in 4-6 weeks!

Cell Phones

My 9 year old daughter thinks she needs a cell phone. We live in the middle of nowhere. My cell phone doesn't even get good service out here. But she has convinced herself she must have one. To make matters worse her friend, who I happen to babysit, got one and brought it over today. What a joke! I have heard all it's ringtones and have seen all her must have photos. Why does a 9 year old need a phone? Is it not enough to use the home phone, now they must be able to text and recieve pictures? She uses it as a toy, nothing more. I will not be getting my daughter a phone until she is much older and possibly able to pay for it herself! A cell phone for a 4th grader!

Nightmares

This morning in my last hours of sleep I was awoken by a terrible nightmare. My daycare kids were arriving for the day. They kept coming and coming. Some I didn't even know their names. They were coming in the back door even. I kept thinking where are the kids I know? And no parents even cared that I was running around about to go insane. They had no worries about leaving me with all these kids. I had no idea how many I even had, let alone where they all were. Thank goodness I woke up.

Fall

The days are getting shorter and I can feel a change in the air. It is still very warm during the day, but at night there is a chill. This morning when I opened my door, I smelled smoke, not like a forrest fire, but from a fireplace. Can it really be that someone needed to build a fire already? I think not, but that is what it smelled like. I look forward to fall. I love the cooler days and changing leaves. I want to bake cookies and eat soup. I can't wait to carve pumpkins and turkeys. It feels like only yesterday spring found me in dirt digging to make things grow. Now it seems winter will soon find me inside wrapped up snuggly in my favorite blue flannel blanket and sipping hot chocolate. I love living where there is a noticable change in seasons. Isn't nature grand?

Crash

So my husband crashed his car about a week ago. Wet road, going to fast(he says he wasn't) deer, corner, muddy shoulder, and a 2 inch metal pole fence ended in a totalled car. The mud spun him around and he hit rear end and passenger side. Thank goodness, or it would have come right at his face.

In any case the car is a total loss. So this past weekend we went to Phoenix to get a new car, well truck. Before we moved to NM Arnold had a truck. He traded it in for a car that got better gas mileage since he had to do alot of driving to work. Anyway, he got his heart set on a truck again. We looked on line all week, and the more he looked to bigger the truck got. He looked locally, but nothing worth buying. He found a 2005 Ford F150, with a lift kit and oversized tires. And that is what he got. Now I may have to sell a limb to pay for the gas!

We weren't planning on spending to night in Phoenix, but ended up doing so anyway. Which was actually really nice, the hotel was cheap because it's summer and no on wants to stay in Phoenix in August. We bought bathing suits at Target and got to swim in a reall pool again. It was great. I love swimming. The kids had a great time and we got all our back to school shopping done.

Ants

A little known fact about red ants: Some times a colony of them will grow wings and fly to a new spot to build a nest. The other day they decided to land on my roof. Thousands of them. They then will chew each others wings off and return to the red ants we are all use to. They ball up in clusters of serveral ants and roll around chewing at each other. My roof was covered, they then would roll off the roof and land all over the ground in my back and side yard. I got my trusty can of Raid and started to spray ants. I ran out and still the ants continued to roll off my roof.

Arnold got the ladder, which was to short to reach the roof, so he put it on a folding table we have in order to make the ladder just a little taller. He has a gallon of bug spray and is going to go spray the ants. I am looking at the ladder on this table and wondering if I am soon to be a widow. But as we walk around the house he is side tract by all the ants that have fallen on the side of the house. He starts spraying the ants and they don't die. This keeps him off the roof. Releif. The next step is the exterminator. He explains to us all about the migration of the ants and assures us we have no need to worry. He is right. By morning the ants have left. The bug spray did work a little, we have lots of little dead ants laying around the house. We also have the house sprayed outside, just in case.

Willow Creek

We went camping a couple weeks ago. Nothing exciting happened. We thought we might get rained on, but no, the wheather held. It was so nice. The first night I thought I had made a mistake and would freeze to death before morning, but I survived. I am not sure what the allure of camping is. Maybe it's sleeping on something uncomfortable, be it the ground or an air mattress. Maybe it's the fact you can never get really clean. I forgot my hairbrush and spent the weekend with my hair in a bun to avoid the tangles. Maybe it's the smell of smoke that sticks to everything you take. Or maybe it's just getting away from TV's and computers, WII's and Playstations. To enjoy each other instead of all the distractions of our time. The food never tastes better than when cooked on an open fire. Smores, do I need to say more? In any case we had a great time. Willow Creek is beautiful. And "getting back to nature" is, for me, well worth all the discomforts.

More on the gopher

Ok, so while I was inside blogging about the gopher, It was outside chewing on another tomatoe plant.

So I got the hose and decided to wash the little bugger out. It didn't work. The water kept going down. I had heard it wouldn't work, but I had to try. Also I was hoping it would at least bother gopher enough to send him some place else. I got out my shovel and started digging holes wherever a gopher hole was. The dogs even got in on the action. I made a mess and still I have a gopher.

I dug a trench around my tomatoe bed, I put shingles around them and buried them. Hoping it will turn the gopher in another direction. So far so good. But every day I go out and stick the hose down any new hole I find. This gopher has me insane. When we moved here I was so excited to plant a garden, the main reason was for fresh tomatoes. The thing I wanted the most is the one thing this beast has targeted.

My rock garden

So I have a small fenced in area in my back yard. I grow rocks there. I swear I am growing them. I have planted some vegetable there, but every time I water them, rocks grow. It's true. So anyway, there are some peas, onions, corn, strawberries, pumpkins, cantaloupes, watermelons, jelapenos, greenbeans, and tomatoes growing with the rocks. I had a thief in my garden two nights ago. A gopher. It came like a coward from beneath the ground and stold a whole tomatoe plant! It left only a hole where a plant should have been. Not even a leaf was left. I may have to start sleeping in the garden to protect my tomatoes. I only had 4 plants.

Crunchy towels

I remember when we moved to New Mexico as a kid and my mom made us hang our cloths on the line to dry. I hated the way it made everything all crunchy. Nothing felt soft. You had to dry off with hard towels. And it was always so hot to go to the line to hang or take off. Oh I hated it.
It's been pretty warm around here lately. I have been doing laundry early in the morning so the dryer won't heat up the house to much. But yesterday after I washed towels, I had a brillant idea, I have a cloths line. So yes, I dryed my towels on the line, outside, in the sun, to get all crunchy. And this morning when I dryed off with one of my crunchy towels I could smell 16 again. I could close my eyes and remember the old house, I could feel the way the swamp cooler made everything just a little bit humid. Never before have my towels smelt so good.

On the catwalk

I hadn't been to the Catwalk since I was in high school. The other day we took the kids and went for a hike. It was amazing. The trees shade most of the path and make you feel like you are in your own private world. There were wild mulberries growing off the side and they reminded me of Texas. We took off the well beaten path and found a little pool to dip our feet in. The water was ice. I could see my feet turning red right in front of my eyes.

The kids started out grumpy, they had stayed with a friend the night before, but the magic of the river soon changed their mood. By the end of the day they were all laughing and skipping down the path. Maybe it was just because they knew we were heading back to the food. I like to think it was something more.

My blue journal

When I was 10 years old my mom took me to a small book store on the "square" in a small town in Texas. They had little earsers shaped like animals and smelled like various fruits. I don't remember much about that bookstore, but I seem to remember that is where my mom bought me my first journal. It was blue with a silver unicorn on the front, I LOVED horses at that point in my life.
It took me until I was 18 to fill all the pages of that book. Some of my entries make me laugh, some bring back memories I had forgotten that I had. After filling these pages with my most personal thoughts, I made myself a journal out of notebook paper kept sercurely in a yellow notebook. That one only lasted a couple years. Still stored in a box in my garage. I now have a small pink journal with two little teddy bears happily hugging each other on the front. I believe my dad got it for me, right before I got married 11 years ago. It pages are slowly filling. I wished now that I had wrote more about my children, as they are growing so fast. I thought I would never forget those unforgettable moments, but there are so many and I seem to be forgetting some of them.
Today as I type I wonder if these words will replace my little pink journal. I seldom get it out anymore. And when I read it I feel silly, it seems as if I only wrote when I was upset. So today I write, type, my thoughts. I am happy, tired and hot, but happy. All my journaling started with a little blue journal that my mom bought at a small bookstore in Texas.

Thanks to my sister Alicia I decided to try this blogging site. So here it is. My blog for today. It's naptime. I would love to be able to lay down and sleep with the little ones, but the big ones are still running around, so I dare not sleep. I am so happy tomorrow is Friday, I need a weekend. I love what I do, but I sure get tired doing it. I know not every one can do daycare. I have been blessed with patience and find children to be little gifts full of energy, wonder, and endless possiblities. I find joy in being there for them and their parents. My "kids" are happy to be here, I am sure they would rather be at home with mom or dad, but since they can't I try to make them as happy as possible. I love kids.