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.