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.