Christmas Poem

Some of you know that I write a Christmas poem each year. I usually send it out in Christmas cards, but as my family grows, I'm unable to send the cards to my friends. So for all you friends that didn't get a card, it's not because I don't love you and wish you well, it's because I can't make more cards. Please know that I wish everyone a Merry Christmas, and I'll post my poem so it can be enjoyed :-)

Twas a month before Christmas and I'm here at home,
Once again composing my Holiday poem.
I hope you're healthy and you've had a good year,
May this season give you much festive cheer.

Naomi is four now, growing with great speed!
This year she's even starting to read.
She still loves dinosaurs and learning their names
She'll grow up to be a dog trainer, or so she claims.

Michael's still working and going to school.
Luckily he doesn't have to use a slide rule!
He's just had a birthday, the big 30 this year,
We celebrated with his family, all quite dear.

I'm much the same, stay at home mother.
But I'm very happy, wouldn't have it any other.
I like making crafts and keeping a scrapbook,
I love reading too, especially with my nook!

Pets we have four of, 2 fish and 2 cat,
Very sadly this year, we lost our dear rat.
Milo and Demi aren't sure of each other,
It's a good thing Naomi acts as Milo's mother.

I'll leave you now and finish this poem,
Wrap up those presents, decorate the home.
Remember that Santa will come any day.
Merry Christmas to all, and a Happy Holiday!

Snow :-)

My camera had an unfortunate accident involving a certain 4 year old and a cat hidy hole, so no pictures...sorry :-(
We got snow! I love snow, I don't like driving in it, I don't even necessarily like playing in it, but it is beautiful.
Naomi was thrilled, she immediately asked to go out and play in it. For anyone who has kids, you know the drill. You suit them all up, the thick socks, the snow pants, trying to keep the long sleeved shirt sleeves down while putting on the jacket, the mittens, the hat, the boots.... Your kid can barely move, they shuffle out into the snow, play for 15 seconds and then are freezing and want back in. Or, alternatively, they need to pee. She did actually come back to the door to yell that she wanted in and I told her that if she came back in she was done for the day (I know, bad Mama!), so she gave me the Naomi look and went back out to play again. She had a blast throwing snowballs at the house! I'm pretty sure she ate quite a bit of snow and she ran around in it. We were lucky enough that the store stayed around for 2 days without getting slushy and icky, so she played in it the next day too.
As much as I like the snow, I'm glad that it is melting today. Michael has to go back to work tomorrow, so I'm glad that his commute will not be hindered by slippery roads or NM drivers.
I probably won't write again before Christmas, so I hope you all have a wonderful week! Be safe and take a moment (or two, or three) to enjoy your family and this time of year!

Halloween

So many fun activities are available this time of year. Pumpkin patches for instance! We went to a great one that a local horse ranch puts on (Galloping Graces). The were able to play in a pile of corn, ride small tractors, have rubber duck races with old water pumps, go through a corn maze and a hay maze, AND they could ride a horse! Naomi and her cousin waiting their turns.

Naomi's horse was named SeaBiscut. She loves horses so she was thrilled to have a chance to ride one again!

Carving our pumpkins. Naomi really enjoyed getting the seeds out, but was unimpressed with the remainder of the process. She could not understand why she couldn't just draw whatever on the pumpkin even after I tried to explain that I had to be able to cut her design out.

Here is the ferocious dragon! She decided to be Toothless from the move How to Train Your Dragon. For those of you who haven't seen it, it is super cute! I made the costume over several months, and I feel pretty good with how it turned out :-)

Here is the back. Again, background story from the movie, Toothless the Dragon is injured and has problems flying because he loses one of his tail fins. A nice human (Hiccup) makes him a replacement fin and helps him learn to fly again. So the thing that looks like a paper bag (because it is) is the replacement fin.


Naomi had a good time trick-or-treating, she went out with Daddy this year while I stayed home to await the other T-or-T'ers. Next year she's thinking of being a bride.

G is for Grouch

Each week Naomi's school focuses on one letter. This past week the letter was G. They learn the sign language sign for G, discuss words that begin with G, they practice writing the letter, do projects around the letter, and of course crafts involving the letter! By the end of the week the kids really seem to get it, it's a great way to teach.

One of their projects for this week was to cut, paste, and color a Green Grouch. Apparently the teachers also asked each child what they would like to name their grouch. Many chose Oscar of course since the most famous green grouch is Oscar of Sesame Street. My child however had other ideas...

Can you read the name in the lower left hand corner? Yep...that's right! Tina the Green Grouch!

When asked why she named the grouch after me, she sweetly said "Because I love you the most Mama!" So I'm hoping that she didn't really correlate the definition of the word grouch with me.

Why?!?

It hasn't rained heavily in a while now. It hasn't rained even lightly for a few days. How on Earth did my child find mud in our backyard?!?

For those of you who know me, you know that I'm not much of a clean freak. I manage to keep the house relatively clean most of the time, but I don't spend much time cleaning. So it'll amaze you (just like it amazed my husband) that I decided to deep clean the kitchen. Naomi wanted to go outside while I was doing that, so I said that would be fine. About 15 minutes later she comes to the back door looking like this:

If you can't tell, she's wearing a white t-shirt, pink pants, and black dress-up shoes. She said she was bathing in the mud...uh, yeah, that's pretty apparent!

A smart person would have hosed her off outside, a person with one thought in her head would have at least stripped her of her clothes prior to bringing her inside, yeah, I was neither of those. I stuck her in the shower, clothes, shoes, and all and cleaned her up. Oh well, she and the clothes got clean, I carried her so mud wasn't tracked through the house, and the kitchen is mostly clean...

And if you're wondering where the mud came from, the rain barrel had some water in it.

Naomi's Haircut!

If you follow us on facebook, you'll know that after months of begging, I finally let Naomi get a hair cut. She was super excited! I took her to the same lady who recently cut my hair. Here she is walking into the Salon with her long beautiful hair! I had it French braided earlier and it looked really nice.

Carmen is washing her hair. Naomi thought this was a real treat! Now, why doesn't she like it when I wash her hair?

Agghh! So much hair! It wasn't long enough to donate to locks of love, but we kept every scrap of it to take home!

Here she is in the final stages of the haircut. She wanted her hair to be just like Eva's and Hannah's (friend and cousin)!

Carmen finished the haircut off by styling her hair (complete with a curling iron) and putting in a princess tiara comb. Naomi really enjoyed the whole experience and loves her new hairdo. I have to say that I enjoy not having to fight with her every morning of doing her hair.

Lincoln County

Michael and I both enjoy history, so on our way home from Cloudcroft we decided to check out some historical sites in Lincoln County. First was the town of Lincoln where Billy the Kid became famous during the Lincoln County War. This picture is of the Murphy Store which later became a courthouse and jail that the Kid once escaped from.

Here Naomi is finishing off her juice box before we go inside to investigate.

We also say the Montano Store, Tunstall's Store, the old Church, the Wortley Hotel, and the site of the McSwine house.

Naomi has been asking to go to the Smokey Bear museum in Capitan, NM so this was a great opportunity to do that as well. Here, she and Michael are looking at a model showing the different fire density's and their destruction.

She's checking out a project all about Smokey.

We visited Smokey's grave while there and watched a short movie on Smokey's life and fire prevention (it was great for kids!).

We also visited the Ghost Town of White Oaks which was once a gold rush town from the 1880's until 1949. None of the building were open, but we did get to see the old School House, the Hoyle Castle, and the site of widow McSwine's house.

Poor Naomi wanted to take a nap, but every time she was falling asleep we only had about 10 minutes until we'd be stopping again. She made it to everything though and finally had her nap after our visit to White Oaks.

Cloudcroft

We spent this last weekend in Cloudcroft to celebrate out 7th anniversary.
Looking down into the Tularosa Basin, all that white stuff off to the left is White Sands National Monument.

A nice biker took this picture of the 3 of us. Naomi was scared of him, but he really was a sweet guy.

A poor baby cow who we scared on our way back from the Apache Point Observatory.

I love Thistles, I never see them here in RR, but they are abundant in the mountains!

Another pretty flower.

At the Sunspot observatory, this time I placed the camera on a trashcan and set the timer!

She was 'tired'...

This is one really neat building! I goes almost 200 ft up and over 200 ft underground. We got to go inside, but had to be quiet since they were working in there. Oh, yeah, see that third leg, Naomi didn't want to be in the picture!


She's either thinking or zoning off.

Naomi did pretty well considering that she's been sick most of the week. She was a little grumpy and took a nap everyday, but she was a trouper.

Holy Tomatoes Batman!

Our tomato plant is officially out of control! This is one nights harvest!

We were just eating them as they came off the plant, but I may need to start cooking with them.

A note to Mothers with girls

So what's the best gift to give your 3 1/2 year old girl for Christmas? Why an Easy Bake Oven! You remember those fond memories making those delicious cakes, all by yourself, that your family just adored, especially your Mom. Right? Right?!?

WRONG

As a Mother myself I now realize that my Mom must have dreaded when that Easy Bake Oven came out of the closet. It is messy, you have to be way more involved than you really want to be, and the cake is gross!

I have spent the last 9 months trying to hide the Oven, or at least put off the baking and decorating of the cakes (with minimal success, Naomi is persistent)! But today, Naomi won... She found the oven, we had nothing better to do, and she made the cake. I spent the whole time worrying that she was either going to spill the cake batter or frosting all over or that she would burn herself on that 40 watt heated oven. She added too much water to the frosting which created a goopy mess and of course I have no powdered sugar! And to complete the experience she naturally wants to share her creation with me. Not wanting to hurt her feelings or stifle that baking goddess that is blooming inside of her, I have to eat at least one slice of the 'cake'. *shudder* That will have to be considered my sugar intake for the rest of the day.

On the plus side, Naomi does remember to wash her hands, and she is pretty good at decorating the cakes, even with goopy icing. So at least there is no dirt added to the cake, and it does actually look like a cake, to an extent.

So, to all you Mommy's who have the 'brilliant' idea of gifting your child with an Easy Bake Oven (or the like) be warned!

First day of Pre-K

Naomi was off to Pre-K this morning! She picked out her outfit, complete with accessories!

I think she was already sick of me taking picture of her.

In front of her school while we were waiting.

Playing before the other kids got there.

I'm so excited that she's headed off to preschool and that she's excited about it! She will be learning all her letters and numbers, writing, reading, doing math and science, plus playing of course. She will also have lunch there (provided by me), and I think that will really help get her prepared for kindergarten next year, she is such a slow eater! It's hard to send her off for four hours on her own, but I know it'll be good for both of us.

We are AWESOME!

I'm the first to admit that I'm not a great gardener. I've killed most of the plants that have come into the my life apart from my Jade plant that has been with me for 10 years and my chocolate mint that has lasted 2 years now. Even knowing that, I was willing to attempt a vegetable garden when Naomi begged to have one just like Pa. We started small, one planter containing one cherry tomato plant and two bell pepper plants (one green and one orange). We have succeeded beyond my wildest dreams!
It's an almost ready tomato! We've harvested about 8 so far, none of them lasting for longer than 2 minutes before they were devoured!

This is the orange bell pepper plant, it has yet to produce much, but it seems to be growing well. The other bell pepper plant, the green one, immediately produced a bell pepper which was also quickly eaten.

As you can see, the tomato plant took over the entire planter! Michael kept telling me I should get it some kind of cage, but I didn't, and now I have an unkempt monster tomato plant...oh well...

Yup...she's mine....

So you've seen the images that come from a grumpy 4 year old after a long day in a strange city. What happens to that same 4 year old when Pappi takes her flower shopping at Pike Place Market, Mama lets her eat a McDonald's ice cream cone, and then you shove her onto a ferry? Well, she goes a little bit bonkers. She's happy mind you, but still completely bonkers. The biker guys who were parked next to us on the ferry were probably wondering who this child belonged to (eyeing both my sister and myself). I just laughed, video taped her, and thought "Yup...she's mine..."!

What happens when you give a 4 year old a camera?

We spent the last full day of our vacation in Seattle, and by this time Naomi was at the end of her rope. She had a major meltdown after we left the children's museum and even a trip to the top of the Space Needle wasn't fixin' it for her. So what do you do with an extremely grumpy 4 year old? Why you let her have your expensive digital camera of course!
Here we have a silhouette shot.


And a personal portrait!

This one is actually really good!

Artistic...

And she even got one of the three of us together. I think we have a budding photographer on our hands...

Seatlle

Pike Place Market, such a cool place, and a great view! Naomi sat on the Gold Pig, but I didn't get my camera out quick enough.

Naomi just looks so happy here! She's in Papa Ken's house in Poulsbo.

Playing with her soul mate Missy. Naomi and Missy played for hours! Naomi was even able to pick her up at one point, but poor Missy looked so uncomfortable that we discouraged her from doing it again.

She climb in the cat carrier. Missy seems a little confused.

Yep, fit in completely.

Wallowa Lake

Here is the view of Wallowa Lake, yep, that's snow on the mountains! Prior to our trip (like 2 weeks prior) the highs were in the upper 40's. Luckily for us it was in the 70's while we were there!

Naomi is testing out the water. The saying there is that the lake water was snow five minutes ago. It was freezing!

Floating trampoline, coolest invention ever! You could sun yourself on it after getting out of the freezing cold lake because it was toasty warm from sitting in the sun. This is December helping Naomi on...or off....can't remember which.

Aunt Jennifer's in the lake!

Naomi relaxing. She loved this inter tube and spent quite a bit of time on it. Notice that she's also wearing a life vest, better safe than sorry.

She looks very guilty here, although she really wasn't up to anything. She is wearing another of the kids dresses because she was still in character from the play they put on earlier. She was the evil villain's helper, Pinkalicious!

I don't have any pictures of meal time, but it was an amazing feat! We had 24 people trying to eat in one house. Each family took on the task of cooking one meal for all 24 of us. We had some of the best food! Chicken pesto, Salmon, Burgers, and Ribs!

We had such an awesome time with the family up here! I would definitely recommend that anyone who is heading up to Oregon check out Wallowa lake!