Falling

I love autumn. I love everything about it. The crisp air that almost burns when entering the lungs, the hues of red, yellow, and orange in the turning leaves, the smell of apples being pressed at an orchard, and the taste of a warm cinnamon sugar doughnut at the mill.

There are not many of these things to be found in central Arizona, but there is one thing I can always count on. The pumpkin patch. For me, going to the pumpkin patch in October for Halloween is as big of a deal as putting up a tree in December for Christmas. This year sucrose guy thought perhaps we needed to bypass the trip with the grim financial forecast we are experiencing. I told him I would take to the pole for a few nights if I had to so we could go. The compromise was taking a hit from the grocery budget.



Growing up a city girl, I have always found a certain novelty in visiting farms. The baby pigs in a pen to pet, the little yellow chicks running around pecking the ground, the shimmering black cow mooing, and the goats eating from my palm all bring me delusions of having my own animal menagerie one day.

Someday, I will have the white salt box house with black shutters on 6 acres of sloping land with one brown spotted cow, 4 baby chicks pecking the corn meal scattered about, and a pink pot belly pig lying on the front porch next to the dogs. Noticeably absent will be the nasty, pellet pooping, stinky goats that run up and ram you in the bum when you are not feeding them enough.

Until then, I will always be thankful for the pumpkin patch.

An Attitude of Gratitude

It's been a rough week. I have been channelling my inner grumpy Gus. Or maybe I feel a little like Alexander and his "terrible, horrible, no good, very bad day." Either way it's not good. Last week at church I was asked to be the Assistant Compassionate Services Leader. I cried. I told them they have the wrong girl, because I don't really like people. They laughed. I wasn't kidding.

Then I saw this video and felt like a loser. I know how much I have to be grateful for. I really should start expressing it more and show more joy, less sarcasm. To this end I am attempting an experiment. I am going to express my gratitude for the little things every day. Things like the play dough smashed against the back inside wall of the craft closet compliments of the wee one while I was vacuuming yesterday. I am going to chronicle gratitude for 30 days. Perhaps it will help me show more compassion to those I serve (Umm, doubtful). Perhaps my heart will grow from it's current condition of "two sizes too small." Or, perhaps, it will just help me develop the habit of writing every day. But let me start with today.

Today, I am grateful for the free tangerines we are picking from a family friend's tree. They are truly delicious. The juice runs down your arm before you are even finished peeling them. They are also sweet enough to stave off even the wickedest craving for gummy bears. I hope the same can be said when the chocolate pies at Thanksgiving appear.

So tell me, what is it you are thankful for?

Oh No She Didn't

She looks so innocent lying there. Like maybe that's how she behaves all day. Well that would not exactly be true. Something inside of her has awakened...and I am not going to lie, it's a little beasty. She is not the first of my children to have this awakening. In fact, we are three for three. It is during these awakenings I want to send them on the slow boat to China for a six month cruise.

But because there are now two older siblings to try and outwit, she is getting pretty crafty. Last week when we went to Costco, I promised her a churro. Upon receiving said churro despite questionable behavior in the store including a rousing game of "Where's Waldo," she immediately licked one entire side so that I couldn't share it with her. Did I mention she's two? Two.

This week's antics include squirting carpet cleaner into the tv while I was trying to srub out the blueberries she mashed in the carpet, resulting in the tv shorting out and being unusable. She has peed countless times on floor because she didn't want to stop what she was doing to go to the bathroom, most notable was was when she peed at the table because she didn't want to leave her dinner. It was not quite the cooking compliment I was looking for. She has stuck gum in her eyelashes, stickers up her nose, drawn on every wall up the stairs, and painted her foot with white out from daddy's office. Yesterday I found a pink streak of lip gloss down the dog's back. She's lucky she's cute...it could very well be her life saving mechanism.

This is Halloween

I must admit, Halloween is my favorite holiday. After all, it is a holiday with the sole purpose of collecting and consuming as much sugar as your insulin receptors will allow. In our house, it is also the only time I can talk Hollywood into going shopping with me. We go to lunch, and then we plot out where the best place is going to be to find the perfect costume. We get to talk about friends and things happening on the playground. This time we even had to have the conversation about the difference between when a girl says she likes you and when a boy says he likes a girl. Which boils down to the difference between "like" and "like like" Aren't forth grade girls supposed to be into Barbies and Easy Bake ovens, not my son?

Then it's Curly and the Wee one's turn. This year they decided to be matching kittys. We had to scour the valley looking for the right size. We found it about 45 minutes away and headed off. The conversation with a six year old and two year old is quite different than that of a nine year old. We sat on the bar stools at Johnny Rockets for lunch and talked about who was nice at school over grilled cheese squares. We talked about getting our nails done and what color they would be. The wee one interjected a few thoughts, but mostly she just blew bubbles in her root beer.

When the big day arrived, the pumpkins had been carved, and the mummy dogs consumed, we headed out with some friends for the big night. The four big kids were done about an hour and a half into it. Not the wee one, she was a warrior. We kept asking, "Are you done?" The answer was always, "Not yet."

The next morning she locked herself in the bedroom with the dogs and consumed 2/3 of the haul. A preempted strike was then formulated by Hollywood and Curly to protect their loot. If only they were so vigilant with the laundry.