More Thanks

Well, I can't head into Thanksgiving weekend without including what I am the most grateful for.  For most people, including myself, it's family.  I love my little family more than I could ever write.

I have a seriously awesome husband (shhh... don't tell him) who genuinely enjoys spending time with me and with the girls.  We have been living it up this fall since the kiddos went back to school.  David's job here in ABQ has a 9/80 work week which means he has every other Friday off.  Kids are in school for 7.5 hours on Fridays, which means the chance to do pretty much whatever the heck we want for as long as we want.  Thanks, school, for all the free baby-sitting for our new "date days!"  We've been known to walk the dogs on the mesa, have long lunches on restaurant patios in Corrales, followed by afternoon dollar movies, possibly combined with spending too much money together at Costco.  (p.s. we always spend more when we are together and can instantly approve each other's purchases.  It's not good.)

We may have also just returned from a belated anniversary trip to a bed and breakfast in Snowflake, AZ.  Thanks to a sweet groupon and some awesome family members (Grandma and Grandpa,) we were able to take off foot-loose and fancy-free for 2 days for really no reason.  David did want to do a little root-digging into his family tree as his Grandfather was born in Snowflake and other family members are buried nearby.  We also did a side trip to the Petrified Forest National Park.  David has promised, promised!, that he would blog about the trip.  Do I need to say "hint hint?"

This super great husband is also a stellar dad.   Although we give him his Saturday mornings for bike rides, he's always game to spend the rest of the weekend with us and never stops coming up with ideas for places to go and things to do.  A couple Fridays ago when he was off work and the kids were out of school, he took us to the Wild Spirit Wolf Sanctuary.   It was a 2 hour drive into the desert, but so worth it to see these amazing animals up close and learn more about them.  Grace and Harriet are such huge animal lovers and were mesmerized by everything there.  It has been more than a week and they are still talking about it.  I think it will be a spot where we will be returning in the future.

We learned so much about wolves.  These two are "low content" meaning they have wolf in them, but they are mostly dog.  You can tell by their waggly tails, big ears, space between front legs, and darker eye color.   Wolves don't wag their tails have very small, fur-stuffed ears, have little space between front legs, and only have amber eyes.

The white wolf here has only 3 legs.  She had been born with a club-type leg and it was cut off by her not-so-nice owners.

A red fox that had been rescued from a zoo along with some other canines.  Our Swedish tour guide, Siri, is feeding him.

A white german shepherd belonging to one of the volunteers.  Seriously cool dog, but no, not a wolf.  Hence, no fence.

More high content and full wolves:

Our way home was past two national monuments.  We decided to stop at El Morro.  "Inscription Rock" is this huge rock where people have been stopping and hanging out for hundreds and thousands of years.  It is a rare place in the desert where you can find fresh water year-round and so makes a good place to pass by with a great landmark to help you find it.  There are ancient pueblo ruins up in the top of the rock and tons of petroglyphs, Spanish, and English inscriptions near the bottom.  Somewhere around 1912, I think, they decided that anything prior to that would be considered a historic inscription and anything later would be vandalism and graffiti.   Some inscriptions (which might now be considered historic) were sandblasted and removed.

 

Harriet just spontaneously sat down on the trail and assumed a yoga position to meditate.  I guess all the mysteries of the desert between the wolves and the petroglyphs caused her to stop and think.  Funny girl!

I am so thankful these two incredible daughters.  I don't know how I got so lucky to have two girls who are this beautiful, smart, and loving.  I could write pages of all the things I admire and love about them.  I am glad to give the greater part of my purpose in life to watching and helping them learn and grow.  But at the same time, I wish I could freeze them and keep them just like they are for just a little bit longer.  I just put away some old photos of them and can't believe how fast it's all going.  I'm thankful to be a mom.

Thanks

I don't know what is wrong with me this year.  For the past few, I've done my daily thankful posts during the month of November.  I just realized I'm a good 13 days behind on counting my blessings.  I know, one should count her blessings much more often than every November, but it's nice to write them down once a year.

I guess it's better late than never, even if I don't do a daily post.  I'll try to work in the family photos too.

One thing I truly am thankful for is our local elementary school.  I know it's an emotionally charged subject around here - where you send your kids to school and why.  I would never begin to tell another parent what to do because I would be pretty mad if someone else tried to do that to me.  But, I'm thankful for public education and for living in a country where I don't have to choose which of my kids to send to school because our family might only be able to afford to educate one of them, or worse, neither of them.  Obviously, there is always room for improvement and the education system in this country is not perfect, but I still feel pretty lucky.  I'm so thankful that my girls have equal opportunity to learn and participate.  Their teachers are so dedicated and hard working.  The staff at school is so nice and they do so much to help families and accommodate parents.  I have really loved spending more time there this year getting to know the workings of the school and getting to know the local families better too.  There are some stellar people around here who are committed to raising a good bunch of kids.  It takes a village... and I'm grateful for my village.

So, on the subject of great things at school, here are a few pics of recent school stuff:

jog-a-thon:  kids were given 15 minutes to run laps around the soccer field to raise money for their school

 (one silly band per lap)

 Grace did 6 big kid laps

one very sweet and dedicated aide - she ran the laps with the kids to keep them going:

Orbit came from the Isotopes field to cheer them on:

 Harriet did 8 little kid laps (about 3/4 of a big kid lap)

They ran about the same distance... don't tell Grace.

Then, it was Harriet's turn to be student of the month.  She is, reportedly, a model student in every way.  She must use up ALL of her good mood, obedient manners, and helpful attitude at school, because she sure has her teachers fooled!  No, she really is a great student and we are super proud of her for how fast she is learning and for how well she has adjusted to her long days at kindergarten.  We just wish she'd bring her school behavior home with her sometimes.   Or, maybe we need her teachers to come home with her too!

Thank you, school!

Halloween Festivities 2011

I'm starting to feel like Halloween season is as much work as Christmas.  It seems like there are as many activities anyway... AND you have to go in costume.  We celebrated the heck out of fall.  Here is the photo tour:

Kindergarten Pumpkin Patch Field trip, complete with crazy corn maze:

 cool green lady bug we found in the pumpkins:

 hay wagon ride:

Costume party numero uno:  Daddy's boss at work hosted a party at our very own Galloping Grace pumpkin patch!  This year, the chosen costumes were an Ice Dragon Ninja and a Fancy Witch.

 always fun to see our sweet friends, Maren and Christian (they were there too since the daddies work together and all.)

next up:  getting ready for trunk-or-treat at the church:

Lots of people have heard my costume story...  A few weeks back, I saw this awesome Marge Simpson costume, complete with wig on clearance for 15 bucks.  I should have grabbed it instantly, but was feeling cheap that day and didn't want to spend money on a costume for myself.  Fast forward a couple of weeks and I realize that I've got a half dozen places where I need to dress up so I head back to see if it is still there.  Not.  I can't get over it, so I decide if I can make the costume for $10 or less, I'll do it.   I made the dress and necklace for like $8 and bought some hair spray.   I've got plenty of hair - I can make my own beehive and spray it blue.  I think it's going to be fabulous.  I hate it when I'm wrong about things like that.  It was a total flop.  It turned out to be cold, so I couldn't wear the skin colored shade shirt under the dress and had to wear long sleeve black with black leggings.  So, that ruined it right there.  Then, I spent more than 2 hours getting a beehive in my hair only to find out that my "blue" hair paint looked green when sprayed on and made my hair too heavy and flattened the beehive.  BOO.  Bottom line - if you have to explain your costume, you don't have a good costume.  It didn't help that Homer has a full head of hair, a goatee hanging from his chin, and took his stuffing out of his shirt right after this picture.  

These folks are much cuter.

Then, off to costume dinner party the next night.  Harriet decided to wear several costumes over the weekend since she has a closet full of fun things.  She did Snow White on Saturday night.  (why don't I have pictures of Saturday night?  She looked so darling in the Snow White.)

Then, a pumpkin carving party on Sunday night with the Wixom bunch.  Hattie opted for Tinkerbell this time.  Grace stuck with her Ninja wear for everything.

 David worked real hard to put on that scarecrow hat from the costume box and find his plaid shirt.  I decided the kitty ears and a satin ribbon tail would increase my costume : effort ratio so I ditched Marge.

Best Woody, Jessie, and Buzz I saw this month:

The kids designed their own pumpkins.  I super love Grace's yin/yang jack-o-lantern.

Is it Halloween YET?????
Oh, yes it is.  Time for school parties!  I have no pictures here either.  There wasn't much to capture.  The school banned costumes and face paint.  The kids wore black and orange Halloween shirts.  Harriet's class served an all orange lunch which they had to eat in about 15 minutes flat to make it to library on time.  They saved my pumpkin muffins for snack the next day.  Grace's class banned sweets and had a mid-afternoon snack of fruit and veggies and pretzels then pulled out some card games.  I guess I should have taken pictures, but there wasn't much to see folks, and parties went by so quick (compared to how much work I did for them and how long I was at the school!)

Definitely pizza for dinner.  Since... I was still at school when the last bell rang and we came home at 4pm with pumpkins still to carve.  Check this out - I didn't even have to make it.  Good ol' Papa Murphy's made me up something cute AND tasty.

The girls chose "luna" pumpkins from the Galloping Grace patch.  They also designed these all by themselves.  Grace also carved nearly her whole pumpkin.  I helped her with the details on the wolf.  I thought this one was SO COOL.  I was so incredibly proud of her for doing such a great job.  Then, I don't know if I can bear to mention what happened to it.  I still haven't told her.  I hope she doesn't ask about it.  One of the trick-or-treaters ripped the wolf out of it and took it.  Was this before or after I gave this child free candy?  For RUDE!!!

Harriet's design:  flower bouquets with a sun, moon and stars on the other side.  (see other picture below.)

 

and, these guys were still hanging on, so we put them out too:

And, MY pumpkin from the GGYR patch.  I thought it was only fitting to carve horses into it.  Grace pointed out afterwards that it does look like a face made with horses.  um sure, I planned it that way!

Can we trick-or-treat yet?  FINALLY!  We invited Aunt Christine to come with us too.

And, I found a use for my blue (no, GREEN) hair spray.

 Came home to glowing pumpkins.

Happy Halloween!