When in the West

I was trying to choose just the good pictures from our trip out west. I got it down to 99... lol.
So, here is our trip to Phoenix/Las Vegas/St. George/Grand Canyon/Wupatki/Sierra Vista/Bisbee.

This first slide show is some of the sights in Arizona including the Grand Canyon and its lookout tower, the forest by Jacob's Lake, the Vermilion Cliffs, a forest of Joshua trees, which was followed by a forest of Saguaro cactus, which was followed by a forest of blooming Yucca. I kept saying "Look kids!" and by the end of the trip I think they were starting to get why I think Arizona is so cool.

This next slide show has selected pictures from Wupatki National Monument and Sunset Crater. I have wanted to go there for years, and I am so glad I got the chance. The ruins are incredible, the volcano is beautiful, the lava flows are startling, and you get a peek at what this area once was thousands of years ago.

This next slide show is Bisbee. Some of these photos won't mean much to people outside my family, but it was a great experience to go back with my kids and make them climb the stairs climbed when I was not much older than they are. There is still something magical about that little arts and mining town full of secret passageways and twisting stairs.

I've saved the best for last. Here are the pictures of the kids, my beautiful and very pregnant sister, her husband, and I, and of my Daddy, whom I love oh so much.

Golf on the Gulf

We went down to Mississippi to visit our friends last month. They are moving to Japan in a few months with the military, so we wanted to get in one last hurrah before they go. (But of course begged them to come up and see us if they can. We are really going to miss them.)

On the 23rd we went to a Mini golf place. We got there before noon, so we got a discount on go-cart rides too. Going out with 11 people always causes confusion.

Little K-man (5) wasn't having focus issues like the rest of us though.

I had planned to sit out, but we needed another grown up to pair with the little ones so I didn't get all the pictures I wanted to get. The big girls got to go a second time though, so I got pictures of that.

K-girl (10, going on 11) had a little trouble.

I was really proud of how well Tali (10) drove.

Little-G (9), well I advised her mother to hold off on letting that one drive a car as long as she can. Over hearing that Little-G argued that she drove really well. Granted, she had no accidents, but wow that girl is fearless!

Then we did the Mini-golf, which was an exercise in taking turns. James took it all very seriously.

Jordi (7) was very helpful with A (4), but she managed to get some fun in too.

Tali wore the shirt and earrings we got for her at Cato. Grandma Long doesn't like it, but I think she looks terrific.

I almost made a hole in one, if it had rolled 4 more inches!

Joe apparently took this when I let him hold the camera because this hole was right under a mister.


After that we went to a pizza buffet everyone likes, some more than others.

Seeing if Little-G would get through all of that was the subject of much interest.

She didn't eat the rice, which was a little too Cajun, even for her spicy tastes, but polished off the rest.

Sigh, I miss them all so much already.

Easter eggs, a week late

Tali didn't get back from her trip with Daddy until late on Easter, so we dyed eggs today. It took the better part of the day. We used wax sticks to resist the paint.

Here are the kids with thier creations.







James only did one egg because he was tired of waiting for the dye. He regretted the choice later, when all the eggs were gone, but was consoled when his sisters "let" him blow thier eggs for them after Mommy made the holes with the dremmel.

Second Place

Talitha's project won second place in her grade.

I shall now spend the next week wondering how bad of a parent I am for doing so much of it for her and if some poor kid who's mom isn't a perfectionist brainiac would have rated better if she'd had to do it all on her own. Sigh.

It's not that I'm not proud of her. I'm proud of the way she keeps thinking of different things for next year. I'm proud that she's finally getting the idea what the process is. I'm proud that she has healthy scientific curiosity.

Hopefully next year she will be able to do the lion share and I'll just be the assistant with the computer and the wallet who won't have to feel guilty at all.

Why the South can't handle a little snow

also Entitled: Four snow days in a single week will drive you crazy.

The problem with snow in the South is that they are entirely unequipped to handle it here. When a storm is coming they will spray stripes of salt on the main roads, sometimes. They don't have plow trucks though, and they don't have rock salt, and they don't have snow tires. They just hunker down and wait for it to melt, or go off the road trying to brave it. Thankfully this usually a once or twice a year thing.

Monday the snow was nice, welcome even. They canceled school, they canceled work, everyone... and I mean EVERYONE stayed home and watched in wonder as the two inches crept up to two and an eighth.

Yes, that is snowed in, in the south.

I spent the day writing. The kids were directed to clean their rooms and then they could go outside in the snowsuits. The girls got out there in the afternoon, but James took "clean your room" as "hide with your DSi in your room and don't clean." Once he realised that I was serious about the clean room, even though I wasn't yelling about it, he got going and went out in the evening.

The roads were moderately melted, certainly passable for an Ohio boy, so Joe and I packed him a bag and he drove into the city. He has a friend who asked him to use/watch his house while he was out of town for the week, so it was very convenient for him to just crash there instead of risking his neck the next few days.

That night the roads became solid sheets of ice. Ice that wasn't going to be salted, recall. School was canceled again. I wasn't thrilled, but they called off work for the day too so it wasn't so bad. Cabin fever started to set in by mid afternoon, then really hit when the recording from the district dialed my line and told me no school again.

I still had to work on Wednesday, but we had a delay in opening. My Mother-in-law called and offered to take the kids, and I told her if the roads were good enough then I would bring them by for the day.

I second guessed myself when I got to her road. Unlike mine, which was clear, hers was covered in ice. We made it, and I prayed it was in better shape when I returned in the evening. Thankfully it was.

I took a few pictures of the fun things the ice was doing.




The snow melted out from under the ice and left glittering other-worldly shells along the bigger branches.



I put the kids to bed, sure that there would only be a delay in school opening the next morning.

No, at 9pm, the Superintendent's recording said those terrible words, "School is canceled for tomorrow."

All the mothers in town unanimously screamed. We all had work, except the teachers of course, but our kids would not be in school.

Thankfully my work is childcare, so I took the kids with me and put them in the site across the street for the day and then held my head on while watching 15 kids climb up the walls in my little room. I tried taking them to the gym, but I had lost my voice at about 4pm the day before (though I had no other symptoms.) There was no way of keeping them safe with no voice in the gym, so in the tiny room we sat and finger painted snowmen.

Thankfully they went back to school Friday, with a two hour delay. Tomorrow is Martin Luther King Jr. Day, so no school, but I will have to work in the evening. The districts were going to have school that day, but apparently that's a no-no in the south. The kids are going Tuesday-Saturday instead.

Tali's Science Fair Project 2011

I have a serious bone to pick with the way science fairs are done these days. The requirements are entirely beyond the capabilities of a 4th Grader, and that doesn't mean I think the 5th graders who are REQUIRED to enter are ready for it either.
Perhaps if the 12 pages of instructions they sent home with her even agreed with each other I might have lost my mind like I did, but no, we were both over whelmed by the report.

Anyway, sigh. We survived it, and it's turned in, and I have 11 months until we have to do it all again.

This is the presentation board:


We did a variation of the potato and a light bulb experiment, going with measuring the energy output from the biochemical reactions with Daddy's Fluke Voltmeter. Yay for good tools! Her hypothesis did turn out to be correct, the lemon won in the volts per ounce race against the tomato and the lemon.
Naturally looking back there were a lot of things we could change. Ah well. At least she did it and it's done. Maybe next year we will just do this one again but fix the things I think we did wrong. If Daddy lets us play with his Fluke-meter again...

Christmas 2010

This year Joe's company underwent some restructuring due to being bought out by Cannon. Mostly the changes have had light impact on our lives, but a few months ago they told us they were changing the vacation schedule structure from a fiscal year to a standard year. The old way started in November and Joe took his first vacation over Christmas, but now that wasn't possible. Not that staying home was a bad thing, we just so enjoyed Pennsylvania and Ohio last year.
The lack of an extended vacation wasn't the only thing that changed this year. Our artificial tree broke during take-down, so we looked and looked for another one. We couldn't stand most of the ones we saw, and we definitely didn't like the price tags. So we thought we'd go with a real tree for a year and hit the clearance after Christmas.
I also decided I needed to be a better mom and let my kids help decorate this year. They did a pretty good job.

Though, well a certain little girl doesn't quite get the concept of "spread the ornaments around" yet.

I also made several new ornaments for the tree. I have lots of crocheted snowflakes, but I put a lot of thought into how to make some in a more spindly fashion (with starch stiffening) instead of doily style.

Once the tree was up I couldn't get the presents under it, so I cut off a few branches and made a wreath for my head. I wore it quite a bit, and ended up filling several special requests from friends.

Here are the kids on Christmas:

We didn't get a white Christmas this year, but woke this morning to canceled church and just enough fluffy white stuff to hide the grass and freak out the Southerners. As behind as I've been running all month I don't begrudge the sky being a bit tardy.