I’m not dead

No, that’s a lie. I am dead. This baby is killing me, slowly, from the inside out.

I’ll write a real post as soon as I go a whole day without puking.

So…don’t hold your breath.

the things that come out of their mouths…

Said by Caedmon, while wrestling with his teddy bear

“You want some of this? Well do ya, Weaksauce?!”

Said by Presley, in the sweetest voice, as she was cuddling with me on the couch

“I wuv you Mommy. Let’s pound it.”

*fist bump*

Said by Presley after she took off her sneakers after a long hike

“Will you please smell my beautiful feet?”

And baby makes 5

If you follow me on Facebook…or Twitter…or any of my mom forums, then you already know this (and you now know that I use far too many social networking sites). But, for the 2 people who read this blog and don’t use any of the previously mentioned sites, then let me fill you in.

Saturday night, when we were at a friends house for Kevin’s birthday celebration, and I surprised him with a quite an…interesting gift.

For those of you not well versed in pee sticks, that’s 2 pink lines and 2 pink lines means there’s a bun in the oven!

The estimated date of the new Leggett arrival is June 6, 2010.

And, for prosperity humiliation sake, here’s a picture of my 4 week belly (read:flab)

First Day of Fall Festivities!

I kind of…maybe…didn’t know that it was the first day of fall until I heard Al Roker say something about it while I was watching the Today Show in bed this morning.

But I quickly came up with some fun first day of fall activities…or I may have used the first day of Fall as an excuse to make pumpkin spice donuts. Either way…

Contrary to what the look on Presley’s face depicts, they were good…really good.

Then, for our daily nature study, we drove up the canyon a bit to visit the pond and talk about leaves.

Look, we have a key!

I asked the kids to look for a tree that had leaves that were either yellow, brown or orange.

Presley was convinced that she could climb that gigantic tree to reach her own leaf. Poor thing.

Shockingly, Presley was unable to reach a leaf, so I told her to find a tree that was all green and to pick a ‘leaf’ from that tree.

We put the leaves in the car and I let the kids run around in the Fall sun before getting down to some learnin’

Then, on the way back to the car, we found a hoof print. Deer? Elk?

Then we curled up with the little gigantic Handbook of Nature Study to figure out what kind of leaves we found, why they were changing (or not changing) colors and how the weather played into that.

Happy Fall!

Picture dump

I’ve been sick for weeks on end 5 days and I have lots of pictures to share, but I lack the ability to come up with anything witty to say about them. So, there you have it.

My parents came up last weekend so that my dad could help Kevin hang a new door in his office. While the men were busy working, my mom and the kids had a tea party.

Then my mom discovered that we have an apple tree in our yard. How did we not know that we had an apple tree?!

The apples were so NOT ripe, but Presley chowed down on one anyway

While the kids were outside watching construction on the door, they discovered an Orb Weaver that had spun a web in the flower garden.

Always the home schooler, I took that opportunity to have the kids do a nature study using our Handbook of Nature Study

And after spending Sunday cooped up in the house being sick, we decided to go have a labor day picnic in Cloudcroft.

And last, but not least, we had a really rainy day on Wednesday and I was still so sick, so I decided to let the kids paint. Caedmon, much like every other day, did not want me taking pictures of him while he was working and his project isn’t finished so he won’t let me take pictures of that either. *sigh*

Alright, that’s all. Move along.

Childhood Stories With Amanda -or- Let’s have a laugh at my expense

I give you, the story of how I came to be terrified of dinosaurs and museums and dark amusement park rides, and various other ridiculous things.

Once upon a time, long ago in the 80’s, I was a young girl who loved dinosaurs and I loved museums.

Then, when I was 9 years old (this was not in the 80’s, mind you. I’m not that old), I got to go to Florida with my Gifted class because we had the honor of being invited to watch the space shuttle Endeavor make its inaugural launch into space.. While we were there, we spent a day at Disney World/Epcot center.

When we were wandering around Epcot I saw a sign for the Universe of Energy ride.

This ride seemed like a winner because A: there was no line and B: it was a long ride/movie inside an air conditioned building.

Upon entering the ‘ride’ (at this point I thought it was just a movie) you are seated in big long bleacher seats that are facing a giant screen. On the screen you are presented with an exceedingly boring video about the mechanics of fossil fuels and how they effect our lives every day.

Then, all of a sudden, the bleacher seats start splitting apart into three sections and begin turning to the right. As you turn, the ‘wall’ to the right opens up and reveals this

Please note the tracks at the bottom of the picture, that’s what our bleacher cars are traveling on. Also note the dinosaur all the way too the left. He plays a very large roll in this sad tail.

That smug jerk.

Look at the expression on his face? All “La Dee Dah. Just chewing on these weeds. Don’t mind me, I’m just a robot, I can’t hurt you!”

LIES!

At this point I was mildly freaked out because I wasn’t prepared to be thrust into a prehistoric rainforest dripping with dinosaurs. And I do mean dripping. That cud hanging out of his mouth was oozing with robot saliva…I can still feel it dripping on my me as I scream in horror…but I’m getting ahead of myself.

As you can see in the picture below, the bleacher car travels right past this small flock of long necks. The bleacher car is to the far bottom left.

And this is when things went horribly wrong. Our car was in the exact spot as the car in the picture when all of a sudden it came to a screeching halt. But even though the car stopped, the robo-dinos did not. That dino to the far left kept bending down and slamming into my head with his dripping wet sea weed cud over and over and over and over. None of my friends had gone on the ride with me, so I was packed into my seat with strangers to my left and no room to scoot away from the dino assault. I have no idea how long this went on, but it felt like an eternity.

And when it was finally over, I left that ride a very different girl. Since that day, I haven’t been able to go to museums or amusement parks without suffering from overwhelming anxiety and full on panic attacks. Because I’m obviously the most rational person alive.

Incidentally, The Universe of Energy was revamped in the late 90’s and now your tour guide through the ride is an animatronic Ellen DeGeneres robot, which might just be more scary than the dinos.

…and they were never heard from again

I am coming to you, dear reader’s, as the last surviving member of the Leggett clan. A horrible tragedy befell the other 3 members of my family last night and I shall recount the story to you here.

This is, of course, a cautionary tale.

Yesterday evening, after a delightful dinner, we loaded up to take our evening walk around the neighborhood. Presley didn’t feel like walking on this particular evening so she got strapped on and off we went.

The route we decided to take this particular evening was quite long and after about a quarter of a mile, Presley was pawned off between daddy’s shoulders and her own two feet.

Apparently Presley has acquired a taste for 80’s style. Rad.

We’d walked about a half a mile at this point and turned around to discover that we could no longer see our house. That’s fine though, right? I mean, how dangerous could an evening walk in the mountains possibly be…?

Apparently there was no real concern amongst the hikers

We press on

And then we came upon a bit of a road block

I get the feeling they don’t want people trespassing?

Oh surely not. If they didn’t want people to come in they wouldn’t have made the gate so climbable. Obviously.

With that small hurdle behind us we tackle the long, steep trail up the mountain…unsure of what lay ahead

As we reached the top of the hill and rounded the corner, we discovered the most lovely little pond

It appears that people have been here before…people who don’t know how to build a sturdy bench…or giants.

I’m leaning towards giants

Drunken giants

“Hey Mom! Dad wants us to go explore this rusted old shed!”

“Um…honey…I don’t think that’s safe…”

“Oh it’s fine dear! What’s the worst that could happen?!”

Famous last words.

What happened then, faithful readers, is too horrific for words. It will haunt my dreams for as long as I live.

I made the long journey home by myself. Only stopping to let the deer pass…

…and only turning around to ensure that the hideous creature wasn’t coming after me next.

I made it home just as the sun was going completely behind the mountains. After taking a moment to ensure that all the doors and windows were locked, I sat down to let it all soak in.

What? Does everyone not handle their greif with video games?

Please send candy.

And comics.

Oh, and could someone make sure the dish bill gets paid? I need my cartoons to comfort me in my time of loss.

The Hitchin’ Post

Ever wonder what’s in the local paper of a tiny mountain town with a population of 124?

Well wonder no more!

Here are a few selections from this months publication of The Hitchin’ Post.

Names have been changed to protect the innocent.

The front page of the paper is mostly taken up with announcements of birthdays, anniversaries, and congrats and then leads into, what I consider to be the highlight of the publication, Comings and Goings:

“Bobbie Sue and Duke attended a family reunion in Arkansas and hosted on in their home the latter part of July”

“Bill and Laura Jane attended their daughter’s wedding July 12 which was held in TX. The wedding was beautiful! Laura Jane did all the decorations, trasporting them from Weed to TX.”

“Tosha Marigold visited family and friends in East TX”

“Jimmy and Melissa Ray Smith’s daughter, Dana, and her grandchildren, Kirstin and Kade, visited in late July. The family went camping and horseback riding and just generally enjoyed the togetherness.”

“Mitchell Jennings and Cindy Smith paid a visit to their Weed retirement home in late June.”

In the Congratulations! section

“Jon Cameo drew a youth Ibex hunt in the Floridas mountains south of Deming!”

We then have a few articles. One of which was a 2 pager that detailed Tosha Marigold’s trip to visit friends in East Tx.

Then there’s the Garden Forum, where you’ll find individual updates on all the locals who have gardens and what their current trouble spots are.

After that is a community calendar and a list of all the area churches.

And then this…wasn’t even in a ‘section’. It was just…sort of…there.

“Peter and Kathy Cameo are looking for a male guardian dog (Akbas, Anatolian, or Great Pyrenees) to breed their female Akbash.

Garden is doing well, except for tomatoes, ’bout ready to give up on them. Most got curly leaf disease and are dying. Asparagus, squash, pumpkins, green beans, watermelons, cucumbers doing awesome.

Saw a horned toad at 8,800 feet elevation.”

I love this paper…so much. I just hope, someday, we have the honor of gracing it’s pages.

Just stuff…that we do…and such

I obviously lack the creativity of coming up with a title to this post.

Deal with it.

This one here. She’s good with the puzzles.

Scary good.

Come on. Don’t act like you could do this puzzle when you were 3!

The other one? He’s good with numbers.

Really good.

I had to explain Roman Numerals once. 1 time. That’s it. And he ran with it and solved all 10 of these problems in 2 minutes flat.

He also declined to have his picture taken. Jerk.

Also, I didn’t realize he had checked that book out from the mobile library until after I made that Roman Numerals file folder game.

I mean, let’s face it. I don’t pay attention to what my children are checking out from the library. Pish. I have more important things to do. Like take pictures of cows.

You thought I was going to post a picture of a cow just now didn’t you, DIDN’T YOU!

Don’t lie to me.

While Caedmon was doing Roman Math…come on, don’t act like that’s not an important life skill…Presley was matching lower case letters to their upper case companions.

Don’t let that smile fool you. .002 seconds after this picture was taken, she threw all those cute little hearts on the ground and yelled “I HATE ALPHABETS!”

I’d like to take this opportunity to remind the readership that my children dress themselves.

Amen.

Another activity that’s been popular around the abode this summer is water color painting.

Now, we’ve got an activity table dedicated to all the kids crafty pursuits, so I don’t have to worry about thin paper letting paint bleed through and such…but I still don’t like cleaning it up.

So I whipped out an old package of paper plates and let the kids go nuts! They’re thick enough to hold all the watery paint, supah cheap, and in near limitless supply around here thanks to all the people who stayed here when this house was a vacation home!

Caedmon took a stack of paper plates outside today and painted some landscapes that I love, but I haven’t taken pictures of them yet.

No, I don’t always have my camera strapped to my neck.

Oh FINE! Yes, I’m lying. Are you happy interwebz?! Yes I do always have my camera strapped to my neck. I just haven’t unloaded those pictures yet and I’m too lazy to do it right now.

That’s all. Carry on.

Living with Presley is also special

Presley walks up to me yesterday and says,

“Sink* I want dis Princess dress off. You help me?”

I dutifully take the dress off while she further explains

“I has to go potty. I’m gonna poop and dis dress is tooooooo girly for dat.”

I’d like to see you argue that logic.

*this is how she says ‘I think’