Why I shouldn't cut my daughters' hair ...

I tried again the other day to do something I ought not. Cut the girls hair. I realize there are lots of mothers who can pull out a pair of scissors, eyeball their child's head, and create a masterpiece. I'm not one of them. In fact, I've already determined that as soon as the girls will sit long and still enough to go to the hair salon, I won't be the one cutting their hair anymore. (Consder the first pic on this page the "before" photo.)



That being said, they aren't yet that old, and they wiggle and giggle, and make the whole process extremely frustrating. S had the smallest change - she also has the shortest hair. I know everyone insists I'm seeing things, but her hair looked scraggly to me. I just tried to even it out a bit around the nape of her neck and on her forehead. I guess I should have left her bangs alone ...




And Finally, poor L. I really only meant to give her a trim. Her hair has gotten so long lately, and I realized it had been nearly a year since I'd done anything to it. I really just wanted to trim it up - just about an inch or so. Then I made a mistake that, in hindsight, was absolutely ridiculous. I took her bangs first and trimmed an inch off them. I didn't realize her bangs, although long, were not as long as the rest of her hair. As I finished the side of her head, I realized an inch from her bangs was three inches from the back of her hair. So, she ended up with a little bob. Lucky for me, she loves it. She insists she likes it better since I cut it. She may look silly in this pic, but I think you can see her hair all right in it, and L's not one to smile nicely for the camera.

NaNoWriMo 2009

Hi - To anyone who might still be reading my blog (I realize it's not the most exciting thing in the world)

I'm doing NaNoWriMo this year again, thanks to my wonderful husband who insists it is a good thing for me. (I agree, it makes me very excited just thinking of it!) Although we're not allowed to start writing the novel until Nov. 1st, I'm starting to think of ideas of what I might write about this time. More on that later ...

I'm also looking for friends to take the challenge with me. The point of NaNo is for anyone who's thought they would like to write a novel to actually sit down and do it. You don't worry about editing or producing a perfectly polished product in just a month, you just get a good jump on your novel. Last Nov I wrote about 55,000 words on Lacy's Choice. In comparison, the other novel I'm working on, Emmaline, I've only just reached 30,000, and I started it months before NaNo last year. Now, Lacy's Choice as a final product, which I'm starting to submit to publishers, got the first 25,000 words chopped off the front and ended up just under 90,000 words. That's just to give you a picture of how rough your NaNo draft will be. But it's OKAY! That's the point! Without NaNo last year, Lacy's Choice wouldn't exist, and I might be around 50,000 words on Emmaline (still a long way away from finishing - even considering I could have spent more time with it if I hadn't done NaNo)!

I'm open to opinions on what I should write this year (and I'm assuming no random person is going to find my blog and steal my ideas), so here are my two options:

1. For those of you who edited Lacy's Choice for me, My Dear Joe is the story of Joe and Becky. Joe and Becky dated their freshman year at BYU, then Joe went on his mission. He came home and proposed to Becky, and she informed him she was going on a mission, too. Now Becky's coming home, and this book is all about how they deal with getting to know each other again (they've been apart for nearly 4 years!), breaking up, getting back together, dating other people, and eventually ... well, you get the picture.

2. Monterrey Jack - On an entirely different note and different genre, Jack is a 10 yr old boy who lives in Monterrey, CA (the one place I'd live if I had more money than I knew what to do with). His dad leaves him and his mom, and his mom sells the only thing she has of worth, an heirloom necklace, to buy a car so she can get to work and support herself and Jack. Jack, determined to get the necklace back for her, talks the owner/captain of a squid boat into hiring him on. I'll stop before I give away the ending.

So, leave me some comments on what story you think I should write, and let me know if you're up for a challenge this November. It's completely do-able, and it's so much fun! Come on!

What have I done?!

That's what I was thinking as I held an ice pack to S's face while she screamed and blood poured out of her mouth. I had to go and buy her a big girl bed, and now she's busted her face on it! Fortunately, even in the middle of my mental ranting and ravings at myself, I realized there wasn't anything I could have done to foresee this happening. It wasn't like I'd bought her a motorcycle, or a BB gun, or anything like that. It's a bed for crying out loud!

At first everything had gone well. We went out on Labor Day to take advantage of the sales and got a set of bunk beds for $299 (normally $399, so I was really happy). We made sure to get the kind that could be assembled as twin beds, too, since L is only 3 1/2 and it'll be another three years until she's big enough to be on a top bunk. It worked out great - S's bed is the top bunk, so it has rails around it to keep her from falling out, and she can climb up on the end, where there's an opening for the ladder to attach to later, when they're bunked.

The problem came when C came home and both girls got excited to show Daddy their new beds. S climbed on hers, got halfway from the foot to the head, tripped on the blanket, and face planted into the headboard. Here's her swollen lip. Luckily it doesn't look like she's done any permanent damage - she's eating just fine, her teeth all survived, etc, but it sure scared me to death!

County Fair

We went to the County Fair on Saturday, and we were so pleased with it! Back in VA, we'd been to the Culpeper Co. Fair (which literally took fifteen minutes to see everything - there were two barns, that was it), the VA State Fair (where the prices were so outrageoius as to leave you feeling sick), to the Orange Co. Fair (which was the only satisfactory one of the three, and was actually quite nice). We also got to go to the Utah State Fair last year, which is another one of my favorites - it's just a bit big for small children who get tired of sitting in the stroller while their mom looks at the quilts and flower arrangements.

So, I'm pleased to announce that the Fair here is perfect! We arrived at 9:00am with two excited little girls. They each got a stamp on their hands, which was very exciting for them, and then we crossed the fair grounds to the show rings. We watched the dog show for about five minutes before the girls got bored - the problem was they were doing obedience testing, and the two dogs had been told to "stay" in the middle of the arena, and we were waiting to see how long they would actually stay. Watching a dog sit isn't very exciting for a one-yr-old.

Then we made our way over to the Horse show. We watched about one full walk/trot competition and even got to see one young rider bucked off, poor kid, before the girls again objected it was too boring. Actually the problem wasn't they were bored, the problem was they wanted to go ride the horses and couldn't understand they weren't allowed to.

So, we made our way over to the barns. We saw sheep, goats, horses, pigs, miniature horses, cows, rabbits, and birds. L is old enough now that she tries to reach into the cages and pet the animals, which makes me so proud of her!
We made it all the way through the art and flower arranging building without the girls trying to jump out, and through the three merchant buildings with the girls holding on to the stroller and walking nicely along.

Then we made our way over to the concessions for lunch. C had inspected them two days earlier, so he was anxious to come back and see some of what they were serving. The girls, true to form, refused everything we bought for them until we caved and presented them with french fries and ice cream ... Hey, we're at the fair, right?

After riding a few rides (video will be posted), we made our way over to the petting zoo. We even got S to touch a few of the animals, especially the large cow who was sitting down with brushes out for anyone who wished to brush her. My personal favorite was the jersey cow who thought I was her own personal salt lick. She was going to town on my arm, which made L laugh and giggle and S run in fear - "The cow's licking Mama!"
That about sums it up, I guess. If you ask L what her favorite part of the fair was, she'll immediately reply that she didn't like going home ... but she did like the pink pig.

County Fair Kiddie Rides

We got the girls five ticket each and let them pick what they wanted to ride. Then S insisted on going back to the carosel while L rode the cars again.

A Failed Cheesecake?

I got the best gift the other day - a "Complete" baking cookbook. I've been reading it and playing with recipes ever since. Going along with the fall bounty I mentioned earlier, we picked some wild blueberries from the side of the park trail and took them home to make this low-fat blackberry cheesecake.

Well, the recipe caled for cottage cheese and yogurt instead of cream cheese. I pureed them in the blender to make the cottage cheese smooth, mixed in the other ingredients, and then carefully folded in the berries, so the cake would stay as white as possible. I was pretty pleased with the results when I had it ready to go in the oven:



I was just as pleased when I took it out: It looked almost exactly like the pic in the book!

The kids sat down, smiling, ready to eat their cake ...

I'm not quick enough to have gotten anything past the smiles, but turns out the blackberries we'd picked weren't fully ripe - they were extremely bitter, and my gorgeous cheesecake was so sour I was the only one who actually ate her slice (and I did so more because I bad making it and throwing it all away).

Reasons we love the Western United States

(Please bear with me, I haven't been able to load the pics in the order I wanted them.)

We went on another weekend trip this last weekend. C's cousin was having her mission farewell three hours away, so we headed up. Craters of the Moon National Park is half-way between us and them, so we stopped on our way and took a look around, letting the girls stretch their legs. Lucky for us we picked the right trail, and the girls just started asking to be carried as we walked the last 100 ft to the car. Perfect timing!

C's Aunt and Uncle have a farm, and there's just something about going there. You can smell the fresh cut hay, ride in the home-made horse buggy, and let the kids run free in the fields. We had a lot of fun.

C's cousin, now grown and raising his own family on the farm, put together this horse buggy. The best part about it is the comfy seat he put on the back. L was so thrilled she couldn't stop giggling, and when I let her hang her feet over the edge, she was in heaven.





C's cousins have settled down all within easy distance of each other, and they each have a mini-van full of kids, so when they get together, there are eighteen kids between the ages of 13 yrs and 7 wks. They get together often enough that they treat each others kids like their own, and their kids accept an aunt or uncle as quickly as their parents. It wasn't long before I found myself sucked into it. Now, I've never really been a kid person, and kids have never really paid much attention to me. But these kids are so conditioned to accepting every adult that it wasn't long before I had kids coming to me to blow up balloons, to kiss their scraped knees, and to sit in my lap. While we were on the horse buggy, one little girl climbed into my lap, declared she was cold, and told me to warm her up. I was a little surprised, but I cuddled her up and rubbed her arms to warm her up. After a while, I got distracted by something, and I stopped, only to have her object adamantly, "I'm still cold!" I just can't get over how funny it was.

Here are some of the Craters of the Moon Pics:

And these are the reasons we like the West. Our kids have gotten to see relatives so much more often since we've moved here. Here's a pic with their great-great-grandma:

And L with her namesake:

And L, having made friend with the girls her age at the farm, running off merrily into the sunset holding hands.

Who says the midwest is the heartland?!