Getting Back in the Saddle Again

Writing even when you don't feel like it was the title of Bird's latest post and quite frankly it home with me. There has been that little nagging voice in my head reminding me that I need to update, but you know nothing was really moving me toward a cohesive post. So here is what you get...

Christmas recap:
Excellent, relaxing 6 full days at the mother-in-laws house up in the mountains. It snowed the day after Christmas, and I always enjoy that. Mostly I enjoy the more relaxed pace at my MIL's house, my sister in law and her two kids were in and out, they live near by. My lovely neice and nephew are 15 and 13 respectively and my kids cannot get enough of their cousins and leave me alone to do as I will for long periods of time. I am thinking I need to see them more often. We got a Wii for Christmas thanks to winning some money back in October and Santa left me a wii fit to go with it. I love it despite the fact it informed me I am obese and unbalanced. I am sure several people I know would tell me that for free. ; )

Auld Acquaintances forgot:
I got sick on the return home with a cold and the 31st was one of those days where you put one foot in front other and do what needs to be done, but no more. We had a party to go to that I really hated to miss, but we did. Lame as it sounds I snored in the new year, but I am sure I toasted everyone in my dreams.

Going to the dogs...
It has been a bit of a readjustment for Rigby since we left them at my parents while we were gone. We got a large crate and she is taking to it well to sleep in it at night. I do need to research or find a good reference about dog training, especially since I suspect she was abused by the way she cowers and hides so much. However she is good natured with the kids but just still kind of wary. Every day is better, in fact today she is downright playful and acting like a normal pup.

The best laid excuses...
I had a Christmas post I was workin on, but the computer and I weren't get along that day and we were trying to leave town. Then the MIL only has dial up and it is slow slow slow. I did get on and check my email once or twice and update FB status, however I was too busy relaxing to try to put a post up, I am sure it would have ruined my tranquility. Then I get a head cold and you don't want posts under the unfluence of snot do you? That's right you are welcome.

Say that again Sam....
I love all the juicy stuff the kids say during the down time... like when I commented to Zachary (6) about his eyes looking tired, the asked me if he had wal-mart bags under his eyes. Or Max (3) who was scarfing down enchiladas that his grandfather madie who declared all I needed to do was love him and feed him enchiladas.

Our Newest Family Member

Saturday night my mom called and said she needed help catching some puppies dumped by her house that were near the highway. Don't get me started on that subject! Jerks. I send hubby to help since he could get there more quickly and wouldn't you know it, he fell in love. A friend is taking the other pup home on Christmas Eve for his kiddos. She looks like a German Shepard mix. A bit timid at first, she is romping around the house getting into a little bit of mischief today.

On the left is Zach and Seargent Pepper, our one year old dog. On the right is Max and our new puppy, Rigby.

Max wants to carry her around and she is too big for that. In fact she is almost as big as Sarge, a cocker spaniel dachhound mix, or cocktail weinie as we like to call him.

Isn't she sweet? Now I just have to get her to the vet and all that.

Facbook Academy Class of 2009

Is it just me or has Facebook grown exponentially lately?I heard it talked about it during the Election coverage. Lately I have averaged a friend request a day, and as we already established, I am not a big deal on the internet. I have over a hundred friends. (I should note that at least half or more are family, the Johnsons are big clan and I don't even have all of them on FB as my friend.) The point is I finally feel popular years after high school. You like me, you really like me.

I really enjoy catching up with my high school, 4-H, and college buddies. In general I love the whole thing despite the whole breastfeeding debacle so to defend my honor I have joined the "Hey Facebook, Breastfeeding is not obscene" group to make my views known. It is a hard lines stance, no really.

I regularly change my status so that people can know what I am doing. I think they get the sense I am a bit of a smart alec. Why? IDK maybe my BFF Elizabeth can explain.

My husband had a long marketing meeting yesterday. He told me the gentleman feels the Roswell Symphony Orchestra needs a presence on Facebook. I laughed because I have been mentioning how he needed an account so I could send him some flair. My husband may actually be the last person on the planet who isn't using social networking online. Plus he could do it and work and claim it is work, how sweet is that? My mom even has an account.

No that wasn't a burn, it is the truth. My mom does have a facebook account, so do some of her friends. She doesn't know how to use it and asked me the other day to show her how to work her Spacebook account. I giggled and she got on to me about how she really needed help with her Spacebook account. This reduced me to nothing more than a giggling teenager as I tried to explain to her it was Myspace or Facebook. She won't appreciate me mentioning it here either but she doesn't understand blogging either. By the way I did give her a lesson, and I was nice. Well except when she was adding one of her (female) friends and it asked how she knew her I did encourage my mom to clicked that they had dated. We thought it would be a good joke, except my mom's friend probably doesn't know how to check that.

In fact I have been fielding a lot of questions from family and friends lately and giving lots of advice. You can block status updates this way or you can get more info this way. So much so that today I have decided to open my very own Facebook Academy to help the superpoke challenged. My fee structure is going to be nominal. Students will only have to donate their status line to read. Nora is the Homecoming Queen of Spacebook.

Pigs, puppies and tiaras, oh my!

Last week was our county fair. Someone called me die hard because I took the boys out nearly every day. I think they were just remembering the old days. When I was the perennial runner up in the fair queen contest. Seriously, I was supposed to win that year, I was the first runner up the year before. I later learned it was because I didn't use the whole can of spray starch on my jeans, they couldn't actually stand up on their own.

Ohh Dig my rockies? I am on the left there.

4-H was a big part of my life growing up. First broken tooth, first dance, first clandestine make out session, first blue ribbon, first time having a battle of wills with a 2000 pound angry steer. The Fair is the culmination of a year of hard work and fun, we would get to run loose and eat greasy hamburgers from the food stand all week.

Then there are the important things, like signing up for the boot giveway from the local western store "Bennies: The West's most Western Store". I have only been trying to win as long as I could write my name. I also need to get my free flyswatters from the bank booth, stock up on pencils from the Sheriff's Posse booth, because I don't want to actually buy those things for my house.

Did I mention that I was a third generation 4-Her? My grandmother is quite pleased that we plan to make it four generations. My boys, while not old enough for 4-H yet, got to participate in the fair too. While I would love for them to take after me and show steers, that is the only group of animals they don't let the little kids show. Why? I don't know, so we had to settle for pigs and puppies. Luckily we have a 4-H family that is keeping their animals at our place since they live in town and they let they boys show their pigs in the "booster" aka little kid show. All the kids who showed got a blue ribbon and a dollar, you can guess which the kids were more impressed with.

Meeting of the future Eddy County Fair Board

Our friends kid, riding in the horse show, Zach wants to do this next year.

We are thinking of opening a pig wash, they really enjoyed it.

Max taking the pig into the show ring. He forgot which was his by the end.


Zach was all business, look at that showmanship.

Max showing our dog Sgt Pepper, he got fifth place in the Mixed Breed Class. I guess it is hard to get respect when you are a Cocktail Weenie. (Cocker Spaniel+ Stray Weenie Dog)

Zach showed my parents dog, Vidalia Sue a lab mix. He got first in Mixed Breeds and then third overall. Shocked us, we didn't know what we were doing we just showed up.

I'll probably be just as die hard next year, and have to take them out every day, and show more animals. Plus I have to keep trying to win those boots, and I may just lobby to raise the age on the fair queen contests too.

The Art of being Crafty

Crafty

adj. craft·i·er, craft·i·est

1. Skilled in or marked by underhandedness, deviousness, or deception.

2. Chiefly British Skillful; dexterous.

Recently a post came through on the polymer clay group I joined about whether we are crafters or artists. Personally I don't have a problem with the term crafty. In fact being crafty has paid off for me this week.

Example #1.

I have a bed of squash and melons coming up for the second time. The first time the squirrels made it through my defenses. This time so far so good, I even have one plant that is growing big. While I would like to think it is all due to my superior, squirrel abatement skills, I think this guy might be helping me out. Instead of being horrified and killing it when I spotted him laying near my melon bed, I obviously went and got the camera. Don't get too freaked out boys and girls, this is a bull snake, not a rattler, not too big only about three feet. I am glad to have him or her around, squirrels beware. I feel like definition number one here, luring innocent watermelon hungry squirrels to their death, but I am okay with that.

Example #2
Being skilled with ones hands means you have lots of things to give away to your friends and family. Sometimes you are the lucky recipient of such gifts. Hyperher, is a crafty lady, and she very sweetly send me this bag this week as a belated birthday present. Please join me in telling her how much she rocks. YOU ROCK, and definitely fall into category #2 there. Please don't drool on your keyboard as you look at the picture.

Example #3

Giving away those crafty items can be so rewarding in unintended ways. I mentioned in my last post about making a scrapbook for my cousin going to Princeton for the summer. My aunt, her mother, has had a hard time of it of late. Her son is in Iraq, her mother passed away in February and now her daughter got on a plane today and flew for the first time in her life, across the country, alone. In fact she had not been speaking to my mom, over some of the arrangements for my grandmothers estate. My mother has been very worried about her sister, she felt like the emotional stress of those situations was causing the problem. In fact we had a going away party for the cousin that they did not attend. However when she saw the silly scrapbook I made at my mom's request for her daughter, she called crying and they are reconciled. I would have never expected some silly crafting to be the catalyst for that.

So upward and onward. These are my last batch of beads waiting to be sanded and buffed. I have great hope for them. Maybe they can instill world peace. ; )

Because Awesomeness is Free

I have two cousins born my senior year of high school, they have chagrined me by turning 17 this year. However tonight I feel as though I have some measure of revenge on them. (Why do I need revenge? I don't know, because they are teenagers and need teasing.)

My mother asked me to make a small scrapbook to send with one of them as she is leaving home next week to attend Princeton for the summer, she was selected to part of a summer program there before her senior year. I have been looking for the best photos and thinking of snarky comments to include, because that is how one makes scraping fun, plus the point is to help her NOT be homesick. However sometimes you just can't orchestrate events better than real life with throw at you.

Earlier today one of the cousins my age asked if we wanted to join them to go to the movies and see Kung Fu Panda. He invited his sister, brother and kids, I invited my brother and kids, before you know it we have almost two full rows of theater seats taken up. (It is only 9 across before you get freaked out.)

As luck would have it, although we have a two screen megacineplex, there was only one choice tonight. Technical difficulties shut down Zohan. Apparently our theater isn't high enough wattage for Sandler. So one my poor unsuspecting teenage cousins shows up after the previews have started and sits in front of us, her poor date seemed a little startled by two full rows of cousins behind them, as was she.

Seriously we are a motley bunch, would you want these guys behind you on a date?

When I Get Where I am Going

Have you ever realized you were doing exactly the same thing last year or the year before and wondered about the pattern? I found myself doing that yesterday. I was typing up an obituary for my grandfather three years ago and oddly enough I found myself writing one for his wife, my dear Nanny three years to the day later. Odd how that works out.

I will always remember and have a slight ache for these people. I am the eldest grandchild, some would claim more spoiled that the most. Of course all those people are younger than me and I could point how in my eyes they stole some of my attention, but I digress. ; )

I have a cousin only 6 weeks younger and when we were old enough they started taking us for camping trips. I think around the age of 4 or 5, we would load up in their motor home and go the the mountains or a lake. Pa pa used to like to tell how we were asking Nanny to fix us a snack before we hit the city limit sign. I wonder if I would still enjoy a can of beanie weenies so much.

On Saturdays they would call and we would all go over and he would load us up in the van and take us to Roswell and we would go to K-Mart, which usually meant some snacks we didn't get at home like an Icee and if we were lucky a new toy. By this time that might mean taking 6 or 7 kids. I don't recall my mom asking them to watch us much, I remember it being the other way around, them calling to see if we could come over.

I remember realizing with this side of the family we were a bit redneck. They were both from Oklahoma. Nanny was the daughter of a preacher who married the boy from the wrong side of the tracks. Pa pa's family were had some rascally habits by the stories my mom tells. One of them paints his father as a man who was kicked out of the New Mexico Territory for preaching on street corners, collecting and offering and then using the money in the bar. Where as Nanny's dad was a respectable preacher named King David. I was always fascinated by that name until she told me that she had an Uncle named XYZ since he was the last kid.

Christmas was big at their house that is where we spent Christmas morning. Nanny had a big Sears catalog and we would spend hours going through it writing our names next to stuff we wanted. Then we would spend days trying to guess what was in the boxes under the tree. One year I had decided based on the shape, size and weight that she had got me the Crayola Caddy I put my name by. However oddly enough on Christmas morning that present was no where to be found, she had hid it, since I was such a smart alec and figured it out.The three of us at my brothers wedding.

We were all welcome anytime, if you knocked on the door before entering you would get razzed. We would drop by with dates in high school or our friends, we were always welcome. Sunday dinners after church with food supplied by Colonel Sanders, then we would fall asleep watching T.V. Their house was the hub for birthday parties, holiday parties, and any day of the week dropping by.

Gamely wearing the ballon hat I made at the family reunion.

I felt a very tight bond with Nanny, and I know most of my cousins would say the same. Although I think out of all my grandparents I am the most like her. She could be stubborn and tough, but full of laughter. We all teased each other and having a quick wit was a requirement around her. The last conversation I had with her, we laughed about how I met one of her former home nurses who gushed about how much she loved my Nanny because when she asked her to do something she didn't want to she replied I am old and I don't give a damn. Even though I have know this day was coming for over a year, it still takes my breath away to realize she is gone now.

With my nice and nephew and one of my favorite photographs of her.

The funeral is Friday morning and we want to celebrate the Legacy my grandparents left us, especially her. We have laughed and cried all day with stories and remembering. My cousin spilled red nail polish on the carpet and as we cleaned it up, I told him she is up in heaven saying those darn kids, I leave for ten minutes and you make a mess.

I love you Nanny and know I'll see you again. Have that can of beanie weenies ready okay?

A New Addition to the Family

Isn't he cute!
His name is Sgt. Pepper affectionately called Sarge.

Many have asked his breed. He is a Cocktail Wienie. I don't know if this breed is recognized by AKC, since we made up the name. He is half Cocker Spaniel and half stray Wiener Dog.
(I have to give credit to Ben, I was calling him a Cocker Wienie, a much more suggestive name.)

I think he is perfect, he was the last pick of the litter. No one wanted him, but he is perfect for us, the other puppies had long hair like their mother. Short hair is preferable to us with all the desert flora around our place.

Any dog training advice appreciated, this is our first dog of our family, although the hubster and I had dogs as kids that has been a while.

The boys have already figured out he likes to slide at the park.

He gets cold and needs to cuddle. How sweet.

Since he will chew toys, the boys have been more apt to pick their stuff up.

Now I am living with four male creatures, possibly five because who knows what the hermit crab is. Maybe I will have to buy some more hens this spring so I can have the majority.

I am going back to Cali!

Welcome to the latest meeting of the blog addicts anonymous.

Old business: A few of you have asked about how the family is going. Well, good actually, last week was rough but I think I may have turned a corner. I'm hoping to post here soon about all that. The kids are doing great. I'll
post some new pics of them soon.

New business: I realize my last two entries weren't exactly earth shattering. However I have noticed only a few comments, since I have had a few problems on other people's spaces trying to leave comments, I am wondering if you are having problems here. If you are, please email me at bugladynora-at-yahoo.com or visit me on blogger
(whitehotmagik.blogspot.com). Hey if you are reading this you are obviously on blogger. Thanks for visiting and please leave a comment. Yes I am a comment whore, I don't even have the spam thing turned on, I'd be happy to get a spam comment, any comment!

Thank you for attending the meeting, now on the the fun social part of the evening.

I am so excited tomorrow we are headed to California. We are headed out to see my sister and family at Camp Pendelton for my neice's first birthday. My parents are taking the boys and I, plus my nephew, Wyatt, 2.5 yrs. (He's too cute he calls me Aunt Noah.) Nonie and Padre (aka Breakfast to Z) think they are quite prepared and have purchased a DVD player with two screens for our viewing pleasure.

Besides hoping for a safe trip, I am hoping that we don't end up stuck in traffic for three hours like we did on the first trip out. The plan is to stay in Maricopa, AZ tomorrow night. I wish we would push on to get there and drive as far as we can stand tomorrow so we can hit San Diego as early as possible. Maybe I can whisper this to Dad and see if he has a plan.

We are going to the Wild Animal Park on Monday. Max looves animals. That wasn't a typo, that kids screams in delight and ooh ooh ooh oohs at anything on TV and loves dogs and kittys. Wyatt (YY for short) is not so fond of animals. He loves tractors, especially John Deer, give him a tractor catalog and he is happy. Animals he's not so sure about. For instance my parents have some horses, YY doesn't want to have anything to do with those "cows" as he calls them. Imagine his horror at the movie Cars. His review: "Tractors not Cows!" I hope he doesn't hate it. My mom (Nonie) has had both her knees replaced the last two years and I hope that she fits in the stoller we rent. I don't think she'll let us get the wheelchair. (Probably afraid we would play with it.)

I also can't wait for the beach. This desert girl has a fascination with all that water. I have my outfit planned complete with matching watershoes. I hope someone doesn't mistake me for a beached whale and try to roll me out to sea.

Tonight the hubby took us to dinner since the drought of no money has ended. He got his first paycheck of the school year today. Somehow we always are stretching too far at the end of the summer since we get July and Augusts paychecks all at once in June. He let me pick, and he made a few suggestions to ge me started on the decison process when I stalled. Red Lobster or Andele's? I pick Andele's so that I can get some extra chile in me before we leave. The choice? Always Tacos Al Carbon. Muy Sabrosa!Grilled meat, fresh tiny corn tortillas, guacamole, beans, limes squeezed over everything and of course the salsa bar. The salsa verde was hot and very great. Only drawback, no margarita or cervaza for me tonight. We ate way too much. In case you are wondering, it is a local joint. I'll be glad to take you there, once we get back, from Cali. (Did I mention I was excited?)

So even though I am full of papas, I am still wired at 9:30 p.m. because as Z put, in the morning we are going to Califormia. (also not a typo) Wooohooo!