Sometimes when I come home from work, we turn on the automatic sprinkler system in the front yard to give it an extra (but small) soaking from the hot days. I’ve always loved watching her enjoy such simple pleasures. Her face lights up, and her body talks.
We don’t have a terrific camera. In fact, we have a horrible camera. We bought it before we went to China, and then it was the middle of the road kind of camera. We’ve been dreaming.....OK Scott’s been dreaming about getting a really, REALLY nice digital camera, for a while now. I know it would take much better pictures. At first I wanted to wait till we went back to China for Melody, but now with such long waits, we might have to take the plunge sooner than expected. The upside is that it would be paid off before we left again for China, anyway.
Could you imagine what the details of these pictures would be WITH a high end camera?? Especially since the current camera usually takes the picture a half second after you click. Do you really know how long a half second is when you have a happy, smiling, always moving child? I DO! It’s enough time to alter the shot from a perfect shot to a side angle....which also sometimes is a perfect picture anyway. :=)

So, here was what we did Friday afternoon after I came home from work. What did you do? And advise on new cameras would be appreciated.

Rosie is finally home, and appears to be getting along wonderfully.
Thanks to all of you who wished her well.
Cady and I will most likely be visiting her later this month.

When my son was younger, I met and married my (now ex) husband.
He had three children from a previous marriage, and I quickly became a constant parental figure in their lives. The oldest step daughter, Ambrosia (I’ve always referred to her fondly as Rosie) has always been close to my heart. We just seemed to click. We were very close as she was growing up.

I met her when she was only five years old. We had spent a lot of time together in her younger years. As time passed, and around the time she turned 17, she and I had a falling out. She resented that I was her “parent”, and to be honest, so did I. Most of the time, the parenting of all four children rested on my shoulders. And under different circumstances, I’m fairly certain our relationship would have grown healthier by the year. In stead, after we parted, and I had divorced her father, we had rarely spoken, although do I think of her constantly.

There’s still a lot of love in me for her, and even though we both went on with our lives, I think we both became a bit lost after losing one another. For most of the next 10 years, we had not spoken too often to each other. We’ve both wondered where we fit into the other persons life now.

Fast forward, she’s now 30 years old, and recently had a baby girl. We had been exchanging emails and comments on blogs, getting to know a little about each other again. She’s such a good mommy. She wants to do everything “right”, and she is doing a fantastic job. I have to admit, I take a little bit of pride in knowing that I took part in giving her examples of mothering, as a child.

Christmas Eve, I clicked on her website, and saw that they had been in a 5 car pile up accident. Her husband and baby are fine, but she took a lot of physical damages.

She has a broken rib, broken collar bone, and one of her legs is broken in a couple of places. They moved her from the hospital to a rehab on Friday, but she still needs a lot of care. She’s nursing the baby, so between wanting to be with her baby more often, trying to heal her body, and being unable to have her first Christmas with her first baby, I’m sure this has been very difficult for her.
You can read about her family and the subsequent accident here

If you’re so inclined, please drop her a get well note on the comments section, and let her know you found her thru me (or she won’t have a clue why she has certain responses to her posts)

And if you have room for one more good thought, one more prayer, one more healing meditation, please remember to pass some good will to Ambrosia as she heals.

This was such a good weekend.
My 25 year old son and his girlfriend drove to our town for a weekend visit. Scott took a vacation day to spend time with the family on Saturday. And Cady was extremely joyful to have my son and his girlfriend over.
Family is such an odd thing. You’re thrust into life with those you seem to somehow know, but have never met before. Then you spend the rest of your life getting to know that person ......strangely...... again.
I feel as if I’ve always known all of my family members (and ex-family members- eg: ex-husband). I don’t know some family members as much as I used to any more, and perhaps that’s because we met face to face, learned what we needed from each other, and then there was no more reason to stay closely connected. Or perhaps we had learned the smaller things, and knew there was something larger to tackle, and we each backed away from it, leaving us somehow distant.

There are certain people that will always be a constant, no matter how large or small the lessons. My son and I have experienced a lot of these lessons. When I gave birth to him, I had different plans for the both of us. I was going to make his life much easier than I did. I was going to keep focused, and give him a life that was comfortable. Life took us in its own direction, and in my own mind, I had failed him in so many ways.
For now, he and I are in a great place together, spiritually.
He’s grown, and I’ve grown.
He’s incorporated Cady into his life as an older brother. In a sense, he responds to her more like a younger uncle but the age differences will do that. Still, I couldn’t have asked for more.
We spent the weekend talking and eating, and went bowling. We stayed up last night till 2:30am, just talking, with the TV blaring in the background. I haven’t a clue what was on TV, because our conversations were much more entertaining.

There are few people in my life whom I LOVE so deeply that I would actually give my life for theirs. My son and my daughter are two of those people. They are both very different, but my love and appreciation for them in my life is deeper and older and stronger than I can put in to words.

I’m so very glad Daniel came into my life 25 years ago.
And that Cadence made her appearance on the other side of the world, almost a quarter century later.
WOW life is remarkable. Love is amazing. The feelings I have as a mother are the most powerful feelings I’ve ever experienced.
One more and we will be complete.

We have cute li'l creatures in our backyard.
Last year we had a HUGE toad in our backyard that came around the patio nightly. We really had no idea why it hung around there until this year. We now have two (big but smaller than the original) toads that do the same thing. All I can figure out is that these two are somehow the babies of the first one. I say somehow because we only saw one last year. And we have no idea how these toads ended up in our backyard. We don't have a pond or a pool. We really have no bodies of water sitting around our yard for the duration of time it would take a tadpole to become a baby toad. But, somehow these toads have ventured into our yard and made it their home.
It dawned on us that they're looking for tidbits of cat food that fall from the patio table nightly. So, now, I've created a smallish pond out of a cat litter box, and some sand and rocks, and placed that under a tree. We also now have an abundance of mealworms kept in a plastic container in the refrigerator and we feed the toads 5-6 mealworms per night. They now come close enough to let us see them, and wait for us to feed them, then scurry off again.



But here's the kicker.....I also made sure to get a pod of Praying Mantis eggs this year, for the garden. If you've never had one in your yard, they're awesome. They eat all the bad bugs, and are extremely intelligent creatures. They will quickly befriend you if you feed them a bit of raw hamburger meat daily. And if they feel comfortable about it, they will walk up your arm, as if they know the individual. They're carniverous, but friendly. Anyway....I released a pod of them and they hatched, and became these cute little critters you see below....which grew bigger and now hide out in my tomato, cucumber and herb gardens. We started with 70 in the pod. And now I'm fairly certain that there are around 3-4 that have found the best camiflauge.


Problem is, now, I think the toads are keeping the mantis population down (hence the scant mantis findings). Still though, with all the experience this has given Cady about the food chain, the eco system, nature and nurturing others in our environment, I would have both species in my yard again next year. I think I might skip tossing the ladybugs though next year....Between the mantis' and the toads, I don't think the ladybugs really had a fighting chance.

Update for Keri and anyone else interested. You can get praying mantis pods at a garden center supply store during the spring. There's usually a refrigerated section that has plastic containers of earth worms, praying mantis pods and lady bugs (each in their own containers). The mantis pod looks like a brazil nut shell, and the container we got had 3 pods, and cost around 4 dollars. Each pod has around 20-30 eggs. You place each pod between the V of tree branches or in a safe place where it won't be blown away. The heat makes the eggs hatch, and within weeks you have several mantis' like the one above. That one was very young when we took the picture. It's in between sage leaves (for measurement sake). They usually get to be a little smaller than your index finger in length.

It's been eery here lately. There are fires all thru California, mostly up north. There have been up to 1,700 natural fires in the past 3 weeks. This isn't really normal for California. I've lived here all my life, and I've never seen it like this. It all started 3 weeks ago, with dry lightening in several places. We haven't seen blue skies more than 3 or 4 days since then. And because of the smoke from the fires, the heat of the sun is getting trapped, making it hotter than normal. The air quality is considered unhealthy, and people are cautioned to stay indoors as much as possible.
We have some pictures from a few weeks ago, when Cady tried out her new Slip-'N-Slide. And just looking at the pictures makes me feel cooler.




Other than that, I have to admit, this child's smile is full of sunshine! I just love her smile.

On Sunday, May 13th, (sometime in the evening, you can't really expect me, a man, to know to ask all the details) Cady lost her status as the youngest in the family. How appropriate that on a Mother's Day, my niece would have her very own little girl.

Grace Noel

Congratulations, Kris, she's definitely a pretty girl.