Homegrown Thoughts

My apologies to those on dial-up. I got a bit snap-happy with the ol’ digital camera so this page will take a little bit of time to load. I hope you find it to be worth it!

So, we finally got nailed with a winter storm again. It’s been awhile and this one was a doozy.

First we had a lot of rain. Which began to freeze and turn into a lot of ice on Saturday afternoon.

Ice on trees:

Ice on normally safe walking surfaces:

Yeah, the dog really loved that. Heh heh. “Fletcher, wanna go out-sLide?” Oh, and we can’t forget the hail storms - yes, that is plural. Pea-sized goodness that sounds like artillery fire as it bounces off your metal chimney cap.

Here is how it looked Saturday night at about 10:30 after snow fell for a while, then stopped. The only light is coming from through our sliding glass doors. This is what it’s like in our backyard when there’s snow to reflect the street lights and such. Kind of eerie, isn’t it?

The next morning, we found that the snow wasn’t over last night and we now had this to contend with:

Fir trees aren’t supposed to look like this at the top, are they?

Of course, the boys had to bundle up and go out to play. What is it with my kids that they love to lay down in the snow?? Thank you Grandma for bringing over snow pants for the little guy!!

Poor puppy! He thinks he’s a mini-Malamute and he wanted to be outside playing in the snow with the boys SO bad. He was whining and crying at the window the whole time they were out. But he manages to get so much snow packed in his fur that we have to give him a warm bath to get it all off, and I just wasn’t in the mood - so he didn’t get to go out this time. Yes, I am mean.

This morning, I got this shot of one of our trees. So pretty, like jewels are hanging off of it! It was really lovely this morning with the blue sky. Sadly, it’s clouded over again now and they’re forecasting more snow over the next few days. I guess we’re getting all of winter at once this year.

And here is the only damage we’ve seen, which is pretty amazing, considering. Our next door neighbor’s tree split like a banana peel and then fell down next to our garage later. Our trees seem to be springing back pretty well already, but if we get another heavy snow there could still be more casualties.

Fortunately we weren’t inconvenienced by the storm more than having church canceled, needing to shovel and the usual. A lot of people around here lost power due to breakage (again I am thankful for underground power lines!!!) and had other issues to contend with. I’m glad that we could mostly enjoy the event - it was perfect knitting weather! ;-)

Happy Birthday to Mommy’s little snuggle bug. Yup, my little guy is now 6 years old. That sounds so old…and yes, I can hear those whose ‘babies’ are 17 years old laughing at me. But for myself…6 seems very old. It’s probably because he’s smaller than average that it’s especially difficult for me to grasp, but the calendar doesn’t lie. We now get to file homeschool forms for him come the next school year and be ‘official’ with tests and what-not. The thought is daunting after being so used to concentrating on one child’s schooling for so long, but I guess the time had to come eventually. Again, those with 10 kids, quit snickering at me!!

The poor kid gets a raw deal almost every year. Having a birthday in February is not always a great thing in a northern climate. For instance, this year my husband is sick, my dad is sick and we had a big snowstorm last night and today. So he got to open his presents from us today but we had to postpone his party until Friday night and hopefully everyone will be well then. He was actually fine with it, better than I thought he would be. He’s saying that he is glad today is his birthday and that on Friday he’ll have his ‘real’ birthday. I tried to explain that he had it kind of backwards, but in his mind it’s not a real birthday until you blow the candles out on your cake and that will happen on Friday. He’s excited about his party. I must explain that in our case the word ‘party’ is used pretty loosely. It basically involves grandparents and cake - we’re not having a kids party or anything. Again, it’s just so hard to get everybody healthy and have good weather and get everyone’s schedules to align, so our kids are pretty used to our meager celebrations by now.

I guess that’s about it for today. I’m very tired and need to get some sleep. I’ve been burning the midnight (and 1 am and 2 am and 3 am…) oil for too many nights in a row now. I wish I could get by with no sleep - I’d be able to get so much done. But, alas, I cannot. Does anybody have some extra hours in their day they’d be willing to give me?

…but I take leave to disagree. I have thrown down the gauntlet and suggested an “Ugliest Bird Contest”. So look at my ugly bird photo. Then go look at Nancy’s ugly bird photo. Then vote by leaving a comment on the post which you believe has the ugliest bird. That means coming back here to vote, because I’m quite sure my bird is uglier.

Here is Nancy’s post, but don’t go there yet, I have to tell you the story and show you the picture first! She got to tell a story, so I get to tell one, too! And me being me, my story will be MUCH longer. Maybe it’ll wear you out so you’re too tired to read Nancy’s post and will just stay here and vote for MY bird. Am I being a bit too pushy? Probably. My humble apologies.

Ok, so shortly after I got my new camera (I mention this because the photos are not the best quality, the cam and I were still in the ‘getting to know you’ phase), we were sitting in our home, minding our own business when I heard this strange noise. Kind of a squeeky squawk. Eeeek! Silence. Eeeek! Silence. EEEEK! Silence.

I thought something in the house had gone haywire or one of the kids had left a toy on somewhere. So I started to look around, but could find nothing. I followed the sound to our sliding glass door to the backyard. Carefully opening the vertical blinds, I looked out. And I saw nothing. But the noise was very very close to me now.

I glanced down and perched on the bottom door track was the ugliest black baby bird I’d ever seen. Apparently a very hungry ugly black baby bird. One who thought it could get food from his own reflection in the glass. And it truly was one of those so ugly it’s cute kind of deals. It’s eyes were bulging, it had scraggly pin feathers poking out everywhere, and huge feet that seemed too large to allow him to walk. Oh yes, and that voice that wasn’t gonna make it to Carnegie Hall.

I called the kids over to see the bird and went for my camera. After taking some shots of the bird, I closed the blinds thinking maybe it would go away if we ignored it. It didn’t. As soon as the blinds shut and it could see it’s reflection again, it started with the squawking. Eventually I decided I’d try to give it some water, maybe trick it into thinking it had eaten so it would go away. When I opened the door, the bird started hopping away from me as fast as his 3 inch claws could take him. I talked nice to the little birdie and it continued to flee. Right to the edge of the deck. Oops - right off the edge of the deck! Down about 2 feet. It recovered nicely and continued to hop out towards the front yard. Our adventure was over. Or was it?

I later again heard what I can only assume was the same bird. He was back. Only this time, he had company. Glancing out into the backyard I saw two ugly black baby birds on the lawn. Squawking it up big time. It seems they each thought they could get food from the other. They were each squawking and then poking inside each others mouth looking for…something. It was quite a racket! Their mom must have been totally deaf not to hear it. Or maybe she was at the spa, trying to recover from the ordeal of being the mother of two such creatures. At least our little bird had found a ‘reflection’ that would squawk back this time.

Eventually they both hopped into a neighbor’s yard and I didn’t see (or hear them) again. I’ve had larger baby birds visit my deck since then and I always wonder if it’s him coming back to visit. :-)

Ok, now wasn’t that a tear-jerker?? And now on to the photo. Since Nancy only posted one, I will not cheat and post more than one, although to get the full effect of the ugliness, you really should see more than one view. However, here is my contribution to the contest.

I rest my case. Winning comments accepted below.

I have been told that I should add this bit of the story. I thought I had humiliated myself enough in my previous post and could safely leave it out, but full disclosure has been requested, so here it goes. Yet another reason for your kids to be glad I’m not their mother.

Okay, so on the birthday cake were the 7 little candles, which you see in the photos in my previous post. What I didn’t tell you before was that I was a very mean mom and bought those candles that won’t go out. If you blow them out, they rekindle and burst to flame again. I’ve never used them before, but I’d seen others use them and it was kinda cute, so when I saw them at the store, I got some. I did this totally forgetting that my son has a hard enough time blowing out regular candles. For some reason he has control issues with his lips which make it a challenge, LOL. So anyway, those are the candles we had, so I had to use them and hope for the best. Well, first of all, they make a really big flame (which you can see in the one photo). Second of all, they spark. That was not expected. They also burn down really fast and drip a lot of wax. It was probably fortunate that I had them in the cake almost horizontal or we would have had wax all over the cake.

So my son is huffing and puffing away (after his first reaction of standing about 4 feet away with fear in his eyes), having no effect on the candles other than causing a small flicker. My younger son gets in on the act and he can’t get any to go out either. I’m laughing and snapping pictures in my heartless way. As I see the flames are getting dangerously close to the cake because the candles are burning down so fast, I run and get a cup of water. My husband has to blow the candles out and then I have to quickly grab what little bit of waxy part is left and toss the candles into the cup of water one by one. Of course I wasn’t going fast enough and they were re-lighting before I could get them all pulled out, so he had to blow a couple out more than once. But eventually, all flames were doused and nobody was injured in the process.

So you see, I am a cruel (and not altogether intelligent) mom. I would like to state in my defense that I really did forget that he has trouble with blowing. And I had no way of knowing these would be super-charged fast burning, sparking candles. For the record, there were also 3 grandparents in close proximity who offered no assistance whatsoever - 2 of whom were snapping pictures of their own! My son doesn’t seem to have been traumatized by it…but I suppose the imaginary budget for his ‘future therapy’ fund should be increased, just in case.

And that’s all I’m going to tell you. I have admitted MORE than enough of my failings already. My humiliation is complete. I hope you all appreciate my transparency, especially since I try so hard to act like I have it all together and know what I’m doing. But you all know different by now, don’t you?

Somehow, I don’t now how, my older son turned 7 yesterday. I’m sure it was only 2 or 3 months ago that I held my first baby in my arms and decided I’d like to keep him there forever. And surely it was only last week that he was learning to walk and talk. It appears that he is choosing to ignore my pleas to stop growing up so fast!

So, since he wouldn’t let me pretend it wasn’t happening, we celebrated his birthday. I made him a special cake (photo and more about that below). The grandparents came over for a little party and he got way too many presents. You give the grandparents one gift idea and they show up with that plus 5 other ‘little things’ they decided to add. And I had to listen to my husband’s “When I was a kid…” speech about his deprived 1 present for birthdays and 1 present for Christmas childhood. Whatever. I was an only child. I got 2.

My son is very pleased with his haul. He got the software he’s been asking for (Zoo Tycoon 2 - see my Tycoon post here) along with several books, a Lego set and a Megablok set (F1 racer and a monster truck), a RC car, a geography game - and a share of real stock! He’s firmly planted in front of the computer now. I am informed that he is getting Emporer Penguins for his zoo and he seems pretty excited about it.

About the cake. He’s been deciding what he wanted on his cake for some time now. I started a bad tradition of ‘fancy’ designs for birthday cakes. They’re not really that fancy because I’m not that good at cake decorating (I want to take a class!!), but I usually do some theme they like. Now something *special* is expected each birthday. So he started out telling me he wanted an airplane. I wasn’t sure how I’d manage that other than pulling the ‘toy airplane on the cake’ trick. Well, then he added that he wanted a runway. So I thought, ok, I’ll put a runway in frosting and put the toy airplane on it. Then he wanted the airplane to have a flag on it. Then he informs me that he wants a specific airplane from his Flight Simulator program. It was at this point that I began searching for a different design I thought I might have a chance at pulling off and which might be cool enough that he’d choose it over the said runway/airplane/flag motif. Well, I finally found it. A space ship! It was going to take some cake carving and a lot of frosting, but I thought it would still be easier than the other option and they made it look pretty simple in the instructions.

Well, I’m not sure it was easier at all, LOL. I think I had some humidity/temperature/too moist cake issues. Something wasn’t right with the frosting. But in the end, I did get it finished. It didn’t turn out as well as I wanted it to and I was getting really frustrated working on it. I had frosting ALL over the kitchen and my hands because my bags kept having ‘issues’. I exploded at my husband, “I can’t get it to look right!”, and my son heard me. He came over, hugged on me, and said, “I don’t think it looks bad. I just want you to try your best, Mommy. I like how it looks! It looks really good!” Hmmm. My ‘baby’ is now more mature than I am at times. How very lowering. And he is obviously learning some coping skills in dealing with his perfectionist mother.

So, since my son was happy with his cake and that’s really all that matters, I’ll be brave enough to share photos. And I’ll try not to point out all the ‘wrong’ things on it. Wow, I totally get that from my grandma! She always did that…you’d sit down to eat and she’d rattle off all that went wrong with the preparation of the meal and how she hoped things would taste ‘right’ and you’d suddenly lose your appetite, LOL. So I won’t do that. And the cake did taste really good!

Here is the cake:

And here it is at ‘lift off’:

So, happy 7th birthday to my son. I’m glad it’ll be another whole year before he has another one. At the rate he’s going, he’ll probably be making his own cake next year.