Seek the road that makes Death a fullfillment

I was driving across my home state tonight and enjoying beautiful scenery and some of the most amazing sunsets (In Wyoming you get multiple sunsets if you are driving because the weather patterns can change so fast!) and the book I was listening to had a quote in it that really made me mentally stop and think.

"Do not seek death, for it will seek you out. Seek the road that makes death a fullfillment."

Wow. That quote really touched home with me. Not that I seek death or anything, but it is true. We will all eventually find our lives coming to a close in one manner or another. But we can choose how we live.

Sometimes I feel like I coast through life waiting for the next thing to happen. Waiting for Spring, for Summer, for Fall, for Winter. Waiting for the next school semester, waiting for the semester to end. Waiting for graduation, waiting for a career. Waiting for Nora's potty training.

Or time is wasted looking back and saying "I wish I had done this, that or the other."

But this year I have been looking for those little opportunities that really make life a joy. Nora is amazing and she give me so much joy day to day. This year even though it is hard for our family, I fulfilled my dream of owning my horse.

I guess it is another way of saying Carpe Diem. Sieze the Day. Live life to the fullest so when that inevitable day comes the promise of your life has been fullfilled. We can't get lost moments back, but we can fill up future moments and savor the experiences.

Just thought I would share! Anyone else squeezing life for all it's worth? :D

Sky Dog likes Organic Apples

My apple tree did pretty well this year. It was the first year for us to be here with this particular tree and I expected the apples to be ready about another month down the road so unfortunatly we lost quite a few because I was to busy to go to the back yard and about 80% of them fell in a wind storm. The hornets have also been having their way with the apples. I have picked some off the tree that have had hornets eatting them, not to mention the ones they have eatten on the ground.

Today I am goig to work really hard to pick up the wind fallen apples and sort out ones that I can still do something with and the ones that can go to the horse stable and ones that just need to go to the compost pile.

So back to my subject of the post. Yesterday we went out to the back yard to play. Nora found an apple she wanted to eat. And she ate about half of it before throwing it for the dog. Sky was playful and chased it, but when she picked it up, because it was already a bit juicy, she got a taste for apples. She ate the remainder of Nora's apple and then started hunting up ones others for herself.

She doesn't eat a whole lot from each apple, but it is so funny to see a dog eating an apple!! This coming year I am going to take better care of my apple tree. I am going to put up hornet catchers after spring pollination and hopefully I can get rid of some of the nests in our yard. I am hoping to be a better farmgirl and utilize this resource better next year!

I am such a ditz!

So I just happen to have four days off that coincide with two of my out-of-state Aunts and a cousin coming down to my grandparent's home for a little bit of a reunion. Great, I think! Awesome! I can go see everyone! So I as Doug to check the Suburban and make sure the battery is charged and maybe we should go ahead and get gas in it on Friday? But he thinks he will have time Saturday morning before work. No problem.

Saturday morning dawns and the plan was get Doug off to work, pack quickly- get in the car and go. Doug comes in and tells me the truck is dead and I have to take him to work. Can't we jump start it and you still use the truck? Nope. No time.

Darn. That means I have to wait until after 2:30pm to leave. Okay. Roll with the punches. It's okay. I still get to go. So we stop and say Hi to Tala on the way back from dropping off Doug. That was fun. Then we jumpstart the car and let it run to re-charge the battery. Note to self: Make sure the radio is ALL THE WAY OFF in the old truck so dead batteries can be a think of the past! Whoops!

So then I let the truck idle to re-charge the battery and of course forget that it is running and almost run it out of gas. So I drive around the block to the gas station and put some $$ into the tank. Ouch.

We get Doug, gas up the car, drop him off.

"So Alyssa, where are the truck keys?" Doug asks. Warning! Warning!

"Uh...I think in the key basket?" Kiss kiss bye bye. Yup. Nora and I left for an 8 hour car drive without verifying where the critical ONLY set of truck keys were. WARNING!! DANGER!! DITZ ZONE QUICKLY APPROACHING.

So I get an hour and a half down the road and have to stop for a call of nature and as I am paying for a candy bar so I am not a complete and total rude person for only usng the facilities I find...you guessed it...The truck keys. Dang.

So I am an hour and a half down the road. It's already late. Do I turn around and go home? Delay my visit? Don't go at all? Do I go on to Laramie and see family that I haven't seen in about 3 years? Darn darn darn.

So I decided to go to Laramie. I got to spend about 18hours there hanging out with family (and sleeping). They got to see me, Nora, and pictures of Tala. And then we packed up and came back! Talk about speed trips! 16 hours of driving in a day and a half. All because I didn't check to see if I had the keys or not.

I am such a ditz! But Nora had fun! And I had fun so it could have been worse!

Toddlers

Nora is sleeping later these days which is a huge blessing to me. Don't get me wrong- for the right reasons I like seeing the early side of 6am. But it starts to get old after a while when your brain is screaming at you "SLEEP! GIVE ME SLEEP!" Unfortunatly, Brain, my daughter comes first.

So lucky for me- she is now sleeping in until 7:30am-8am ish. Hurrah for shorter daylight hours. I always mourned the ending of the long days when summer was coming to a close before. Now I am starting to see the beauty of longer periods of dark!

We've all be sick lately which means we have all been spending WAY to much time in front of the TV. I have seen all of our child-friendly DVD's at least once (we only have a handful) and I swear if Dora yells "Say Backpack! Say Backpack" one more time...

If I were feeling better I would feel guilty about all the TV time. But I don't so I don't. Nora has been so good. Today was the reading day. We read five books in a row and then she sad and read to herself for another 15 minutes. She has also been really into her blocks. We have been working on color recognition a lot this week and she is getting better. She is doing great at Yellow, Blue, and even green and red. Sometimes she gets them mixed up still, but it is getting tones better.

Nora wanted to wash dishes today. Usually this consists of soapy water in the sink, her with the scrubber/spounge thing and lots of water ending up on the floor (Look mommy- I am bailing out the sink!). Today I though- Sure! The floor needs mopped anyway!

Sure enough water goes on the floor (and counter tops and the clean dishes) but after a while I hear her get down from the chair and I peak around the wall furnace that blocks full kitchen vision from the living room and she is on her hands an knees scrubbing the floor with the dishes scrubber. Uhm. Okay so we have another cleanig spounge, need to get out a clean one for dishes, but hey! The floor is clean! Go Cinder-Nora, Go!

My little naked baby is also learning the joys of clothing. Normally I give her about 15 minutes from the moment I get her dressed to the moment she is running around shirtless, pantless and diaperless. However recently she has been asking to wear clothes! Awesome! Maybe she will learn the lesson before it frosts!

Speaking of winter coming- our garden is done for the year. I know some plant fall gardens but with only about 10 days left before the first predicted frost- I don't think I would even get radishes planted, sprouted, and grown before the frost killed everything. That means I need to either spend a lot of time digging in the garden and working in some manure from the stable or I need to rent a rototiller. Note to self- go talk to the rental guys!

Our apple tree is shedding apples like crazy. I am not sure if I will be able to keep up with them all! I hope so because they are fantastic! The wasps and ants have been getting a good fall treat! I hope the squirrels have been taking some as well.

Well I am going to go lay down and hopefully go to bed early tonight. I have had the flu for about 5 days now and have work tomorrow. We are joking that it is swine flu. I hope not. But I feel pretty recovered so I don't think I will be a Typhoid Mary at work tomorrow!

Ciao!

Alee

Learning...

So I have been feeling lately like I haven't been doing enough for Nora as far as helping her learn basic information... like colors and counting. I know I know- she is only two and a half so counting is still ambitious. But she did count to five until her dad started play a game with her where he said one, she said two, he said three as he tickled/tossed/or twirled her.

So lately we have been doing a lot of naming games. I point to things, name them and ask her to repeat the name. I have also been telling her the names of colors and having her repeat them back to me. Again Doug "broke" her she was saying "Yellow" properly and he said (in her hearing) that she was saying "Lellow". SO guess what she is saying now. LOL Oh well. She'll get it eventually!

One of her favorite things to do right now is to look at the stars and the moon. Doug and I are thinking of getting those constellation stars that you can put on a child's ceiling.

How is everyone out there doing?

Trying something new- Pay Per Post

Okay so I am trying something new and I have no idea how good it is or if it even works. It's called Pay Per post. To prove that I own this blog, I have to post a random sentance that they gave me:
On the first day of xmas your true love gave you a schadenfreude


Okay so before I post some weird word on my blog (see shadenfreude) I had to look it up. LOL Neurotic I know...

Philosopher and sociologist Theodor Adorno defined schadenfreude as “largely unanticipated delight in the suffering of another which is cognized as trivial and/or appropriate.”[2]


Cheers! We'll see if this thing actually works!

I love this Picture

I just had to share this picture of Nora enjoying playing in the back yard!