Meltdown. Day two, evening

Anna fell asleep on the way back from the Breaks, and was none too happy when I woke her up to take her to Wal-Mart. The "dress" she'd been wearing all day was WAY too short, and she needed some leggings. She was very much against this. We went back to the hotel, where she spent an hour crying about it. I finally got her calmed down with the promise that she only had to wear the leggings to church, and then she could take them off. This is a post-church dramatization of Anna being sad about the leggings.

We went to Mass at Our Lady of Perpetual Help. Anna was good and quiet and charmed everyone around us. It's nice to be able to go to church wherever you are.

After Mass we got dinner from El Reynaldo, a recommended local Mexican place. We brought it back to the hotel to eat so that Anna could get those leggings off.

She was worried there would be nothing for kids to watch on TV, but we found something right away. She loves "The Lawrence Welk Show". She sang, danced, and played imaginary instruments.

Then we had a bath and did one of the little craft projects we bought at the store yesterday. She painted a heart shaped box to keep her barrettes in.

Over-tired, she crawled into bed and complained about it for an hour...I think she's asleep now.

Aaahhh...

Gimme a break! Day two, afternoon

After lunch I thought we ought to go up to St. Francis to explore a bit more. The drive up was great, I love those flat horizons, as far as you can see.

First thing we did was the River Walk along the Republican River. It was a perfect afternoon, just warm enough with a little breeze. We had a nice ramble along the 3/4 mile trail (one way), I was worried it would wear Anna out too much, but she was a trooper.

Afterwards we had a little snack at the picnic tables.

Then we stopped at a little store to go potty and get a snack. Anna requested fruit. How did I get so lucky with this girl? I got directions to the Arikaree breaks, and we took Lady out on the road again.

I'm not, historically, much for scenery. I like to get out and see pretty things, walk around in them, but not to see them from the car. But the Arikaree breaks are breathtaking. My breath actually caught. You've got to go see them. It's like nothing you've ever seen in Kansas, out of nowhere. My photo gives you no idea of how cool it is.

We also passed from Kansas into Nebraska, and marked Anna's first travel to that state.

Goin' with the flow-Day two, morning

We woke up bright and early, watched a little PBS kids while we ate our cereal, and went out to the car...to find a nearly flat tire. We asked the desk clerk for directions to a service station, got air and the recommendation that we get it fixed ASAP. So then we went to Kansasland Tire on Main St, and find they're all backed up and it'll be a couple of hours to get it fixed. I popped Anna in the stroller and we went to downtown Goodland instead of Wallace Co.

We had a fresh bear claw in the Daylight Donut and then went shopping at the thrift store, finding lots of fun goodies.

Then we went to the Hallmark and looked at Christmas ornaments and cards and pretty things. Before we knew it, the tire place called and we went back to get Lady. Inside the tire shop they had lots of big tires, and Anna had a wonderful time crawling through them.

It was too late to try to make the sales, so I asked for a recommendation for lunch. The girl at Kansasland said Crazy R's was great. First we went by the courthouse, because Mom always liked to see the courthouses. It was pretty, with some neat red and blue tiling.

Behind it was a park! Here is Anna "eating a cookie at the tea party in my house" at the top of the slide. We had a lovely visit there.

Then we had lunch at Crazy R's, which had big wooden booths and neat stuff hanging all around, and tasty fries.

Running away from home, day one.

Ennui led Anna and me to throw all caution to the wind and run away from home this weekend.

We just headed north, to pretty and unexplored country, to go where the wind and whims took us.

It is pretty up here, rolling hills sometimes, flat sometimes, always fun. I'd never seen the giant Van Gogh in Goodland, so we took the interstate after Oakley to find it. On the way I saw a sign for "The Craft Peddler" so we took the exit and went to Brewster. We found a fun little shop with two sweet ladies and we got a few things for some projects.

Then we went to the elementary school in Brewster and played for awhile on the playground.

On to Goodland, (or, as Anna called it, "Goodlookin") with a delightful stop at the Van Gogh. What fun. There were visitors in the guest book from all over KS and MO, with a few from other states and one from Italy.

We made a stop at Wal-Mart to buy some hotel snacks, Anna chose Princess cookies with delight.

In Goodland we looked for a cheap hotel with an indoor pool. The Super 8 was cheap and nice, but no pool. Across the street there was a new Comfort Inn, with a pool. I stopped and asked the desk clerk if they allowed non-guests to swim, and he said that he would. So we are staying at the Super 8, and had a nice swim at the pool across the street. Here's the darling in a strange pose. We had a great time pretending to be fish and flowers. The flowers grew when the other person splashed and made "rain" and then we'd be picked and put in a vase on the table.

After our illicit swim we ate at the Harvester restaurant, chosen because it was on the same access road we were on, and because Daddy is harvesting and planting while we're gone. It was yucky, but fun. We were the only patrons, other than employees and strange town regulars who went into the kitchen to refill their coffee. Anna asked why the waitress was eating, shouldn't she be bringing our food? Back at the hotel Anna ate a few cookies and announced she was ready for bed. Here she is talking to Daddy about her day. Then we prayed all together as a family, with Daddy on the cell phone. It's been a fun day. I think tomorrow we'll head to Wallace Co. for the County wide garage sale. And then...who knows?

Wordle

I'm on another tech team this year at school, and one of the cool things we learned about was wordle. It's a fun little tool you can use to make word clouds out of any sort of text you'd like. You can link to your blog and see what comes up, or paste in text, or type up your own list.

The more times you type in a word, the larger it will appear. You can play with fonts and layout and colors all you'd like.

A few tips:

***copy your text each time you create one, because it will be lost if you go back.

***To put it somewhere else (like your blog) you need to (alt+print screen) and then open it from your clipboard somewhere else (I use adobe photoshop) and then crop it and save it as a jpg and then put it in like anything else.

Here, for example, is a wordle made from one of my favorite Anne chapters, 25 in Anne of Green Gables "Matthew insists on puffed sleeves" I just googled it and copied it from the text (provided by Project Gutenberg)

I'm looking forward to doing it with my 6th graders, having them describe themselves in Spanish and then make a wordle out of it. I think it'll be a fun way to practice and reinforce vocabulary.

Overheard at Wal-Mart

Woman on a cell phone:

"She just cusses at the clients too much."

The sock doesn't fall far from the drawer.

When I picked Anna up from the bookstore after school today I was surprised to see her outfit. She confirmed that she dressed herself. 3 bows, legwarmers, flip-flops, long sleeved shirt, dress, all in the same general color family...

I was thinking she was a strange little girl when I remembered what I wore today...

Chopsticks!

Tonight, when I told Anna we were having Chinese food (Shannon's yummy stir-fry) she squealed with delight and ran over to the silverware drawer.

"It is Chinese food so I can use my chopsticks! They are eating things! For eating Chinese food!"

She knows this because she has asked a zillion times about them, when doing her "chore" of putting away the silverware.

During dinner she said:

"I call these my gymnastic noodles, because they are from the place where they do gymnastics."

After dinner, when getting ready for bed, she informed us (while laying on the floor with her head on her blankie) that she did not want to go to sleep. Matthew told her she could just lay in her bed in the dark and think. She told him:

"I will think that I want to get up."

Little pink flats

I looked really cute today. A new little knee length A-line skirt with an Italian street scene, all bright and cheery, little pink flats with flowers on top, an embroidered jean jacket. Cute.

As I was leaving school the teachers were teasing me about how I was supposed to stay and sub in the afternoon and I explained that Matthew and Anna were gone, so I had the whole house to myself. They told me to hurry and get home.

I hopped in the car smiling and sang along with the radio some, and thought about 9/11/01, remembering and wondering at the fact that my 6th graders weren't even in school yet.

I pulled into the drive and saw that the trash pile was on fire.

I looked around a little, for someone, because I know that sometimes fires on farms are purposeful, but I couldn't see anyone. I called "the farm" (Marion and Joan) but no one answered and I remembered Marion told me he had to go to Hays. I called Matthew but he didn't answer. I tramped gingerly through the dried knee high weeds to get a peek at the fire. No flames, but lots and lots of smoke and lots of wood to burn and dried weeds and metal and things that scared me.

I tried Matthew again. No answer. I tried to pull the hose over to the fire, but it didn't reach. I decided to go get my watering can. Matthew called back and confirmed that the fire was an accident. The man who is going through the trash pile to take out what he wants and pay us for it was here earlier using a torch, so that must have been what started it. I filled up my flowered watering can 4 times and put out the fire, dirtying my sweet pink shoes and getting weeds all stuck to my cute skirt.

I feel a little bit like a hero.

My new favorite quote

"Start by doing what is necessary;

then do what is possible;

and suddenly you're doing the impossible."

--St. Francis of Assissi

September Gift

At just the right moment, it rained, and the million dormant sunflowers all came up to see me.

(I wish I could take a better picture) (or get better resolution here) (but you get the idea)

And people say it's not pretty where I live.

Slippin' 'n' slidin'

I guess the "5 and up" age limit might not just be about safety. At 5 do you understand the concept of flinging your body onto the slide? We couldn't explain it to Anna, even after I demonstrated.

She found a way to have fun though--

4:45 AM

5 minutes after getting everyone back into bed, with dry sheets and jammies...

Anna: (yelling, from hall) Mama! I have to go to the bathroom!

Betsy: (eyes still closed) OK, you can go by yourself, you're a big girl.

Anna: (still yelling) I will go in this bathroom so I don't wake you up!

Betsy: Thank you, Anna, that's nice.

The lonely garden

--or--

So that's why pickles were invented.

--or--

So that's what tomato cages are for.

I finally went out and spent some time in my poor garden today. With all of the rain, I haven't needed to water, so it's been neglected. The weeds made a fence around the whole thing and it's work just to get in.

The zucchini seems to have given up, crowded out by the massive tomato plants.

The yellow squash is fighting valiantly back, I think I'll have another 15 squash later this week.

The cucumbers, who've mixed with the cantaloupe, are all over the place and producing zillions of cucumbers. I don't even like cucumber.

The tomatoes, sans cages, have grown wild and taken over yards of garden, but they're sprawling and thick and so no light gets to the little tomatoes, and they're perpetually green. And nibbled by bunnies.

The cantaloupes, which did look so good, now look like an elephant came and stepped on them, or like vampire bunnies came and sucked all of the insides out. I really don't understand what happened there.

The watermelon still seems happy. When should I pick him?

Here's the bounty for today. Some of them look too big to be good to me. Does that happen? Do they get too big to be good?

Girls Day In

Today Anna and Mama ignored the messy house, forgot about the unfinished classroom, and threw all responsibility out the window and spent the whole day in Mama's bed watching the Olympics and building things out of pillows. It was lovely.

Time to get back to it!

Go World!

A safe snob, maybe?

Adding the copyright at the top of the blog makes me feel like a snob, but after reading sweet/salty today (warning--a naughty word or two, she's angry), it seems like a good idea, at least.

Belated Birthday Wish

This is late--for Chelsea.

We may be getting older, but take comfort in the fact that on the fridge on 5th St, we'll ALWAYS look like this.

Happy 30th Birthday!

Farm Girl

Tonight I prepared and froze zucchini and yellow squash from my garden. I feel like a real farm wife. I signed up for this "Fix it Fresh" mailbox course from my extension agent, and it has instructions for doing all sorts of things with produce. My yellow squash and zucchini have been doing really well, and we don't eat here at the house very often, so I wanted some way to keep it. It was pretty easy and fun.First I chopped it all up. That was fun because ever since Sarah taught me how to dice things, it's lots of fun to do. I had about 18 cups all together. I can't remember how many yellow squash and zucchini I cut up.

Then I boiled a lot of water in a big pot. (the instructions say 6 cups to a gallon of water) I put 6 cups of vegetables into the water and boiled them for 3 minutes.

Then I drained them immediately and cooled them off with cold water and ice cubes. Rinse and cool for 3 minutes, drain, and transfer to bags. I did three batches.

It was pretty fun and didn't take too long, except the waiting for the water to boil. That took a long time.

I don't know how the rest of my garden is going to do. I didn't get tomato cages on my tomatoes and so they're all spread out all over the place. The lettuce I picked but haven't eaten yet. The peppers I accidentally got look good, but I have NO idea what I'm going to do with them. Anyone know about banana peppers? The cucumbers and cantaloupe have grown together in a tangled mess I only noticed tonight, so I don't know about them either. The watermelon's looking OK, but I've never grown it before so I don't actually know.

Fly on the wall

Tonight Anna and I had dinner with Linda at Quiznos. Anna noticed a fly on the window and Linda commented that the fly was crawling instead of flying.

Anna (delighted): That fly is pretending to be a cat!

Dog Days of Summer

Check out Matthew's post about what happened here tonight.

Not a conversation I ever envisioned having.

4th of July

Anna and Lucy. Two good friends. Too too cute.

We Alsops like doing quiet fireworks. Snakes...

Smoke bombs...
Snap 'n' Pops

The whole crowd watching from the front porch.

This year Matthew was harvesting, so I did the meat all by myself. Delicious.

We also figured out Mom's Potato Salad, which was very exciting.

It was a good day.

My Mama

Rita Alsop

September 23, 1951-June 18, 2008


Service Times:

Vigil @ St. Dominic Church 7:00pm Friday, June 20, 2008.
Funeral Mass with Dinner to follow @ St. Dominic Church 10:00am Saturday, June 21, 2008.

1 Thessalonians 5:18

In every thing give thanks: for this is the will of God in Christ Jesus concerning you. (KJV)

Mom's cancer didn't go the way we'd hoped, but there are things to be thankful for.

• Hospice is a great organization, they're helpful and efficient and unfailingly kind.
• It's summer, so I can be home all day, every day, to help out and squeeze in every moment of time available.
• Anna has so many friends and so much family that she just thinks she's getting to do lots of fun fun things. I already have her scheduled through Wednesday.
• It's summer, so every day the three Alsop girls can go to the pool when Dad gets home from work, and then go for sno cones.
• I'm married to Matthew, who'll let me spend every day, all day, at my parent's house.
• Susan gets to stay home another week.
• I really like Father Wesley.
• I have a lot of friends who love me.
• We get the chance to say things many people don't get to say.

And that's all I have to say about that.

Gatorade

Since Matthew's pretty much on his own these days, I like to throw in little bits of helpfulness where I can.

Tonight I made 260oz of Gatorade in about 10 minutes.

Here's the (over?)simplified recipie.

1 packet kool-aid

2 T lemon juice

3/8 tsp salt

1/2 c. sugar

2 qts water

Mix it up, pour it into saved bottles from the real stuff, and you're good to go!

Public Service Announcement

Even if it's a really good prize for going in the potty, even if it's cute....

It's never a good idea to give a 3 year old a harmonica.

yea/yeah/yay

I've seen much confusion in the blogosphere about the appropriate use of these three words.

On Friday, Matthew's daily calendar of "random things people say incorrectly and how to correct them" (a wonderful gift that we really enjoy, because we are nerds) addressed this very issue!

Here is the answer:

yea/yeah/yay

"Yea" is a very old-fashioned, formal way of saying "yes," used mainly in voting. It's the opposite of-- and rhymes with--"nay." When you want to write the common casual version of "yes," the correct spelling is "yeah" (sounds like "yeh"). When the third grade teacher announced a class trip to the zoo, we all yelled "yay!" (the opposite of "boo!"). That was back when I was only yay big.

Thank you, nerd calendar. And Katrina, for knowing us for who we really are.

Pickles, jam, rocks, and hard places.

I did NOT see this coming.

Today, after the 3 accidents before 10:00am...we had no more accidents, and also, no successes. She just didn't DO anything. (we were in the pool for a while, so I guess I'm hoping she did there?) I am hydrating the child! I'm really confused.

Tonight, when she really really didn't want to sit on the potty, I thought, OK, so we're not there yet, no biggie, and explained that if she didn't want to use the potty, we'd need to put a diaper back on. But no, she doesn't want to wear diapers, they're for babies. She wants her soft panties. She doesn't want to get the panties wet, she doesn't want to sit on the potty. She, apparently, wants to not release anything from herself in any way.

I'm so glad we started potty training! Before I felt bad just because she was 3 and in diapers...now I can worry about her actual physical and emotional health too! Yay!

Bored yet?

Day 2

Woke up dry, then three accidents, then our last visit from Parents As Teachers *sniff*

She did her "chore" (putting away the clean silverware) in record time and without complaining, so when she said she wanted to watch something, I thought that would be fine. Once again, watching TV on the potty.

I think we'll get some pull-ups in town today.

End of Day One

No more accidents, one more success. We were playing in the pool when Anna suddenly said "I need to go potty!" We ran in. Panties have stayed dry since.

I passed parenting duty off to Matthew when I got home, so they're in the bathroom together now.

My fortune from tonight's dinner:

"Your short term goal will soon be realized."

So I'm expecting smooth sailing from here on out...

continued

After the third accident put a temporary end to the plastic panties, I just plopped her on the potty in front of a movie. (Not a Mama's finest hour)

1 hour later, we have contact!

Now we're off to the pool.

Potty Training...The first few hours

Anna had a terrible start to the morning. She woke up at 6:30, and stumbled, crying, into our room. She was still exhausted, but it was light outside, so she thought it was time to wake up. She crawled into bed with us, and instead of falling asleep, she cried and kicked us, so she was sent back to her own bed with many tears. I finally went in to talk to her, and ended up falling asleep with her in her bed. We woke up a few hours later.

I had been thinking that if we could just get a good start to the morning, we'd start really trying to go on the potty. Today I thought, we're never going to have a good opportunity to do this, so we might as well just start now.

We've been wearing panties and sitting on the potty every 15 minutes, and we've had two enormous accidents accompanied by tears (Anna's) but nary a drop in the potty itself.

Hmmm....

A warning

If you enjoy reading chick lit for fun, for a laugh, for easy conflicts and happy endings--AVOID "Certain Girls" by Jennifer Weiner.

This is not to say it's a terrible horrible book. I'm sure it's good, but it's not what I was looking for. It's NOT "literary cotton candy" It has sad in it. I think maybe books should come with warning stickers or something.