Not Again!

There is nothing like feeling helpless in the face of a disaster. This year New Mexico and the entire Southwest has been under extreme drought conditions. Many areas of the state have reported little to no rainfall for 200+ days, extremely high winds, and extremely high temperatures. No less than 20 fires in NM alone have been started since January. I have watched footage of these fires with trepidation, some fascination, and a feeling of helplessness. Now, history seems to be repeating itself.

Eleven years ago, when I was a junior in high school, my family sat on the roof of our house in the Pojoaque Valley and watched as the town of Los Alamos was evacuated and then burned in the Cerro Grande Fire. We had evacuees and their pets staying with us and our schools were used as evacuation shelters. Much of that week was spent helping families who did not know whether or not they had a home to go to, helping them find other family members and friends who had evacuated, and just trying to keep their spirits up. And while we were doing this, we were warily keeping an eye on the fire and the possibility that WE might be evacuated. At one point, we DID make preliminary preparations to evacuate. More than 200 homes were eventually lost as the flames blazed through town.

I was born in Los Alamos and spent much of my childhood there visiting family and spending summers riding my bike around town. I have always enjoyed the beautiful Jemez mountains above the town and have many memories of picnics, hikes, and horseback rides up there. During the Cerro Grande Fire, much of those mountains were so badly burned it will take several hundred years for the lush pine forests to return to their former glory.

A few weeks ago in the first part of June, another wildfire started on the opposite side of the Pojoaque Valley in the Sangre De Cristo Mountains. The Pacheco Fire is less than 15 miles to the southeast from where my parents live. The winds have kept this fire away from structures and in the opposite direction from where my parents live but I was terrified to see this fire so close to home. I was able to relax a little bit as firefighters began to take control and keep it away from nearby towns.

Then, yesterday, at about 1:30 in the afternoon, my dad was outside working on building defensive space around their property and sent me a text picture of a new fire in the Jemez Mountains. He asked me to see if I could find out something about it online. Shortly after that, my cousin posted pictures on Facebook of a fire she and her family had driven by in the Jemez near a picnic place called Las Conchas.

In less than 24 hours, the Las Conchas Fire grew over 40,000 acres, is still growing, and is now threatening the town of Los Alamos yet again. The town began mandatory evacuations about 2:00 this afternoon. This just brings back so many memories, and not good ones. I feel even more helpless being 250 miles away, despite knowing that I wouldn't be able to do anything to help with the fire anyway. I know my parents are still safe where they are, and they are in fact housing some evacuees right now. They have a plan in place in case they have to leave. Yet I am still terrified for them. Mom reported ash and burned pine needles in their yard this morning. Those could easily be still-hot cinders.

I am terrified for my friends and family who have had to evacuate twice in less than 2 decades. I cannot fathom the terror of having less than 24 hours notice to pack up every precious belonging knowing you may not ever be coming home. And to do it all over again eleven years later. It's disheartening to see that the just barely new growth that has just begun to return in places damaged by the Cerro Grande fire is again at risk of being destroyed. When we were up in the Jemez Mountains with my parents earlier in May, I was heartened to see a momma bear and her baby cub playing on a recovering part of the mountain above Los Alamos. My heart aches for them that they may be in danger or at the very least their home is in danger. I just can't believe we have to go through this again. I may be far away now, but those memories of the Cerro Grande fire are just as fresh today as they were that long week in May 2000.

My prayers are with those in Los Alamos and White Rock. I pray for rain for the entire Southwest and some relief from this heat.

O God, in Whom we live and move, and have our being, grant us rain, in due abundance, that, being sufficiently helped with temporal, we may the more confidently seek after eternal gifts. Through Christ, our Lord. Amen.

Prayer Source: Novena in Honor of St. Isidore: Patron of Farmers by National Catholic Rural Life Conference, National Catholic Rural Life Conference

Tornado Warning

For once, I'm not referring to the state of my house or the two tornadoes I call Squeaker and Monkey-man.

My Daddy sent me a text message about 5:45 this evening and said "did you know you're on tornado watch?" We've been on tornado watch/warnings before, and it was sunny with a few billowy clouds in the parts of the sky I could see from where I was. So I didn't give it much thought. Until the sirens went off about 5 minutes later as we were leaving for judo. It was almost surreal because although they say they test them weekly, I swear I've never, ever heard them in the 5.5 years we've lived here. We went to judo and they were keeping an eye on the storm on the Weather Channel, so I figured they'd let us know if things got bad.

Thankfully enough, the storm and its 3 funnels that did drop were north of town. I had a few friends who saw the funnels and were a little nervous, but from everything I've heard so far, everyone is ok. Guess I won't be taking the tornado warnings/watches nearly as lightly from now on!

Stocking up on food...

No, I'm not a squirrel getting ready for the winter. But I've finally been able to start really stocking up on foods that can be frozen. Mom & Dad, and Grandma bought us a new-to-us upright "big" freezer for an early Christmas present. Mom and Dad brought it down a few weeks ago when they came down for Squeaker's birthday. I've been putting a few little things in there, but not a lot of stuff. I went to Sam's Club today and stocked up on some meats and cheeses that we go through a lot of. I got home and seperated them out per our average meal portions or recipes and put them in freezer bags. It's pretty cool to finally be able to do that. Before, I would sometimes try to cram so much in our little freezer that is part of our fridge that I would have to use a bungee to keep it all from falling out. And finding anything in there was nearly impossible. My other problem was buying meats on sale and not having room in the freezer to put them away and wasting money on meat going bad. Now I can store the bulk of my food in the big freezer and move it out to the little freezer as needed. I'm excited about that, and I think it will keep my food budget down too. Yay!

Sorry for the lame post after yesterday's, but today, I got nothin!

Being "Mom"

I always wanted a large family. My dad is one of nine kids and they are almost all still very close, which I think is totally awesome. Even my 25+ cousins/second cousins are all pretty close. I love kids and I always thought I would do a pretty good job of handling a lot of kids. I have 2 awesome boys and I would love to have at least one or two more. But financially, we struggle to keep up with 2 kids so the 6-8 kids I always thought I would have is probably not in my future. At least not in a way I had planned in my "dream life."

I've come to the realization in the past few months that God clearly means for me to have a lot of children, just maybe in a way I would ever have expected. In the past few years, my family has become acquainted with and eventually friends with a couple of teenage girls who are/were in the foster care system. We're not currently in a position to take these girls into our home but we have certainly taken them into our lives. One has officially (although never legally adopted) become my sister-in-law, and another I would consider a little sister. They treat our boys as if they were their own siblings or even their own children and they never hesitate to spend time with us (and in fact seem to prefer it sometimes). "Little Sister" even recently volunteered to help with an event for Squeaker's school that she didn't even have to do. I try to lend an ear for these girls and provide them with a sense of normalcy and family life that they wouldn't otherwise get.

I also took on what appears to be a new project about a week ago that seems to be following a similar trend. The little girls in our neighborhood (all about age 8-9) were fighting and arguing about what appears to be trivial things and wandering the block unsupervised. Squeaker was starting to get involved in the fighting and taking sides, I think to protect his friend, and I decided I'd had enough and rounded up all the girls (about 4 or 5 of them). I tried to figure out what the fighting was about (which I never did get a straight answer) and I told them that as long as they all got along, they were allowed to come and play in our yard whenever I'm home. Two of the girls confessed to me that their mom is in jail, and the others don't seem to have a mom present either (aunties and grandmas, but no mom). I told all of them that if they ever needed someone to talk to, they could always come to me. I really didn't expect them to take me up on that, but an incident today proved me wrong. I won't go into details, but one girl (S) came knocking on my door this afternoon and said that one of the other girls (A) was crying and needed to talk to me. Mind you, S was one of the girls fighting with A last week, so that right there was a relief. The situation was resolved as best as I could handle it, and A has decided to start judo classes as well. I am hoping it will give her some self-confidence as well as hopefully a sense of belonging in a healthy, safe environment. I am trying to get the other girls in there too.

I am really hoping that by creating a steady presence for these girls (amazingly enough, it's only been girls so far), that I can make some measure of difference in their lives. Hubby has also felt a similar calling (to help kids with difficult home lives and/or in the foster care system) which is comforting to know we are going down the same path. I didn't set out looking for this life, but I have a feeling my future family is going to be a lot bigger than I ever dreamed. I only pray that God will continue to guide me in the way that He wants me to go.

Any fool can count the seeds in an apple. Only God can count all the apples in one seed. ~Robert H. Schuller

Too smart for their britches

I think we knew this before we even had kids so it shouldn't have come as a shock to us- any kids we have will most likely be extremely intelligent and quick to learn. They come by it honestly- many intelligent and creative minds on both sides of the family and going generations back. Lawyers, farmers, nurses, teachers, artists, musicians, engineers- superb intelligence is all there, each one requiring extensive knowledge of their specific fields. And really, it's not so much shocking, but still amazing to me how very stinkin smart my kids are.

Squeaker has known his alphabet since about age 3 and knew his letter sounds from about age 3.5. Now at age 6, he is learning how to read and reading pretty much everything he can. He correctly uses big words like "actually" and "apparently." Squeaker's memory retention still amazes me too. Hubby taught him the cardinal directions on a compass rose about 4 months ago. We haven't done much with maps/directions since then other than the occasional "which direction are we going, Mom?" Yesterday we were looking at a map and I told him Roswell was in the SE corner of the state of New Mexico. I asked him to show me which way was south and which way was east. He correctly gave me the answers with no hesitation and we found Roswell quickly. Then of course there's the Snail/Hurricane Incident. Now that Squeaker is in Kindergarten, we've really noticed just how much farther ahead he is of his peers on many levels. I don't know very many Kindergarteners who know as much as he does or any who even CARE about learning about stuff like he does. We pulled out an old (2004) NM State educational benchmarks book and compared what Squeaker knows to what the state requires for K. He's achieving most of those goals and a few of the 1st grade ones. He's bored in Kindergarten, and it's a struggle that we're working on to find the right balance at the moment, but we will see what the future holds.

Monkey-man will be 3 on Friday and he's just as smart as his brother. He's known his alphabet (upper and lowercase) since January or February, and he's showing number recognition as well as being able to count to 10 (and he does try to go higher). He's starting to show basic reading readiness by figuring out the correct letters that certain words begin with. He plays preschool computer games and more often than not wins the games easily. Several of the games he plays are even closer to a Kindergarten level than preschool and he still wins them. Much of the stuff that he does is stuff that some of Squeaker's classmates still can't even grasp. Monkey-man's memory is just as good as Squeaker's. If I tell him we're going to do xyz, and forget about z, he will remind me that we haven't done z yet. He wants to go to school like big brother, so we're doing some "school" stuff at home. I am utterly fascinated and constantly amazed at how quickly Monkey-man AND Squeaker process and retain new information.

Of course, all this is to say that although I have extremely high expectations for my children (as any good parent should), I will not discourage them from their dreams. My parents used to say that if we wanted to be the director of a flea circus and that was what made us the most happy in life, then by all means, be the director of a flea circus. I expect my children to go to college and get degrees, but if they perhaps choose vocational school or military pursuits instead, I will support them and continue to encourage them.

Learning is a treasure that will follow its owner everywhere. ~Chinese Proverb

Clearly I don't post enough...

since my last post was in February! I'm not a very good writer, but several family members have recently restarted their blogs and prompted me to restart mine.

Too much has happened in the past 8 months for me to relate here, but suffice to say that I'm ready for a change. Some things are going better, but now other things aren't going so well. We seem to be in a sort of holding pattern right now, just trying to survive this school year and get through to the end of June. Squeaker will finish his first year of Kindergarten (which is beginning to look like a disaster, which I will hash out in another post) and Hubby will finish his MBA in June. We don't know where we'll be living after that, and we also don't know what we'll be doing as far as Squeaker and schooling. As much as I despise change, and loathe the idea of moving again, we need a change to continue to raise our kids in a healthy and happy environment.

Some of our future options aren't so enticing to me, in fact I nearly get a panic attack thinking about one possible scenario. Another scenario I am almost chomping at the bit to accept and welcome. Scenario one takes me into literally completely unfamiliar territory where I know absolutely no one in an environment contrary to my personal nature. It also puts me an uncomfortable distance away from family. I am trying very hard to look at the positive aspects of this scenario (of which there are a few), but it's definitely not my first choice. Scenario two makes me want to yell "throw me into the briar patch!" In this case, I am trying hard not to get my hopes up too high. Scenario three means we stay here, which I also have mixed feelings about. I know whatever decision we make will be the best one for our family at that time, it's just unnerving not knowing where we'll be 7-8 months from now.

If you don't like something change it; if you can't change it, change the way you think about it. ~Mary Engelbreit

Remember, only YOU can prevent wildfires!

It's been a while since I've posted, but I've been trying to do different things every weekend when the weather is nice since the weather can't quite decide between winter and spring yet. I've decided to start posting a blog nearly every weekend if I remember.

Yesterday I thought "we'll go west towards Ruidoso and find somewhere to go hiking." I barely had enough gas to get there and back, but I figured we'd try. Along the way I started seeing signs for the Lincoln County Historical Museum and the Smokey Bear Museum. I checked mapquest on my phone and found out that Lincoln and Capitan (where Smokey Bear is from) are roughly the same distance from Roswell as Ruidoso is, just off a different highway so I figured I had enough gas to get there. After making the turn onto the different highway, I pulled over to transfer money from the boys' bank accounts so that we could pay for the museum and maybe get a souvenir. We'll pay them back when we get our tax returns.

Little Loren said he didn't want to stop at the Lincoln County Museum so we just drove through the town of Lincoln to get to Capitan. About 7 miles from Capitan there was a marker on the side of the road that pointed out the location where Smokey Bear was found clinging to a tree, badly burned after a devastating forest fire.


After we got to Capitan, we went to the museum. We saw where Smokey Bear was buried and walked around the little park area there.


The boys did puzzles inside and we looked at an exhibit that had fire information to learn about good and bad fires. It was very interesting. Little Loren is already asking when we can go back. I told him perhaps we can go with my parents whenever they come down to visit again.