The Greatest Show in El Paso

I've been remiss lately, so this is going to be a nice long post to make up for lost time. Seems like someone always needs me to do something these days, or I need to do something for myself...hard to make computer time. But, gambarro! (Which is not gibberish...it actually means "keep trying" in Japanese.)
Anyway, here are some of our doings recently:
We heard a circus was in town, so I was determined to take the kids. Noah had been seeing videos of children going to a circus & had been wistfully saying, "Mama, I wish I could go to the circus"...hint hint. So we kept it a surprise until the big day. He was very exicted. As well he should have been...it turned out to be an exciting day.
On our way there, as it turns out, we had a very near accident on the freeway, courtesy of some nimrod who had...get this...strapped a refrigerator to the tailgate of his hooded truck. So the fridge is basically haging off of the tailgate, just strapped with some bungee cords around the sides of the truck. THANK GOD Jeff spotted this, as you had to kind of look closely before you realized what this idiot had done. We merged directly behind this guy to exit the freeway, & Jeff saw what he had done & slowed way down, getting as far away from it as he could. The thing was literally swinging in the breeze, as the guy was doing about 60. Well, the inevitable happened...it fell off & bounced all over the 2 exit lanes. Again, thank God we had seen it and weren't right up behind him, because it could have all been over for us in a big way. We don't think anyone was hurt. You win the booby prize if you can guess where the guy was from & where he was going with that thing.
Anyway, that was some excitement we could've done without. But the circus was great for the kids. It was a very small affair, a travelling thing, with only about 12 performers in all. They all doubled & trippled up doing different things. The kids loved it, of course. They can't tell the difference between what's a professional act & what's not, they were just happy to be there. I felt kinda bad for some of the lady performers, actually. You know how in a circus you see all these model-looking, muscular, fit people in basically g-strings & pasties, up there twirlling around in the sky with, like .2% body fat? Well, they had the g-strings & pasty part down, but unfortunately (or fortunately, if you run that way), they had had a little more for dinner than your average acrobat, if you catch my drift. Most of them were these little hispanic girls, maybe 4ft on a good day with high heels on, and just not what you would expect to see in those getups. I think many of them looked kinda uncomfortable too.
One act that I thought was pretty amazing was when they took 4 dirtbikes & rode them around at what seemed like at least about 40 MPH in this little metal sphere type thing, like two collanders put together. I mean, there wasn't really even room for them to park side by side at the bottom of it! Pretty thrilling stuff. They had great timing...if they had been even a little bit off there would have been a pretty bad accident in there. I thought that was the best act they did. Noah liked it when the acrobats "flew" on their ropes, and Dillon liked the balloon we got him.
Oh yes...a huge highlight was that Noah got to ride ponies and an elephant! Doesn't get any better than that. I have pics, but unfortunately our camera was uncooperative, or else I'm just a bad photographer. In any case, I will post them here for your enjoyment.

Firstly, some pics of the kids:

Noah at lunch...observe the food around the mouth.

Dilly at lunch. If you look closely, he is looking rather gritty. This is because he took his peaunt-butter besmeared hands and RUBBED THEM ALL OVER HIS FACE & HAIR. I had to shower him afterward.

Dilly "Dorkyface" Doss

Hamming it up with Miu the Possessed

"Dorkyface" II

And now the circus pictures:

The Ball of Danger in which great feats were performed.

Daddy & Dilly with the prize balloon

After the elephant ride, the best pic I could get with our crapcam

A nice shot of the elephant's butt & Noah there on the end.

Noah on the pony ride

Quote of the Day

" The irony of commitment is that it's deeply liberating - in work, in play, in love. The act frees you from the tyranny of your internal critic, from the fear that likes to dress itself up & parade around as rational hesitation. To commit is to remove your head as the barrier to your life. "
--Anne Morris

If you don't know who Anne Morris is, it's because she's just a person from New York who drinks Starbucks, and the above quote is off of my vanilla latte this morning. But isn't it great? I think that I have never heard anything quite like it, and I wish someone had told me this about 10 years ago, it would have saved me a lot of heartache.
It's amazing how true it is....how we all have that "internal critic", some more than others, which tells us that our fears are just rational hesitation, when in fact they are almost always just our own cowardice & inability to let go of what we have now to make the leap, or commitment, to something new.
I would like to challenge myself and you today to commit to something you have been on the fence about, and not let your mind convince itself that it's too dangerous. It's almost always worth it, I've found. And Anne is right...it's VERY liberating.

A healthy appetite

So I was thinking today about how there is at least one perk, that I know of, in being pregnant (for me....may not apply to just anyone): namely, that I develop a healthy appetite! (And when I say healthy I don't mean that I was niggardly in the appetite department before....oh no. I become healthy in the things I have an appetite for, is what I'm saying.) I suddenly become the child my mother always wanted, in that I want very much to eat healthy, good food, and have almost no taste at all for the bad stuff.

Case in point: we went out to eat at Hometown Buffet, which incidentally should change it's name to Pigouts "R" Us...but I digress....anyway, we went there on Sat. nite for dinner. And usually I enter these all you can eat places with firm resolutions to be good & not eat the gross national weight of The Gambia, but things always digress rapidly, if you catch my drift. However, the other night was different! I didn't want the usual deep fried stuff I always do, was content with some fish and a little chicken, and get this....I didn't even want anything from the dessert table. This is a miracle on par with the feeding of the 5000. I have a legendary sweet tooth, but it magically goes away in my first months of pregnancy. This has been the case with both of my other children. Each time I develop a craving for fresh fruits, veggies, and Japanese food. Sadly, as we live in Mexas, or Texaco (not the gas station), good Japanese food is out of the question. But I can get produce all I want, and it's so great to actually want what is healthy for me. I begin to feel so....superior. Righteous. On the way to fitness, and certainly healthier than you are, (unless you are my Mom, who has informed me that she now only eats brown rice and tofu and early morning dew).

When in fact it's all a sad lie, a fiction of galcium proportions, a delusion and a snare. Because, friends, as soon as my morning sickness wears off, the cravings for all that good food goes with it, and the old sweet tooth/burger-and-fries-wanting all comes back in with a vengance. And oh, how low I sink. In the last few months of pregnancy all I have to do is drive past a fast food place & I can gain a pound or two. I am absolutely serious....it's like a disease. There is nothing I can do about it. So I'm enjoying my healthy, superior feeling while it lasts. I may be a lactation station, I may be a pregnant overweight housewife with no life, but by God, I not only eat healthier than you, I actually WANT TO. How do you like them apples?

Childish Miscellany

If you have children or are around them a good deal, you will agree with what I'm saying here: there is NOTHING new under the sun when it comes to children. The things that you did when you were young, the dreams you had, the jokes you told, and you thought you were so original....all done before, and your children will do them after you. For example: the other day I popped some popcorn for the kids, the 1st time I've done so for a long time. It may as well have been both of their 1st time to eat popcorn. And Noah, upon picking up his first piece, looks at it & says, "Look, Mama, it's a dinosaur!" and then the next one..."Look, it's a mingo!" (Flamingo). Etc. And I sat there thinking, "I remember doing this exact thing when I was little, sitting there telling my family what my popcorn was...I did it all the time!" It was so funny that he had just come up with it out of nowhere. And of course, the all time favorite everywhere with every child, are poop & private parts jokes. And farts. These NEVER fail to get Noah laughing. The other day he laughed for probably 20 straight minutes because he had almost "bit Daddy on his peanuts". (Through his pants, of course. Get your mind out of the gutter.) Why was he biting there at all? I have no idea.
Also, a funny tidbit from the other day: We were outside swinging & conversing. Noah says to me out of the blue & off the topic,

"Mama, I want to teach people about Jesus. I want to teach them".

I though that was remarkable & pure of him, seeing that we haven't ever really spoken about doing that in front of him, and asked him how he wanted to do it. He says,

"They will say, 'Sir, what is Jesus?', and I will say, 'He's under the haystack, fast asleep.'"

I bit myself so hard trying not to laugh at that one. He confused "Little boy blue" with the baby Jesus sleeping in a manger.

And finally, on the subject of nursery rhymes, here are some lyrics by Noah that shouldn't be missed:
"Patty cake, patty cake,
Bake your man,
Bake me a cake as fast as you can.
Pat them, and prick them,
And mark them with the breeze,
And throw them in the oven for the baby and me."