Bringing autumn indoors

When we first moved to New Mexico, I was underwhelmed by her seasons. The dry climate seemed to mute the annual display of leaves and blooms, and many of the plants that I associated with seasonal color don’t grow well here. But as the years have passed I’ve become attuned to the splendor of our native plants and the local traditions that mark the seasons. Hot air balloons dotting the skylines, chiles roasting in front of every grocery store, and bands of bright yellow aspens on the mountaintops all mean autumn to me now. This year, the mounded yellow masses of wild chamisa that surround our house have been magnificent, and doting Luke has picked many a stem for me. I displayed a few of those sweetly given yellow blooms inside for our autumn mantle.

My beloved crabapple tree in our backyard has been a glorious masterpiece of orange and yellow leaves and deep red berries.

The perfect backdrop for my little artists’ glittery pumpkins. They’re still cute even though most of the paint has flaked off, thanks to curious hands.

Inside their aquatic themed costumes are foreshadowed on the dining buffet along with grandparents’ sweet Halloween cards.

More autumn décor near the entry.

And a painted pumpkin craft in the front window. I just love how these wooden ones turned out with liquid watercolors!

In case you’re bemoaning the lack of kid pics here, you can check out an autumn decorating video featuring our little pumpkin pair here!

Preschool party

Luke and Eleanor had so much fun at the Fall Festival at Luke’s preschool. The biggest hit may have been the box maze. They raced through the twisting tunnel of boxes with sparse lighting countless times. But it was in the dim courtyard and came at the end of the evening, so no maze pics here. Most of the evening was spent on various throwing games. They led us to discover that we could work with Luke a little to improve his accuracy before next year’s fall festival, but the ‘prizes’ were awarded indiscriminately at each station so no heartache was caused by our less than stellar throwing skills.

He did nail a few shots given close range advantage and some sisterly encouragement.

We also made masks,

And sticker quantity was of course valued over visibility concerns.

There was a book walk and this was where we received my favorite prizes! Here I’m coaching the kiddos to ‘stop!' as the music pauses.

Eleanor was aglow with joy at being included in so much fun and excitement at her big brother’s school. Since then, it’s been even more difficult for her to say goodbye to Luke on school mornings, and I’m looking forward to when she can join the 2’s class next fall!

{More Halloween pics here.}

Plein air artistes

It thrills me to see Luke and Eleanor standing side-by-side at an easel engrossed in spreading colors on canvas.

Not only are they churning out almost-free masterworks that I can hang on the wall, but there’s something so idyllic about seeing them working harmoniously, expressing their unique creative visions. Eleanor leaves plenty of white space to balance her colors, and has to be coaxed a bit to fill the other half of a canvas. I can quickly pick out Luke’s work on the preschool wall due to his commitment to covering every inch of the page with paint. You sometimes have to take a picture away before his zeal leaves a hole in the paper.

Our easel has especially helped Ella blossom as an artist since it was harder for her to perch above a paper on the table to properly paint.  We’ve hung many of their masterpieces, both in tempera paint and liquid watercolor. I love the texture and depth of the tempera (above), and the bright blotches of the watercolors (as seen in the Luke original below).

Luke has just started to draw his first non-abstract pictures, with underwater scenes being a favorite subject. Here’s his first realist work – a tiny gray boat with a huge colorful anchor that is visited by various sea creatures.

 

It’s so exciting to see what he draws and how he portrays it. I hope they grow to love art as a form of imaginative exploration more and more. Here’s the artist adding a little more to his underwater piece.

We still do plenty of team-produced pictures, such as crayon resists with a requested scene drawn in white crayon by mom, or paper plate animals that I cut out and they tape and decorate.

Eleanor’s passion for art goes beyond paper and canvas applications. No painting session passes without at least a little self-adornment for this little carnival chick. So precious and so much contentious clean-up at the same time!

Despite the perils that are obviously posed by running in to grab the camera, we have oodles of adorable artist pics. See our most recent gallery for a few more from September!

Late night guests

A few weeks ago, we were reminded that the scenic paradise of Wild Oak isn’t all stunning sunsets and purple mountain peaks. As I was straightening up the house around 11 pm, I spotted this making its way across my kitchen floor.

I might have thought that it would take a moment for my brain to process the absurdity of this situation, but no. I instantly knew it was a real, live snake. And I screamed. Erik, thinking it must be ‘just’ another scorpion sighting, rushed in and then we and the snake stopped frozen, staring at each other. Everyone at a loss for what do next. I tried to calculate how far away we needed to be to be out of the reptile’s striking distance, and hoped that he wouldn’t disappear into a tiny crevice that we couldn’t retrieve him from.

Thankfully we subscribe to the security service for our neighborhood, whose officers include ‘snake calls’ in their scope of duty. So we gingerly inched over to pick up the phone and call the on-duty officer, Matt.

As we waited for Matt to arrive, we caught a few photos and guessed at the young snake’s species. It’s harder to tell on such a young snake if the head has a rounded bullsnake profile or the more triangular rattlesnake one. The two species have similar markings and rattlesnakes are born without rattles. Either way I knew he couldn’t stay overnight.

Finally, Matt arrived with a snake catching stick and his small-sized snake bucket. He wasn’t sure if it was a bull snake or black-tail rattlesnake, which ticketed our guest for export to open space miles away. When he grabbed the snake with his stick, the reptile let out a loud and hair-raising ‘HIISSSS!!!!!’ but that didn’t stop Matt from stowing him in the snake bucket.

With gratitude and relief we said goodbye to Matt and the potential black tail, ‘Hissy’, so thankful that we didn’t have to drive miles in the dark with a cranky snake in the back seat.

Of course we were on high alert after Hissy’s departure, but we didn’t actually expect to see another snake indoors. Our neighbors assured us that snakes are very rare. And in the midst of normal home life, Hissy felt like a fading dream. But then, the very next evening, I was walking back to the kitchen around 11 pm and again, lying in my path, was a snake.

We called Matt and kept our eyes on Hissy’s brother while we awaited our rescuer with the special snake stick. We had researched the difference between bull snakes and rattlers, and this one’s head seemed more rounded and we didn’t see the beginnings of a rattle on his tail. The final proof was an eyeball check. Instead of getting cheek-to-cheek with our snake, we zoomed in on the photos we’d taken. Thanks to digital technology, we could firmly conclude that the round-pupiled reptile was a non-venomous bull snake (and that his sibling the previous night must have been too). Bull snakes are constrictors, valued for controlling mice populations and keeping rattlesnakes away (surprisingly, they’re able to kill rattlesnakes and protect their turf aggressively).

So after some discussion, we decided to have Matt release ‘Bully’ the bull snake in our backyard. We took extra measures to seal up the house, and are hoping that Bully will be very happy outside, protecting us from potentially plague-carrying mice and rattlesnakes alike. We haven’t seen him since but keep our eyes peeled for Bully, our automatic mousetrap.

{I didn’t want to overload our cutie-kid-themed blog with snake pics so there’s only one in this post. If you want to see more mugs and even a few videos of Hissy and Bully, click here.}

Looking forward: Halloween

Fleeing the noxious fumes of alumacoat, we took a trip to the mall earlier this week. Erik’s hard work painting the roof with sealant not only protects our house from roof leaks, it also earned L & E a ride on the mall carousel and an Auntie Anne’s pretzel! Unfortunately, I forgot our stroller and could only wrangle the kids amidst merchandise for a very limited time. But we made our single store count with this precious little outfit for the Ellabelle on end-of-summer sale. I’m thinking we might have two sailors (or one sailor and a fish?) weigh anchor here this Halloween…

Busytown Art Party, finally!

Since Luke turned three (6 months ago), I’ve wanted to throw him a Busytown party. But amidst pending moves and other busyness, we missed the window of his actual b-date and once that urgency was lost it slipped down our to-do lists. So, to make up for lost time (and spread out the kiddo chaos) we’re now planning two Busytown parties for the little man. I designed the invites last night and we delivered them this morning, so there’s no turning back now!

As you can see, the first party is just for his preschool classmates and is coming up next week. I’m a little nervous because I only know one of the kids and her mom a bit, and the rest are completely new to us. But we thought that the start of the year would be a great time to get to know the other families in his class, and I’m hoping it boosts Luke’s friendships too. When I ask him who he plays with at school, he tells me, “I didn’t play with any kids at school. I play with Eleanor at Wild Oak house because she’s my best friend.” I love their sweet sibling friendship but of course I’d be delighted for him to have lots of school friends as well.

We haven’t set a date yet for a second party for our church and family friends. It could start to get chilly pretty soon, so I think it will have to wait until our heating system reno is complete. I’m sure I’ll learn a few lessons from Busytown 1.0 to incorporate into the second release. Until then, we have plenty of Richard Scarry reading material to inspire us!

Easter time capsule

There’s still so much summer fun to recap here and the evenings are already cooling toward fall! Since I’m not sure where to pick up our summer review, why not revisit early spring with some precious pics from Easter?

The day before Easter, we enjoyed a mega-hunt with playgroup friends at the park.

Eleanor found her very first Easter eggs!

Thanks to Luke’s prior egg-hunt experience, he finished the hunt with a basket much fuller than his sister’s. Then he warmed our hearts by sharing several of his nicest eggs, including the extra-large one that he’d been most excited to find!

Mr. E. Bunny himself made an appearance at the hunt. It took all my cajoling powers to inch Luke and Eleanor close enough to receive some of his treats.

We left with two happy egg-hunters (and don’t you love their matching buckets?!).

Unrelated to their candy loot, the kids came down with a stomach bug on Saturday evening so only Erik made it to church for Easter. We brightened our quarantine with fancy dishes, a first for Luke perhaps, that added some pretty to our BRAT diet Easter breakfast.

It would take more than sickness to keep me from pulling out our bunny namecard holders…

Or forgo another egg hunt in the backyard. By the afternoon I decided that the worst of the sickness must be over and dressed the munchkins in their Easter finest. I hoped it would distract from their somewhat grumpy moods, at least in the photos.

Ella just wanted to play with her eggs.

And Luke was excited to hunt.

While a pesky sickness wasn’t part of the Easter I’d envisioned, we still were able to read the Easter story together and enjoy collecting (but no eating!) some Easter goodies. Here’s hoping we’re all healthy next year!

{More Easter pics here.}