Bambi Makes a New Friend

Guess who came to visit again???  Well, I guess I gave it away in the post title.  But our orphaned deer friend stopped by our home and invited him/herself into our back yard. 

Since I don’t the know gender of our little fawn I think I’ll just refer to him/her as Bambi.

Hope did offer little Bambi a little fresh grass but wisely he kept his distance a little bit from us today.

Please don’t call Animal Control on us, as we didn’t try to make contact this time, other than Hope’s first grass offering.  Just mainly stood around the yard and quietly took pictures as our deer friend visited.  He stayed for over an hour.

 

Even Hope’s bouncing around didn’t scare Bambi off.

I think he was too intrigued by his new friend.

I don’t imagine too many cats are dumb enough to let a deer get this close.

But Pumpkin the Ninja Cat isn’t the brightest cat.

Bambi appeared very curious, and I believe wanted to make a new acquaintance.

And so I watched for a good 20 minutes of nose touching, then bounding off; followed by sneaking back up on each other.

In nearly all corners of our yard.

Sometimes Bambi would be more interested in lunch.

And when Bambi lost interest and started eating our weeds again, Pumpkin would wait  patiently.

And before you knew it Bambi would be curious again.

So Pumpkin gave Bambi a tour of our backyard.

 

He even took the little Prince/Princess under the trampoline.

And introduced him to even more native terrain.  Yum, Fresh Spring Grass.

I think Bambi appreciated the kindness of our silly Pumpkin.

And, I think, Pumpkin appreciated the nuzzle in return.

So this post is dedicated to my little Arizona nieces who are just as enthralled with Bambi as I am.

Now I’m back to the de-hoarding – But Bambi’s visit was just the rejuvenation I needed to have a wonderful day.  Guess what another room DONE!  I promise to post pictures soon.

Sidetracked!

I’ve so much to tell you but I keep getting sidetracked.  I wanted to tell you how wonderful it felt to pick up a crochet hook after nearly 11 years.  All the wonderful projects the girls and I have been working on.  The Dreams.  How we turned off the T.V. a few weeks early… etc.

The sleep, the challenges, the ups and downs of life with six very different kids.  But I can’t bring myself to form two coherent sentences because my attention in focused on Haiti.  I’ve been checking up news updates every couple of hours, and my heart aches for their pain.

I’ve only been through one quake in my life that I actually felt and it shook me to my core.   A 6.8 magnitude, but it was deeper in the earth so the damage wasn’t catastrophic like you seen in Haiti.  I remember hurriedly crowding toddlers and small children under my large dining room table, watching the chandelier sway a few feet and seeing my vehicle out the front window bouncing up and down like a toy.  Then when it the shaking stopped, I grabbed my little ones and rushed to the nearby elementary school to make sure my other two kiddo’s were o.k.  They were fine.  I was the one freaking out.  No damage, no injury, only frayed nerves. 

I haven’t shown my kids too much of the news but I have told them a little about it.  However, I can’t tell them about it without getting a little emotional. 

My heart was touched yesterday afternoon when my daughter Lea brought me a sandwich bag full of her carefully saved money. 

‘Mom, I want this to go and help the children in Haiti,’ she said as she handed me the bag. ‘Maybe it could help so that they could stop dying.’ My husband and I had donated earlier in the day to an organization providing food, water, tents, medicine and more.  But I hadn’t really talked about it with the kids.

I love that Lea has a big heart.  I know her money will help.  But for many it will be too late.  One foreign relief worker told Reuters, ‘"Money is worth nothing right now, water is the currency."

Water, Medicine, Food, all needed.  All slowly trickling into a country with Millions of people so desperate.   Donations do make a difference, and I’m so grateful for those Doctors, Missionaries, Search and Rescue, and Military people who are flying in to help, and I pray for them as well as the people of Haiti.

Sometimes sidetracked can be a good thing.  I don’t think I’ve gone through our 72 hour kids for 5 years.  Time to update.  And those empty water barrels in the back yard, – now would be an excellent time to wash them out and fill them up.  Family escape drill, emergency contact information – perfect for our Family Home Evening activity on Monday.  I’m grateful that I have the means to help my family be a little bit more prepared.  I’ve no doubt that we will all have to deal with disaster at some time or another, so for me Preparedness is Hope.  And when you see the eyes of people who have lost Hope on the news, it makes you want it all the more for yourself as well as them.

Here are some great organizations that can use the donations to help and that are on the ground in Haiti helping as we chat.

The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-Day Saints Emergency Response

American Red Cross

Save the Children

World Vision International

Mercy Corps

Unicef

Care

Hopefully soon I’ll be able to let you in on all the other mommy adventures happening in our forest.  They are magical to say the least.

Have Broom, Will Travel

Is the slogan of my newest Tee-shirt. And my kids wholeheartedly agree that it suits me to a Capital T.   I only wear it on house cleaning days.

Today was one of those days.  The weatherman said that Fall was finally going to arrive this week in the form of cold weather, abundant rain, and frisky wind - so that meant one last sweep of the garden of weeds to see what I could harvest.  It was a little scary.

Yet, with Hope’s eagle eye (I guess it helps to be closer to the ground), we were able to pull in a nice last haul.

Yikes, now I’ve got to plan a couple of days just to process all of this food for storage.

Will someone tell me why I planted beets?  I don’t even know how to cook them.  I guess it will just have to be another Fawn first moment in the making.

Now for the update on my Holiday List.  See I remember that I was supposed to make a list and read it.  And I deserve a gold star for actually completing most of that list.  I’m still digging up a couple of addresses on my Christmas mailing list and there are still some Halloween decorations I need to finish making.

The kids and I had a hoot making several super-fun crafts:  Including  some Potions Labels for an odd collection of different shaped bottles.  You can check out my Mommy Blessings Blog to see how we made them.

I’ve also been working on repurposing some vintage looking books into something enchanted.  

Shhhh, don’t tell hard core book lover’s that I’m cutting up books, or they might not let me in the second hand bookstore any more.

 

From the ’Joy of Words’ to ‘The Joy of Wands’.  And I’m turning the old fall-aparts into Magical Books that hold secret compartments, fairy quotes, and magical goodies.

Can’t wait to show you how I made them.  Of course I’ll post the instructions on Mommy Blessings when I finish.

So, as you can see, I haven’t finished decorating for Halloween so that’s back on my list for week 2 as well.

What’s up with my Holiday Countdown.  Well here’s Week 2:

1.  Um – Complete Halloween Decorating – Still.

2.  Sew at least 1 Halloween Costume.

3.  Cut out patterns for some Christmas Presents

4.  Design a Christmas Card.

and that’s in addition to preserving all those goodies from the garden,  and keeping my sanity in check.

On a side note:  The blessing keep coming.  My good friend Ethel stopped by and helped me clean up my sticky floor today - Just because she had nothing better to do than earn saint points from on high.  Maybe she was just disgusted that you couldn’t walk through the house without something gummy glued to your shoes or socks – or maybe, just maybe, she might be an angel in disguise.  I’m leaning towards the notion that she’s an angel.

Evo-Man and the Dalai Lama

My Evo-Man got to go see the Dalai Lama yesterday. He was one of 15,000 kids from 25 different countries whose schools were picked to attend a special conference called ‘Seeds of Compassion,’ in Seattle.

He told me he was a little uncomfortable because everyone addressing the Dalai Lama said, ‘Your Holiness.’ It was a good chance for me to explain that while we don’t have to agree with certain aspects of other religions, it is wonderful to show respect and acknowledge others with compassion and realize just how much good they are doing. God loves all his children on this earth.

So the whole Mission of the conference was to nurture kindness and compassion in the world, starting with children and all who touch their lives. Evo-Man brought home a tee-shirt that mentioned the Three R’s, Respect for Self, Respect for Others, and Responsibility for Ones Own Actions.

Now, any way I can get these messages to sink into Evo-man is good. What a neat experience he had.

So last night we were having a little Family Council, Sometimes we call it, ‘The War Council,’ or ‘Family Fight Night,’ just because discussing family issues isn’t always the funnest thing to do. But our subject was a light one… ‘What are some of the activities that we can do as a family that you guy’s would enjoy?’ How hard of a topic is that? I also mentioned that it would be nice to try and mention the things you want to do but it wasn’t appropriate to tear down other people’s suggestions. Once we started it was clear that Evo-man’s O.D.D. was in full bloom. I couldn’t say a thing without super negative feedback, ‘That’s not fun… that’s really stupid… I don’t want to do that… and so on. I wanted to rip his Dalai Lama shirt off and shove it in his face. Of course since that would be un-motherly of me, I refrained.

Our counselors have mentioned that reacting with anger is absolutely the wrong thing to do when things go south. I don’t know too many ‘Seeds of Compassion’ that are angry seeds. But it is really hard not to get emotional. So, instead of losing it and destroying the discussion I simply walked out, hopped in the car and drove to the local supermarket to get some WW ice cream treats. By the time I got back home Evo-Man was all apologetic and had to give me a hug. The rest of the evening went well.

So I learned that I need to work harder at cultivating seeds of compassion with my kids. I immediately thought back to the little lesson I was trying to teach him earlier about tolerance. I’m glad I didn’t give into my natural reaction to lose it, however I need to make a greater effort to acknowledge the good things that my kids do, and praise them for it. Too often I’m all about correcting the mistakes they make, and that isn’t really compassion.

“The more we care for the happiness of others the greater our own sense of well-being becomes.” Dalai Lama