Fireflies!

Are fireflies Flies, Bugs, or Beetles?


This is from a library book we got last week called "Ladybugs and Other Beetles":

"Fireflies are not really flies. Some people call them lightning bugs, but they are not bugs either. Fireflies are actually beetles. Some firefly larvae can glow, too. This is why people call them glowworms. Of course, they are not worms at all."


So, fireflies are not flies, lightning bugs are not bugs, glowworms are not worms!


Glowworms are baby fireflies (even though there are other types of glowworms that don't come from fireflies).


I knew this before, without really ever thinking about it, but to see it in writing was amusing for me.



One of the things I've missed from being away from the east coast are these delightful little critters. They are something a person could take for granted, until you don't get them anymore. When we travelled across the country in 1999, we brought a couple back from Kansas in a large jar. We put lace over the top and put some greens in the jar, but they kept escaping. At night, we'd be sitting in the living room with the lights down, only to see this little glow travel slowly across the room. Of course, I felt bad knowing they couldn't survive long in NM, but they were nice to have for the week, anyway.



When we were trying to figure out if we wanted to relocate from the peaceful and laid-back southwest back to the east coast, we made a list of "reasons to stay in NM" and "reasons to move east". On that list for reasons to move were, you guessed it, Lightning Bugs! Fireflies!



Imagine my surprise when my Mom sent me two signs, in the form of a lightning bug, when we returned home last summer to make arrangements for her funeral. We were staying in the basement apartment at a friend's house, tucked quietly back in the woods. Even the phone reception was quiet. I couldn't sleep, so I stayed up all night writing the first draft of her eulogy. Suddenly, somewhere in the middle of the night between 2 and maybe 3 am, I saw a lightning bug light up on the window of the sliding glass doors that were directly in front of me about 4 feet away! Now, these creatures are usually high in the trees and not glowing anymore after about 11 PM. I just looked at it and it made me cry. Then, two days later, the night before the funeral, I stayed up late to wash clothes and get our belongings gathered and packed up so we could move to our next destination after the funeral. There I was folding clothes, having been moving about the room for a couple hours already, and trying to get my thoughts together. Suddenly, there was this little lightning bug that went flying slowly across the room, fully lit up for my pleasure. Again, it was in the wee hours of the night. I have to say, in all our years living "down county" I never once experienced a lightning bug inside of a house, unless one of us kids deliberatly brought it into the house. It just never happened. I know it was a sign of comfort from my Mom!


So, here we are preparing to move back closer to our roots, and we end up reading about lightning books in one of the beetle books my son picked out at the library. They really are amazing beetles, one of my favorite of all time! Here's some more information on them, for anyone interested: Firefly FAQs. The pictures contained here are borrowed from online educational sites.


Cheers to natural country beauty!

06-07-08 -- Wedding Day!

One of the youngin's in our "New Mexico Family" got married on 06-07-08, yesterday. Amanda and Chris accidentally chose this date, as it was the one that worked out the best for the summer weekends to get married. Later, they realized the fun of having 6-7-8 as their wedding date. And no, they didn't get married at 9:10 AM or PM. but at 5 PM. Still daylight for a few hours, a warm 95 degrees but no humidity, then got a little breezier by the time it got darker. It was a great day for the wedding!

Four Generations!

We met Amanda when she was our next door neighbor in the North Valley in Albuquerque when she was only 10, and now that she's 24 and more beautiful than ever, it's hard to believe she's married now!



Our little Christopher has been interested in "getting married" for the past few months, mostly he just tells me that he's in love with me and will I marry him someday, and while I try to explain that I'm already married and one day he'll find his soul mate, he can't see that far ahead. When we told him we were going to a wedding party for Amanda & Chris, he was very excited.


We got there several hours before the wedding started, about 1 PM, and helped our friend LeeAnnette, the bride's mom, to set up the hall. It was at the National Hispanic Cultural Center, where there was indoor space, outdoor courtyard with a water fountain and plenty of room for tables and chairs, and even nice bathrooms with really tall wooden doors. On the tables, she had bowls with red and clear glass balls and tiny battery operated lights that made a beautiful sparkle effect. Fresh flower arrangements, and lots of candles around. Chris did great helping, watching a movie, and entertaining the little 3-yr old flower girl, Briana -- the daughter of one of the other youngin's from our old neighborhood (that was a FUN neighborhood! lots of kids on the block, everyone played with everyone else and watched out for each other too. We had the kids at our house as much as anyone else, and that was just with the dogs and no kids of our own at the time)!





Just before the wedding started, I gave him our camera to go around and take some pictures, as he was getting bored. As usual, there were several "self-portraits" that he took of his face, but he's getting pretty good at capturing his subjects, centered, and smiling. I'd say that he is probably the only one that thought to take a pic of the sky, so Amanda & Chris will be able to forever remember how beautiful the weather was that day!

We don't know who this is, we think he's a half-brother to Amanda. He never looked up or talked to anyone, but he did look at Chris when he took his picture. Since he only took about 8 pictures of guests, it's amusing that he chose this guy.

After the ceremony, all he was interested in doing was getting cake. He had seen the cake on the table earlier, but then it was moved to another location, which really stressed him out. We had to take a walk to go see where the cake had been moved, and explain why he couldn't have any yet. Then, later, he saw the bride, Amanda, and we discussed how he wanted cake and was waiting patiently for her, but he was on his way to the restroom at the time. He was again stressed out because he thought she was going to go cut cake and not save any for him. Well, he finally got cake, and he was very happy!


Following the cake was music and dancing and playing with the many other children that were present. His favorite was a 3-yr old boy that played the "chasing game" with him. He still gets quite shy around other kids his own age until he gets to know them, so he probably felt safer with the younger one.


There was an excellent mariachi band that played several songs after the dinner, earlier there were 2 musicians playing a violin and and bass, and finally a DJ for the rest of the evening. The DJ got everyone to stand in a circle around the bride and groom, and "tricked" us all into dancing to the chicken dance song!



You should have seen the look on our Chris' face when he realized it was the chicken dance! Well, he recently learned how to do that dance in pre-school, and his class had performed the same at his preschool graduation party. He LOVED the dance, and did it well, it was a ton of fun with him. Then, he stayed on the dance floor with me and we danced a couple more songs, but he kept going away from me, making his rounds ALL around the outdoor dance floor. He informed me that he could dance by himself, and later told me that he didn't have to hold my hand when we danced, hmmmm. Well, he pretty much danced with everyone, and had a great time. Earlier he danced with the bride for the "money dance" and paid his dollar to do his dance. When he was done, he did his happy jump, where he jumps up and down a few times .


For part of their gifts, we made her two christmas ornaments made from glass beads in her favorite colors of black and blue, her Mom says she will love them. I hope so, they did come out pretty, and they take about 4 hours to make just one. Here are some pics of them, both on and off the glass ball. The nice thing is, you can change the balls if you desire or if they break, we went with the red ones for this time. You can't really see it unless you are holding the balls close up, but where the swags come together, they are joined by small buttons. I got all of these buttons from Mom's button jar last summer, it is always nice to work with the things that she once held or touched, however small.

Even nicer to pass a piece of her to others that we love.

We didn't get any good pictures of Amanda and Chris together, as the photographer kept taking them and the rest of the wedding party to another location at the cultural center to do the photos. When they came back to the party, they were all over the place, often not at the same place together, so we have to wait for the professional ones to be developed and posted online.


Well, that's a rundown of the wedding event, which was a beautiful and nice wedding, no stress or problems, everyone had a great time, a very pleasant way to have a wedding!

After all of this, we were getting tired and he was getting tired. So, we left the hall, but in saying our goodbye's, we got separated. I thought Mike had Chris, so imagine my surprise to find an empty seat in the van when I got there to join them a few minutes after Mike had left the hall. Fortunately, the hall was safe, and he was just getting himself a drink of iced tea when I returned momentarily to get him. Got home, he changed to some light pjs, we read a book on fleas and mosquitos, which is part of his insect obsession at the moment. He was really concerned because there were mosquitos at the wedding, and they pretty much bit my legs and ankles and fingers up the last 2 hours of the night. We don't typically have them in Albuquerque, but since the cultural center is located close to the Rio Grande river, they were quite plentiful. And, Itchy! Apparently, I have the attractive smell for mosquitos, ever since I was very young!

Chris is worried about getting bitten by mosquitos when we move east. We don't know why he's so obsessed about it, and we've tried every possible way to get him to not want to discuss it so much. We've explained, shown him pictures, told him you put on medicine to take the itch away, and more. Our explainations are not working, he's just so obsessed about it. In fact, he's currently outside observing the honey bees that are feeding on our purple sage and also watching the ants on the ground. He just got back from 2 hrs at the local pool and the first thing he went to do once he finished his ice cream cone was go back to what he was doing before they left to go swim...watch the bugs!

Well, that doesn't cover all that happened at the wedding, but it's Christopher's rendition and experience of it, which is fun for us. We got home and copied all the pictures to a CD for Amanda & Chris, and for LeeAnnette. Most of our pics were candids, with a few posed shots. We did get the little kids to line up sitting on the fountain, and those were fun until the security guard made us move them all away from the water. Personally, I love to get the candid shots of an event, just as much as the professional shots. They tell SO Much more, and since the bride and groom can't be everywhere and see everything, it's like going to the party a second time!

Can't wait to get to see the ones from the photographer.

Congratulations! 06-07-08

The Creative Mind

The following is from "The Scientific Mind" magazine, June/July 2008 edition. I found it very interesting, and wanted to share:

"Creativity is not a gift from the muses only granted to certain people. Rather, it is something that anyone can cultivate, using a variety of methods."

From Robert Epstein, author of "The Big Book of Creative Games" and more:

"There are 4 different skill sets, or competencies that I've found are essential for creative expression. The first and most important competency is "capturing" -- preserving new ideas as they occur to you and doing so without judging them. Writing them down in a journal upon wakening, using a voice recorder. There are many ways to capture new ideas.

The second competency is called "challenging' -- giving ourselves tough problems to solve. In tough situations, multiple behaviors compete with one another, and their interconnections create new behaviors and ideas.

The third area is "broadening." The more diverse your knowledge, the more interesting the interconnections -- so you can boost your creativity simply by learning interesting new things.

And the last competency is "surrounding" -- which has to do with how you manage our physical and social environments. The more interesting and diverse the things and the people around you, the more interesting your own ideas become."

1. Capturing
2. Challenging
3. Broadening
4. Surrounding

AMEN to THAT!

Help, Shawpy!

That Obama is getting closer! He's already picking out someone to be his running mate, which is extra amusing since Hillary still has not conceded she can't win. She just wants that White House back so bad, she's probably willing to do anything. And now it's too late for her to make nice with Obama to see if he'll let her run on his ticket. But, here's my question: is he a black man or is he a white man? The media keeps calling him a black man, but Opus was in the Sunday comics a couple months ago asking this very question. They resolved the answer by going for a swim in the local river. Now that Hillary is almost out of the way, the next division will have to be race in this race. How does a racist country reconcile the ethnicity of a politician who is of mixed ethnicity? Help!

Wheeep, whheep, wheep, WHEEP!

The language of a guinea pig! Lucky, the tri-color boy, does most of the talking. Lisa, the red one, is learning now. They are self-refrigerator trained, which means that everytime the fridge door is opened, they start their talking, or maybe it's just begging!

My favorite noise they make is a purring-like sound that Lucky makes. He started to make the sound before he was neutered, back when the world thought he was a she, but he quickly proved us wrong! So, now we'll be sitting in the evening chilling, and then we randomly hear this purring sound, like the rolling of r's on your tongue. He just struts around his play yard singing, for no particular reason.

Funny how the latest animals that have "found us" are tri-color and match each other (Lucky and Maya, that is)! Lucky was found by a guy in Albuquerque under the car in his driveway. No one ever claimed him, so he made it to the home of the guinea pig rescue, just the same week we were looking for a "girl' playmate for our little Lisa. Well, they do play nice together, and now we don't have to worry about any little ones appearing in their cage.

Here is Maya waiting diligently for Chris to accidentally drop part of his dinner. She's very patient when it comes to dinner time.

Anyone thinking about getting guinea pigs? They are fun little pets, but make sure you do your research BEFORE you get them. Them, because they are meant to be in at least pairs, or in threes. And, they do better in a larger play yard. The ones you are advised to buy in the pet stores do not work, they are way too small. There are instructions for really neat housing units on google.com if you look.

Awwwwww....it's a baby pinecone!

We had our landscaping done on paper before we moved into our house, a requirement to have done before we could close on our home loan in 1998. Then, when we saw the final product, we discovered that the landscaping company didn't tell us that we made some poor decisions, namely we inadvertantly put a pine tree next to a pine tree, bush next to bush, tree next to bush, way too crowded. Then, our pine tree started to bend, so it's not even straight. But here we are 10 years later and it started to produce pinecones just last summer! Now when I was checking out the pinecones that are finally getting bigger and are still green, were surrounded by little purple buds. It looked like little flowers, but pine trees don't flower. Upon closer inspection, we discovered they were the beginnings of new baby pine cones! They are so cute! I think in all these years that we've loved the beauty of nature in pinecones, I don't think I've ever seen one so tiny. Enjoy!

Oh, and here are some pics where we don't have to cut grass but have to pick weeds. The first one is of our only hedge-like bushes, honeybees love it.

Cactus bush getting blooms ready, will open in about a month.

Our cactus has babies, starting last year. They are about 3" tall now, and more are starting to come up around the momma.

Our yucca plant finally died last year, July 8th. That was the start of a week of major life transitions, maybe it was a sign. Well, we didn't replace it yet, so Christopher put the garden gnomes and wind pinwheels there to hold the place until we plant a pinon tree in the next week or so.

Haircut, All the Curls are Gone

Okay, this first one is not a haircut, but you can see his beautiful curls! This has been a week of milestones for the family. He lost a tooth the first week of preschool, and now he lost his 4th tooth the last week of school! This time, you can see the hole on the bottom

left when he smiles big:

So, we have spent the last few days telling Chris that he was going to get a haircut, to which he replied, "I don't want my curls cut off!" We worked on him, for he'll be much cooler in the summer with shorter hair, AND, his bathtime will be more pleasant for the entire family.

This is only his 2nd haircut by a stylist. I've actually used the clippers and scissors to keep his hair cut and trimmed the past 4 years, and it's been working great. But, it's good that Kinsey cut his hair, she did a great job. So, picture below is BEFORE the haicut, still not sure he's gonna like it, but he did like the lift chairs that swivelled.

Half way through the haircut, enjoys watching the job on the mirror ahead. He actually looked down when she said to do so:

My favorite part of a haircut is having someone else wash your head and massage your scalp during and after. It's a small part of heaven, for sure!

His 1st haircut appointment that came with a wash:

All this hair from that little head!

Awwwww, he's still so beautiful, and we compromised, so he still has curls on the top.