The Burrow

There's a lot involved with decorating. This is especially true when your mother has a J-O-B and absolutely no interest in knick-knacks. It's a good thing that my part of the village which is raising these children is filled with wonders. Just ask Mr. 9. Gramma Rose, who's nobody's grandmother by blood but everybody's grandmother by love, brought the Hawkeye's t-shirts when she visited last month.  I smiled just a little bit to myself; the machatunim  tailgate at an Iowa game every year, having deep roots in the heartland, themselves.  All the pieces of my ever expanding family fit very nicely within one another.  I am the luckiest girl in the world. Miss Texas thought she was pretty lucky, too. My walker never looked better, nor did that spider hat on her head. "Why does this have a bow on it?" she wondered "Because it made me smile," was enough of an answer.... for both of us. "What's a mallet?...

There's something about boys out in the wild. They will find an adventure ten steps from the parking lot. This the the top of the secret place . Big Cuter wondered how I managed on Mt. Lemmon with Amster and her kids on Sunday. I told him that I was able to creep through the secret place with no problems. " The secret place?" he wondered. " You know, there are always secret places," said I. "Ahhhh, yes, I know," was his reply. For a moment, I think, he was back on Mt. Tam with his little sister and his mother on an adventure - hunting buffalo and tracking them silently with our Nature Explorer backpacks and our sticks. The buffalo were everywhere, just as Amsters' kids' imaginary terrors were stalking us this weekend. Up and over and under we went - or they went and I observed and photographed. "Will we be on the blog tomorrow? I like to know when I'm on the internet." That was the permission statem...