from the prairie's edge: sitter, friends, parents, house, rummage, geese

I'm gonna write as much catch up / goings on info as I can before bed, and even if it's short or barely edited, I will hit the publish button; oh yes I will.

My parents should be arriving tomorrow, which is only awesome and a half. They're here to help us make optimum progress on the house renovation and move. We're down to the last two weeks in the rental farmhouse here, so it's delicious timing. While Dad and Jason work on the new place, I've decided Mom can take over a few little things here like cooking, taking care of the kids, and house cleaning, and I'll do everything else the family needs done, like blogging, surfing ebay, and going thrift-store shopping in Minot. Kidding! Duh, I also need to pack up a few more things.

We've been spending a bit of time at the new house. The other night we got a sitter so that I could help Jason put in the 3rd of 4 windows he's replacing on the main level. By the way, getting a sitter, letting someone else be responsible for meeting the kids' needs, is tremendous! We've only had her over while I'm/we're there, so I do wind up meeting a need every now and again, but I'm gonna stick with the adjective tremendous. When you don't live near family for the freedom to be free, you gots to buy your freedom. But we happened upon a gem of a gal, so yip! Anyway, work on the house. Jason has been taking video footage with his phone, and I hope to put the clips together soon to show the progress. (Soon = sometime in 2012)

I am as happy as a clam to have met up with about a dozen moms who are also transplants into this town. We trickled into a play group organized by one of them. About half of their husbands or partners work with mine, about half are in the oil fields, and one or two have other work. I imagine that we cover the entire gamut of perspectives about parenting, politics, faith, and other life issues, but that doesn't seem to deter us from getting along, holding each others' babies, going to lunch and movies and Minot, informing everybody about the presence of cilantro or kale at the stores - the stores here aren't what you'd call predictable - and playing Bunco. I am very thankful for these women. It would be an entirely different existence here without them; that I can see.

It's already rummage sale and goose migration season. It sort of felt like winter was draaaaagggiiiinnng ooooooonnnnnBUH-BAM!springishere! The weather has been ridiculously warm for a week. (Sorry, Alaska and northwest U.S. friends. I know your winter has been horrible. Sorry. I'm so sorry to mention it, but WOW, this is fantastic! You should come visit.) We are in the center of some sort of major migratory path for birds, says my husband. Well, he knows the actual name of the path. I am telling you it's some sort of one. A flock I saw a couple days ago was just phenomenal; hoping to have out my camera for the next big surge.

This weird bug was the exact deep-deep-orange-almost-red of our water bottle.

Steve Martin has a new book out called, "The Ten, Make That Nine, Habits of Very Organized People. Make that Ten." There are a dozen recent examples of how well that title fits my nature, but this photo should be sufficient. I was multifrantic-izing one morning at breakfast time, and when I glanced over to see if Ziah had enough bites at his place, I realized I'd put Zoralee's slippers on him instead of her. He wasn't complaining, but this did precious little for her cold toes - or her confidence in my child-detection skills / eyesight.

I think that'll do it for now. Later I'll update you on the fact that Ziah now has two teeth.

Oh, what the heck. Ziah has two teeth. Good night!