Letterboxing~Leaf Monsters

As most of my readers are probably aware, I'm an outside-gal. I love to be outside, hiking, exploring, horse-back riding, playing with my kids and animals, camping, and Letterboxing.

Autumn is one of my favorite times of year. I enjoy seeing the trees turn color and think it's fun to walk over the fallen leaves listening to the crunch-crunch sound.

Everyone in my family seems to enjoy this seasonal pastime, too. Except for my daughter.

She's afraid of leaves.

As some of you know, my daughter suffers from OCD and Aspergers/High Functioning Autism. One of the symptoms seems to be latching onto irrational fears. She's 'chosen' leaves.
She's been afraid of leaves on the ground, moving around, and leaves on the trail, that might brush her skin, for as long as I can remember. She's not just a little bit afraid. She's terrified and will go into a panic even thinking about touching a leaf.

It's good we don't live back east anymore, where trees with leaves number in the thousands. And raking leaves into piles, for kids to jump into and play in, is as normal and common experience for all children every Autumn.

For her leaves are nothing to be messed around with. The bigger the leaf, the more horrible it must be, waiting to gnash it's teeth and carry my daughter away.

So, as you can imagine, including my daughter in Fall hiking, camping and Letterboxing trips can be quite the challenge. She loves to be a part of everything we do, though, so I try to bring her along at most opportunities. Except It usually means I become a pack mule. But if my sons are along, they generously help carry their leaf-challenged sister, to give my aching back a break.

My neighbor friend, Val, over at Fantastyk Voyage and I recently drove down about 40 mins south to the Manzano Mountains, Fourth of July Canyon to search for a letterbox placed there. Jenna tagged along, too.

All the leaves had fallen off the trees. There were alot of dead, crunchy leaves on the ground.
Here's Val on the leaf-covered trail.


Val wrote up a wonderful post on our Fall letterboxing adventures, with some lovely photos, too. You can see them on her Lost in Fallen Leaves post.

We located the letterbox, as well as a Hitchhiker box nearby, too. (We relocated it to the Quarri letterbox location, after we left Fourth of July Canyon) We stamped in with the cleverly created, and pretty stamp, made some leaf rubbings (just Val and I, of course), and enjoyed the nature and the sound of the wind in the trees.




As you can rightly imagine, Jenna was not about to set one foot on the ground.



For more info on Letterboxing.

Fandago Flamingo

I first learned how to knit using round looms in September 2006. Soon after, I bought my own set of round looms, called Knifty Knitters and set to work creating hats, which only took a few hours to make.

Very quickly, my kids caught the knitting bug, too, and set off to make their own knitted hats, too.
By December 2006, I had bought a rake loom, or straight loom, and started making scarves and potholders. For Christmas that year I knitted 14 scarf/hat sets for gifts. I thought of them as art and decided each of my creations must have a creative name.
This little hat, just knitted yesterday, for my daughter, I named Fandago Flamingo.

This hat is so soft, fluffy and warm, and looks cute on my little girl. Don't you think?

Jenna asked me to include this photo of her special cat, Javelina, our sweet Manx kitty. She is completely devoted to Jenna and is never far from her side. If Jenna leaves the house, Javelina cries and paces until Jenna returns. Every night, Javelina sleeps wrapped tightly around Jenna's head, with her furry cheek next to my daughter's cheek. Javelina seems to think this hat is a snuggle toy for her and has tried to carry it off to sleep on it.

So, is anyone else knitting, crocheting, or doing crafts to make gifts for the holidays right now?

Happy Knitting!

Carving and Clucking

What do you do on a beautiful Fall day? Carve pumpkins!The chickens sort of get in the way, but Jax didn't mind. And the chickens did a pretty good job at clean-up.I borrowed this camera and it's unbelieveably slow in taking photos, so it was hard to capture just what I wanted. The pixels are bare minimum, too, so the photos look kind of grainy. I sure miss my camera, but at least I'm able to capture these special moments of all three of my kidlets preparing for Halloween.This was the first year that both boys could carve their own pumpkins, or at least the first time I felt safe enough to let them. lol! Jenna decided that she never wants to scrape out the pumpkin guts every again, thank you. Ewww.Here's the finished Jack-0'-Lanterns. Jem's is on the right...the one with the Uni-Brow.Jen's toothless wonder is in the middle. And Jax lays claim to the double-chinned pumpkin at the right, who is badly in need of some dental work.
Happy Halloween Y'all!!

Letterboxing~Quarai Mission Monument

Through our Sonlight homeschool curriculum, my kids and I have been reading about the Aztecs, the Spanish Conquistadors, Spanish Missionaries and their journeys and explorations from Mexico searching for Cibola, Quivira and the Seven Cities of Gold.

After reading "Walk the World's Rim", we decided to do some exploring of our own and headed 38 miles south of Laughing Orca Ranch to the Quarai Mission Monument.
We were also excited about finding a recently placed letterbox in the park, by one of our favorite letterboxers, 'Lions Mane'. It was a gorgeous sunny day, the sky crystalline blue with nary a cloud. The park had a few miles of lovely paved hiking trails, as well as some 'back country' dirt trails, many under cover of towering cottonwood trees, with leaves turning a sunny Autumn yellow.
We quickly and easily found the letterbox, with only a few scratches from some wild rose bushes (Thanks lionsmane! -grin-). The stamp carving was perfectly completed for the location. And you know what?! We were the First Finders!! Woot! Woot!
After rehiding the letterbox, the kids did some climbing and playing along the trail.

We rounded a bend in the trail and saw the mission church. At one time, thriving Native American trade communities of the Tiwa and Tompiro speaking Puebloans inhabited this remote frontier area of central New Mexico. Early in the 17th century, Spanish Franciscans found the area ripe for their missionary efforts. At our first sight of the mission church we were awestruck.
Not everyone realizes that Spanish missions were not actually churches. They were Pueblo Indian towns, with the church as the focus. The Pueblo Indians were being instructed by the Spanish Missionaries on how to become Spanish citizens.
In order to become a Spanish citizen, they had to be Catholic. That is why the King of Spain sent missionaries to acculturate them. We were all impressed with the size and strength of this structure. We were even more impressed when we discovered that women played an important and crucial role in it's construction.
The inside of the church made us feel very small.
Even my kids were amazed and kept duscussing what it must have been like to live here during that time, especially for the Pueblo people who were having their own beliefs squashed in order to forced to become Spanish citizens instead, something they discovered they really didn't want.Many aspects of the original pueblo structures were destroyed or covered over, so that the mission would be at the forefront. Two of the Pueblo Indians' Ceremonial Kivas were filled in with dirt, inluding this less common square shaped kiva. It was covered up and turned into a sunny courtyard for the priests. Jax and Jen are peeking down into the fireplace.
We all enjoyed exploring the living quarters of the mission, including this hallway. Because the roof is missing, these rooms and hallways felt like a Labyrinth.
The reason why Quarai is so important is because there is little physical evidence left of history where Spanish settlers came in contact with Native Americans. These mission churches have gone through very little physical change. Quarai, along with Abo and Gran Quivira, are all a part of the Salinas Mission Trail Monuments, and contain some of the oldest church structures in New Mexico.The church is in the shape of a cross, with the altar at the top, two separate smaller altars on either side and the nave(congregation area at the bottom). My 3 monkeys seemingly forgot that we were in a church and decided it would be a fun place to boogy down instead.
We each took turns speaking from the altar and were amazed how well our voices carried into the nave area.
The church at Quarai was built during the late 1620s or early 1630s. It was abandoned in 1677 after a combination of drought, disease and Apache raids drove the residents from the area.
A placard showed how the mission church must have looked long ago.My kids discovered wild gourds growing near the mission church that we were permitted to keep. They are so excited to create gourd rattles, similar to the one that Esteban carried with him during his journeys. It was magical to consider that these gourds may have originally been planted by the pueblo people who lived here.
We sat on a bench and admired the beautiful mission church as the sunlight moved across it. I thoroughly enjoyed the interesting discussions my kids and I shared concerning this unique and interesting place.

On the way back home, we admired the many horses and cows grazing in open fields with the beautiful Manzano Mountains for a peaceful backdrop. For some reason I was drawn to stop and visit with one particular group of four horses. This handsome boy seemed to be the group's leader, and walked up to greet us first.
This beautiful mare was next up to say hello. She was my favorite.The leader horse was a very in-your-face and curious boy. He really seemed curious about Jen's M & M's.I fell in love with this mare, I tell ya. She was so gentle and sweet and reminded me alot of my Baby Doll.She seemed to love the attention and was very affectionate.We really enjoyed spending time with these horses.

Jenna has a special way with horses that calms them and puts them in some kind of trance.Just look at that mare's soft muzzle. Don't you just want to kiss it? I did!Jackson tried to sneak a smooch on one of the two brown horses. They weren't all that friendly, but this one was a little more curious.Jackson grabbed my camera and took a few photos of me loving on that pretty mare.I'm telling you. The thought crossed my mind several times how wonderful it would be to take her home with me.Then there was that goofy lead horse. I don't know what it is about geldings (I'm assuming this guy wasn't a stallion) but they annoy me because they usually stick their noses in my face, nibble my clothes, poke and prod me and are just generally pests. This guy was no different.I think he wanted to kiss me.He had a serious fetish for having his nose rubbed and tickled.I really prefer mares.Isn't she cute?My favorite mare walked away while we were playing with the other horses, and all I had to do to get her to come to me was cluck and say "here sweetie".She stopped grazing and turned and walked to me.I didn't have carrots or cookies, just my voice. And that sweet girl kept coming.I do love my own pretty mare, but I felt some sort of something towards this horse. I felt like I could have walked right up and jumped on her bareback and rode across those open fields straight for the mountains, into the sunset.What a great day.