Now they work on cornering

Liam currently looks at things and runs into them. today he did this to his sister as well (she's OK but is avoiding himon his bike).

Today he got much better on corners 

This is a boy whose pleased with himself!

Richard and Liam have been riding around the block for a week or two and yesterday they took Liam's training wheels of and went for a ride at the school. Liam was off by himself from the first run. 

Eat peaches!

We have a lovely peach tree in our yard it has been covered with peaches since we moved into the house. We had moments of concern when the thunderstorms lead to large hail stones, and people mentioned previously lossing tomato crops to golf ball sized hail. Over the last few weeks they have ALL become ripe so we are eating a lot of peaches. It's hard to complain about peaches which are ripe and sweet and warm from the sun. But if your nearby do pop in for a bag as there are still more on the tree and the fridge and freezer are full. It was peach muffins today. I'm thinking of peach salsa with pork for tomorrow. Getting peaches into the main meal is something I haven't achieved so far.

Humm...and Rambings

So recently we decided to rebuild my PC, it was not performing as well as it could and it was full of old stuff of Richard's. So first we went for reloading it with win2k that it was already running, seemed better but there were a few things I wanted which would be better with XP. Since it was all backed up already we decided to go ahead and move it on up.

It was all going quite nicely until yesterday when my hard disk died!

Not sure where we'll go from here - today I've stollen Richard's machine since he's out (in pouring rain and thunderstorms) playing with those new carbonfibre shafts he purchased last week.
Last weekend we went away again, our current plan is to keep heading northward's while it's warm and as it cools we'll go to some places to the south. So we went to Capulin Volcano National Moument. There has been so much rain lately that the place looks more like Taranaki than a desert, especially around Capulin where it's a volcano field. We walked around the rim, Liam and Richard went into the crater, I didn't feel like walking up again so I skipped it. It's much like most of the Auckland volcanoes craters so I don't feel I missed much. We did the junior ranger program, so Liam has another badge for his hat.

We camped by a very pretty lake, yet again there was a canyon so 'they' had to dam it. It's reputed to be very good fishing, we weren't fishing, and there are dinosaur tracks which were exposed after they dug the spillway for the dam.
Unfortunately for us a group of loud teenagers turned up about 11 and decided to camp next to us. Liam and Madeline slept on fine and I think Richard slept most of the time but I was awake a lot. I'm pretty convinced NZ and US teenagers are much the same, I recognised the music there were no astonishing conversation topics, they threw stones at things, all I noticed as different was the size of their vechiles. Even kids have enormous pick up trucks.

We were backtracking to head home on sunday so I saw less of the plains but I woke up before we got to Kiowa National Grassland in Harding county. We visited the Canadian River Canyon which has some interesting history. I had fun with two cameras taking pictures of the ruins of the buildings. The new camera came with an 18 - 55mm lens so when I put it onto my old camera it give a really wide angle - quite fun. I have black and white film in it currently, hopefully I'll get some arty results. It is nice to have the instant results of the digital, thou I haven't downloaded it yet( thankfully with the hard disk having died ) so you can't see any pic's.

We had our own car back for the trip which was nice it's taken about two weeks to chevy to get the parts and panel work done after someone drove into the rear wheel when Richard was driving round town. We've been driving a red ford explorer, Liam really likes cars with extra seats in the rear, he sat in the very back and got into the car through the boot.

Liam's excitement for the weekend was a yard sale across the road had bunk beds for sale, we saw them as we went to LLL on friday and they were still there when we came back, we had to run over because someone else was aproaching the yard sale and Liam was concerned they'd get the beds before us. Charles needs to be aware the bottom bed has been alocated as his. (too bad if Madeline decides she wants her own bed before then). The people were really nice to and delivered and set the beds up. So now Liam sleeps all night in his own bed. Except tonight when he's staying at Alex's place.

He went to play this morning and so Madeline and I went to the outlet mall, we returned successfully with underwear, shoes and books.

So apparently WE needed these!

Richard came home for lunch today because the FedEx track that he was watching said these were sitting on the front door step. He had with him a crochet set and kids golf bag and clubs ( 2) that he'd found at the goodwill this morning. 

Food and Friends

We stayed around Santa Fe this week-end and started the week-end with some unsuccessful yard sale-ing. We tried a local cafe for breakfast which was a most successful find. The area we are in had a street party event so we had a look but we were there a bit early really as we left at about 12 and I think most of the live acts were in the afternoon. We however were off to the party we'd been invited to. It was from 3pm and a storyteller was arranged for the kids from about 4ish. "Dave" is well known in Santa Fe and apparently used to tell stories at Borders in town before they rearranged, he was very well received by the children and we didn't see them for several hours.

I only know a handful of people in Santa Fe but one of the other league leaders arrived at the party with her children and husband too - Santa Fe is a small town. It was realy good to meet some more people. Everyone was very well travelled and doing lots of exploring around New Mexico so we have some good recommendations for further weekend (and longer) trips.

Tuesday night we had our friends from the hotel over for dinner. Liam and George haven't seen each other for about a month so they had a great time at the school next door, and making a mountain of gravel of the back. I attempted to make a pavlova in the oven here, without an electric beater with an Australian recipe = pavlova slice! It was tasty but I've since brought a $15 electric egg beater and found my trusty Vegetarian Adventure for a better recipe next time I'll have to blame altitude and gas stoves for failure. I made a tasty meal from New Zealand Food, Wine and Art, and even found a bottle of New Zealand Chardonnay to go with it, not the recommended Gladstone Wairarapa Chardonnay but a very nice wine none the less.

Ice cream

Liam had school three days last week and Madeline and I participated on the final one, it's the end of summer school so it was a party week. The pool party from tuesday got posponed due to inclement weather so thursday, when we were there was pool and ice cream party.

Making the ice cream was the activity that I and the other participating parent were involved in. Lynn (one of the teachers) gave us a list of purchases to bring with us I had 4 quarts half and half, vanilla and cones, the other list was rock salt, crushed ice and sprinkles ( there was already sugar at school).

The plan was that you have small empty cans (like tuna or slamon cans) in the freezer and you put 1 part rock salt and 4 parts crushed ice into a container, about an inch bigger than the can all round, and into the can you put 1/4 cup half and half 2 t sugar and a 1/4 teaspoon vanilla and stir. After about 5 -6 minutes you should get ice cream.
One of the dad's who was there (like many of the parents) works at Los Alamos he said they super cooled water in class using rock salt, ice and acohol so the theory should work. Our problems were, most of the kids wanted to mix all the ingredients in one container, they wanted to eat the ingredients, they lost patience with the stirring.

We did have one girl who stirred and stirred but the containers we had the ice and rock salt in were to small and there wasn't enough ice up the sides of the cans. I tried one later in a larger container of ice and after initally thinking the whole thing was a faf I left it on the table and came back to ice cream. We had a plan B anyway which was fold frozen raspberries into whipped cream fold and fold its just like ice cream and was defineately popular for snack. (plan C stayed in the freezer)

Some people get stamps at post offices

While we had overseas visitors we went to the Post Office. Liam and Grandma went in, they got stamps but while there Liam managed to make a new Friend. I gave his mother our contact details and she called a few days later.

We visited with them late last week it's really good 'cause there are two five year olds and two almost two's, so the older two play and the younger two ignore each other or follow the older ones around. Liam stayed for the afternoon at their house while Madeline had her sleep.
We did the oposite yesterday except in the morning we went swimming at the indoor pool (and Ice ring!) as it looked like rain, outside pools close if it rains, they don't want you out there in a thunderstorm, and Alex came over for the afternoon. Madeline slept all afternoon so the two boys played unsiblinged all afternoon.

They have invited us to a housewarming at their place on saturday -our first party!

So I was sitting here at the computer fully intending to use this time while Liam is at school and Madeline is sleeping to tell you what has happened here, but instead I've read your blog's and some other peoples and looked at the new photo's I just got (but haven't put up anywhere yet) and now it's time to get Liam from school again! How did that happen.

So this is/was Garden of the Gods we were there two weeks ago.