That is what Tyler told me one day when we were driving down the street and he saw someone mowing there lawn.  “Someday I want to do that,”  And I told him that someday he will and I bet he will do a great job at it.  He loves to mow the lawn.  I am sure his Daddy sometimes wishes that Tyler’s mower worked a little better because as much as Tyler mows the lawn during the week, Daddy would never have to worry about it!

Today we were on a walk and now that Quinn is equipped with her push walker, Tyler feels odd if he doesn’t have somethign to ride or push as well.  Today it was the lawnmower.  Here is some video of Tyler “mowing”.

She LOVES to walk with her push walker and these days loves to push/eal with anything she can.  Tyler’s old rode-of firetruck is popular as it our basket on instruments.  One of our favorite things to do these days is go for a little walk outisde our house.  Tyler and I haven’t done this much very often, but as we have a new walker, I think that this will again be popular.   I have been trying to get Quinn as many opportunities to practice he walking skills these days.  Here is a video of her heading down the sidewalk after Tyler.  Check out how strong her skills are to “correct” the direction of the walker.  She was shoving this thing around on Day 2!

So our neighbor is building an addition to their house.  The work is happening right in front so we can watch everything.  It is an almost daily ocurrence now for the kids to toddle down there and see what is up.  A few days ago we watched the small, but agile mini loader picking up bits of driveway, lifting them up so high and dumping them in a dump truck.  We hung out in our neighbor, Bill’s, front yard.  See he and Pat and Jerry (the couple building the addtion) go way back because they have all lived on this block for over 20 years.  It is great.  They all love my kids and so great to them.  My kids have like several grandparents on this block.  

I think next week concrete will be poured, so there will be a cement mixer on our street.  That will be a big day.  I am seriously considering calling over friends, packing a picnic, and having a big lawn party in Bill’s front yard!!

Who knew that Austin had an amusement park for toddlers and preschoolers?  Many of the Superfriends had plans to go, but I wasn’t so sure.  In my head I imagined long lines (not fun for toddlers) and lots of sunshine on asphalt.  It just didn’t sound like we would have a good time.  Well, after some prodding from a friend over chat, I decided what the hell.  It was meant to be because the kids and I calmly got our of the house in 15 minutes.

Boy was I wrong!  This place was a perfect small size and everything was shaded.  We have a great time.  Tyler rode everything with gusto, but later told me the merry-go-round and the ferris wheel made him nervous.  I can see why – holding onto a horse moving up and down while spinning around fast can be scary (I was standing next to him) and the ferris wheel – sitting in a huge cage without mama and sometimes it stopped when he was up high to let others on..well, that would make me nervous too.  But we did lots of other things that were so fun – airplanes, boats, cars, a train and a pony!  Even Quinn got in on the action! 

Quinn gets in on the action!

Poor Quinn. For most of the morning, she was merely an oberver on this great adventure.  She did ride the train and the caurosel with Tyler and I and for other rides she would stand by the fence and watch.  Our very last ride was a second time on the cars which simply rode around in a circle.  I asked the ride operator if Quinn was old enough and could sit next to her brother.  So I put her on and latched her in.  She absolutely love it!  Every time they circled around she had the biggest grin on her face!  In was a great time for all of us and I am so glad my friend implored me to go!

I took a walk tonight with Quinn and felt so melancholy.  It has been growing, but thumbing through the “Global Warming Issue” of Backpacker magazine reading about all the sad impacts of global warming on the environment pushed me over the perverbial edge.  My heart ached as I read through all these things that will change from a mere few degrees increase in the climate temperature over the next 50 years.

You see, nature is my church.  I sit on a mountaintop feeling a few inches tall compared to the majesty of the mountains staring back at me and I feel God.  At that point, I realize how priviledged I am to have this life and witness so much beauty around me every day.  A full moon – have you ever stopped to gaze at a full moon, especially on the second night?  It recharges me in a way I can’t explain and in long stretches between vacations, Chris and I start to feel the pull to get away and renew ourselves.  The initimidating Rockies, the georgous maples in Vermont, the pristine perfection of British Columbia.   When I sink myself into my travel and hiking memories I get goosebumps and I feel the passion stirring within me.   When I go on a hike with my kids, the passion stirs within me.  Every Wednesday we hike, and I get that recharge, that grouding, that connection I need.

So when I read that my church is slowly deteriorating and is changing in devastating ways, it scares and deeply saddens me.  I am losing something so precious to me.  The things that I wanted to share with my children, the world I wanted to show them won’t be there.  Chris and I’s retirement dream was to go around the world hiking and taking photos of these amazing journeys.  In some respects our dreams are deteriorating too. 

A few gems are (and these are merely talking about forests here):

• The Western Evergreens will disappear.  Apparently the freezes that once killed beetles who were a threat to conifers are not coming.  So goodbye pine forests.  In British Columbia, these beetles wiped out 21 million acres (that # is correct) in ONE year.

• The Colorado River Basin will see annual precipitation drop by 55% by the end of the century.  Oh and this is based on the most conservative climate predictions.  Adios rafting trips through the Grand Canyon.

• Less colorful autumns in the Northeast.   Maple trees require a prolonged cold season for optimal sugar content and sap production.  They are estimates to completely migrate to Canada between 2070 and 2090.  This one in particular KILLS me.  It will wreck the maple industry up there as well as fall tourism.  I can’t even explain to you how amazing the fall foliage is up there.

• More devastating wildfires.  Earlier spring snowmelt will lead to fires that burn so hot, there is simply nothing left.  A director of Tree Ring Research says that if you look at the fires that burned in Yellowstone in 1988, you will see 19 year-old trees and that is how it is supposed to work.  But the high-severity crown fires which we are increasingly seeing burn so hot that they burn the soil, torching all the organic matter down to the mineral gravel.  The leads to erosion of soils that have taken millenia to develop.  Apparently there are areas in the Northern Rockies that have already been weakened by drought and beetle infestation that could succumb to large fires this century.

And I could keep going because there is more, there is so much more.  I have a hard time focusing on people problems when I feel like our home, the planet we live on, is in peril.  And while I sure that some measure of climate change is normal, the speed with which it is ocurring and the insane, destructive ways that things are changing and are ocurring absolutely are human-caused. 

A friend of mine once commented that people are so arrogant thinking that they can save the planet.  She said when Mother Nature was tired of us, she would rid herself of us.  And maybe that is what she is doing.   I am so connected to the outdoors and I sit here feeling like all that is beautiful and wonderful in the world is dying and I am powerless to stop it.   If you know me, you know how Chris and I get during fall foliage season.  We honeymooned in New England during foliage season for goodness sake.  

People have no idea how badly we need nature and the outdoors.  It is so powerful.   Natural settings are the one place that I take my toddler and he is in rythm with the world.  He is always at peace and so am I.   We WILL be affected by these changes.  At first, like now, it will be the hardcore backpackers, recreationists and scientists.  The ones who venture to the backcountry and see the glaciers melting and forests disappearing and those with all the tools and measurements that confirm what is being observed.  

But eventaully water sources will dry up, regions where food was grown will no longer support the agriculture once grown there and whole industries (as with the maple) will migrate elsewhere or go away.  And sure - water sources may not dry up in the US, but maybe they will elsewhere and so people will have to migrate.  People will move with the resources and this will cause its own sets of problems.

While I realize that I will be long gone before the worst of the predictions take place, I can’t leave my children that world.  It is difficult to think that I brought children into this world to basically observe and deal with what careless generations before them have created.   I will bet money that in looking back, we can say that the most damage happend wduring Presdient Bush’ 8 years.  While he alone could not have saved all these things from happening, he stopped any progress we were making with the world community.  The Kyoto treaty was a start and he shut that down.  

I need to do more.  I am a little upset with Backpacker magazine in that all the doom and gloom is in there and I definitely feel called to action, but I don’t see the – “here is how you can help” section.   I want to do more..but tonight I am just sad.  My retirement dreams of hiking through pristine forests and mountains with Chris seem to be eroding away.   Yeah, I know much of what we love will still be here in 25 years, but I will know as I hike through some of these special places, that they are slowly dying and going away.  I will be lucky to have experienced the power of some of these places before they disappear. 

To think - I saw a frickin’ glacier in British Columbia and hiked to its snout and that may be something my kids are never able to do because the glaciers are gone.  Oh, and that amazing feeling of hiking above the timberline in the Northeast?  Well with warmer temps, the trees and brush are advancing northward and one day the bare peaks will be covered.

To think I am reading Tyler books from the 70s that preached the dangers of the industrialized world on the environment.  The Lorax by Dr. Seuss (1971) and Barbapapa.  To think that 35 years ago, people were thinking about these issues and here we are in 2007 just fulfilling the prophecy. 

Of course, with Vietnam going on and the drugged-out, strange, free-love hippies being the only ones standing up for the environment in the 70s – people probably didn’t take the threat seriously..and then there was the decadence and “me-ness” of the 80s, the personal despair of the 90s – we just didn’t get around the the environment.

To think that cashmere = dust storms.  Did I mention that the US’ lust for cashmere means more of these special goats that live in a specific region of China and because there are so many goats needed to fulfill the US’ (specifically yes, this country) demand, they goats have trampled the grasslands and left a dust bowl that has lead to increased dust storms.  And guess what?  Some of those huge dust storms and clouds are making their way over to our country!  It is all connected – we can’t escape the environmental ramifications of our actions.

Maybe I sound ridiculous, but I am feeling such a sense of loss.  It has been growing and growing.  I will have to reconcile it somehow because like it or not, this stuff WILL happen.   It sucks..  OK, end rant, but really this just leads me into another post about life in general and how screwed up our society is.  It is 10:30pm, so lucky you, I will write that one tomorrow.

The checkout line at Whole Foods…seriously.    It signals the end of my week – we have made it!   Fridays are a day to prepare for the weekend, Daddy being home and lots of fun to be had.   Every morning we do our “Friday Home Blessing” which includes changing the sheets on our bed and Tyler’s (I love fresh bed sheets), vacuuming the downstairs floors and carpets, abd getting at least one load of laundry in process.  We tidy up the toys as we head out to our morning adventure and come home to a welcoming home.

After Quinn’s nap we hit Whole Foods at their sweet spot – Friday afternoon before 5pm.  Dead as a doornail people.  No crowds and open checkout lines!   We do our shopping and enjoy a chocolate chip cookie at the end..and sometimes a smoothie before or Kids’ Club snacks or whatever keeps the troops happy.  They are usually pretty easy in the grocery store..and since I shop at the Farmer’s Market on Wednesdays’ now – there is less to buy these days.   Anyway, we get to the checkout line and I can feel my Friday slowing coming to close.  We are at the end of the week and Daddy will be home soon; it is a good feeling.

We get so much accomplished and I know Chris loves coming home to a clean, calm household ready for the weekend.  It is fun and there is no way I could do this if I was working.    It is my little Friday routine and it makes me happy.  Call me Susie Homemaker if you want to – but if it makes me happy – that is what’s important.  

Remember when I thought I was going to have to get a learning tower for the kids?  Well, I got one and  – Oh My God! – I love it!!  If you have two young kids you HAVE to get one.  Or do what I did and borrow someone else’s for free and save the $160.   I had spoken with a momma friend about borrowing it from her for a while since she didn’t need it for her son.  She is pregnant with her second though, so I expect in about 16 months she will need it back which is perfect for me. 

I had to get one because my climber daughter would get up on Tyler’s stool wanting to watch everything and he would try to pull her off.  Or he would be up there and she would try to climb up behind him and he might accidentally step or fall over here or she would fall trying to get up there.  She is so young and although really steady in her standing, I wasn’t comfortable with a stool for her.

Now we have sweet harmony and happy, safe kids.  Quinn can stand up there and not fall out.  She now also have another climbing apparatus.  They like to both be in here and enjoy the view.  Tyler can help me with things and she like to watch, play with stuff on the counter or get involved herself.  It is so great and makes me so happy!  I highly, highly recommend this if you find yourself in the same shoes!

(P.S.  If you are a Mom and have a laptop I HIGHLY recommend putting it in the kitchen. Somehow my kids are much more tolerable of me checking email standing up then sitting down back in the office.  Also let’s me sneak over there if I need to from time to time!)