Daddy!  You forgot to take my drawing to work with you! Its not about planes or circles or beachy balls this time.  This is a fragment of a highly detailed map of Arizona trails.  Uncharted territories that calls our names. So, please study carefully and plan accordingly.  I will personally deliver the whole of this parchment for it cannot get into the hands of dispirited people or it will instantly disintegrate.   It "knows" who has the Spirit of Adventure in them, and thats you daddy.  This map will make sense in your hands. 

The Desert Solar Eclipse.

Zander and I were driving west yesterday and he commented on how peculiar it is that the sun could blind us if we were to gaze into its fiery eye.  And yet, its not common to hear of people going blind from it...

Hikers at Papago Park,The Valley of the Sun.<--Click!  There is a slue more!

and then today, i found this quote from one of my absolute favorite books "The Pilgrim at Tinker Creek"....


"We have really only that one light, one source for all power, and yet we must turn away from it by universal decree. Nobody here on this planet seems aware of this strange, powerful taboo, that we all walk about carefully averting our faces, this way and that, lest our eyes be blasted forever."


I would love to plop Zander down at Oak Creek Canyon for a month with a pen and paper and let him scribble down his spiritual, philosophical and scientific musings. But then I'm pretty sure he would scrap that idea and instead scramble up the canyon walls, putter around in the creek, build more "churches" out of fallen trees and so forth... ah zander, if I didn't find your toe nail clippings scattered about the house, like right here next to this computer!, i would certainly mistake you for a mythological man.

roping together a giant cross

Spring is still with us.

“The breeze is the merest puff, but you yourself sail headlong and breathless under the gale force of the spirit.”

I can't think of a better thing to say to express the springs i have experienced in Arizona.  The breeze carried me all through the weekend; i couldn't have imagined sweeter times. If I could I would convert into analogue the smell of creosote or the taste of warm peaches freshly plucked from the tree, so you could know more accurately.  All the photos are from "no nos" birthday party.  Do you see the golden fairies swirling around ender in the pool?  Babies laughter tends to attract that particular crowd.  Or sharks.  Depending on what body of water they're swimming in...

He likes to get his recipes from You Tube

"thank you so much for making dinner tonight, zander!"
"Yeah, I should do this way more often." 
Lets just lay two ground rules, then:
1)Zander, do not over salt.
2) Leslie, stay out of the kitchen.  Hes a diva!

We all lapped it up!  Ender took his time falling in love though.  But we figured if he likes to eat raw onion and garlic, Indian food wouldn't be such a stretch for his adventurous palate.

This post also doubles as an add for anyone out there who is obsessed with Indian food and needs a place to get away for a bit.  This meal is officially a staple in our home. So come and enjoy and please bring a Bollywood movie.  I'm just sayin....

Last night Zander and I were both restless laying in bed. 

"I can't stop thinking about rock climbing and my cams.  Isn't that silly?"

"No," i replied. "I wish I could think about that."  (i was too busy sulking over the fact that i didn't live at the ocean)
After talking a bit about the gear, i see zander steal away to his chest of toys and i hear the clanking and tinkling of hexes and new cams.   His pearls all strung neatly on steel or nylon rope.  He let me hold one.  In the dark, I could barely make out a shape.  I pulled down on the lever, the metal pieces rotating down looked like a jelly fish inhaling and exhaling.  Maybe I can convince Zander to find some nice climbing walls over the sea...

Then he slept with them, like a little boy and his favorite toy car or baseball mitt.  Don't be embarrassed Zander.  I will now admit to whoever so reads:  I still sleep with a stuffed duck.  She has a pink bill and pink feet & used to done a pink garden hat with white polka dots until her childhood bully ripped it off of her! 

Before I drifted off to sleep, zander gave me strict orders not to let ender play with his toys.  He was concerned that the boy would unlock the kitchen cabinets, find the bleach, unscrew the lid and pour the liquid death all over his cams.   Around here we mistake our 19 month old as an evil genius.

our perch

zander is great, but he has flaws.  for starters,  he will not build me an observation tower so I can see over the rooftops.  so ender and i went to scope out the view from papago and feed the ducks. apparently bread is not good for our webbed city companions, so i've read to try frozen peas.  the duck and I say "blech!" but ender ate half of the bag!  his breath was rancid, but it couldn't deter me from kissing him as usual. 

well the view is amazing to the east from the old kinkel family ramada.  i can't wait for the next storm to come riding over the mountains!  and if you go up to Hunts Tomb you can see a sweeping view of the southern and western valley.

i'm deciding  how to handle ender's aversion to the wind.  he screams whenever a breeze kicks up his hair and pleads to go "in-sigh, in-sigh!"  i crouch down to his point of view, a gnome-ish size and look around and quite possibly,i've concluded, ender thinks the earth is falling down upon him.  All that heaving of the trees and swirling of the leaves, the rushing over your ears.... what a fright!  but i know, he will overcome, much like he did the vacuum cleaner, he can't get enough of that machine. 

we love our mama

me, older sister, mother

What makes mothers all that they are?
Might as well ask, "What makes a star?"
Ask your heart to tell you her worth
Your heart will say, "Heaven on earth"
Another word for divine
Your mother and mine ~wendy darling


i wish i listened more to little wendy.  i was truly one of the lost boys without her, my mother, not wendy.  she irked me in the disney version. so did tiger lily- can't the gals just get a long and join forces?

rain rain, go away - quoteth ender

i couldn't believe my eyes when i looked out the window to the east and saw a horizon overcome with a massive storm cell.  ender was dozing.  should we skip our play time at noahs and speed toward it, meet it head on?  well I decided that like with all travelings, it might be best to share with friends.  when he awoke we headed to the boys brigade at erin's to await it. 
however, much to my dismay, ender cowered before the thunder and melted in the rain.  how could he do this to me?!  doesn't he know who i am?  doesn't he know how much the storms mean to me?  how can you let all the other tots run free in the rain while you shrink away and get strangely obsessive over the Jesse doll from Toy Story. I left.
I complained to Zander.
Then I felt horrible.

Ender eventually tolerated the storm.  We came home to zander and all the doors were flung open.  We bundled ender up in our arms and showed him what some american boys do in the rain, play football.  We showed him what mama likes to do in the rain, dance. 

Later that night after ender went to bed, i paused in my reading, and told zander "I am so proud of Ender." 
Zander stopped whatever he was doing and went to sit on the couch, "Are you really Leslie?  The sky was not beautiful today because you saw it and said it was so.  It was beautiful because it was." 

ender is his own definition of ender.  zander and i were given him and our quest is stewardship. 

If an ender shines brightly in the forest, and no one was around to see him, would he still shine? 

us, ready to play together in the rain.

absolutely yes!  The God who saw the tree that fell, sees the ender that shines. 

clear creek, clearer minds

Wild times, until the light has gone
Wild, until the rising sun
Let us hear the sigh,
Of all the days gone buy
Wild times

Shine the light, down through the years
Through the fields of yonder, the veil off tears
And well take the time,
That is yours and mine
Wild times

Wild times, into the dawn
These wild times, will not be gone
And the music plays,

To these golden days
Wild times

You can here the sigh,
Of all the days gone by
Wild times

And well take the time,
That is yours and mine
Wild times

we cannot be caged, and we, like our God are not tame, its written in His word.  i know the sea is calling you girls.  i'm ready when you are. 

"Superstitious sailors used to hear the mournful songs of whales echoing up through the hulls of their ships, and were enraptured.  Singing whales once inhabited the Mediterranean, and probably are the Sirens Greek myth says lured sailors to their doom on the rocks." - diane ackerman

there is more written about whale songs that needs to be read on the sandy threshold of their deep wide home. 

as a child i never would have chosen tv over the moon especially a super moon.  however, i have realized that the ones we love have a stronger pull than the celestial orb.  you stick zander and his family in a room with episode 3 of sherlock holmes and its over for me. 

so on Sunday night, zander snapped a few shots, even though we had plans of silhouetting me against the moon drawing his bow and arrow. ha ha ha.  it didn't work.  zander was feeling uninspired :)  he takes his night photography seriously. 

oh boy, i just remembered, ender had a terrible sleep saturday night.  now, i told myself i wouldn't blame the moon.  but why is it that the waves can vehemently respond, but not a baby? 

*arica, there are rumors sneaking around that you have amazing shots of the moon.  i'm waiting for the great reveal!

what does a very young little human perceive?  in terms of colors.

i am making a cape for ender's spunky and bright cousin, noah, whom he affectionately refers to as "no-no" which makes grand sense if you know the mischievous boy! 

the lining of the cape is going to be buzz light year and its on lime green fabric with splashes of christmas red.  i cringe.  but noah and i'm assuming the majority of 2 year olds just don't care.  he will only notice buzz, a man, much like himself with non stop energy and fun.  pure.  and maybe i've been watching too much of What Not To Wear....  i'm sorry!  stacy and clint woo me with their wit. 

but i'd like to look at that lime green cape and think of Tom Sawyer gleaning bio luminescent mushrooms of "foxfire" to light his way through underground passages.


  i have a glowing idea!  plant these (can you plant fungi?) along your walks and lanes to guide your wonder struck guests up to your door for an enchanting evening.  Something tells me this won't work in the urban sonoran desert.  well, if i were a fairy's electrician, i would install these for sure. 

and really buzz, you're such a romantic.  "to infinity and beyond!"

photos: noah's eyes- i stole them off ashley's facebook
mushrooms, that i forgot!

good riddance april! you were not yourself.  i'll give you a year to shape up and i'll meet you in fields of wildflowers where we both belong.  until then....

 good tidings may!

well, zander likes to pull photographs off my blog for his desktop at work.  so.. here ya go bud. 
basically, ender is donning a hobbit cape for a smorgasbord of a whimsy wedding and we are trying to keep up an appearance with him so he'll include us in his entourage. 
*photo by a lovely lass called Charity Maurer :)