Growing Up on the Conderosa

 

My 9 year old little girl, my baby, asked for some kind of Bowie knife with a GUT HOOK for Christmas!! EEEKKK! How does she even know what a gut hook is? I mean, I know the answer to that question: It's all these people that live in this house! It's just wrong on so many levels!! What happened to dolls and tea sets??? 

 

Thankfully, the supervision required for the use of the above mentioned item falls not under my jurisdiction, but under Kregg's. In fact, anything in that general category, or remotely resembling it, immediately gets deferred to Daddy. 

 

The kids have taken to shooting dove with their BB guns (during dove season, of course). I make them clean them outside because I don't want to even know it is going on. The other day I saw Ben walking through the kitchen with something in his hand. It was one of those "mom moments" and I just knew I should ask what he was doing. He had "parts"! I asked him why on earth he was carrying them around in the kitchen. He told me the hoses were frozen up outside and he had come inside to clean his latest victim in the bathroom sink!! I just about came unglued! New rule: No dove hunting when the hoses are frozen!!!! Silly me!  After being a mom for 23 years, you would think I would have thought of that one. But, oddly enough, it had never come up before. Wonder what else I haven't thought of . . .

 

As mentioned in a previous post, after years of residing with revolting reptiles we finally got rid of every last one. I should have known it was too good to last. And then it happened. Elizabeth found a hatchling desert kingsnake by the back porch and here we go again. 

 

She had been keeping it in a warm closet during the cold months (where I couldn't see it all the time). To my horror, she recently informed me that it has escaped. Yes, it is loose somewhere in my house at this very moment! What is wrong with these people??

 

To make matters worse, you should see the stuff they stick in my big freezer. There have been times when I just refused to open it because I knew what was inside. It's just not okay to look in the freezer to retrieve something for dinner and have something looking back at you! I have tried to make sure that certain shelves are reserved only for food, but that doesn't always work. Over the years they have stored everything from snakes (because they might want to perform an autopsy), to all shapes and sizes of "mousecicles" (for the snakes that were still alive), to an owl that had been hit by a car, to every possible part of deer, elk, birds, etc. 

 

Because of all the kids' pets and projects, the Conderosa* has witnessed the demise of many a critter that are now laid to rest in the back yard. In the future, some archeological dig is going to uncover the remains and wonder what on earth happened here. We have buried barbados, lambs, goats, turkeys, dogs, cats, snakes, rabbits, chickens, turtles, lizards, and an owl. I'm sure I have left something off the list. My kids can put "grave digger" on their resumes. 

 

To look at us, you would think we were just a normal, average family. And you would be wrong. We have lots of skeletons in our closet, I mean our yard. 

 

And I wouldn't have it any other way!!

 

*For those of you who are too young, there was a western on television during my childhood called Bonanza. The ranch owned by the Cartwright's on the show was named the Ponderosa 

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=mjdRgBAY278&feature=related