A Belated Birthday Present For John

John, because you're so far away, we couldn't really send you anything but our best wishes for your birthday. But then we went to Vegas Sunday to return library books and get Darcy out among people after being cooped up for most of the week with a cold. She gets to choose the park if we go to town without too many errands and this time, she chose the "cake shop park", which is a small, but very nice playground in the middle of an outdoor mall that pretends to be a town center.

Along with a few cute buildings with kitchens, a cake shop, and other furnished rooms, it has a astroturf-walled maze, and a splash pad. The municipal parks in Las Vegas all turn their splash pads off at the end of September and I assumed this one would be off, too. It was when we first got there. And then, it wasn't. I usually have a back-up outfit for Darcy when we go to town, so we didn't fight too hard when she made a bee-line for the water. She had a lot of fun and got SOAKED. But that's not your present, John. I'm just stalling for dramatic purposes. The playground is near the (also astro-turfed) town square where they have live music and other events. Yesterday morning, the event led us to think of a new career path for you.

Whenever you've talked about yoga, the first thing that stands right out is just how darn competitive yoga is. You're always talking about trying to out-yoga all the other yoga-people you know. (Or wait ... is it that I've never heard you talk about yoga as competition?? That would really kill this whole gift-idea.)

The event taking place was the Nevada Regional competition for the USA Yoga Championships. Yes! It was competitive yoga! Yoga as an athletic sport, brought to you by the people who are petitioning for yoga to be added to the Olympics in 2016. So we figured that if the whole travel-the-world-teaching-yoga business dries up, maybe you could start competing to represent our nation at the Olympics. I guess there must not be any prize money involved if they're calling it an amateur sport, but otherwise, I was thinking that it could finance your travels for a while, too.

The people under the red tent were the judges. Each competitor had to do a set series of poses following their introduction. In between the men's and women's competition they had a yoga fashion show. It was all very commercial; again, just what I think of when you talk about your yoga experiences.

According to their rules, you apparently have to do yoga half-naked, which I've never noticed you doing in the photos of your classes. In fact, the more I think about it, maybe this isn't the perfect career for you after all. I guess I'm going to lose the "which sister-in-law got you the best birthday present" competition, huh?





(Too bad, 'cause from what I saw, you could kick their tushies. Then I could brag that my brother-in-law was the USA yoga champion!)

Retrospective, Part IV (The Final Installment)

Here it is, the final installment of the Darcy Retrospective. These stray from the preserve a bit more than the last. My next series will be strictly of the preserve as we get closer to our move date, but enjoy these snaps of our girl in the meantime...

Darcy hides in a rockshelter in Quail Basin.

There were two of these cute snaps from the rehearsal dinner. Now you get the other one.

You didn't think you'd get out of this retrospective without Orville, did you?

Darcy and Liana show off Thomas-themed tattoos in North Carolina.

Darcy and Michael climb more rocks on the edge of the Granite Mountains.

Darcy rides the Jungle Cruise at Disneyland.

Darcy's first baseball game, complete with first Cracker Jacks.

Retrospective, Part III

No Darcy, but a great sunset as viewed to the east of Cima House.

Darcy in the snow at Cima.

A trip to the Quiet Canyon wouldn't be complete without a stop at the Echo Place.

My laundry line! I'm going to miss it so much! Darcy loves to play in the blowing laundry.

Oh, those weird, alien Joshua tree flowers. This year, found only at Cima House!!

The Cross In A Box On A Rock Goes To The Supreme Court

Here's Darcy climbing on the rocks across the road from the parking lot for the Teutonia Peak trail, one of the few official, maintained trails in Mojave National Preserve. The rocks and the parking lot are right on the side of Cima Road and the rocks -- and the box on top of them -- are clearly visible from the road in both directions and from the trail itself. The box covers up a cross that has been the center of a legal debate for a decade or more. The cross is claimed as a veterans' memorial by regional veterans' groups, but has been challenged as violating the separation of church and state because it is on public land, Mojave National Preserve to be exact.
A judge ordered the cross covered with the box while its fate is decided in court.

Today, the Supreme Court heard arguments about the Mojave cross. The article continues the myth that this is in a "remote" part of the preserve, which is far from the truth. It is 10 or 11 miles from the intersection with Interstate 15, on a paved road. Considering how few paved roads there are in the preserve and how much of the preserve requires miles of driving on dirt roads, this is hardly a remote part of the park. Mojave National Preserve is 1.6 million acres of land, with only three paved roads entering from the northern side. The cross is about 30 feet from one of three ways people can enter the park from a major interstate.

I have some sympathy for veterans who have visited the cross as a memorial over the decades and I could get behind a compromise solution that allowed some other kind of memorial (a flat plaque, for example) to be placed in the same spot. Without the cross. I've driven past the rocks when someone had (illegally) removed/destroyed the box. It's out of place in the middle of a national park property, especially because so much of the land around it is federally designated wilderness. It is a jarring sight and it is very visible from a distance, with or without the box.

I do hope that the Supreme Court decides that the cross be removed, both because I think it shouldn't be there and because of the larger question of religious symbols on public lands.

If you have the stomach for it, there's a video on YouTube about the cross from the "other side" of the argument. It's blatant propaganda as far as I'm concerned because it works very hard to make it seem like you have to drive across miles of salt flats and dirt roads to get to the cross (so how could anyone be offended by it?!), which couldn't be farther from the truth. It also carefully avoids mentioning Mojave National Preserve, describing the land only as "federal" public lands.

Let me just add that Michael is not going to see this post before it goes up on the blog. As an employee of the preserve, he has to be more careful with his opinion than I do with mine. My opinion does not represent Michael or any other employee of Mojave National Preserve.

Retrospective, Part II

Along with a retrospective of Darcy, the next two posts will be a tribute (mostly) to Mojave National Preserve. In a week, assuming that the movers actually come when we think they will, we'll be driving north to our new park. Enjoy the scenery as well as our ever-growing girl!

Early spring flowers, Razor Road (technically, just outside the Preserve).

Darcy's first trip to the "Quiet Canyon", officially named Banshee Canyon.

An early rock-climbing expedition off the Teutonia Peak trail.

On the trail to Eagle Rocks in the Midhills region.

Not at Mojave, but a classic camping breakfast on Darcy's first camping trip.

Darcy's first visit to Yosemite. Can't leave this out!

Darcy-as-butterfly hugging a Joshua tree near the old corral on Morningstar Mine Road.

Pause For A Joke

Darcy knows one joke. It comes from a Baby Einstein video friends gave us and goes like this:

Why did the bee go to the doctor?

Because he had hives!

She tells it without a good sense of comedic timing, but she's getting better. At dinner tonight (made much more delicious by a gift of roasted Hatch chiles gifted to us this morning), jokes came up and I prompted her to tell her joke. She did. And then did again. And again. And made us tell it to her. To get out of this rut, Michael searched his brain for a toddler-appropriate joke. He found one and posed the question to Darcy.

[Before I tell the joke (Darcy's way), I need to describe a page of her ABCs de Babar book. If one spoke French, each page is illustrated with many things that start with the letter for that page. On the "N" page, there aren't many (politically correct) words that start with N in English. It's supposed to be all about swimming (nager). But for us English speakers, there's a nest and there are some naked elephants.]

So, Michael asked, "Why did all the elephants decide to go swimming?"

And Darcy answered, "Because they were naked!"

Post One Hundred: A Retrospective

Our blog will reach the grand total of one hundred posts when I hit "Publish Post" this time around. I thought I'd give you a little retrospective of Darcy. It's going to take a while to choose pictures, but I'm going to work on it off and on today in between wiping Darcy's nose, which is trying to run right off her face this morning. She found a cold while we were among people.

Ok, here's the first year plus a month or two. It was hard to choose because digital cameras let you take way too many photos and keep them in an easy-to-browse format! I'll do the next two years (that's right, she'll be three in just over a month!!) later because apparently a girl with a cold can only nap for twenty minutes at a time.

The First Hours: With Betty (Granny Mimi) in the birthing room.

First Christmas: Asleep on top of her car seat fleece in New York.

First Playdate: With Nia, in King Salmon.

First "Interactive" Play: With cousin Liana in North Carolina.

First Time In Play Center (King Salmon)

First Car: And with it, first independence! (In Baker.)