dirt don't hurt

A break from the kids! Hiking in Tucson, Arizona, sans kids. A nice getaway for my husband and I, and as much as we enjoy our kids, we don't like dragging them past the second mile on the trail. Because of the summer heat, we left as soon as the coffee shop opened. It was a wonderful reminder of how spectacular the outdoors are in the morning, something that is exceptionally hard to do with our kids. They are more of the "late night campfire" type, not the "let's eat breakfast on the trail" type. Maybe someday I'll wake them up extra early just to let them experience it. Of course, that would mean I would have to get up, too. BRAIN FOOD: The sagauro catci, like the one I'm standing in front of, starts growing "arms" when it is about 15 feet tall and about 75 years old. Kind of makes my 30-year-old body feel young!

A break from the kids! Hiking in Tucson, Arizona, sans kids. A nice getaway for my husband and I, and as much as we enjoy our kids, we don't like dragging them past the second mile on the trail. Because of the summer heat, we left as soon as the coffee shop opened. It was a wonderful reminder of how spectacular the outdoors are in the morning, something that is exceptionally hard to do with our kids. They are more of the "late night campfire" type, not the "let's eat breakfast on the trail" type. Maybe someday I'll wake them up extra early just to let them experience it. Of course, that would mean I would have to get up, too. BRAIN FOOD: The sagauro catci, like the one I'm standing in front of, starts growing "arms" when it is about 15 feet tall and about 75 years old. Kind of makes my 30-year-old body feel young!

By Karrie McAllister My son was attacked this week. His tiny body, weighing in at a mighty 32 pounds was no match for what he was up against. It took just a few short minutes of his innocence, and he’s got battle scars all over his forehead, arms, and legs. I have to apply medication constantly. Anti-itch, medication, that is. Mosquitoes. He’s got a bite the size of Rhode Island that looks like a second brain growing above his right eye, and an unknowing person might swear that he’s got the chicken pox. Meanwhile, despite the fact that I am equipped with a super-sensitive poison ivy radar and can spot the three-leaved foe faster than you can say “Calamine Lotion,” I somehow ended up with a cute late-summer rash on my legs. Keeping all of these things in mind, it is no surprise that my family and I have taken to chanting and cheering, “WE WANT FALL!” We love fall around here. It is, by far, our favorite season. We love it all: the leaf raking, the football games, the apple cider, pumpki

By Karrie McAllister I know. I do the same thing. I see a woman that I know is expecting, and I ask the same thing: “How are you feeling?” It is a gut reaction, like asking someone, “how are you?” even though they’ll tell you the same answer no matter how they really are. “Fine.” “Good.” Something like that. But now, as my own abdomen grows to unrealistic proportions, I am finally having to deal with the question, “how are you feeling?” on a daily basis. My family asks me. My husband asks me. Neighbors ask me. Friends ask me. Strangers ask me. And I tell them the same thing. “Oh, pretty good.” And it’s a big, fat lie. Like most other pregnant women, although they’ll never tell you otherwise, I’ve really felt better in my life. Wanna know how I’m really feeling? I feel big. My clothes are in constant limbo. In my early pregnancy, maternity clothes were far too large to wear, and I promise that I spent entire days thinking “I look like I’m wearing a tablecloth...with a dust

By Karrie McAllister I don’t always give my husband credit for his supreme parenting skills. In fact, most of the time I’m rolling my eyes and mumbling things under my breath when he oversteps the boundaries I’ve worked so hard to set. Being the person who is in charge of the children for the majority of the day, I tend to make the majority of the rules and do the majority of the disciplining. And when he comes trotting home from work and tells the children they are allowed to do something they I normally don’t let them do, it not only makes me feel small, but it makes me feel like the wicked stepmother. But he has recently stumbled upon the most glorious parenting tactic that I have ever seen. And judging by the success we’ve been having, I dare say it was quite a stroke of genius. Like most families, our meal times come with our fair share of struggle. We’ve got picky eaters. One won’t eat vegetables, one won’t eat meat. One would rather sit there and talk about absolutely nothi

***This article can be found at www.momwriterslitmag.com/SmallTownSoup.htm beginning September 24, 2007! Please visit!!! ***

By Karrie McAllister This week I will send my oldest child to kindergarten. We have been preparing for weeks for this next step in her academic career, when I take the baby bird I have been raising and grooming and teaching and drop her out of the nest and into the care of someone I have never met, and then trust that person to love my child half as much as I do. But back to the preparing. It seems that being a first-time school-mom should come with some sort of handbook. I have been living my life for the past few weeks trying blindly to prepare my daughter for her first year in school. I just want to make very certain that my kid has a great beginning experience in school, and very, very certain that if she doesn’t, it wasn’t because I messed up or forgot anything. So we prepare. First task: the infamous school supply list. I’ve been carrying this list around in my wallet all summer so that I wouldn’t lose it. Folded and crinkled like an old receipt, I studied it long and hard be