Allison's family

I love this picture!

Tiffany, Fiona & Piper's visit
(David and Carmen were camping again)

Employee banquet

See Amy's blog for the stories...

Line by line translation…

How
Oscar
Died

Oscar
Oscar died.
I did not
get to meet
him. I wish
I got [to] talk
to him and
meet him.
Oscar used
to take my
father to
football games
and baseball
games. Oscar
died in the
hospital.


David's Tio Oscar died last Monday night after his first couple of weeks of chemotherapy for colon cancer. Oscar was his mom's youngest brother and her only sibling in town. David worked on the eulogy for him all week and the funeral, complete with mariachi, was yesterday in Garland. Carmen wrote this in Lety's journal during the service and Lety scanned and sent it today (thanks, Aunt Lety!).

I just want to actually write something that is dated correctly to explain that I've been publishing tonight a lot of drafts I'd saved on the correct dates... I am more concerned about dating entries correctly for Paloma's sake than for having the date they were published... so, there are things I updated today that go back to January. Sorry if this confuses anyone. I will be going back to add to and fix other ones this weekend if possible.

Last week, Paloma started saying "ba-ba" when anyone started to leave. We got it on video by sending Gabe & Carmen out the front door!

Also, this weekend in Austin, Paloma started waving with one hand. (Before, she was like one of those toys that you pull the string and its arms & legs fly up in unison!)

Tonight she's been seeming like she's trying to say Mama--I've clearly heard her say it twice tonight when she was looking at me, AND she also has started reacting when I come or go.

I have so much to say but I am very tired, so it will have to wait.

ILPC trip to Austin

I took 9 of my yearbook staffers to Austin for a journalism convention this weekend. We went with the Bell newspaper group and the Trinity newspaper and yearbook groups. It was a beautiful weekend and we had a good trip. My yearbook kids love my kids. I'd say we're going to miss them but I don't think we will. I think they'll still come around. I hope so, anyway.

That's my friend Charis with Paloma (she's the newspaper sponsor) and that's Keith calling me his term of endearment, "crackhead".

In front of the tower is the best group shot I could get for reasons that I'll not list here.

Thanks, everybody, for helping with Paloma on the trip! Who would've thought I could attend 6 sessions and the awards ceremony? And she never made a peep on the bus, either!









If you'd like to see more pictures from this trip, please go to
http://raideryearbook.blogspot.com/

My precious Paloma is SEVEN months old today and I am frustrated and angry about missing the last month! Where did it go? There was even a spring break in March and I didn't manage to post a picture?

I have some pictures. At some point, I am going to catch up.

Yeah, right. Why do I keep telling myself that? Believing that?

Partly, if not entirely, I blame my job. I told my principal I was quitting yearbook in late February, the day before transfer paperwork was due. A couple of weeks ago, I was grieving that decision and feeling sad to let it go, but events of the past week (having to redo documents for the plant that were corrupted, but facing obstacle after obstacle with our "technology" trying to get it done) have reassured me that I made the right decision. I just can't bear the thought of putting up this fight again... there is no light at the end of a tunnel... there is not even a tunnel. But I love my yearbook kids and the creative process, so it's still hard.

ok--
P.S. here are some pics, more to follow soon.
REALLY!

I had to take these pictures of Paloma in her Aggie onesie to innoculate her before we went to Austin! She was so happy to have Daddy home from Washington!

Last day in the pack-n-play--she stood up after I took these!

In the novel Beloved, Toni Morrison's protagonist refers to her baby as "crawling-already". I don't know why this story sticks with me, but partially because it was so awful. I was the first person to check the book out of the library at A&M... you know back when they stamped the paper in the back inside cover of the book? It had to be 1990 or before. Anyway, Beloved (the book, of course much better than the movie) is the story of Sethe, a former slave who kills one of her children to protect her from being taken back into slavery--and this character was based on a true story Morrison read about.

All of this to say, how is my baby girl crawling already? I have not been escaping from slavery, but I swear I feel like I have missed so much. She is really starting to be able to get around!

Maya's first birthday party