We got out most of the Christmas decorations this weekend. Wish I had some photos, but I don't. Here are some from our no-snow day on Thursday, though.

Allison's birthday

Poor Allison, her birthday often falls on Thanksgiving, which is a hard day for someone who doesn't like turkey.

Mom's birthday at Saltgrass & Main Event

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The kids had fun just waiting for a lane, running around and acting crazy. Paloma kept score (her way) on the shuffleboard table while another family was playing (yikes!!).

Today I missed my first class (thanks, Kelly!) to see and videotape Carmen's Spanish Immersion program and David made it too, so we orchestrated a four-camera shoot like we did for her Kindergarten program. Unfortunately I was sitting between Kindergarteners on the floor with my tripod and every kid around me kept bumping it or playing with the strap, their velcro fasteners on their shoes, etc. Should be GREAT video. Jackie brought Gabe & Paloma.

Tonight they performed again for the parents. David, Dad & I shot video (along with a stationary camera in back and another dad shooting the peanut gallery). Mom had Gabe & Paloma this time and said Paloma clapped at every opportunity. Afterwards she walked around in her squeaky shoes and tried to climb on the stage (it did look like fun!).


The first part was a play (Carmen was a sailor on Christopher Columbus' ship)


followed by songs (they dressed as mice to sing Susanita)



and ending with the 1st graders as Meadow Creek Mariachi. Her friend Serena was the singer. Now Carmen wants to learn some mariachi songs to sing in Spanish. So there's a gift idea! Mariachi karaoke, anyone? Or maybe Canciones de mi Padre? I've always wanted to get those CDs, and now I have an excuse.

It was really sweet when Gabe took Carmen a bouquet of Mexican paper flowers after the program was over, but I missed the shot when another parent stepped in front of me.

Here's Paloma trying to get on the stage after it ended!


When I got home, I kept thinking, next year, we could do such & such... crazy!

The teachers & kids pulled it off and we were very pleased.

In the three years we've had kids in preschool, this is the first time I've made it to a Pow Wow. It wasn't exactly P.C. since they were using the term "indian" and lots of ululation) but it looked like the kids had a blast. Here's Gabe, a.k.a. Wise Owl.
I got to sneak away during my essay-grading time to see him.

Nanny would have been 99 today, but she died two years ago in December. Grandmommie's birthday was a month from today. I miss them both.

I don't like Tuesdays. I know it's Mondays for most people, but for me it's Tuesdays. We have department meetings during lunch so I never even leave my hall, and that makes for a really long day. Then it's a mad dash after school to try to get dinner in before Carmen's 6 o'clock piano lesson. Tonight we also had to go to the library (with overdue stuff from yesterday). So we didn't get dinner in before the lesson, which meant we were running late towards bedtime. During dinner, Carmen spilled her milk for the second night in a row, then Gabe spilled a little of his. Just a general comedy of errors, which I guess lifted my mood a little.

Then after dinner I heard Carmen playing, among other things, We Are the Dinosaurs, Fur Elise and Doo Wah Ditty on the piano. When it was time to go upstairs to get ready for bed, she was working her way through a Mary Poppins book that was mine a long, long time ago. (She'd already picked out Stay Awake before we found it. Tonight she was amazing me with Chim Chim Cheree.)

While I was in the laundry room, I heard David tell Gabriel to take the footstool back to the laundry room. "I can't," replied Gabe. "It's the candy stool!" (He had it positioned near the bucketfuls of candy we ended up with after Halloween.) I had to stop what I was doing and take this picture.


And a story for Paloma: Sunday morning she woke David up, climbing on his chest and pulling on his shirt, saying, "Nana! Nana!" (meaning, "Feeeeeeed me, Daddy!) David almost always lets me sleep in on weekends while he feeds the kids, which I wholeheartedly appreciate.

My own story for the day has to be about making pralines for tomorrow: it's an essay-grading day and we're having a taco salad lunch with everybody bringing different things. I signed up to bring pralines since I haven't made them in a year. Each time I make them (with Grandmommie's recipe), it's an adventure. I've messed them up every possible way. Tonight was a new way. I forgot to put salt on the wax paper before I spread out the liquid pralines, so they stuck to the cabinet. When I tried to pull them up, they crumbled to smithereens. Lots of wax paper & sugar was stuck to the countertop. I had to use a spatula to get it all off and it took me a long time. Why did I sign up to make these on a school night???

I don't know if these are an acquired taste or not, but I have acquired them every chance I could since I was a child. Here is what they are supposed to look like: (I happened to have the camera out after the "candy stool" comment. But even when they look like they're supposed to, they wouldn't win any beauty pageants!)


If you're still reading, you're invited to Carmen's Spanish Celebration on Thursday. It's a play (she has a speaking part as a sailor on I think Christopher Columbus' ship!) with a few songs and poems thrown in for good measure. Her class is singing "Susanita Tiene Un Raton". Don't worry if you can't make it; we will record it. There is a morning performance for the school at 8:30 and a night performance (not sure what time!). Also, she's probably going to be in a Christmas piano recital soon--either December 9 or 16. Nevermind that today was her first lesson with the Christmas book! I'd say she's obsessed except she's the same way with drawing, writing, and almost as fond as reading.

Picture of the three kids (one is sitting on a pumpkin, although you can't see it!)

Last night I saw the biggest grin in my rear view mirror I could ever hope to see. I sure wish I had a photo of it. I suggested going out specifically to buy the Pixar movie Cars.

Just as we had to see Cars the week it came out, we had to buy the DVD the week it came out (this week). We had intended it for a Christmas gift, but I changed my mind yesterday.

On Tuesday night, Gabriel told me his throat hurt. We got out the flashlight and I looked, and sure enough, it was red. But since he started playing with the flashlight, I figured it must not be too bad.

On Wednesday, Jackie brought the kids to me at school; I had decided to take them to our pep rally because it was later in the day than usual (so Carmen wouldn't have to miss anything to come). (Thanks for the picture, Charis!) After the pep rally, I had to stay late getting ready for my substitute so I could go to a workshop on Thursday. The kids hung out in my classroom for two hours. But Gabriel wasn't himself.



We tried to go to the Cotton Patch for dinner because it's usually fast, but because it was almost 7 PM, (an hour past dinnertime) there was a wait, so we ended up at Railhead getting our clothes all stinky with smoke, reminding ourselves why we usually drive through for Railhead, swearing we wouldn't take the kids back in there. While we were eating, a guy walking through from the bar side with a schooner in hand fell and although he immediately was talking and responding to those attending to him, he didn't get up; the table behind me called 9-1-1 when he seemed to have a seizure. Soon a fire truck and an ambulance had blocked us in to our parking spot, so the kids were left to watch the scene after they'd finished eating.

We were running pretty late for our bedtime rituals, but I did manage to give Gabriel some Advil for his throat, which he was still complaining about.

During the night, he cried out in pain. When I went to check on him, he wouldn't talk. He was wide awake, but would only answer by shaking his head yes or no to my questions. He was trying not to swallow. I gave him a sore throat strip (like those mints, a strip you put on your tongue) and Tylenol. He went back to sleep. A little while later, he was crying again. This time I gave him a Fruit Breezer (thank goodness we had something besides Halls, which he would not have taken). He was up at 6, asking, "Is it morning yet?"

David called the doctor when the office opened at 8. Jackie took him at 11:30 and found out it was strep. Dr. Santesteban said it looked awful. But David immediately got his prescription filled and Gabe was already feeling better when I got home yesterday.

Gabriel has almost never been sick. This was his first course of antibiotics ever! I felt so horrible about blowing off his initial pain, I attempted to assuage my guilt by giving him the DVD of Cars early.

It took forever to get to Best Buy in traffic, but I knew it was worth the trouble because the smile in my rear view mirror told me I was forgiven.

Where does the time go???

For a while, I didn't post because I didn't know how to start again after Sept. 11. Everything I had to share seemed so trivial in comparison.

When Paloma started really walking, I didn't really get good pictures, and now she's all over the place.

I haven't been on the computer at home as much lately because Paloma's not nursing as much (and that seems to be my only excuse to sit down around here!).

Furthermore, my screen time has been consumed by myspace and facebook lately. I joined myspace in February when Jordan, my former student, died. I did more with it this past summer. I learned about facebook from my Aunt Beverly (she told me her kids used it when I was helping her set up her blog). I've found some cousins, old friends and former students, so I've been connecting, just not here. I was feeling like no one read the blog anyway, but I've heard from a few of you, so now I know otherwise.

So I apologize to anyone I disappointed!

I want to get back to blogging, at least for posterity, since I still haven't filled out a baby book for any of the kids--at least we'll have this someday.

All the time we're telling Carmen and Gabe things like, when you were this (Paloma's) age, you were such a carnivore... liked to stand up and play in the bathtub, etc.

I was such a freak; I didn't write in their baby books because #1, there was no free time, and #2, I was afraid to "mess them up". Arrrgghh! So dumb.

And I might as well mention, sometimes because I'm an English teacher, I feel like everything I write has to be worthy of my profession to be posted here. But the reality is, this is first-draft stuff. The polished piece I wrote this summer never even made it to the blog. I thought of trying to publish it, but it was never more than a thought.

Yesterday I attended a writing teachers' workshop in Dallas that was fantastic. I was hoping I'd write something to put here. The presenter, Gretchen Bernabei, had us writing, but I'm not a fast writer. My writing process requires percolation.

It's too bad, because I constantly see and hear things that make me want to write. Sometimes, though not as often as I'd like, I write when my students are writing. But that stuff never makes it out of my classroom.

Too bad, because sometimes we write about things like Walden, where Thoreau wrote about sucking the marrow out of life, planning to report whether he found it to be mean or, "if it were sublime, to know it by experience, and be able to give a true account of it."

Life IS sublime, I am happy to report, and I go to sleep most nights with a prayer of thanks for the family that surrounds me and the life I'm blessed to lead.