Reading & writing

I don't know if I've mentioned that Paloma loooooves to read and write. She's pretended to read herself a book for months, but tonight I noticed her saying an actual sentence from Another Monster at the End of This Book: Elmo, she said pointing at him, "Turn the page please!" (Which is one of the things Elmo says.)

She also loves to draw and write on everything. So she's following in her sister's footsteps.

The thing Carmen has been in trouble for the most is writing on things that aren't paper: furniture, walls, picture frames, gifts (no, not wrapping paper, the actual gift). We found a whole sentence on her dresser last year: Be a good example to Gabriel. Yeah, great example.

The kids at Carmen's school celebrated 100th day by dressing up as 100-year-olds. Carmen said she got to be on the announcements that day. She dressed up pretty much the same as she did last year for 1ooth day.

Gigi went on a cruise with her Bunko friends, so we hardly knew what to do with ourselves for a couple of Sundays. I decided to have everyone over for lunch the first Sunday, but Mom didn't want us to do anything on Amy's birthday (the second Sunday), because she didn't want to miss it!

I was too busy to take pictures, but we did the Chicken Cacciatore thing again. I did have to get a shot of Zoe & her Zoe outfit and purse, though!

Nesha & the kids were locked out one day, so when I got home, everyone was at our house. What fun!

We celebrated Martha's birthday on Sunday afternoon.

The picture of Irma with the calendar is from when she asked, "Did any of you call Mark for his birthday?"

"What!?! When was his birthday?!?" asked everyone.

She went to last year's calendar which was rubber-banded together to double-check. She had written it on the wrong day on purpose last year--a couple of days early so she'd remember to send a card in time. Only she never got around to transferring her calendar info!

So we made a conference call to Mark who had just returned from a gig in Israel.

When we were leaving Abuela & Abuelo's house, Gabriel asked, "Why is there a 'no ants' sign in that yard?"

Do you have any friends you miss so much you'd buy tickets to see them?

Dana & I worked together for 7 years, but not for the past 3, so I've seen her much less than I'd like to.

So, when she called us on Christmas, she told me her brother, who has his own show in Branson, was going to be bringing the show to town (in Garland). I immediately made plans to take the whole family.

Her brother is Clay Cooper, and we all enjoyed the show. Dana's kids made an appearance in the show, too, and they were great! Here's Elaina, Emily & Tommy (with their cousin) singing.

I'm also including one of Clay with his 3 year old son who had a couple of parts in the show as well.

Unfortunately I don't seem to have taken one of Dana! She was working the show, at the ticket counter, etc. Oops!

The Snowy Day

I was shocked when the telephone rang with the news of the SNOW DAY! At work, we have a calling tree in case of bad weather, so I got the news from a colleague at 6:45. I probably would have known sooner if I'd watched the news the night before or when my alarm (on my t.v.) came on that morning, but I hadn't; I wasn't expecting it at all!

It was so cold out the day before that I dreaded getting out in the weather, but of course the kids wanted and deserved a chance to get out and play in the snow. They had a blast. David & Gabe had a small snowball fight, but Gabriel seemed a little shocked when David hit him with a snowball. Next, we began making a snow baby since there wasn't a whole lot of snow on the ground.




Paloma wanted to be held because she apparently didn't like the way the galoshes felt, plus when she fell, she was not able to upright herself in them. I agreed, enough is enough, and we went inside and gathered things for the snow baby. The other two kids did not ever want to come in!

I had big plans for this MLK Day weekend. Since this is the first time in 6 years that I'm not in charge of a yearbook, I was looking forward to Celebrating a Meaningful MLK Jr. Day. I wanted to take the kids to the parade, but instead, it was cancelled due to the weather.

Besides it being canceled, it would have been difficult anyway because David spent the entire weekend working due to the weather. He was on every radio station and t.v. channel on seemingly every broadcast.

(Tangent: did you know you can spell "canceled" "c-a-n-c-e-l-l-e-d", and either way is correct? Weird, this language of ours. David promises me this is true since he uses that word all the time in his job. I noticed this when I used spellcheck on this post and it only tagged "MLK". I had spelled it both ways above because I couldn't decide which was right. I wondered why neither spelling looked weird to me.)


Anyway, during his interviews, I was trying to keep the kids entertained and get the laundry done. (Recently we moved our old iMac, Ruby, to the kitchen desk, where she's getting a lot more action as the kids' computer. We held off on computer skills and games for a long time, but that has quickly become one of their favorite activities.)



Unfortunately, our washer picked one of the coldest, wettest days of the year to dump a ton of rusty water on our laundry room floor. It was not the first time it happened, but it was the final straw. We had too much laundry to wait until the weather cleared up!



So we called lucky Uncle Brian (not Dad because I thought it too dangerous for 'Ol Blue!) and he & David took his truck to get us a new washer at Home Depot. While they were in the parking lot, David did another interview via Blackberry. (Thanks again, Brian!)


Anyway, I didn't end up doing much for MLK day except a little research and making a compilation of songs in iTunes:
U2's "MLK"
and "In the Name of Love",
Stevie Wonder's "Happy Birthday",
and Moodswings' "Spiritual High (part 3)".



Did you know there's a campaign to make the MLK day a day of service instead of a day off?

I was also working on a playlist of Vietnam songs to go with a short story in the curriculum I teach, but that is a post for another day.

Lauren turns 15

I can hardly believe our little Lala is 15!
We celebrated at Mom's for the usual Sunday lunch after church, but we also went out to dinner at Mi Cocina in Southlake. Those were the only reasons the kids & I left home for the whole 3 day weekend because it was sooooo cold!

Paloma fell asleep on the way there and slept all the way until I'd finished my dinner (yummy Ernie's Chicken: a marinated chicken breast grilled and then topped with this decadent Queso con Crema sauce).