Carnaval

Rod and I celebrated his 35th birthday by going out to dinner with a couple of friends and then heading over to Carnaval. Carnaval is supposedly the biggest Brazilian celebration outside of Rio, and it was celebrating its 30th anniversary this year. We had a lot of fun dancing and people-watching. Some of the costumes are an excuse to get a little exhibitionist--but that's all I'll say, given that we've got a family blog happening here. One picture is with us at the house before heading out to dinner (Evelyn wanted to jump into the photo) and the other is at Carnaval. Nana watched the kids for us, so we stayed out late.

Celebrate Your Valentine's Breakfast With Us

Evelyn and Kenneth were having a conversation in the car today based on a song Evelyn was singing that had the phrase "Get that quarter back" in it. I have no idea if this is something she made up or if she heard it somewhere. Kenneth's personality is such that if he feels someone isn't 'getting it' he'll pipe in with clarifications. So we get something like this:

Kenneth: "Evelyn, do you even know what a quarterback is?"

Evelyn: "Yes. It's when you throw a quarter over your back."

Kenneth: "No that's not what that means. A quarterback is a guy in football who has a good hand at throwing."

Evelyn: "Well my song is about throwing a quarter over your back. You know when Mom says Chill Pill? You need to be a chill pill."

On a different note, I went to HEB after the kids went to bed. I am now debating doing all of my grocery shopping at night because it was uber-fast, despite all of the re-stocking boxes everywhere. At the end of one aisle was a display of all of the varieties of Quaker Oatmeal with a big sign that said "Celebrate Your Valentine's Breakfast with Us." Who on earth starts Valentine's Day with oatmeal? And even if they did, who would call it a celebration? Maybe I need a chill pill.

Can You Roll Your Tongue?

This picture is just terribly fuzzy, but it was the best I could do in about 10 attempts. Kenneth has the rare ability to triple roll his tongue! Most people can roll their tongue into a double roll (like a taco shell), but he can do one of those clover-like indentations where two sections indent creating 3 bumps. I am impressed. He is too. It is a trick that has apparently won much favor in the 3rd grade.

c/o 1993

Last Friday night a few of us from the class of 1993 met for a Happy Hour at El Gringo in Austin. Heather recommended it and it was a great spot. I do think we all pretty much look the same. Perhaps it is the blinded lens of my mind despite the undeniable fact that most of us in the picture are twice as old as a high school junior. Anyhow, it was fun, and Amy will try to round us up again in the summer. Go Tors!

R-E-S-P-E-C-T

So I was singing loudly along with Arethra Franklin when the song R-E-S-P-E-C-T came on the radio. I looked back at Kenneth and Evelyn, and Kenneth had a look on his face that clearly indicated that he did not appreciate me singing with such abandon. Evelyn was smiling and trying to sing with me. The age of embarrassment starts somewhere in the 8-9 yr range, I guess!

100 Sunflower Seeds

I don't mean to harp on the quick turn-around assignments, but today, Evelyn came home with a note that said Thursday is the 100th day of school, so each Kindergarten student must create a posterboard that has 100 items glued to it. No, I am not kidding. The idea is that you can do something educational with it as well, such as grouping 100 M&Ms by color, or spelling their name with 100 paperclips, etc. We will glue 100 sunflower seeds in patterns that create circles, squares, and other shapes. Sunflower seeds were the item of choice because I found some in my cabinet in large supply.

They've known for 98 days that Thursday will be the 100th day, and they waited till now to inform us of the project.

The Alphabet Parade

Maybe it's just me, but is it a little odd that teachers would continue with their weekly activity plan when there is only one night (because of ice storm days off) to inform parents that their child needed to create a letter "J" posterboard and accompanying starts-with-the-letter-J-items for the Friday morning Kindergarten Alphabet Parade? I would have postponed the parade to the following week. Oh well--Evelyn will bring a jack-in-the-box and wear her poster and we'll all call it successful.

5-Day Vacation?

We are on our 3rd day of being stuck in the house because of the Central Texas ice and snow storm that has hovered around us. No school tomorrow either. The kids are having a good time because we've played a lot of board games: Sorry, Boggle, Labyrinth, Go Fish. Their Nana has been with us this whole time, which has been tremendously helpful for Rod and I as we've navigated conference calls, etc. mixed in with the daily duties of being home.

This afternoon the ice changed to snow and the kids played outside a lot. I included an old picture of Evelyn and I in College Station from January 2002. My cuties.

Just a Figure of Speech

Evelyn has been surprising us more and more lately, as she is developing more grown-up ways of expressing herself. This is true for facial expressions, hand gestures, and verbal expressions. I see myself in her in so many ways. Tonight, Rod and I were talking and he said, in reference to one of my co-workers, "She knows you, but she doesn't know you." About two minutes later, Evelyn pipes in "Anyhow, Mom, it's just a figure of speech. She does know you, but she doesn't know you well."

Maybe it's just me, but that is pretty smart for a 5 year old to (1) know generically what a figure of speech means, then refer to it, and (2) explain what that particular figure of speech means.

Visit from the Ontiveros Family

This weekend flew by. We had a quick visit from Aixa and Tracy on Friday night (they brought something up from Houston for Rod). Then, on Saturday, April, Cesar and Noah visited for about a day and a half. Noah liked being around Kenneth and Evelyn and April says that ours was the first non-home bathtub in which he hadn't freaked out. He must like us! Noah spent an inordinate amount of his play time "slicing" wooden vegetables that were velcroed together. The other major toy adventure was cracking up at the jack-in-the-box and trying to slice the jack's head off with the wooden vegetable knife. LOL. We ended our visit at Hula Hut, where Rod felt discriminated against because of his beard growth. He promptly shaved it later that day.

The rest of Sunday was spent pulling together Kenneth's Science Fair project, which was a take on "will it float?". The hypothesis was that there were age and gender differences in being able to predict whether 3 different things would float. The objects were a bag of frozen peas, a pushpin, and a rubber ball. He did the majority of the thought processes himself, including percentage calculations in his head (e.g. 1 of 4 = 25%, 2 of 6=33%, etc.). We used Excel for the more diffcult ones, like 7 of 9. Anyhow, his project looks great and he'll be turning it in tomorrow. 'm pretty impressed with him.

Serious Face Grown Up

The kids got their own photo albums for Christmas and we've been going through our enormous collection of digital photos so that they can pick some to begin their books. In this process, I ran across a couple of Kenneth that made me smile. When he was 2, we used to ask him to do his "serious face." It always made us laugh and we got a picture of it at that time. Sometime this past summer, we caught another photo of him with a serious face, so I thought I'd post them together.

Happy New Year!

We've had a fun couple of days visting with Rod's Dad and Linda. They have travelled to TX to visit us and Gwen, who is in Dallas visiting Jeff's parents. Then they will go to Kerrville and check on their land--they are building a house out there and are finalizing architectural drawings. They were able to watch the kids last night so Rod and I could go out downtown for New Year's Eve. We first stopped at a place called Cru, where you can get a 'flight' of wine (2 oz. samples in trios) and just people-watched and chatted. We had a fun time. The picture was taken by Rod--I think he did a pretty good job considering he was holding it out in front of us.

They've Messed with the Wrong Girl

Christmas morning was spent at home, just with our immediate family. We leisurely spent the morning opening a few presents and of course, the best ones were things that the kids had picked out for us or had wrapped themselves. Example: Evelyn created her own wrapping paper by coloring a piece of white paper with a design and used it to wrap and tape a candy cane to death for me. She even created her own miniature tag with "TO MOM LOVE EVELYN" on it. Kenneth had chosen a chocolate-scented candle at Target with his Nana because he knew I would love it. I could not be more blessed. Later that day we headed over to my Mom and Dad's house and met up with them and Elizabeth's family for a dinner. The cousins always enjoy each other.

Today, I took the kids to the Texas Memorial Museum, which, despite its name, is somewhat of a natural history museum. The best thing about it is that it's free! The museum had several exhibits specific to Texas natural history, which made it more interesting for the kids. For example, we saw a huge underwater dinosaur skeleton that was found in the Austin area. Just neat. I should have brought my camera and am seriously regretting that I didn't.

On a different note, I noticed water leaking out of our water softener and when Rod got home tonight he confirmed that it was indeed broken--just a rubber piece on the inside so hopefully it's easy to find a replacement piece. All of the household water has to run through the softener (at least how ours is set up) so we had to turn off the main water source to the house to avoid continued leakage. I'll have to take the kids out first thing in the morning until it's fixed. We have people coming over for dinner on Friday so we need a solution ASAP!

Evelyn was outside with me briefly this evening when we went to get the mail and we saw our neighbor with several of her age-11 friends waiting for a pizza guy to deliver pizzas for a birthday party. One of the girls in the group must have said something like 'that girl is staring at us -- that's weird' because Evelyn heard it (she does not miss anything). I'm sure they were just being 11-year olds in herd form, but Evelyn has not experienced that yet. When we got inside she told me what she had heard and added "Mom. When I heard that girl say that, I just thought in my mind 'they've messed with the wrong girl.'"

Getting Ready for Christmas

Last night we got back from a nice trip to Houston to visit Rod's family. We saw his Mom and Tracy, Rod's grandmother, Scott and Lucy, and Gwen's family was visiting as an added bonus. Tatum is the most independent child I have ever met. Jeff had been on deployment for 7 months, so he just got back to his family and you can tell he's enjoying it.

We spent tonight back in P-ville getting ready for Christmas. The kids and I baked roll-out cookies and they decorated them. In contrast to the usual angels, crosses, Christmas trees, etc., Evelyn made a cookie snake for Santa "because Santa would appreciate that." She was actually very creative with the snake design.

We've been listening to old Christmas records that I listened to with my family when I was growing up. They really are much better than most of the currently available music fare, such as Mariah Carey's blah blah annoying songs.

Have a fabulous Christmas with your family and friends!

Purse Returned!

In a wonderful turn of events, someone found my purse on the street in Rod's Mom's neighborhood and tracked us down! Yea!

MIssing Purse

If you have located my purse (lost in Houston area) and found this site via my driver's license, please call me at 512-517-3746. Thank you!

Vacation Starts!

The past few days have been great. We hosted our neighborhood Christmas party and had a great time. Basically, everybody congregated in the kitchen the whole time and we laughed about suburban incidents.

We saw Tiffani, Jim, and Abby on their way back from a family trip to San Antonio. We met at Central Market, and Fred, Jed, Adrian, and Nate joined us as well. Later that night we went to the Zilker Park Trail of Lights. It was busy, but it was very fun. Most of the displays were pretty traditional, but there was one that had some kind of bastardized Jetson's theme with Santa in the flying car. Not sure where that came from. Supposedly Dell sponsored that display. Someone thought it was a good idea.

I went into work today, but now I'm on vacation till 1/2/07. Sometime over the break we have to work on Kenneth's Science Fair project. I have to admit that I hated Science Fair while in school, but Ken had a great idea so this one should be pretty fun--it's a take on 'Will it Float?'.

Evelyn lost her 2nd tooth tonight. She is quite excited. Nana was here to witness it!

The 3rd Grade Holiday Concert

Kenneth was in a 3rd grade Holiday Concert this evening. The picture is pretty bad, but it was the best I could do, given the seating and lighting circumstances. He was great! He had a speaking part (brief as it was) and sounded very natural, unlike many of the other kids. (Bragging Mom moment--sorry.) We heard songs about Christmas, Hannukah, Kwaanza, and threw in a Feliz Navidad. The kids were really great and were clearly enthusiastic.

After the 3rd grade portion, the music instructor told the audience that we would be treated to a 5-song set by the 5th grade honor choir after a short break (What does 'honor choir' mean anyhow at the elementary level?) This was a surprise to me and the other adults around me (after a quick verbal poll). I think they were trying to force a performance on an already captive audience. Love to watch my kids (or kids of friends) perform, but I'm not too interested in watching a random performance. Given that we were about to be stuck for 30 more minutes, we bolted as soon as Kenneth came back to where we were seated. You know there were some other parents thinking what a poor example we were setting. I call it taking advantage of an easy exit.

More 5-Year Old Conversations

Elena was at our house again today. While they were coloring, they had a conversation about stealing and it was so funny I wrote it down as they were talking so I could type it out later.

Elena: "I used to steal, but now I don't."

Evelyn: "Stealing is bad. You know what happens when you steal?"

Elena: "Jail. Jail, Jail, Jail."

Evelyn: "You don't get to see anyone in your family for three whole days."

Elena: "I'm not allowed to steal anymore."

Evelyn: "Can I have the red crayon?"

I Saw Santa, No I Saw Santa

Evelyn and Elena (our neighbor) spent time debating on the reality of Santa while coloring at my kitchen table today. Kenneth knows the real deal and is keeping up the charade until Evelyn is ready to understand. The conversation went something like this:

Elena: "My grandma told me there is no Santa." (I have separate thoughts on grandmas breaking that kind of news.)

Evelyn: "Santa IS real. I saw him flying to our house last year. And I heard his jingles."

Elena: "Maybe you're right. Sometimes my grandma lies. Dad says so."

Evelyn: "Lying is not good behavior."

I was snickering when I heard that last part.