Zacatecas

Are you smarter than a fifth grader?

Let's see....do you know where Zacatecas is?  What natural resource is it known for?  What does the terrain look like?

Isabela has been doing the most amazing ORAL presentations in her class this year.  The first one was on Kansas.  She does a google doc slide presentation with each one.... no notecards, no writing.

So back to Zacatecas.  It's one of the thirty one states of Mexico.  And Zacatecas has produced 17% of the world's silver.  The main silver mine is called Mina El Eden and was hand dug out by the indigenous people over 400 years ago.

Isabela made a model of it.  Diego was nice enough to share his train track with her.



Her original idea was to make a Spanish Real silver piece for each student.  These are also known as pieces of eight and are the sought after treasure of pirates of old.  Instead she just added some spilling out of her model.



Inside the mine were altars to Catholic saints erected by the miners for added protection to their dangerous job.  We learned that miners only had an average life span of 36!  They would enter the mine before the sun came up and work through the day until after the sun went down...never seeing daylight.



Zacatecas is mountainous but also has desert areas.  Isabela always likes to include information about the native animals, too.  Zacatecas has wolves, deer, porcupines, mountain lions, macaws, and wild boars.



If you'd like to see some additional pictures of Zacatecas, Mexico, here is a link to our pins on Pinterest.



Next project: marine life.  Isabela chose a shrimp.  Better study up!

should mama

Are you a tired mama?

Life as Mom wrote a beautiful article just for you.

And make sure you read this post next from Creative with Kids.  Don't let the 'should mama' ruin your kids.

quick fall decor

Diego and I had collected some amazing leaves on a walk through Forest Hill Park one weekend.  I wasn't sure what we'd do with them, but went ahead and pressed them in a dictionary.  That's cool in itself...amazing how flat they come out.

We decided to paint them with Q-tips...just polka dots and white paint.  I suggested he follow the lines of the leaves, but I think he came up with his own patterns.  I think they look pretty strung up over our window.





JP snapped this shot of Diego later in the evening around 6pm:


He is actually asleep!  He had been napping on our bed, and when I went in to check on him, it was dark and I couldn't see any sleeping figure on the white comforter.  I thought he had woken up and come out of the room, but I knew I hadn't seen him, so I turned on the light and there he was!  His Dad put him back up on the bed and he didn't even wake!  Now if I could only get him to take a nap earlier in the afternoon...

turkey trot

Turkey Trot.  Great name for it!  Our family ran... walked... trotted our first 5K as a family last weekend.  In my mind, we were going to stick together, enjoy the beautiful scenery, and encourage one another along.   Silly me.

Oh, who cares?  As long as we all crossed the finished line.  Although I did expect a little cheering at the end when I finally got there, instead of the crickets chirping...not a family member in sight.  Sigh.

But back to the start...I think just pinning these numbers on ensures that you'll run just a little bit faster.



Carmen even came along in a jogging stroller borrowed from a friend...pushed by me!  This is my non-sleeping baby.  It wasn't until about 1.5 miles into it that she finally conked.



These three are a little more competitive than the rest of us.  Joaquin was the first to cross...in under 30 minutes.  Daddy stuck with Diego who literally ran the first two miles then suddenly said, "I want to walk now."



Isabela and I encouraged one another along for awhile until she met up with a friend.  We were dodging people even slower than us (who knew?) and making our way to the grand party at the end...free Jersey Mike's subs and snow cones.  If that isn't enough to motivate you, I don't know what else there could possibly be.



And here's Carmen pre-race loving on another dog.



Isabela informed me that even Carmen beat me...since I was pushing her along in front of me.  I think my official time was around 45 minutes...I'm pretty sure that was ten minutes faster than my first ever 5K last year.  My reaction: "Woo-hoo! I won!"

Now we can bring on the turkey and pumpkin pie.

too late for pumpkins?

The weekend before Halloween, I realized we hadn't gone to the pumpkin patch.  It's always been a fun tradition, but no one had asked this year.  No one even wondered if we would carve pumpkins. (We didn't.)   I'm not sure what that means.  But it was Carmen's first Halloween, and how could we not go? So we headed off to the pumpkin patch late on Sunday afternoon.

Carmen hung out in her carrier.



"Saca ese chupi!" You might hear us tell her that.  In other words, "Get that paci out of your mouth!"



Love that expression.



By the time we got out to the pumpkin field, Carmen was ready for a nap...but mama wanted some pictures in the patch.



Isn't that pumpkin so cool, Carmen?



Not sure, ma'...let me taste it to find out!



Our rule this time...pick the smallest pumpkin you can find...you're carrying it all the way back to the car.



Anyway you can.



Here's Isabela's perfect little pumpkin.  It's still sitting on the front porch with a label on it that says 'Isabela', just in case anyone forgets.



This was our entry for Juan Pablo's annual pumpkin painting contest at work.  I found these beautiful pumpkin owls by Alisa Burke on pinterest and simply copied it as best I could.



And it won!



If you still have pumpkins around your house, here's what we did at our monthly garden club meeting at the kids' school...bird feeders.  I had absolutely nothing to do with how beautiful it turned out.  But it's really quite simple...just cut in half, scoop, tie up with twine, and fill with seeds.  I believe they notched the pumpkin a little to get the twine to stay in place.



Here's a closer look.



Or if you don't have any pumpkins...you can do the same thing with oranges.  This is what the kids got to take home.  Now we just need to hang ours and see who comes to visit!

a warm house

Yay! A house warming!  

My cousin Kate and her husband Dan just bought their first house.  And me and my rowdy bunch got invited to come, too!  (Only, I thought it better to just bring two of the kids, one of whom can't walk.)

They live just on the other side of the city, but it may as well be a world away.  Us with our busy kid schedules and they with their workplace real jobs...we rarely see each other.

But I always love getting together with the fam.  It somehow keeps me cracking up the whole time, like I haven't laughed in years or something.  

And here's the newest addition to the family: Calvin.  He's a poodle.  Did you know poodles are hypo-allergenic?  So cool, Calvin.



Carmen is VERY interested in pets.  Sometimes in our house, the cat will walk by and she'll follow her with her eyes and look around at us with the expression, "Did anyone else just see what I saw?"  Here with Calvin, she would get that soft fur in her hands and just SQUEEZE.  He was very patient.



And now I definitely have to paint a wall in our house with chalkboard paint.



Just in case you weren't sure who was who.  (Thanks, Kate, for the great iPhone pic!)



And it turns out Kate and Dan have the same taste in furniture as me, only they actually buy it and enjoy it!  Their house looks amazing.

Congratulations, Kate and Dan!

isn't it ironic?

Diego has always loved baseball.  More of a fall ball guy.  Fall is just a great season to be outside swinging a bat.

How about that bat?  It's a real metal bat--that I bought five, yes five, years ago at a yard sale, then  quickly hid in my closet.  After I bought it, I wasn't quite sure my kids were up for the responsibility of a real bat verses a foam one.

But the day has finally come.



OK.  But that's not the ironic part.  This is:



I glance over at the unkempt yard...bikes randomly parked all over the place, weeds growing...but that doesn't look like a weed.

We stop playing to get a closer look...and would you believe it!!  That is corn growing in front of our porch.  You see those silky threads hanging out of the one and only ear?



Since it's not summer, and I'm sure that plant wouldn't have lasted much longer, we picked its only ear to shuck.



It even had three or four kernels!  We dubbed it the cutest corn ever.



How's that for a follow up to the goodbye garden post?!  It just goes to show what a great gardener I am.

I'm quite certain it was planted when some raccoons went through our trash one evening.

"Enough about corn, Mom.  Batter up...let's play some ball!"

goodbye garden

One day, three years ago, I got a crazy idea to start a garden at the kids' school.  The reasons behind it were mostly selfish...I wanted my kids to be outside more since we weren't going to be homeschooling anymore, plus I'd get to be at their school often and see them.  Then there was the other more educational reason... that gardening is one of the best hands-on learning opportunities for children.

What started as one simple garden for the Kindergarteners (a grade my own kids weren't even in) grew to include seed starting kits for entire grades, Pansy Day to make the school grounds pretty, and two more gardens: one for second grade and a sunflower garden for the Spanish teacher.  And just this year, we added 5th grade garden helpers to pull weeds and our first ever Garden Club that meets monthly.



Looking at this garden, it all seems so easy, but it has been anything but.  The posts for that gate were dug deep by my hard-working husband.  That mulch was spread by my family and one other on a most frigid spring day.  Those cinderblocks were moved by only a few hands.  That dirt was wheelbarrowed around the fence by only three people.  We gave up afternoons, weekends, and summers maintaining the garden.

And Diego has surely been my helper those many years.  He was usually eager to go to the garden and help in whatever way was needed...especially watering.

I've complained to my own family over the years at how nobody helps out with the garden.  In my dreams, it was never a one man show, but something that would eventually take on a life of its own: with schedules of teachers clambering to get their classes out in the garden; children learning science, math, language arts in the fresh air; and cafeteria workers opening up a salad bar grown by our own students.  Maybe in another ten years.

Last week was Pansy Day.  Our biggest yet...780 pansies planted by each child in the school.

At one point, six classes of third graders were filing their way back into the school, and I noticed that Diego was nowhere in sight.  I followed them into the building to see if he had gotten mixed up with the students, but the halls were pretty empty and still no Diego.  I figured I better head to the office...maybe they could make an announcement or lock down the school or something?  As I'm getting ready to turn into the office, I glance out to the front parking lot, and who do I see skipping down the sidewalk?  Yes, Diego.  All by himself, heading towards the school.  He'd obviously been looking for me at the car.

I gave him a good talking to, but finally and immediately realized it's time for me to give up this garden dream.  I'm hopeful someone will take over, despite volunteers being few and far between.

While it has been so fun to see the kids' faces light up when they discover a giant zucchini or dig in the dirt or pull the longest weed or watch a salamander scoot over the edge of the garden, I think my own kids are calling for my attention now.  It's time to get my own garden at home back in order.

Diego and I took a stroll around our house the other day, and I finally got the nerve up to sweep the mega spider webs down from our back door.  That made me sweep off the stoop.  And that made me empty the two pots and think of putting some pretty fall arrangements in there.  And what should we see in the dirt beside the door?  A giant toad!

Looks like the garden adventures will continue after all.  But I'm happy to have them right in my own backyard.