Yes we Can!

With Obama fever filling the nation, I had high hopes for the HOA meeting I attended this last week. I sat through the meeting listening to various expensive ideas the community members had to make our streets more safe. The fact is that our community is really safe, but people were shooting out ideas for speed bumps (which cost quite the pretty penny), and even making our community a gated community. I threw out some suggestions and even signed up to be on some safety committee. Then when the meeting was offically ended, I raised my hand to add a food for thought.

When we were house hunting a year ago, this property had a lot of appeal but lacked a critical component: a swimming pool. As you can imagine from my posts previous to this one, this is kind of essential. In the end, the fact that Sea World is 5 minutes from our house convinced us that we could buy a home without a pool in the community. Since then, we have heard of a few people who wanted to move into this community but opted for the neighboring community that came with a pool.

With that said, My motivation for building a pool in our community has increased drastically. I want people to love our home and community so when i go to sell in a few years, we will have some serious buyers. Unfortunately, the rest of the HOA people and community members were not so thrilled. They didn't even want to discuss the possibilities. They said it was too expensive and would increase our HOA fees. Sadly enough the people failed to realize that our HOA fees are comparable to our neighboring pool owning community, but all we see of those fees are notes for home improvement and some catered party. With the number of homes and the amount of dues and the trimming of unnecessary monetary waste from our HOA, we can have a pool.

Westover Place HOA, you haven't heard the last from me. Grass movements obviously work in this nation and it's in my families blood to campaign.

Let's hear Foux Da fa fa

One of our friends had these videos on their blog awhile ago and they made me giggle. Ok, I actually snort laughed which happens when the explosive giggle comes so unexpectedly that I can't get my mouth to open fast enough. My kids heard me and came running to see the cause of such an outburst. They will now start singing parts at the strangest times. We often hear "brown paper, white paper sticky ba da with the tape" repeated. I sometimes wish (usually on the 18th time that line is repeated) that I watched it alone, but you should enjoy these too. They are strangely catchy and clever. Warning. . .most of their other movies are less then clean.

Bust out the swim trunks

San Antonio has the most unique and vacillating weather patterns of any state I have visited. Winter months consist of a cluster of warm days (70+) and then a sudden stint of cold weather (50 or so degrees). It makes life interesting and difficult in so many ways. For example, when Mia gets ready for school, we never know what to send her with. The morning could feel freezing and by the end of school she is roasting. It also throws our systems for a loop since we can't ever really adjust. I always felt like the blood had a chance to thicken during the winter months then as the temperatures warmed up to the 50's, the body would feel the need to dawn spring clothes. For us, 50 feels freezing and then when it jumps to 80 the next day, we are searching for the pool.





This past week was such the case. We invited some friends and tried the sprinkler ball. A few days later we tried our newest water toy, the Crocodile Chomp. I should have tried the set up before I had hot kids waiting for fun. I tried to be quick, but I totally set it up wrong and no one cared.

We had a few readers in the group who happen to glance at the Warning label and instruction manual. Due to their literacy, I wasn't able to try out our new slide and yet they didn't seem to observe the slide with hand out in front and no running on the slide rule. Poor Talia had to wait and watch while everyone else had all the fun.




You know you want to come out and show me how to set it up correctly. Just remember to bring plenty of sunscreen, swimsuits, and clothes to layer with.

The Healthy Way to Eat Donuts

After Jumping (and technically dancing) for life, Mia knew just what the focus of our last FHE should be. I was her co-partner responsible for acquiring the much needed viewing material. Even as amazing as I can be sometimes, I couldn't produce the jump rope champion or his video as he stated was for sale at the assembly. I tried to throw in the idea of talking about Daniel and his word of wisdom experience, but I guess that isn't as fun as the other famous Daniel and the lion's den story. In the end, we went to the store to buy stuff for the treats and ended up with donuts. Tiago even warned us that "Donuts are not good for our bodies, but they're a fun treat." On the drive back, we re-emphasized the points made at the jumping assembly and figured out the most healthy way to eat a donut.

TMA and Jump Rope For Life

Did you know there were such people as Jump Rope World Champions? This fact was made known to me Monday when we attended Mia's school fundraiser event called Jump Rope for Life. Hoping to catch more of Talia's nap then the opening ceremony of sorts, we arrived just in time for the kindergartners to have a go at jumping. We missed the champion jump roper amaze the audience with unicycle jump roping down the stairs, jumping while sitting down, and black light fancy roping. Where was this guy for all of our lame elementary assemblies?

The gym and cafeteria turned into a veritable wonderland of jump rope stations. On top of the constant changing stations, the school's coach blasted such hits as "Surfin' On Top of the World" by the Beach Boys to keep things interesting.


And in true Mia form that has existed since she was in the womb, her body was incapable of holding still for any length of time while the music was playing. If she wasn't completing the jump rope task of the given station, she was bouncing and shaking her stuff to the beat.
Fernando and I are certain that she is destine to make her way to the Knight Mangnum building someday to sing into a mirror at random intervals and step ball change her way through most menial tasks. (for non zoobies, just know that she is a performance major candidate for sure.)

Tiago and Talia found joy in the music and plastic cones and someone's stroller.


Tiago tried once to get into the jump rope scene because the ropes happened to be red, but with so many kindergartners, he had a hard time finding a free one. No worries, the red cones were good enough for him.

A little Mania of sorts

Sometimes I feel like a swing too much between productivity and lack of ambition. I love the times when I not only have an ingenious plan, but the tenacity to follow through with that plan. Saturday happened to be such a day. After our zoo trip, I was energized and ready to be productive. From cleaning the house, to making bread (one loaf for panini sandwiches and a cinnamon swirl loaf for gourmet french toast yum yums) and spinach artichoke dip, I was on a roll. To top it all off, I decided to paint. I'm not talking an enriching finger painting powwow with the kiddos, but a gallon of specifically tinted satin paint to slap up in the toy room. Painting the house has been a long desired chore since the white wall effect lacks luster and makes me feel like I am living in a dorm room, but I was afraid of the process from lack of experience. I even willingly offered to help a friend from church paint a room of her house just to get some idea of how it is done. (Note: I didn't actually end up painting anything. I spent the whole 3 hours scraping wallpaper.) I did get some good tips and now was the time to use them. Fernando was on call and the Talia was down for the night. Let's do it.

The kids were thrilled which help over ride my desire to put them in bed before launching such a project. They took turns with the various tools and did a pretty good job for first timers.
With that said, may be I could blame any imperfections on the kids' help and not my first time troubles. It took me a few hours because I kept standing back and looking at my work and wondering if I should have done a little more research on color schemes and fancy variations on block colors etc. I think that my inability to commit to things on a long term basis made me feel trapped.

In the end, my walls didn't soak the color evenly and I almost ran out of color, but it is done and I did it.

Free Food is Always a good lure

Saturday often brings the question, What do you do all day to entertain the kids? Often we turn to the parent connection at gocitykids.parentsconnect.com for the sweet hook ups. For example, see here and here. As a quick plug for that site, they let you know the obvious time, date, and place of things, but also tell you price and age suggestions. Go check your city out. Alas, it isn't always full of activities our troupe would enjoy. Lucky for us, the US mail brought hope for fun this Saturday morning. We had the "exclusive" invite to breakfast and activities at the San Antonio Zoo. This members only event was just the ticket of curing Saturday boredom. (or at least could be used as motivation to clean up the house which is a standard Saturday activity because that is what the day is for: to get ready for Sunday.)

It turns out our exclusive invitation wasn't so exclusive after all. By the time we made it to the Zoo a mere 20 minutes after the event was to start, the lot was near full and there was a line to get in. The kids were more then anxious for the food. After a long wait in line and my desperate efforts in trying to distract hungry children waiting in a confusing line, we finally saw the tables' offerings. Who knew how wonderful prepackaged cereal bowls could look even without any milk to accompany them? I decided to not tempt the good will of those around me who had already proved less then cordial and take my stroller up a near by ramp, so I pulled Talia out and went with the 3 kids to wrangle up some grub. Word to the wise, DO NOT leave you biggest carrying capacity at the base of the stairs and then attempt to get enough food for 4 starving people with only one hand available for holding and keeping food from a snatching infant. As more people crowded in, I knew we had to find a place to eat. My load, including Talia who had managed to rip apart one of the mini muffins to find a wrapper and shoved it into her mouth part way, was slipping. I looked around a tables and benches full of gawking adults almost embarrassed for my existence and decided to put down all of the food and grab the stroller. During some point of this show a kind teenage boy offered his assistance to me--a single adult trying to get food for these 3 kiddos and doing a sub par job. I mechanically stated that I was ok and was just going to solve the problem by getting my stroller. Somehow he knew that lie wasn't worth listening to and started to pick up my cereal bowls and mini muffins and walk them over to a near by table.
To keep Talia happy, I let her snarf on an apple. Here she is trapped in the stroller and waving hello as she consumes the apple.

But even the food connection wasn't going to please her for long. Naps were calling and who really wants to be in a stroller for long periods of time anyway. I had to cut down our adventures to those things in close proximity to the breakfast. This was more then adequate. I enjoyed the animals that the zoo keepers brought out on display. I was the nerdy person who kept asking questions like "Does the snakes' eyelids blink side ways or up and down?" (answer: snakes doen't have eyelids. Instead they have scales. When they are about to shed the scales fog up. More information was given, but I was the only interested then and I am sure that goes for my readers now.)
The kids loved fishing in the little indoor stream.

Mia loved getting a lion painted on her face.

Both patiently planted pinto beans in a biodegradable jimmy rigged newspaper cup.


And Talia connected with the caged animals with a sympathy only another trapped individual can feel.