Note from Emily

Emily, age 3: "Mommy, you get me a piece of paper?" She mutters to herself as she scratches on the paper with a pen. "Don't be weird. Don't ever ever ever be weird. Don't do that ever again. You're my sweetheart. We don't do that because my mom said so." I asked her if she was writing a note, and she smiled at me, "For Santa." She cracks me up every single day.

Minuet 3 with the Mid-Texas Symphony

Scott says he likes the symphony, both playing and listening. He also reported that when he went into play position, his violin got caught in a girl's hair. We heard Water Night, a musical setting of a poem by Octavio Paz and a gorgeous oboe piece called Down A River of Time, written in 1999. It's a great day!

Negotiations

Elizabeth : "Mommy, after my room is clean, can I earn $1 by cleaning up the library?"
Me: "Sure."
Elizabeth : "Can I have an extra penny with that?"
Me: "OK."
Elizabeth (excited):"Thanks! That extra penny is my allowance!"

Christmas surprise

On Christmas morning, the kids received quite a surprise. After searching for clues and then assembling them, they read a message that told them that we were leaving for Cancun, Mexico, in just 2 days. They were quite excited, mostly because they had been begging for plane travel for months.

After a few minutes, this girl unbuckled and announced with a frown, "Mommy, I no like airplanes. I get off."

On our way!

The view from our balcony. "Look at the color of that water!" 

Dinner at the Tequila Grill on our first night there

Our waiter brought us all sombreros once Emily grabbed a decorative one for herself.

This girl...

And our other girl...

Ethan was exhausted after our early-morning flight.

I overestimated my strength at the grocery store and had to carry this all home alone. Luckily,  it was only a total of about 4 blocks that I had to walk, and the shuttle took care of the remaining distance.

Tulum was magical, another world that you could only enter though a hole in a stone wall.

A little wrestling after our pottery painting

The master at work. He touched up all the projects and then glazed and fired them.

Who do you suppose created this out of seaweed?

Chichen Itza

The Chichen Itza gang

Here we all are, waiting for our transport to the airport to return home.

Not dead yet

I had a milestone birthday in the last few weeks and wasn't going to do much to celebrate. My friend Kim lured me to her home under pretense of inviting our family to dinner and then all these lovelies jumped out and surprised me! We all rode together in Kim's van and had dinner at the Alamo Cafe. On the drive home, I saw a huge green meteroid streaking across San Antonio. I'll take it for a sign of good luck for the next 40 years:)

One of the great surprises of my life. I was so happy that I almost cried. Thank you, my kind friends! 

The cake made me laugh (and no, I didn't chop my hair off -it's in a braid). 

This was the best cake I can recall eating in all my life - a moist vanilla crumb with yummy marshmallow fondant! The beads around the bottom tasted like childhood - Canadian milk chocolate.