Russian Cabbage Soup

Yesterday afternoon the kids and I cut the cabbage that we had been growing and I cooked Russian cabbage soup for dinner. I found the recipe in allrecipes.com. I think it was very good, we usually don't eat cabbage but I really liked it this way. Don liked it too. The kids would not touch it, of course.

Happy Birthday Don and Larry!!!!!

Today is Don and Larry's 48th birthday!!! I hope they are having a good day at work.

We had some coffee, milk, and cookies for Don in the morning and we will celebrate more tonight.

Today is also Lolly's 50th birthday! Happy Birthday Lolly!!

Don and Larry's Birthday Party

We celebrated Don and Larry's birthday this past Saturday. It was a great party, a lot of people came and I think everybody had a good time. There was even a guitar player. He was great and sang lots of good songs. Don and Larry sang with him and they did a good job. We had Italian food and everybody brought food and drinks. There was lots of beer!

Parties, parties, and more parties

Another weekend with lots of parties. We went to the party of one of Carlos' classmates, Friday after school. It was a pool party and Titi was invited too. They had a lot of fun. We spent most of Saturday getting ready for Don and Larry's birthday party at our house (I will write more about that in a separate post) and then had a lot of people over. Carlos and Titi went to bed at 11:30! We had 2 more kids birthday parties on Sunday but by the time we had to leave for the second one Carlos started saying he didn't want to go. He said "too many parties!, too much cake!" He really looked miserable and didn't want to go but since we had told his classmate we were coming I convinced Carlos we had to go to drop the present and leave. He didn't want to do it but we went anyway. This is the last time I RSVP for more than one party a week. The kids really get tired of going to so many parties. They love being home and don't feel the need to go out at all during the weekends. I love being home too. Don, on the other hand, loves being outside, he could go to 10 parties and not get tired :-)

Happy Easter!!!

Happy Easter everyone! We had a great Easter. Carlos and Titi got up early to see if the Easter Bunny had come. They were happy with their baskets and they started eating candy way too early in the day. Later in the morning they had an egg hunt with the girls that live next door. They had fun.

We spent Easter Day with Mimi, Luke, Mario and the rest of the Morales family. Keri, Larry, Laura, Allie and Jennie came too. We had great food and like always, we had fun. The kids got Easter baskets from Mimi and Luke and Keri, Larry, Laura and Allie. They also had another egg hunt. Now they have so much candy!! We loved seeing baby Mario, he is so cute. He was wearing a tie!

Passover

We had the Passover Seder at our house yesterday night. It was the first time we had it so we had to learn a lot.

Carlos and Titi were very excited and they helped set the table and cut the apples to made the charoset. Mema then helped them set the Seder plates. Grandpa opened the wine and served it. They also brought cakes and cookies. Keri made brisket, chicken and her famous macaroons and I made matzo ball soup and vegetables. I think that Don did a wonderful job leading the reading of the Haggadah and Laura and Allie did great reading some of it. Larry was the Seder organizer and he carved the meat for us. It was a group effort. We were very happy to have uncle Izzie and aunt Mary too.

We surely missed Janie, Steven, Hailey and Andie. We are now more grateful to them for having the Seder every year at their house. It is a lot of work! We also missed Rich and Marty. We hope they will come next year.

Happy Birthday Mema!!!

Today is Mema's birthday! Happy Birthday Mema!! We love you!!! We hope you are having a wonderful day. We will celebrate it on Wednesday :-)

Seder at Titi's school

Titi's school had their Seder today. This is her last year at that school so it was kind of sad for me. She loves her school, teachers and classmates. After dinner, she found the Afikomen and was very proud of herself. (I was proud and happy for her too!)

Mud

Talking about mud. Titi loves playing in the mud and Carlos loves making it for her. They always pretend they are going to play in the swingset in the back yard and then I find them playing with the hose.

Concrete workshop

I had a great time yesterday. One friend from WebGarden wanted to learn how to make hypertufa planters and garden ornaments and I told her I would be interested as well. She was able to organize a workshop taught by another member, in Homestead, 1 hour 30 minutes away from our house, and I was able to attend. Don stayed with the kids all day so that was very nice.

We learned how to make concrete castings and it was a lot of fun. The teacher, Amanda, and the other women were hilarious and we were laughing the whole time. Amanda was wonderful, and she took us for a nature walk (where we stole cherry tomatoes from an abandoned garden and seeds and cuttings from everywhere), she picked a great place to have lunch and even gave us a completion certificate, saying we were now qualified to play in the mud.

A useless fact

Don knows somebody that sends him emails and jokes all the time. They are always white jokes so sometimes Don forwards them to me but he says that I don't read most of the things he forwards me.

This person emailed Don the following and to prove to Don that I read them I am going to post it here :-)


"On Wednesday , at two minutes and three seconds after 1:00in the morning, the time and date will be 01:02:03 04/05/06.

That won't ever happen again.

You may now return to your normal stuff".

A busy day!

We got invited to a luncheon organized in honor of Susana Luarca, a Guatemalan lawyer, and some Guatemalan Congressmen who were in South Florida. They have been visiting different parts of the USA to talk to adoptive families and to see some of the children that have been adopted from their country. Mrs. Luarca has been fighting for years to keep Guatemalan adoptions open and I had read many of her posts and has always been impressed by her dedication and enthusiasm. It was a pleasure to finally meet her.

Mrs. Luarca talked about the importance of keeping adoptions open and the uphill battle they face in their country due to the false information Unicef and other international organizations spread about international adoptions. We also heard one Congressman talk and I could see I was not the only one moved by his words. It was great to have the opportunity to talk to the other members of the delegation and to thank them for giving us the opportunity to parent Guatemalan children and to ask them to keep fighting to keep adoptions open.

We met other families with children from Guatemala. Most of the children were toddlers, Carlos was the oldest! He immediately became friends with the son of one of the lawyers and Titi played with the babies. They had fun.

We also went to a birthday party but Carlos and Titi were exhausted and wanted to go home early.