Mexico City, baby!

I going to try and actually keep up this blog while we are here in DF, wish me luck!

Day numero uno:

My family and I are living in Mexico City for 3 months.
We are staying in Coyoacan in a social help building. So while Coyoacan is a rather expensive place to live, our apartment building is pretty mixed and family oriented. It's also very loud at times with lots of activity all around.
Don's not to fond of that part.
We were lucky to have good friends with good relatives and were able to get a ride to our apartment from the airport, saving us a cab ride.
It's always an adventure driving here! Cars are going every different direction at once and honking, it seems like complete pandemonium. But I'm sure there is some kind of hidden order? The biggest car gets the right of way, maybe?
When we got to our apartment and settled in we had to go grocery shopping for food and to make dinner. We were told by our landlord to go to the "Mega" about three blocks away. We are definitely going to need to teach our children how to walk in a big city! They were all over the sidewalk, in everyones way. The Mega did not lie. It was MEGA. More mega than 5 Food Cities and a walmart smashed into 1. Two stories with a parking garage below. It was hard to just find what we needed and leave.
Eventually we did finagle our way out of the store and walked back to our new home.

The girl settled into Scooby-Doo en espanol, and were delighted to find an occupied nest right outside their window. They have been watching the mother inca dove care for her little chick through out the evening.
We also watched the kids below play soccer and people walking their dogs.
After we ate dinner the thunder kicked in, then rain and lightening!
What a welcome!!!

Sleep tight!

I fixed up the girls bunk beds yesterday.
I bought nice semi-matching quilts thanks to my $10 off coupon from Burlington Coat Factory. Okay, that's a joke.
I was lured into the store, because of the coupon. The quilts were $30 each, so really the $10 off was just a lame excuse to buy them. But aren't they puuuurty?!!
My rational was thus:

1. Make the kids room and beds presentable for whoever will be staying at our house this summer.

2. Encourage my children to want to clean there room, by giving them an incentive.

3. Encourage my children to sleep in their own beds my making them all pretty-like.

So, here is the result:

Yes, I think the beds do look at lot nicer.
Yes, the kids did clean up a little, but you can hardly tell. They also "decorated" their beds, meaning even MORE junk!
YES, they actually slept in their owns beds last night!!!! WOOT!!!
I am feeling quite justified in my cutesy quilt purchased.
(Plus it also justifies my earlier bamboo sheet purchase :)

Today I furthered my splurging binge by buying one of those baby rail guards, because the top bunk doesn't have any railing. I'm sure all of us grew up without railing on the top bunk, but we also started on the bottom and learned through trial and error not to fall off. But my soft children have not have this important learning curve in their lives.
I am really paranoid that my 10 year old will roll right off.
Ker-plunk!!!
To justify that the rail was not a "baby" rail, I made a cover for it and cut the "First Years" tag off. Teagan picked out the fabric. Now she can sleep safely without plummeting to her death in the middle of the night.
If you can't tell it's chicken fabric.



She can sleep.
I can sleep.
And if I want too, I can now turn over and sleep on my side. Or my back?? Or my other side???
Aaaah.

Holladay Magnet School

An awesome day in Mr. Wagner's 4th grade class.

First, a piano was rolled into class.

Since Holladay is a performing arts magnet school, this is actually quite an easy thing to do. There are several pianos in the hallway that can just be rolled into a classroom. One of my favorite things at Holladay is seeing kids just sit down and start playing. Just because the pianos are there.
After the piano arrived, kids moved their groups of tables over in preparation of their two special guests. A pianist/cornet player and another puppeteer.

In Wagner's class, as a reward for good behavior, every Friday children are allowed to do their own puppet show. Eric Wagner is a puppeteer. He is also the coolest teacher ever.

Today was special, because the class got to see professionals. Very serious professionals that strive to teach these children life lessons through the fine art of shadow puppets.
Or something like that...?





Afterward, Wagner's class got to participate in a taste test for TUSD's new cafeteria items: Beef Flautas and Turkey Wraps.
It must have been hard to taste food after all the donuts they just ate from having two classmate's celebrate their birthdays that day?

Then to top off their extremely rough day. Kids were forced to play on the playground the rest of the day... with each other!
You can just see the torment in their faces.





Apparently, Mr. Wagner's class were not the only class having fun that day.
As I walked past Mrs. Stembridge's classroom, I saw all three 3rd grade classes in there in a break dance circle. And I believe I saw Stembridge and Redman dancing. I'm sure if Redman wasn't 8 months pregnant she would have been in the middle doing a head spin.

Wow, Holladay rocks!

New Year!

We rung in the New Year with yummy black eyed peas and greens! So delicious.
I'm hoping those peas bring us good luck and a better year than last.
Also, I didn't let Don do laundry, it's bad luck.
Did I mention my husband does the laundry and the dishes?
I guess I have a lot to be thankful for, even if Teagan's underwear is often in my drawer (which I take as a compliment.)

Today I began my new year by painting over hard feelings.
Quite literally.

Last summer our kids playhouse plus many of their toys were spray painted while we were away. Not by vandalistic teenagers, but by our house sitter's 5 year old son and his friend.
Also two chickens were left out and killed by a cat.
I'm still a little depressed by it all and my kids never like to go in their playhouse. I think it's filled with sad feeling for us all.
It was a bad return home from an otherwise fabulous vacation.

So new year, new beginnings.
Starting with the playhouse!

I began painting it a cheery yellow today. I'm going to paint the trim white. Teagan got some cute owl wall stickers from Santa that will look darling in it too.
Here are a couple pictures of the spray painted things (there were a lot of expensive toys too, much of them I just threw out.)



Oops. I forgot to paint the door...


Anyway there's such a happy feeling inside now and it's going to be super cute when it's all done.
It feels so good to paint over the bad memories and start fresh!

Doomed I tell you!

My quirky father-in-law sent out and email today proving my long thought out theory.
That Anderson's are all loco, regardless of their age and gender.

Pictures taken in 2006:



Don's grandfather Donald and Teagan imitating:



Pictures taken in 2009:
(Same restaurant!)






I believe that we are helpless.
The nutty Anderson gene must be more dominant than my hippy Kolb gene.
But if Teagan grows up to be 98 and can still balance a tortilla chip on her lips I'll be pretty damn happy.

Undocumented elves anyone???

Are hiring elves that don't have the right papers illegal?
I need to know cause I need to get my sweatshop, um, I mean workshop flowing.

I feel a little guilty that I make things for other peoples kids, but never my own.
Of course that is not entirely true, but for the most part, yep.
Minus the retarded owl.
Oh wait, sorry, that is not very p.c.?
He is a "special-tarded" owl.

So here is my sweetshop, so far.

Felt cupcakes for niece in Australia (nice and light for shipping yo.)


Eggs, bacon and evil knife for niece with parents who understand my sick sense of humor.


Random bag for a classmate of Teagans...


Onsies made for friend and soon to be neighbor. :)


And special owl for daughter.
Notice that one wing is sewn upside-down... yeah I TOTALLY meant to do that!



See, he's just bustin' a move.

We have had a rough weekend.
Thursday night while I was a work the kids found a cat hiding underneath their playhouse.
Actually I guess Carmen found it, it had been hit by a car.
Don put him in the garage. He was incredibly loving and affectionate, and was jumping around the room wanting to be snuggled.
But he had a HUGE open wound on the side of him. I mean HUGE.
We debated what to do with him, and then a friend suggested her vet might be caring and give us help.
So we decided to pay for the visit to see what she had to say.
We had already look into all the shelters, they are all full.
I guess a sign of a bad economy is people dumping off pets left and right.
The Humane Society or Animal Shelter would put him to sleep.
We all kind of fell in love with him and made a family decision to try and help him.
We decided to pay for a visit to the vet, look for his owners ourselves.
When we brought him to the vet, we were told that first, "she" was an altered "he" (oops,)and secondly that he had been hit about 1-2 weeks ago.
His fur had all dried up and therefore it could not been sewn back.
He'd need several surgeries.
If he didn't get them the wound would always stay open and it would get infected.
We told her that we don't have the money to pay for anything like that (esp. since he's not our cat!)
The vet was nice and offer to take the cat for the weekend, clean out his wounds as much as possible, put him under and do a little stitch work at no cost, while we looked for his owners.
SO we have spent this whole weekend searching high and low for the owners of a cat!
Notices everywhere, craigslist, emails, newspapers, etc all weekend without any leads.
They kids were getting sad about not finding his owners.
Finally I put out a plea for any advice on what to do with this poor cat on craigslist.
And... late last night, someone offered to help him.
She wants us to take him to the vet she works with today.
She (or the organization she works with?) will pay for his surgery and then find him a home.
YAY!!! Teagan and Ari are so happy!!!
I was even happier.
Yay, to happy endings and second chances!!