Food Drive update: Sales by 5 is AWESOME

My group at school has already brought in 190lbs of food towards the food drive. Tonight, my sister's soccer, the Lady Cyclones committed to bringing 7lbs each. There are 12 members = 84 lbs.
We will collect on Sunday after the soccer game and during the next two practices.

My mom gave me some great news today after school. Her friends, who she met through twitter, are going to allow their office space as a donation location. The wonderful place is Sales by 5. She is hoping tomorrow we can pick something up tomorrow at their Pity Party. At least I hope so. Anyway, the players at Sales by 5 are

• Erik Darmstetter, CEO, follow him on twitter here
• Nan Palmero, CIO, follow him on twitter here and his wife Ashley, a wedding photographer here (see Mom's blog post on Ashley) and their dog Clunkers Palmero. (I know, lots of twitter)
• Kya - the brand evangelist
• Bobby Freeman

These folks are on twitter, so be sure to follow them. I hope to meet them tomorrow at the pity party to pick up the first round of food. I know it is last minute, but please consider attending the pity party and giving up some non perishable food.

The Sales by 5 office is located at 85 N.E. Loop 410, Suite 218, San Antonio, TX 78216

Thank you Erik!

Alex
follow me on twitter

Help me on my food drive

Hi, My name is Alex, the oldest child of Jennifer and Jaz. As my community service project, I want to expand on our JROTC at John Jay High School. We are required to raise 7 lbs of food. I am hoping through social media (my mother is a social media junkie) I can raise so much more.

I am asking all you out there to each donate 7lbs of food. My parents have agreed to drive me around and pick them up and we are working on a couple of donation stations. I have a twitter account, but haven't used it yet. Look for me soon. I will also be on my facebook page and trying to hack my mother account to get more donations. If you can help. Please contact us through twitter. Here is my twitter. or my mom's twitter. You can also call my mom at A Regal Affair: 210.563.6705 or email jennifer at regalaffair dot com. My deadline is the end of the month. I hope to be able to do weekly pick ups.

Thank you in advance. I will be blogging more often. Updating donation stations and recommended donation items.

Catch up post

I've ignored the blog in the past months and now regret it. I have so many pics to post and not enough time to do it.  We had a great Christmas break, January and February came and went - quick.

This morning Alex is going in for surgery on both his legs. He has what they call miserable malalignment...but they are only working on the bottom half of his legs. Lucky us.  He started having knee pain towards the end of football season and then completely giving out during the tennis season.  Since he has been restricted from all physical activity except straight forward running and lifting weights, he has been doing great. But one 1/2 hour of street basketball in the neighborhood and his other knee gave out.

We got second and third opinions from the best we could find... All said have the surgery and do it now.  He will miss the rest of the school year and I know he is just heartbroken over it (insert :: rolling eyes here ::).  He will also miss all that ridiculous TAKs testing... but he will be just fine and can do his work from home.  We thought it would be easier if his siblings were gone for a half day at school.  Jaz will be off from work for 6 weeks and I only have two weddings left until Fall (of course they are this weekend and next).

Spring break is next week and it is NEVER the second week of March.  For once, my parents and family have spring break the third week and this year we have the second week.  So all the help we planned on isn't panning out, but we can handle it.  Every year for spring break we brainstorm on our adventure.  We went to Florida one year and they had so much fun.  Try driving 12 hours with 5 kids to the Florida panhandle.  Last year we went camping, for the first time with all of them.  This year, we are caretakers. Another adventure, just different.  We are moving our adventure to July and heading out to West Texas to visit some land we will develop, camp in the heat, and scuba in the San Salamon Springs in Balmorhea.  I'll update on his progress in a few days.

Alex at the beach this past Christmas. Dec 2008

Diego wearing Alex's glasses, he loves to borrow them. Jan 2009

Isa styling Diego's hair. Sept 2008

Diego fighting her off.

Everyone, May 2008, at Isa's Girl Scout Bridge ceremony.

Frank, Antonio, Alex, Isa and Diego

One of Isa's many soccer games.

One of Alex's football games, he was special teams and his job was to tackle the punt returner.

Frank's fall band concert.

Isa as a cat for halloween.

Sookies, our kitten.

Isa with Baby T-Ray.  He is just so cute! and there is Sookie, watching over them.

Alex as Michael Phelps for Halloween.

Wrap up 2008

I know I haven't posted much... I've been keeping everyone abreast via facebook, but just realized not everyone is on there.

So here is a recap for La-iad:  These were taken at the November 2007.  My brother was married and we finally got these pictures last spring.  

This was our attempt at a proper family photo...

Diego playing the air guitar.

Diego

Jaz

Alex

Frank

Isabel

Bend it Like Beckham?

Not quite. More like "a diva like Posh" and just kicked in straight. Why bother with moving around defenders. She just nailed it straight through in the most amazing slant move to score a goal today in her first soccer game. In the beginning of the game, she wasn't too into it. You could tell her selective mutism was causing her to not engage. She started to warm up and get comfortable, and really got into the game. She was doing great, then came the incentive: big brother Alex promised her some choice trading cards (pokemon, naruto or something) if she scored a goal. She was like a maniac like her teammate Cassie (this girl has skills). The team did great. Isa scored 3 goals and her teammate Cassie scored the remaining goals to win in their opening game of the season.

We were so proud. She has done great this school and is really working through her anxiety to overcome selective mutism.

Poodle update

We received a phone call this evening from Joan Pfeifer of the local poodle rescue. She called to thank us for the donation and to let us know both dogs were adopted into good homes about a week ago.

Community Service for Alex and Frank

Well, here is a service project easily handled in your very own neighborhood. Yesterday, we were speaking with our neighbor Margaret. She just turned 92 a few days ago. We do odd jobs here and there for her as she is by herself, with her only living son in the hospital for the past three months. The boys were 3 and 4 when we first met her. She walked up to us, as we were in the driveway of our new home and asked who we were, what we were doing, why are we here. Turns out she keeps an eye on things. Well, it us our turn to help her out. One of our neighbors left two poodles in her care and promised to return in a few weeks after he moved into his new place. Fast forward to now, it has been 5 months. She can't take care of them, she can barely walk.

The project:

1. start caring for the animals and make sure their basic needs are being met
2. find a rescue (this has not been easy) They googled and yellow paged all types of places. The Animal defense league and humane society won't take them in as they are full. I have not even known a time they aren't full.
3. Well, they thought of specific rescues - I guess since we found our guineas through a guinea rescue... and voila! We found Poodle Club of San Antonio and Rescue. Please consider a donation to them. We have made contact and hope to get this resolved soon. We will update as things happen.

Here are a few pics of the two...who don't even their names.

Junior High Track Season

Well, track season came and went in a flash. This Alex ran the 200, 400 and 400m relay. At the district track meet, they were blown away by Del Rio. Those boys could run and just blew by everyone. We were shocked. We hadn't competed against Del Rio all season. Alex ran the second and caught them up quite a bit. We forget the camera again, so no pictures, but it was quite a sight to see him actually try at something. Book work comes natural to him and we haven't seen him put out any effort all year until Track. Just like him, waiting until the end.

Hiking at Goverment Canyon State Natural Area

We went hiking today. We love our Texas State Parks Pass. This is the third time to use it since we bought it for Spring Break. Goverment Canyon is just about 10 minutes from the house. It is an amazing lump of acreage full of hiking and biking trails. Since we had everyone with us, we hiked the "baby" trail, Savannah which consisted of 99% flat trail of 2.3 miles.

Next time we are doing the Lytle trail when we get up early enough to start at 9am. We started at 12:30 pm and were finished by 2:00 pm. We moved kind of fast because it was flat and momma needed the exercise. My foot held up, but it is hurting now. The kids were funny because they would yell, "poop on the left!" or "Momma - rocks on the right!" They did not want a repeat of Spring Break.

Getting ready to head out into "THE WILD" (think of the movie Madagascar)

The park rangers want to know how many you are, when you left, what you are driving and which trail...I guess in the event you don't come back and they find your car after closing they can send out a rescue posse. We filled out for form and left in the box to the left.

This is what a good portion of the trail looked like...nice and green.

Diego and Jaz next to a cactus

a white bluebonnet, never seen one before. It captured our interest for at least 10 minutes.

The only animal foot prints we saw. We thought is was probably a wild hog.

a tiny cactus in the middle of the trail. Someone put rocks around it so it wouldn't get stepped on. We payed it forward and did it for another one down the way. We didn't get a picture...we get so busy having fun.

Isabel singing at PTA meeting on April 8th

Tuesday, Isabel, along with all the other 1st graders sang for the PTA meeting. I don't know what possessed her, but she wanted to wear her Easter dress. It was cold on Easter and she didn't get to wear it. She even wore chocolate pearl earrings (she said it compliments her hair) and a red headband and bracelet for just a pop of color. I think she is learning too fast. I had no idea she actually listened to me.

After she got ready, an hour too early, she wanted to have a few snapshots. Here you go:

Being silly - as usual

She is really tall for a 6 year old, well almost 7.

This is her photo journalistic shot.

She tried to sing. She danced a bit and smiled a little. Progress!

Here she is trying to form the words. For an SM child, she is coming along nicely.

For those of you not up to date. SM = selective mutism.

Corpus Christi April 2008

This past weekend we decided to getaway to the beach. We thought it would be warm enough to play outside. If you know us well, you know the kids are like saltwater fish and they don't care much about temperature. This time, even diego was on a boogie board. It was too cold for me. I was afraid what I would do if one of them, especially Diego started to drift off. I stayed close and made the little ones stay close to me. Frank and Alex, the dare devils, kept trying to go way out past the second sand dune where the surfers were.


They had a great time and as usual, when we are having fun, we don't get to take too many pictures. Enjoy!


Frank learning to play poker. It was Friday night. It was chilly and rainy, so we had some food, checked out the beach, then came back to teach the kids the ways of Vegas. Who knows, they might get good at Texas Hold 'Em.



Our view Saturday morning of Corpus Christi Bay

You can see the Lexington from our balcony.

While I was cleaning up breakfast and prepping our food for our beach outing, Jaz and kids played on the beach. That's Alex throwing the football to Jaz.

Here we are at Mustang Island State Park. We love our state park pass. They just waved us in, no fees and the beach was not crowded. Antonio, Isa, Frank and Diego

View from my chair.

Diego eating his standard daily meal, peanut butter and jelly. Those frozen PB&J sandwiches are perfect for a beach outing.

Alex, of course, causing trouble. He decided to feed the seagulls the extra piece of cookie from the oreos that didn't have the creme. They chased him up and down the beach. It was a scene from "The Birds", the movie.

Then Diego had to get into the action.

He kept saying, "I have a transformer! I have a transformer!" I guess the birds should know a transformer is not a cookie.....dumb birds....

Alex and Frank forever digging for crabs instead of waiting for the night.

Diego!? We didn't know what he was doing here.

Then we figured out he was playing with his shadow!

On our way back from the island, we took this picture and told the kids we would go there on Sunday. We didn't. We were too tired from Saturday and slept in.