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.

Sprink Break 2008 - Inks Lake State Park

Jaz and I lost our minds and thought an old fashioned camping trip was the way to go for Spring Break. You know, with 5 kids, what's the big deal? I guess we forgot the kids like to stay in 4 star hotels with room service, valets and heated pools. Thank you Mom and Dad for continuing to spoil them.


Turns out, they enjoyed it very much. and so did we....thank goodness, because it had been so long since we went camping, we had to replace or upgrade some of our stuff. Like our tent. Back when we originally bought it, Alex and Frank were 4 and 3 respectively and we had no plans to add three more to the group. Here are a few pics from our trip. We had a lot of fun and only took a few pictures. Enjoy!

Our campsite from the chair I was sitting in looking to the left towards the water.



View of the water from our tent...That is Jaz taking the Diego, Isa and Antonio for a trial run on the inflatable raft we bought....walmart.com...cheap enough and it worked great.

View from the water's edge of our tent. Our campsite was very large. We enjoyed having a large space and staying close to the water.

They are still on a trial run. If you look closely, Antonio is not helping paddle. He has his legs crossed and he is very relaxed.

Isa enjoying some hot chocolate. Notice she camps with pearls (earrings). I had a hard time convincing her she didn't need her beaded shoes for this trip.

Diego, the baby, enjoying some hot chocolate.

Jaz, superdad, annoyed I wanted to take this picture. That is our camp kitchen. Nifty little thing. we did all food prep there and it has a tiny sink to wash out dishes. We tried our very best to not have hardly any trash. We did it - only two heb bags for 4 days. The people next to us had 3 girls and stayed only two days and had 2 large lawn bags full of trash. I was appalled. We work really hard on buying and using various resources and recycle as much as we can.

Our propane stove didn't work at all. We think it was too windy. So all we had was this pot and this comal. I don't know what you call it in English - oh, a griddle / grill.... anyway, it worked out.

Another view of our campsite. By the way, it is number 334, excellent spot. We hope to get the same one next time.

Frank and Antonio in the boat, going for a little spin. Isa and her Dad fishing. Only she would fish in a white bikini. Diego is just hanging out on the rocks like the turtles.

More fishing

Alex is in the back ground, "fishing in the trees" as Jaz puts it.

Frank and Isa on the way to save big brother.

More rescue pictures.

It cold really cold on Tuesday, so we made Isa gather and chop firewood.

(not really, Mom, don't call me....gathering firewood is not allowed - this is totally staged)

Spring Break 2008 - Inks Lake State Park - Hiking

Frank, Isa, Alex & Diego
Frank, Alex, & Diego

Antonio and Alex

Isa and Diego

Diego, working it out. He did great and only tired once for about 5 minutes.

We think there are racoon foot prints.

Short snack break, looking like a Diva, even while hiking.

Just after our second break of beef jerky, we're ready to make the big climb.

I'm the King of the World!!

(Diego)

Diego, Isa & Alex, lunch break, apples and oranges.

Isa

Isabel and Alex climbing a large rock - the risk takers of the group.

This was towards the end when we were exiting the wooded area. I thought it looked like a tiny piece of heaven in there.