A Smattering of Theater

Mandy & Brianna were in the Jr. High play. They called the show A Smattering of Theater. It was actually two small one act plays. One titled Wendy's Tale which involved a girl and her imagination that explains why she is horrible at taking test. Both Mandy & Brianna were in this play & held performed as more than one character. The other play was Offerings, a much more serious play that was more thought provoking about what you have to offer to be accepted. The director made it clear from the get go that only older and more mature actors would be placed in this play. Mandy was one of those chosen.

Both girls did an outstanding job in their roles. All of the students did! Below you will see some pictures of their performance. If you are on my facebook you can see more. I will also put up a few video clips. If you want to see more you can visit our youtube page: petefamzoo

From Wendy's Tale:

Mandy is in this section the whole time. Nina enters in at about 2:40 and her speaking part starts at 3:55:


A scene with Mandy:


From Offerings:

Mandy's main scene:

Youn Marine pancake breakfast

John "serves" in the local Young Marine unit.  He has belonged for about a year now.  He loves it.  Jim, is also involved, he loves it as well.  It's sort of like the boy scouts, but with a military emphasis.  Even though we left that life years ago, at our core we are still a military family.

The Young Marines do various projects.  Not only as a unit amongst themselves, but also within the community.  They had a pancake breakfast to help with funds in running their unit.  On a cold winter morning, the boys (and their parents) got up & served pancakes to those who stopped in to support the unit.  The fundraiser was a great success!

They have a few members that play instruments & play as the Young Marine band.  They are a nice group to listen to.

 John thought it was funny that the sign says Watch Your Head and without even trying I have PLENTY of clearance under that spot.

 The members who came out & served at the pancake breakfast.

Valentine's Day

We are not real big celebrators of Valentine's Day.  I shared my more personal thoughts on the subject on my other blog. It's not so much that we don't celebrate love & what not.  We are just not into flowers, gifts, all the hype & yada yada yada.

Since we have kids though, some in elementary school where class parties are still the norm, we get roped into this holiday a little bit more.  It is fun to do little things for the kids too.  Simple things that show love, but doesn't contain a bunch of hype or a lot of money.  It's kind of how we are as a family any way....simple.

Things started yesterday as the kids signed their valentines to give to their classmates.  I am NO FAN of these seemingly cute, but secretly evil cards.  First off, they just don't make them like they used to (as so nicely stated by my friend Suzie.)  Not to mention they come with these teeny tiny stickers or tattoos that they want you to insert into a near invisible slot that even someone with 20/20 vision could not see.  I ended up not attaching properly.  I told my kids to just give one to each kid along with the Valentine.  The kids are not required to give Valentine's, but the younger ones do, since it is the norm of their classmates to do so.  Carmen even got in on the action and wrote her name on Valentines.  At least she started with her name, by the end she resorted to scribbling.  I don't blame her I do that sometimes when I have to sign my name over and over.  The first few are nice and neat then I just lazily scratch my name that semi resembles what it should look like.

Other than telling each kid "Happy Valentine's Day", today was almost just like any other day.  At least until the afternoon when I had to go to the elementary school.  I am room mom for John's 5th grade class.  In a recent quest to clean out and re-organize my basement (post to come soon) I came across my chocolate fondue fountain that we had bought for our wedding.  I had not used it since then and figured I should put it to good use.  After obtaining special clearance from the principal I was able to bring the fountain in for the class party.  Instead of your usual store bought prewrapped junk snack/treat I (along with the many great donations of other class parents) created a chocolate feast for them to enjoy.

 We had bananas, strawberries, pineapple, marshmallows, pretzels and angel food cake.  Not to mention chocolate galore!

When it was all said & done I packed up and did not want the left overs to go to waste.  (I don't like to waste food).  I created this yummy treat (a mix of everything) and came home & shared it with the other kids after i picked through & took everything that I wanted.

Then I was on a roll so for supper I made pink/red heart shaped biscuits to go along with my lasagna.

Last, but not least, on this very special day....we celebrate Bella's birthday.  It's not her real birthday, as in when she was born, but it marks when we adopted her from the Humane Society.  She's been a really good cat to have.  Happy Birthday Bella!  Happy 2 year Anniversary of when you became a member of our zoo!

She was smelling the camera when I took this picture.

 For us not "celebrating" this day or trying to keep it simple, this sure is a long post.  That's usually what happens though.  Even in our simple, scaled back ways, you take it all times 8 and you get the normal happenings at the Zoo!

Feliz Cumpleanos Juan Antonio

We celebrated another birthday last weekend here at the zoo.  John turned 11 years old.  In his honor we arranged for a national football game to be held and televised for millions to view.  Oh, wait.  That was already going to happen anyway.  Well, then it just turns out that both occasions occurred on the same day.

We celebrated a couple days earlier with John having a sleepover with his buddies.  First we were going to take them swimming.  Then I realized the Y was closing early for an event.  So we decided we could take the boys to the church to run around, play dodge ball & the likes at the church.  Except the church was booked and that plan was not going to work anyway.  So we just fed them pizza, chips & pop and let them play around the house.  Boys don't need much beyond their imagination to have an active game of tag or war or something involving guns (toy ones or imagination ones with them using their fingers and making their own sound effects).  I didn't get any pictures but we had several moments of a group of boys barricaded in the living room with a fort of pillows and blankets.  And another group of boys in the kitchen & dining room making an attempt at an ambush.  It was fun to just sit & watch them play.  Boys just being boys in their still innocent & simple ways.  Otherwise the boys watched movies & played video games.  I went to bed and let them be, but was woken at 1:30 a.m. with noise of them playing around.  I went out, scolded them to be quiet & settle down.  Figuring that was that I went back to bed & slept soundly again until I was awoken at 5 a.m.  There were still 3 boys (one of them being John) up playing video games & being a little too loud!  Crazy boys!  GO TO BED!  One boy forgot to tell me he was getting picked up at 8 a.m., even though the party was not ending until 10.  We were all still asleep when a knock on the door woke us.  That is fun to answer the door to a parent when I'm barely awake.  They were very understanding!  It did get me up and moving to fix breakfast for the remaining group.  I made them a nice breakfast of eggs, toast & orange juice.  However many of them opted to eat left over pizza instead.  BOYS!!!!

Here are some pictures from John's party:

In this picture they were coming up with different ways to "blow out" the candle.  They all clapped really hard & managed to get the flame out.  They spent several minutes doing many different tricks to accomplish that.  Somethings I was NOT going to take a picture of!

 A little sibling frosting fight erupted during the evening.

It is so hard to believe that it has been 11 years since I gave birth to my first son.  After my mistaken gender guess with Nina I was reluctant to think one way or another about what I was having.  The ultrasound showed that he was a boy.  After 3 girls & being wrong on the last one I wouldn't believe it. I kept saying "I'll believe it when I see it!"  Since I didn't grow up with a brother (mine died as an infant) it was very important to me to have a son.  We knew all along that IF and when we did have a boy his name would be John Anthony, after Jim's grandpa.  My dad likes to call him Juan Antonio since that is the Spanish version of his name.

John was a twin.  I didn't give birth to his twin.  An early ultrasound confirmed the second baby, however by then the heart had already stopped beating (how amazing to see the perfectly formed 4 heart chambers on such a small baby).  It's a condition they call an invisible twin where the second baby just absorbers into the baby that is still alive.   I have always longed for twins with such a deep passion.  It seemed so unfair that of all pregnancies this is when I had conceived twins.  It was very bittersweet.  Since Brianna was only 3 months old I'm sure God knew what He was doing with His master plan.  Both John and I grieve and long for that twin (who's name is Matthew).  We know he's up in heaven waiting for us someday.

I had slipped in the bathtub a few days before John was born and strained some of my supporting ligaments.  Since I was pretty uncomfortable they admitted me & induced me.  I was already 5 days past due.  My labor was short & sweet and when John was finally born it was such a sweet moment to hold my son.  Since then it's been very different to raise a boy, but such a joy as well to see him grow into a young man. .