Sisters at the playground

This morning we woke up, dressed quickly, and headed to Burger King. What? Not a usual breakfast place for us, but it came with a playground so it was just the right place to be for fun, food, and plenty of pictures.

This slideshow worked perfectly, except I needed to add some pictures from the day before to fill in the second to last slide. I was going to use those pictures for their own blog called "Say Cheese!" because Tessa grinned and said "cheese!" everytime I held the camera up! Oh well, they're cute in the slideshow, too, just a little out of place.

Make a Smilebox scrapbook

Mr. Gloomy Pants...AKA Zozobra

We went up to Santa Fe (about an hour North of ABQ) Thursday night with some friends to witness the burning of Zozobra. Check out the link for more info, but here is my take on the Old Guy. In English, Zozobra means Old Man Gloom, or in Sophia's words, Mr. Gloomy Pants. Back in the 1920s, an artist in Santa Fe decided, with some friends, that the Fiestas were getting dull and overly commercialized, so he made his own! As a prequel to the other fiestas, he thought of building a giant marionette, symbolizing all of the gloom and unhappiness is our lives, then setting it on fire to rid ourselves of the gloom. Once all gloom was gone, everyone could celebrate and enjoy the other festivities.

The puppet has since grown to 50 feet tall (making it the tallest marionette in the world now) and the crowd has grown to over 20,000 people! The puppet is filled with papers that people want to have burned...divorce decrees, paid off mortgages, or just a hand written note describing a personal gloom.

At Fort Marcy Park, there was face painting, souvenirs, snacks, drinks, music playing all afternoon, and lots of people! Sophia got a light wand, later realized it was a sword, then began to call it a glue stick, even after I pointed out it was actually a glow stick. She got her face painted with little blue stars all over her face...her own design. Sydney chose light-up rabbit ears and got her face painted like a Princess, but wiped it off soon afterwards. Sophia wanted to sleep in her face paint and wear it to school the next day, but I wiped her face with a baby wipe as she sleepily lay in bed.

Although the bands leading up to the show seemed to play forever, the actual show was rather spectacular. The bands were good, don't get me wrong, but I think they played for almost 2 hours after sunset and the kids were impatient to see cool stuff, plus the Mom was impatient to get them home in bed!

My girls are usually in bed by 8pm, and that night they didn't get into their actual beds until 12! They did get to sleep awhile in the car (took us more like 2 hours to get home because of the traffic getting out of Santa Fe) and amazingly enough they weren't at all grumpy when I woke them up at 8am because Sophia had school. I guess the burning of Zozobra worked!

Back to the show...after the bands played, there are dancers symbolizing gloom and one dancer trying to chase them all away and the music continues while they do a long, very drawn out, dance. But every time you think it is going on a bit too long, BOOM! Fireworks come shooting out the back of this giant puppet. That gave the kids their first jump, but then he starts moaning and groaning on and on and it gets a little creepy. Sophia's friend was ready to go at that point, but Sophia would've had to be dragged away. She clutched her Daddy closely, all the while peering out at this strange moaning, groaning abomination. Tessa stared at him with mouth in the "o" position and looked at me occasionally, to make sure I was still smiling and not at all concerned.

They all cheered for the fireworks, though, even as they zoomed up a string towards old Grumpy Pants. My biggest concern beforehand was the people shouting, "Burn Him! Burn Him!" I was sure that would freak Sophia out, but she was yelling "Light him on fire!" all afternoon, until I explained that she was really supposed to yell "Burn him!" The other people shouting only encouraged her to shout more...which she was doing at that point out of impatience more that anything else.

When he finally caught fire, I realized that I should have been concerned about the visual image of a person on fire burning into my children's minds. To me, it was disconcerting to see the shape of a human face with flames surrounding it. Fortunately, the thrill of getting what you have waited so long to see, combined with the jubilant cheers of 20,000 + people, not to mention the numerous fireworks and the sheer spectacle of a 50 foot tall thing in flames was enough to bring grins to all of their faces as they were quickly whisked away by their parents. We got out of their quickly, mostly due to the fact that we had moved out of the crowd of people and stood by the exit for the actual fireworks and burning part of the show. Still, everyone else was trying to get out of there as well and it took a long time. Sophia and Sydney were still excited at that point and Tessa was asleep before we made it out of the parking lot, so even the long wait didn't ruin the evening. It was a night to remember.

Here are some of our videos from the night...you can find more on YouTube if you are interested.

Make a Smilebox slideshow

Sophisms and Tessisms

Well, Tessa says cute stuff too, now! Ok, sometimes we have to use our imaginations to figure out what she is telling us, but not always. Such as when I was getting ready to walk to the library last week and had the stroller by the front door. Tessa pointed to the stroller, said "stroller," pointed to the shoes, said "shoes," then waved her arms and said, "yes!"





Similarly, Sophia was eating chicken stars and showed us the proper way to eat them. She said, "First, dip it in the BBQ sauce, then the ketchup, then the ranch dressing." Here she clenched both fists and brought them towards herself, declaring, "Its the best!"





Ok, this one of Tessa wasn't really funny or witty, but she was wearing a princess hat and Sophia and I kept calling her princess, so she smiled at me and said, "Princess?"



Sophia had a scratch on her lip and told me there was something on it that she couldn't get off. I explained that it was a piece of missing skin, so she said, "Its missing? Let's go find it!"

Tessa was playing in the bathtub with two of Sophia's little pony toys, one in each hand. She would move one and talk in a deep voice, "Shuba bah she do guh guh" (or some similar gibberish...I'm not sure exactly). Then she would move the other pony and talk in a high pitched voice, "La la belah shoe da." I love how each pony had its own voice!

Sophia has started making a Christmas list already. I told her to write down things she wants on a list, because I'm not going to buy her everything she wants, but she might get some of them for Christmas. So she told me the other day, "I'm not sure if Santa is really alive because I've never really seen him, but I'll go ahead and throw the list downstairs with some cookies and a carrot for the reindeer when its the night before Christmas. If he is alive, he'll get it."

Sophia's friend Sydney told us that she wants a baby brother and sister. Sophia asked what Sydney would name the baby (because clearly the parents have no say in the matter!) and Sydney shrugged, saying "Don't know yet." Sophia grinned slyly and said, "You're going to name the baby Don't Know Yet!" And they both laughed hysterically.

First day of school

The wait for preschool to begin? Finally over! Sophia has a hard time waiting for long term things to happen...as do most kids her age and some people my age too! She has been anxious for the end of the summer but her school started on Wednesday and she had a great first day. She found her name tag right away and gave Tessa and I a quick kiss goodbye then took off to wash her hands so she could start playing. She told me when I picked her up that she spent the entire time playing with ponies, but later she spoke about playing piano, making new friends and reconnecting with friends from last year, hearing a story about a fox, and then she sang a new song she had learned.

After I picked her up, we met Chuckolate for lunch at Federico's, one of our favorite Mexican places, for a quick but yummy lunch, then Sophia had Gymnastics. She started it about two weeks ago and really enjoys it. She likes walking across the uneven bars and jumping on the springboard. Someday I will get pictures of her doing it, but so far I spend most of my time going back and forth from watching Tessa play to watching Sophia through the windows, and haven't gotten around to pictures yet.

At home, Sophia and I made a chain to count down the days until Tutu's visit. It helps her with the waiting to visualize the days. Then she sang the new song from school and I took a video. When it was done, Daddy suggested that she could sing the song about anyone she wanted, so she sang it again about Tutu...then made an adjustment and sang it a third time about Tutu. I couldn't choose between the videos, so I just added them all in.

The day ended wonderfully for me, with Sophia telling me, "If you weren't my Mommy, you would still be my friend."

Tea party for 10?

Sophia was invited to a costume tea party at Gymboree for her good friend. She hasn't gone to Gymboree for awhile so she loved being there, dressing up, having a tea party, and of course celebrating one of her best friend's birthdays. She started off in her Tinkerbell costume, but as the day progressed she changed into some of her friend's many costumes. She found two different Jasmine costumes, who is her current favorite princess.

She and Sydney had fun racing through their cups of tea (actually apple juice) and looked more like they were drinking shots than sipping tea. They played lots of fun games and also loved seeing Gymbo the clown and getting balloon animals made by him/her. Note: they never say whether Gymbo is a boy clown or a girl clown and it is funny to hear the Gymboree teachers refer to Gymbo as sh...he. Sophia wanted a snake and loved it until we got in the car and then was completely devastated because it instantly popped when it touched the hot seat belt buckle. It was a long sad ride home. But she did get lots of fun party favors, which managed to cheer her up about the time we turned onto our street.

Feast with the Beasts

Our zoo had a special night last Friday where we could have dinner there, see the animals, and also see gymnastics, a magician, storytellers, jugglers, a giant slide, a climbing wall, and more. The line was crazy and we almost just went home, but finally we made it inside and had a little fun. Not too much because most of the fun things had long lines and we just skipped them. We did get to see some animals, gymnastics, jugglers, and hear a few stories. Tessa loved the giraffes...she pointed at them and said "giraffe" twice. Sophia like the stories...she always loves to hear a good story. They both loved the popsicles...and I loved that it was all free for zoo members!

Funny Girls

My girls are always saying or doing funny things...so I thought I might share a few of the latest...




First of all, we are hoping for overseas orders...I know some people may think we are crazy but we miss living overseas and want to see more new places...not to mention I'm not thrilled with the idea of my kids going to school here! Anyway, lots of wonderful sounding places currently have jobs open for Chuckolate...Hawaii, Greece, Spain, and Turkey are the ones I am interested in the most. I was telling Chuckolate maybe we should ask the universe to give us orders, like in that book The Secret. Sophia overheard and said, "Mom, could you ask them to get me a unicorn too please? I really want one for a pet." I hadn't realized she was listening and didn't understand what she was talking about for a minute, then thought it was quite funny.


Tessa talks a lot lately. Long, complicated sentences stream out of her mouth, though they are completely unintelligible and I am not sure how to respond when she looks at me, waiting for my reply. Sometimes we can understand her, though. Like last week when she was eating peas, beans, and chicken. Chuck asked if she wanted peas or beans (expecting her to point to one of them) and she said, "schicken!" He gave her the chicken and she smiled.



Sophia decided, after watching the Olympics, that someday she will be in them for both swimming and gymnastics...two of her favorite activities. She is wearing her sister's hat in this picture, as a swimmer's cap, and pretending to swim around the room.





Last weekend we had a garage sale and I tried to sell some of my old toys that had been in storage for 10 years. Sophia wanted to keep most of them though. I let her pick a few to keep (such as this lion and dog) and put the other toys on a blanket for Sophia to sell. I told her she could keep the money and put it in her piggy bank. She walked around following people (for the first half hour), saying "Do you want a toy? Here, you can have one." One nice lady offered to give her a quarter or two, but didn't want to buy any toys. Sophia missed the point though, and said, "No thanks. I already have a dollar. Here, do you want it?" and tried to give her money away!


One of Tessa's favorite games is pointing out body parts. I tried to teach her "where's your nose?" awhile ago, but she must be independent like her sister and will point to almost any other body part but not to her nose. I will ask her to point to her arm, her head, her ear, her nose, and she gets every one right until we get to the nose! Then she just looks at me, like why am I asking her to do such silly things.



Last Sunday Sophia and I went back to I Scream Ice Cream with our friends Sydney and her Mom. The girls played dress-up there and I got a few funny pictures. I don't know what kind of expression Sophia is making in the first one!


On Monday night I came home from the pool to see Tessa climbing on the new slide and Sophia about to watch a kid's show. The slide was in a neighbor's yard with a "free" sign and I thought it would be great...but it will be in the yard soon...our living room has enough toys! Anyway, when Dora came on Tessa started dancing, so I ran for the camera and caught a bit of her in action.

Just today Sophia made me laugh again because we were in the car and decided to stop by the pet store for her and Tessa to see the animals and she said, "Someday you should play a trick on me and tell me we are going to do some boring shopping and then really go to the pet store to see the animals like we are today. That would be fun." So I said, "Oh, ok. But we aren't really going to the pet store today. I decided we have some boring shopping to do instead so maybe we will go to the pet store another day." I thought she would see through my obvious plan to trick her, but she said, "Oh Mom! I really wanted to go to the pet store. What shopping do we have to do? Can we go to the pet store when we are finished?" I could barely stop myself from laughing as I told her we were going to a store with only boring grown-up books, no kid's books or anything with pictures. Then we pulled up to the pet store and she said, "Why are there pictures of animals on this store?" Finally I told her I had played a trick on her like she had told me to do and wasn't that funny? She laughed too, but not as much as I did when she didn't realize I was tricking her!