Fall, Fall, Fall

Another week has flown by. I would have posted earlier (ummm, sure...), but Margarita has been heavily involved with her science fair project until late every night which involves using my laptop because the "family" computer has a dinosaur version of Word (according to her).

Fall Colors

Last Friday Pedro, Guapo, and I went up to the mountains to check on our lovely house that we no longer are able to use due to soccer games, football games, basketball games, swim meets and such. So we decided to take the afternoon and go just for a couple of hours so we didn't miss the leaves (like last year).

It was beau-ti-ful.

Guapo loves this picture that he took; I think I have lion hair:

Remember Quakey? Yes, we still have him.

Fall Sports

After being drug to his siblings organized sporting events for the last year, Pedro has been looking forward to his chance to shine. I finally gave in and signed him up for "PeeWee Soccer". It was a pretty lame program run by college age girls that were more interested in their iPhones than the cute little 4 and 5 year olds (you can feel the enthusiasm in the photos below). But, finally, in their last two practices, instead of playing freeze tag (a critical element of any serious soccer program), they actually had a little scrimmage.

Pedro rocked!

Look at him going in for this goal-and against 2 goalies nonetheless:

So cute.

Fall Grapes

We have great grapes in our backyard. People far and wide (in our neighborhood) talk about the wonderful grapes they've eaten over the years from our yard. Unfortunately, Guapo trimmed them back so far that we only got like 6 this year (we each got one). Fortunately, our neighbor didn't trim his back and therefore had a bumper crop that he had no interest in harvesting.

Here's Guapo picking them (didn't you know grapes grew on trees?)

Just look at these babies:

This is pretty much all we did last weekend:

We made 5 1/2 gallons of juice that is de-li-cious. I am now making grape jelly from the juice. I tell you, I'm a domestic goddess. And, there are still more grapes out there. (Guapo doesn't know it yet, but he's going back up the ladder when he gets home. I'm not letting them go to waste.)

Fall Obsession

I'm still pretty big into my food storage kick these days. I figure it just makes good sense what with food prices constantly on the rise. I'll have you know that today I took a Sharpie and wrote the expiration date so it would be easily visible on each of my 56 boxes of cereal. And then I alphabetized them.

It made me *so* happy.

I hope you're all enjoying your fall and that you have a great weekend. :)

Junkyard Dog

Oh the joys of dog ownership.

(That's very un-PC, isn't it? I can't really "own" my dog, can I?)

Quakey has turned out to be quite the little scavenger. Kitty's a scavenger-but we expected as much-she was a little skeleton when we got her-she'd been living on the streets of Small Town and almost didn't make. So, I would expect that she would eat whatever she could find. And she does (bunnies, birds, voles).


Quakey, on the other hand, was a very expensive purebred who has never suffered even a pang of hunger in his short little life.

And yet, he loves, loves, loves the trash. Loves to dig through the trashcans and hoard the trash in his crate.

I finally made Guapo clean it out the other night and here's what we found:

1. A bag of potatoes he stole out of the pantry.
2. Julio's lunch thing-a-ma-jig (what do you call those?) that he scavenged out of his backpack. I guess he doesn't like blueberries. He does, however, like PB&J sandwiches.
3. The lid from those delicious little lemon cakes Costco sells-have you had those? Yum. He somehow wrangled it out of the lidded-recycled trash can.
4. Kitty litter remnants-he still has the disgusting habit of eating the cat pooh.
5. One of his chews-the only thing he's supposed to have in his crate.

Here are some of the potatoes I found throughout the house that day, thus inspiring the edict to clean out the crate:

I'm telling you-the dog is like the 5th child we don't have. The messes, the fighting and teasing(with Pedro), the cleaning up of the pooh (both his and the cats), the guilt when I leave him home alone. It's awesome.

Luckily he's fairly cute and is always happy (especially when he's got some fresh trash).

It's been a LONG week here.

Have a great weekend!

What Would Cesar Say?

I know. It's mid-week and I'm blogging about something other than why I'm not blogging. Strange.

Just a few pictures of a very naughty Underwear Dog.

I'm trying not to think about how his favorite treat, despite the oodles of chews that I buy him, continues to be cat turds.

And Guapo wonders why I am a cat person?

(he is cute, I'll give him that; I just don't want him licking me. Or my flatware.)

My Unbloggable Life

It has been almost 3 weeks since I last blogged. I know I'm not the most faithful blogger, but 3 weeks without the excuse of pregnancy or summer vacation? Come on!

I guess I feel pretty uninteresting lately-just a lot of normal life stuff. Let's see-

The End of Fall Soccer

Hallelujah!

Soccer kept things hopping this fall-4 practices on three different weeknights and then 2 or 3 games every Saturday for 7 weeks. Whew. I was pretty much burned out after week 2. Julio's poor team, who went defeated until their last game, finally posted a "W" and Julio scored the winning goal. Man, that was one bad team. Julio is currently OBSESSED with playing tackle football next fall (gee, I can't imagine why he's not interested in soccer anymore). I've only got 9 months to talk him out of it-any ideas?

Juan Carlos's team won every game but their first one, and then lost the last game. :( He made a lot of improvement during the year and had fun so I imagine he'll play again next year.

Flu Shots

First time I've ever got one-after getting the flu a couple of years ago I'll do whatever I can to prevent it. It didn't even hurt.

Puppy Update

Work. Lots of work.

Oh, and I've realized that Coloradans, at least where we live, are crazy about dogs. Remember how I always talked about how much Brazilians loved kids and babies? Well, that's how the people are here about their dogs. People could care less about my kids, but everyone's all talkative and friendly if I'm out and about with Quakey (yes, his name has evolved into Quakey which is much easier because we don't have to explain why we named our dog "underwear" in Portuguese).

His latest naughty trick was getting in to Juan Carlos's backpack, removing a full chocolate milk box and then ripping it apart on our bedroom carpet. Not good.

Margarita's a Girl

Margarita has succumbed to peer pressure and started dressing like a girl. No more Nike t-shirts, plaid shorts and flip-flops. She is wearing cute skinny jeans, blouses and even an occasional scarf! The bad thing is is that she has the wrong mom for help with fashion advice. And, she has the same affinity for black, grey and white that I do-so our closets are looking pretty similar these days.

Fall

After 10 years of living in cities nicknamed "The City of Eternal Spring" (or worse, Small Town, Mexico which I nicknamed, "The City Whose Weather Most Resembles That of H@#$"), I am LOVING fall. The leaves, the crisp air, the pumpkins. You'd think I'd have taken a million photos of all of my favorite local trees, but no, I've been too busy with soccer, student teacher conferences (Pedro is one of his teacher's favorite kids ever-and she's been teaching for 20 years-wow!), piano lessons (I was the oldest student by a good 20 years to play at my teacher's Halloween recital last week-won't be doing that again!), cub scouts, and all the other random activities that come up to preserve the lovely memories.

But, I have loved it all the same.

That's about it. See? I told you, pretty boring. But, boring is good sometimes.

Puppy vs. Newborn Baby

When we announced we were getting a puppy the majority of the responses had something to do with how having a puppy is akin to having a newborn again.

Last time I checked, my newborns didn't:

• leave puddles and piles randomly throughout the house
• bite my other children
• hoard shoes into their crib
• make the cats hiss and run
• run away when I open the door
• eat cat poop from the litter box

No, having a puppy is much closer to having a very rambunctious, very naked, biting two year old than a peaceful, immobile, newborn.

That said, we're having fun with little Cuecas. And whoever dreamt up crate training was an absolute genius. We can leave the house without worrying about what kind of mess we'll come home to and he sleeps through the night in it (which makes him a bit easier than a newborn-but only in that regard).

We've decided, while we're at it, we might as well crate train Pedro, since it's working so well with the dog. He's taken quite well to it:

Like babies, puppies are super cute when they're asleep. Here's Cuecas with his favorite shoe to hoard-my fuzzy crocs:

Here we are taking a walk last weekend with the dog-everyone fought for their turn to walk him.

He's just a little guy, so he gets tired out easily:

Anyone want to babysit over Thanksgiving?