There's Pie!

Look at what my sister-in-law Cristi made! The bottom left is Pear/Cranberry/Apple Crumble; the bottom right is Pumpkin Pecan; and the top two are Dixie Pie which consist of Walnuts, Chocolate Chips, Bourbon and Brown Sugar! She also made a pumpkin roll and is going to make a sweet potato pie per my request!

This is the sister-in-law that lives in Texas. She' David's brother's wife. In addition to wonderful pies, she's an all-around great cook. She was the "head chef" for the famous Christmas Goose dinner a couple of years ago.

We're going pretty standard traditional this year - regular roast turkey cooked with turnips and butternut squash, several stuffings/dressings, mashed potatoes, sweet potato mash with bacon (!), green bean casserole, creamed onions, Brussels sprouts (yay!) and the pies. You know me though, I could easily do with just the side dishes. The turkey can be the centerpiece, Ha!

iPhone Blogging

See that title...it's a lie. You, or maybe just me, can't Blog on the iPhone. I can type in the title...but then there's no way to get to the text body area. I tried to be good and Blog on the road during the last leg of the road trip. Epic Fail.

Anyway, we're here! We arrived to fog and rain but it's not too cold. It's supposed to rain a lot tomorrow but be dry and "allegedly" not too cold by Thanksgiving. We'll see.

When we got to my in-laws' house all four nieces were here and the nephew arrived shortly thereafter. YAY! All the Christmas gifts I ordered are here and ready to be wrapped. YAY! I already had my first Philly Cheese steak YAY!

And...I won $50 on a North Carolina scratch-off lotto ticket! WOO HOO!

Lets see what adventures await tomorrow!

Aaaaaand...we're off!

OK, today we start the two day drive to Pennsylvania. Tonight we'll be stopping in Kingsland, Georgia.

Oh the road wonders that await...Waffle House coffee...Sonic Chocolate Coke..."road food"!

The Blogging may be sketchy, but I'll try my best!

Abi

Did I ever tell you about my maternal grandmother? She lived with us and pretty much raised me while my parents worked. She was born in Spain and moved to Cuba in her 20s when she married my grandfather. Her name was Sofia, I called her "Abi" short for "Abuela".

The Jean Nate scent wafted in the air around her. As she walked into the room, taking her time, the first thing you’d notice was how tiny she was. Under 5 feet tall, she was uniformly petite, her face hands, and limbs were small and thin. Yet, her body was plump and round. Her thin, lined skin was alabaster hued with shades of pink on her cheeks, her bright honey-colored eyes belied her age - alert, aware and inquisitive. Her face was framed by her beautiful silver hair which she kept trimmed in a blunt, round style. Her voice was surprisingly strong and resonant. Everyone else remembers a definite Galician accent but I didn’t hear it I guess my ears were used to it.

She never had a formal job, but when she came from Cuba with my parents, she worked for a while. The first "job", before I was born, was hand-sewing hems for wedding dresses for a shop near their apartment in New York. Later, and I don't know the details of how she pulled this off, she went door to door in the apartment building in which they lived - for some reason there were several other Cuban families living there, and she sold guava bars and other tropical "treats". It was her way of helping the family get through those early exile years.

Abi offered me the most "uncomplicated" love I ever experienced. While I know, like her, my parents loved me unconditionally - her love for me wasn't fraught with the drama that comes with parental love. We never argued even though she was "old school" and she was strict - never letting me get away with spoiled or disrespectful behavior. But then she spoiled me in her way making me the center of her world, or at least making me feel as if I was.

I know no one will ever love me the way she did...I was blessed to have had her in my life until I was in my 20s. As important as my parents were to me, Abi was my foundation, my first teacher and instrumental in the person I became.

These many years later, I often miss her. Today is one of those days...

For you 52...

...for me it's even less than that! David and I are going up to PA for Thanksgiving this year, so the plan is to order the gifts for the PA contingent and have them delivered to MIL's house before then, so I can wrap them and leave them there.

We do a gift exchange between the four sibling and the spouses, so rather than get everyone a gift we pick a name and give one nice gift. Then everyone gets gifts for my MIL and FIL and all five children - this time next year there'll be six! (While I wasn't Blogging, David's sister went and got pregnant with her second. )

So if my plan works I'll only have to buy the gift exchangees' gifts and mail the Texas contingents' gifts later.

My in-laws are relatively easyish - but the kids! They're always a project. Granted that's pretty much my fault because I want to give each of them books, a toy or other "fun" thing, and a personalized ornament commemorating something that occurred to them during the year.

Here's the breakdown: In Pennsylvania I have two nieces from one of David's brothers - they're 11 and 9, and David's sister's son who's 1, almost 2 (he's the one that's getting a brother). Then in Texas, David's other brother also has two girls that are 6 and 1½. Look how cute they all are!


Now since I don't live near any of them it's difficult to keep up with what they're into so trying to figure out what to get them and what the ornament should be is stress inducing to say the least. So I am in the throes of figuring out and deciding and picking...GAH!

Have you started your shopping yet?

Back to School

image source

It seems summer vacation is ending much earlier than it did "in my day" (I'm over 40 I'm allowed to say that without irony). I did however start school slightly later than everyone else. Most people started school shortly after Labor Day, however, since I went to a very Cuban-American grade school (1st-8th grade) we didn't start until after September 8 which is the feast day of Cuba's patron saint La Virgen de la Caridad (Our Lady of Charity).

But my favorite part of going back to school was, of course, shopping for school supplies. Even now I'm a bit of an office supply junkie, but school supplies are so much better. Because I went to a private school we didn't have to worry about shopping for clothes because we had a uniform so it was all about the supplies. I know that today parents usually get a list ahead of time for what to get, but 142 years ago, when I was in grade school, the parents got nothing ahead of time. So before school started we would head off to the now defunct Zayre's, which was sort of like a Wal-Mart only not soul-suckingly evil, and buy general stuff.

General stuff was pencils - I would get 2 packs of pretty yellow unsharpened #2 pencils, a pencil sharpener - the black one with the domed plastic lid, depending on the grade either spiral notebooks or plastic three-ring binders with three hole punched college ruled paper, a wooden ruler, and starting around 5th grade we had to get ball point pens - a pack of blue, a pack of black and a pack of red. Then there was the matter of a carrying method - this was before backpacks and rolling suitcases were an option. When I was little I would get a book bag that looked like a soft sided briefcase with a buckle on the front - I can't find a picture of anything like it. Later on I was too too cool for book bags so I got those elastic book bands with hooks to hold the books together and hitched the pile of books and notebooks on my hip. Oh and there was that glorious time when the Trapper Keeper entered my life - as John Mayer said (although he was talking about the 80s generation it applies to me as well) it was "the genesis of obsessive compulsive disorder for my generation." I never needed a pencil case or pencil box because my mom would get me bank deposit pouches from work.

On the first day of school the teacher would give us the list of specific items we would need - crayons, scissors, and as we got older calculators, protractors, compasses (shudder!), etc. But best of all, we would get our books for the year. Again, because I was in private school we would buy our books, so each year we would get brand new books - people didn't sell used text books back then. I remember the crack sound when I opened them, the smell of new book...they were so pretty and shiny, so full of promise. Later that night my father would cover them, first in clear contact paper to protect them and then with whatever book covers I had chosen for the year which wound up lasting about a week tops. It was awesome.

Then of course, the second day of school we'd get homework and everything went downhill from there as I counted the days to the next summer vacation.

I hope everyone's 2009 back-to-school day is (or was) uneventful and full of promise!

image sources: pencil sharpener, elastic book bands, bank deposit pouch, clear contact paper

Sidecar Saga

As you may remember, in March Hubby and I went to the Philly area for his sister's wedding. I had decided that my drink for the evening was going to be an old-school cocktail - the Sidecar.

However, when we arrived at the reception the bar had a menu of what they called "Featured Drinks" - various types of vodka drinks. I thought those were the only mixed drinks they would serve, so I *sacrificed* and proceeded to have a few "Appletinis". Then we toasted the couple with champagne, and of course with dinner I had red wine.

It wasn't until after dinner that I found out they made all kinds of cocktails. I immediately went to the bar and asked the nice man for a Sidecar. He gave me a blank look for a minute, then said that he had made them before but could only remember that brandy was involved. I had no idea what was in them, I just knew I liked them. The guy felt bad for me so he suggested a Brandy Manhattan, which replaces the whiskey with brandy. Again I *sacrificed* and had a couple of those.

When I returned to the reception area I immediately went to a friend of the family (one of my favorite people - he's just that fabulous!) who I thought might know the ingredients in a Sidecar. He's one of these people who should have been born in a different era - in his 30s but all about retro stuff...and debauchery. So you see, he was perfect! Sadly, he told me he didn't know. Dejectedly - while sipping on my Brandy Manhattan - I returned to my table and shared my tale of woe.

Suddenly, my brilliant computer god brother-in-law whipped out his...Blackberry (dirty-minded people!). He Googled the recipe! Just as someone at my table was writing it down on the back of the wedding favor engagement picture of the newly-married couple, the guy I had checked with earlier was at my side delivering the drink and a copy of the recipe on a wedding favor engagement picture! It turns out he too had "Blackberried" (is that a verb?) it and had given the recipe to the bartender. YAY!

Talk about synchronicity of brilliant minds devoted to the all important task of helping me get a cocktail. I have the greatest friends and family don't I?

Here's a picture of the hand-written recipe:

Needless to say - several Sidecars were subsequently consumed. That's me at the top of this post in my wedding finery and delicious Sidecar. Don't I look happy?

The Lola Shuffle - The "Good Friday" Edition

image source

Wow! Doing the Lola Shuffle on Good Friday! I realize I've done a couple of these already and I never made the connection of music and Good Friday before today.

When I was growing up I was raised by my beloved, very Catholic, very old-school , very pre-Vatican II, Spanish grandmother. This meant that on Good Friday not only was there no meat - there was also no TV, no playing, and no music - there was pretty much no fun at all, because well, Jesus Christ died for us that day and the least we could do was be miserable.

You can imagine what that was like for a kid all day at home on vacation from school who loved TV! It was awful. It was made worse because, while we couldn't listen to music, my grandmother would turn all the radios in the house to one of the local Cuban radio stations who on Good Friday would only air the reading of the Sermon of the Seven Words on a continuous loop - all day. So my grandmother, and therefore I, would listen to it ALL DAY, EVERYWHERE.

But that was then and this is now. Today Lola shuffles and I'm pretty sure Jesus is cool with that.

1. Movin' On - Elliott Yamin
2. Love Affair - Erasure
3. Behind the Wall - Tracy Chapman
4. Rock and Roll Dreams - Meatloaf (By the way did anyone see Meatloaf last Monday on the awesomest episode of "House" ever? He wasn't in the main story, but he was good...)
5. Get the Party Started - P!nk (Sorry Abi! - that's what I called my grandmother)
6. When I Come Around - Green Day
7. Babe - Styx
8. I Kissed a Girl - Katy Perry (Yeah, Lola seems intent on giving Abi a hard time today...)
9. Don't Stop - Fleetwood Mac
10. Clumsy - Fergie

I hope everyone has a wonderful weekend. If you celebrate Easter, then have a blessed, happy holiday. I hope you get lots of easter candy, and remember - always, always, always, eat the chocolate bunny ears first!

The Leader of the Band

As some of you know my husband and I spent a week in the Philadelphia area for my Hubby's baby sister's wedding. As some of you also know, we've had a rough couple of months after my husband's illness and hospitalization - for a while it looked like we might not be able to make it to the wedding!

Because of this, and maybe because I've been more introspective than usual for who knows what reason, several things during the wedding and its preparations caught my attention and I'll probably write about them periodically.

Today I'm writing about the Father-Daughter dance at the wedding. First a little background about my father-in-law. He - like Hubby's entire family - is a musician. He's also a retired music teacher. Throughout his career he taught all ages and directed school bands and chorales, and even today he is the choir director at his church. In short, he's always been, in one way or another, the "Leader of the Band"., which is the song my SIL chose for the father-daughter dance.

Besides being a talented musician and beloved teacher, my FIL is one of the kindest men I know. He welcomed me into his family from day one, and has always made me feel loved and cared for, I am very, very lucky. Yet another reason the song choice was perfect!

As for the dance itself, it was beautiful but I can't fathom how SIL managed to not bawl her eyes out! I am so impressed by people who can do that. I of course was crying like the dork I am along with a bunch of other people, but FIL and SIL kept it together, although I think FIL got a little misty...it was, after all, his little girl, his only daughter.

I don't know how my SIL came to choose this song, as it was popular when she was very young, but it is really apropos for FIL and the family since all of them are musicians and music is such an important part of thier lives.

It is one of my all-time favorite songs by one of my all-time favorite singers, Dan Fogelberg. Because the words are so beautiful, I wanted to share them with you, and wish that you all have at least one "leader of the band" in your life.


Leader of the Band
Dan Fogelberg

An only child
Alone and wild
A cabinet makers son
His hands were meant
For different work
And his heart was known
To none --
He left his home
And went his lone
And solitary way
And he gave to me
A gift I know I never
Can repay

A quiet man of music
Denied a simpler fate
He tried to be a soldier once
But his music wouldn't wait
He earned his love
Through discipline
A thundering, velvet hand
His gentle means of sculpting souls
Took me years to understand.

The leader of the band is tired
And his eyes are growing old
But his blood runs through
My instrument
And his song is in my soul --
My life has been a poor attempt
To imitate the man
I'm just a living legacy
To the leader of the band.

My brothers lives were
Different
For they heard another call
One went to Chicago
And the other to St. Paul
And I'm in Colorado
When I'm not in some hotel
Living out this life Ive chose
And come to know so well.

I thank you for the music
And your stories of the road
I thank you for the freedom
When it came my time to go --
I thank you for the kindness
And the times when you got tough
And, papa, I don't think I
Said I love you near enough --

The leader of the band is tired
And his eyes are growing old
But his blood runs through
My instrument
And his song is in my soul --
My life has been a poor attempt
To imitate the man
I'm just a living legacy
To the leader of the band
I am the living legacy
To the leader of the band.

At my wedding my father-daughter song was "Wonderful World" by Louis Armstrong - what was yours?

A Year of Thanks

This is a bittersweet Thanksgiving for me.

It's my first holiday season as an official orphan. As you may know Mami died in February of this year. Since my father's death in 2003, we hadn't really done the traditional Thanksgiving meal with her. Her Alzheimer's made it difficult to go to a crowded party, and frankly, being Cuban, she didn't really miss the turkey and all the trimmings. Don't get me wrong, when I was a kid and up until my father died we always, always, always did Thanksgiving, either at home or with family - in fact due to my father's dealings with and travel to the United States (and the fact that he would use any excuse to gather with friends and eat), my parents were among the few who celebrated Thanksgiving in Cuba. In any case, with Mami we would usually take her to lunch during the Thanksgiving weekend and she would have her Thanksgiving steak!

Since we started not celebrating the actual Thanksgiving meal with my mother, we have been blessed to have dear friends who have adopted Hubby and me for Thanksgiving or Christmas Eve (we alternate holidays with my in-laws in PA). This year we will be going to our friends' house and giving thanks with and for them. I'll have some sweet potato mash - Mami's favorite Thanksgiving dish - in her honor. I'm comforted knowing that in heaven she and Papi will be dining with all their friends and family who are with them, Papi cutting the turkey (that was always his job - slice a piece, eat a piece, slice a piece, eat a piece) and Mami enjoying her super-rare Thanksgiving sirloin with fried plantains and white rice.

On the other hand what a year to be thankful! First the biggest blessing of my life - my husband - he drives me crazy, he keeps me sane, he picks me up when I fall, and he holds me when I need to be still - he is my life and my love and there will never be enough thanks I can give for him or to him.

Next the blessings of friends and family - these wonderful people fill my life with love and laughter. I am so much a better person because of them, I am so lucky. As an only child, these people are my tribe and my support system. And did I mention the laughter?

On the Sports front - let's give a big Thanksgiving shout out to the 2008 World Series Champions, the Philadelphia Phillies! WOO HOO! OK, that was mostly for Hubby, but he's happy and that makes me happy so - YAY!

And of course, what I've been waiting for since November 2000 - the end of the long national nightmare! We have a brand, spanking new President-elect! And what a President he will be! I am thankful for President-elect Barack Hussein Obama. I am so proud of him and so impressed by him and Michelle. January 20th can't come soon enough.

And I'm thankful for this Blog which gives me a chance to vent, ramble, rant, write, and share with old and new friends. And I'm thankful to you for reading my musings.

Have a safe, happy and blessed Thanksgiving with those you love. May next year find us with even more for which to be thankful.

The Dictionary Game!

Like me, my in-laws love playing games - board games and the like. Among our favorites is a game we call "The Dictionary Game" but which is the same as Fictionary. So we played it the other night and my mother-in-law came up with a doozy of a word! Let's see how you do...

The word is: floccinaucinihilipilification.

I'll give you four definitions - three that we made up along with the actual definition - and you have to tell me which one you think is correct in my comment - DON'T CHEAT! I'll reveal the correct answer on the Friday shuffle.

OK, here are the definitions:

1. The process of getting pox-like lesions on the skin after encountering a fablieaux scent of indescribable hoodoo in the men's room.
2. A process used by hyptonists to help patients suffering from spelling bee nightmares
3. The act of making something appear to be worthless by deprecation
4. That which occurs when flocks of domesticated animals are herded uphill in order to avoid their wool from pilling when they are sheared

Now wasn't that fun? Yep - wild and crazy times at the Mindwobbles' house!

The Lola Shuffle - "The The In-Laws are Coming! The In-Laws Are Coming! Edition"

Yes, that's right! By the time the next Lola Shuffle comes around my MIL in FIL (that's them up there - are they not adorable?) will be here - YAY! We always have a good time when they're here. And they'll be here for my birthday, which means I moght even get a yummy MIL-cooked birthday dinner !

MIL makes several dishes that I really like: Home-made pierogies (OHMYGOD you have no idea how good they are!), Slovak-style Halupki, spaghetti and meatballs, etc. The thing is the pierogies and halupki are hard to make, so we'll see...

So Lola, shuffle us up a good "in-laws visiting" mix...

1. Come Dancing - The Kinks
2. Stronger - Kanye West
3. Dark Road - Annie Lennox
4. Landslide - Fleetwood Mac
5. Whatta Man - Salt-N-Pepa
6. New World Man - Rush
7. Why Don't We Get Drunk and Screw - Jimmy Buffett (oh, nice job Lola - perfect for the in-laws!)
8. Help! - The Beatles (Lola is being snarky now...this is totally random, I swear!)
9. Mesage to Myself - Melissa Etheridge
10. Love to Love You - The Corrs

Have a great weekend before a holiday weekend!

A New Project

My friend purplepassion and I have embarked on a new project, because you know we don't have enough going on in our lives right now.

We want to collect recipes for traditional Cuban home-cooking and be taught by the "experts" - our mothers, grandmothers, aunts, older friends, etc. and then we want to preserve them and share them - hence the inception of a new Blog: Cuban Home Cooking ...Keeping the Tradition Alive. TA, DAAAA...

So Sunday 2/17 we met at the home of one of one of our best friend's mother - her name is Miriam, and she's fabulous. She taught us how to make Ham Croquettes - Cuban style. We had a blast! While we waited for the croqueta mixture to cool, we drank wine, looked at old photo albums, told and listened to stories, and basically just enjoyed ourselves.

Although this had been planned for a while it was particualrly good for *me* at this time to spend time with a "mom". She talked about stuff my parents used to tell me about and we talked about common friends, and about stuff I would've talked to my mother about.

At the end of the day we had croquetas to take home and the memory of an afternoon spent by women of different generations but with so much in common.

Anyway, please go check out the new Blog and tell me what you think!

Is it over yet?

2007 that is. Because heaven forbid my life should be boring.

I woke up yesterday at around 8:45, we had been out kinda late Saturday night so Hubby was fast asleep. I made coffee, ensconced myself in my big arm chair, turned on the TV to CBS to semi-watch the delightful and mellow Sunday Morning. I also logged on to World of Warcraft and started a quest in a my quest log - Hildalaira, my 'toon, had just banged the kodohide drum to summon a marmot to capture something I needed to get for the quest. All was right with the world. There was nothing pressing that needed to get done, we were probably going to go to Purplepassion's house to watch football and hang out. A perfect Sunday.

Then my cell phone rang. Even before I saw the called ID I knew it was bad because everyone knows my "don't call me before 10 a.m. on a weekend unless it's an emergency" rule. It was the ALF where my mother lives calling to tell me my 84 year-old Alzheimer's ridden mother was found on the floor when they went in to her room with her Cuban coffee and newspaper. They were going to call an ambulance because she couldn't walk.

sigh.

To make a way too long story short I wound up in the hospital ER from 10:15 a.m. to 6:30 when she was taken to her room. In the interim I cried several times when I saw my mom confused as to what was going on or wincing and crying out in pain until they thankfully gave her morphine and she was able to sleep. It turns out she broke her hip and needs surgery. We're hoping it'll happen Wednesday or Thursday.

I spent most of the day with her today. She is pain-free since she was put on (in?) traction. Because she doesn't feel any pain she has absolutely no idea why she's in the hospital.

Between 9:30 a.m. and 4:30 p.m. today she asked me why she was in the hospital approximately 84,217 times. Each time I told her she had a fractured hip it was all shock and awe: "Me!?!" "I broke my hip?" "When?" Then I tell her. 15-20 minutes later: "Why am I here?" Second verse, same as the first. And so on, and so on, and so on. I was about ready to ask for morphine for myself. Come to think of it, I still have Vicodin...

Oh yeah - and I have to tell everyone who comes in contact with her to not mention the *s* word - surgery. She completely FREAKS OUT! The thing is my mother understands English perfectly, so through a series of winks, and grimaces, and rolling eyes I have to communicate to the innocent health-care worker to not mention surgery, they have to call it treatment instead.

And this is only the beginning. We still have surgery, 2 or 3 post-surgery days in the hospital, god-knows how long in a rehab facility, and the back to the ALF.

W00T! Happy New Year!

But, still, I know I'm blessed with friends and family who love and support me. And my husband has, as always, been wonderful. Last night he was my rock when I literally fell to my knees crying in exhaustion and sadness. He helped me back up and plied me with a Checkers' chili dog, a Big Buford hamburger, a chocolate shake and Loaded French Fries. Now that's love.

I wish everyone a wonderful 2008. Tonight I'll party with my friends and tomorrow I will resume explaining to my mother that she broke her hip.

Christmas Cookies!

So...it's 37 frickin' frackin' degrees right now. I'm cold. Hubby and I are going to an Eastern European place for dinner because I want Hungarian Goulash to warm me up.

The Texas contingent left early this morning and the older nieces came over to decorate the sugar cookies above - and YES I did help! (stop snickering Purplepassion) Here are the girls, working away:



A good time was had by all.

Did I mention it was cold?

Happy Thanksgiving!

Wow! We ate a lot.

Here's our Thanksgiving Menu:

• Cauliflower Blue Cheese Soup
• Turkey stuffed with citrus, sage, rosemary, thyme, onion and garlic
• Cranberry Relish
• Grandmas' Gravy
• Grandma's Stuffing
• Sausage Stuffing
• Cornbread Oyster Stuffing
• Potato Cheese Casserole
• Sweet Potato Pecan Casserole
• Carrots and Horseradish Casserole
• Traditional Green Bean Casserole
• Brussel Sprout/Apple/Craisin/Almond Casserole
• Grandma's Cole Slaw
• Creamed Pearl Onions
• Biscuits
• Sweet Potato Pie
• Pumpkin Eggnog Pie
• Eggnog Cheesecake
• Pumpkin/Cream Cheese Rolls
• Pecan Cranberry Torte
  
  I'm full and happy...:)

***HAPPY NOTE - I found out yesterday that Harlem Renaissance: An Awakening of the Soul the DonorsChoose.org project I've been supporting and for which I posted a link here has been fully funded. YAY! Thanks for those who helped.***

The Whole Fandamily!

This is the official family picture for 2007 - look how nice everybody looks...

This is the real us...

'Nuff said...:)

Four Years Ago Today

Four years ago today - September 6, 2003 - my father died and my world changed - it became a little sadder and a little emptier.

Papi, I love you and I miss you every single day.

Enjoy the Pavarotti concert tomorrow night, I think he may be performing a duet from "Carmen" with Beverly Sills. The acoustics are supposed to be awesome!

Besitos.

What's the Deal With Toys?

I don't have children of my own, but I do have three nieces - ages 7, 5 and almost 2 - and my job (which I take very seriously) is to be the cool aunt who gives good toys and books and never, ever anything practical like nightgowns. Therefore I'm always on the look out for stuff to buy them for birthdays and holidays.

Lately I'm noticing an explosion in what I would call tie-in toys. In one catalog that I've always liked for good variety and prices practically *every* toy or book set is tied in with Dora the Explorer, the Disney Princesses or the movie "Cars" or Spiderman!

Now, I think kids are exposed to enough advertising as it is, I don't feel comfortable encouraging them to play with toys that are basically commercials. One of the girls is into the whole princess thing, and I'll happily buy her generic princess stuff, but I don't want to buy her Disney princess stuff. Another one has Mexican ancestry and her mom wants me to help her include learning Spanish in toys in books - but I don't want it to be Dora the Explorer.

Mind you I don't take issue with Dora the Explorer, Or the Disney Princesses (Since when they were all clumped together though?), etc. I just don't like submerging kids into advertising when they should just be playing.

Am I wrong? Is this just part of a changing world?

Happy Fathers' Day

My Dad!

My wedding day

In New York City - one of his favorite places in the world

Happy Father's Day Papi...I miss you every day.