You know your kid is half-Mexican when.....

He has recently taken to being 'el Chapulín Colorado' - the Red Grasshopper.
Classic Mexican sitcom, very funny, and very family friendly.
So he asks me to come watch it with him, so I go sit on the couch and ask if he can come sit up there with me. "No, because Chapulín doesn't hug his mommy."

Now I know.

(btw - the Wiki link is not entirely accurate. The guy who created the character is NOT Chespirito. The guy's name is Roberto Gomez Bolaños. He created the character Chespirito and El Chavo del 8 as well. Just had to clarify.)

Now for some YouTube so you can see some Chapulín:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=harjdP4sBWk

Daniel dresses in his cowboy boots, red pjs and a makeshift cape (read: his blanket + a clothespin) to be the superhero.

Enough already!

Just got back from the immigration attorney's office.
$340 for transferring our case from the greencard dept. to the visa dept. That went to the esteemed Dept. of Homeland Security. (don't even get me started on that.) And then $150 went to pay the lawyer for 25 minutes of his time.

I'm less upset about paying the lawyer - I know that's cheap for an immigration lawyer - than I am about paying DHS. They raise the prices because they know they have people like us by the balls and we have to pay whatever they charge.

On top of that, my grandma is dying. So today has kind of SUCKED.

What to do....

....when your kid asks you a question you have no idea to answer???

For instance:
"Is Jesus a boy?" (Ok, that one's probably pretty straightforward.)
"Where is heaven?"
"Did Coocoo go be with her family?" (yes.) "Why can't we go live with Coocoo's family?"
"Where is Jesus' daddy?" (which way to go with that???)

Sheesh, the questions this child asks!! I thought I was sort of intelligent until about two weeks ago!

And, the sweetest thing ever:
"Mommy, I love you, and I want to live with you until I go to Heaven."

We'll see if he's still singing that tune in about ten years.

Memorial Day

Thanks to:
My brother

My dad

My stepdad

My grandpa, whom we recently buried

My uncle

And all those great folks who never came home.

Thank you.

Daniel funny

"Mama, can we take these shoes back to Aunt Charlie now?"
[he is referring to pair of baby shoes Charlie sent us when I was preggy with Daniel.
Charlie is now expecting baby #2 in a few weeks and so might want the shoes back.]
"Well, we're not going to take them back to her. We have to mail them."
"Why?"
"Because she lives far away, so we have to mail them."
"She lives in Nineveh?"

Questions of a 3-year-old

"Do ladybugs have ears?"
"Does the turtle have hair?"

And my most recent favorite thing:
"Did God make me, Mama?"
"Yep, He sure did."
"He drew my face and then that's me!"

New pet

And I use 'pet' in the loosest sense of the term.

She (he?) is a turtle that Jesús rescued from the side of the road and has since taken up residence in a hole under our gladiolus plants.

Daniel picked her name. It's Coocoo. (Don't ask. We don't know.)

Reminds me of that scene from Forrest Gump

He's been listening in Sunday School....

....as evidence by the fact that he put on my flip-flops (the only ones I can wear thanks to plantar fasciitis) and informed me that he was Samuel in his sandals.

He proceeded to march off to bed and lie down, but not before instructing us to call his name.

Me: "Samuel!"
*door to his room opens*
Daniel: "You called my name?"
Me: "Nope, I didn't do it. Go get back in the bed."
*off to bed & the door closes*
Me: "Samuel!"
Him: "You called my name!"
Me: "Nope. It must be God."

This continued for a few rounds til he tired of being Samuel. And morphed into Larry-Boy.

Daniel & Uncle John

Flowers

PFC Swindel

Double graduation

I posted last about my brother John's graduation from USMC boot camp (pictures forthcoming). But I'm afraid I forgot to brag about another very important graduate in my family - my mom. She graduated this past Saturday with her BS in Business Administration. So needless to say, I am very proud of her as well. I have never had any doubt in my mind that she could do it, but am proud of the fact that she has worked very hard and overcome a lot of obstacles to do it. So WOOT for you, Mom!

John graduated from boot camp yesterday. I am very proud.
After the next couple rounds of training, he's off to the Sandbox.
Damn.

My Grandpa (Dad's dad) died this AM.

I'm relieved because he'd been wanting to go for a long time. Alzheimer's had destroyed much of his former self but he still had enough wits to know he wanted to go. He was peaceful and apparently just quit breathing, no fighting, no nothing. I'm thankful for that.

But I still miss him. I told Daniel that I might be sad because his Grandpa's dad had died and is in Heaven with Jesus now. I told him that I might cry because I was sad but I would be okay. (This was in the car on the way home from preschool.) He said, "Mama, I'll pray for you." And he bowed his little head and said:
"Thank you Jesus for today, and Mommy's sad because her Grandpa died and she might cry. Help her and Grandpa (my dad) feel better. Thank you, and he's in Heaven now. Amen."

Ah, the wisdom of little ones.

Books I have read in the last year about war:
Flags of Our Fathers
Ghost Soldiers
The Greatest Generation
The Greatest Generation Speaks
Letters from the Greatest Generation
Warriors
Battlefield Chaplains
With the Old Breed
Secret Commandos

All of them are great, but if I had to pick the best, I'd pick Flags of Our Fathers, Battlefield Chaplains, and Ghost Soldiers. Military stuff fascinates me and at the same time (see previous post) the war stories I read make me more and more disgusted with war in general.

I'm not sure how to say this other than to just say it. I feel like a hypocrite, esp when it comes to war. I am so proud of our troops, and always have been. People who serve honorably (which is the vast majority, let's be honest) are among my heroes. They are doing a job I could not do, and doing it bravely.

But.

I hate war. I hate the war we are in now, I think it was started on a false premise, and I hate the fact that OUR men and women, sons and daughters, brothers and sisters are over there killing and being killed and that country's police and military and whoever else can just decide not to show up for work whenever they feel like it. I hate the fact that OUR children have to decide whether that man bringing a soldier his sick baby is really bringing the baby or if he's hiding an bomb behind the child. I hate having to look at my brother's USMC bootcamp training schedule and see a couple days labeled as 'Intro to IEDs.' That gives me pause, you know? I hate the fact that that country is freakin' swimming in oil, making a $70 billion profit in oil alone, and WE'RE financing the rebuilding. What really cheeses me off is that this is okay with our president, who has asked for an additional however-many-billion dollars to continue to finance this war. I voted for this man twice, and this is the thanks this country gets. His children aren't the ones out there 'humping the boonies'. (No offense to Jenna and Barbara, I actually like them.)

But I still have a bumper sticker that says "Proud Sister of a United States Marine." A Marine who has already been promoted to Pfc. before boot camp graduation, and will be promoted again when he reports for duty. A Marine whose drill instructor told him that if he kept up the good work he'd be a Sgt. before he's 20. I am really really proud of him. That is the ONLY bumper sticker I have on my car (the 'Gandalf/Aragorn '08' one came down a while back). All that to say - I'm sure some people think that because I am proud of my brother the Marine that I support the war. I don't. And I'm sure that some people think that because I hate this war that I don't support the troops. I do, with all my heart.

It's just that the more I read about war - many different wars - the more pacifist I become.
My grandfather recorded his memories from WW2 and they are enough to make me cry. He was an Army Ranger. My stepfather was amphibious infantry in WW2 as well (he says their motto was "We tear stuff up and kill people.") He refuses to talk about it much, but what little he does say makes me think he hates war too. His unit saw the prison camps where survivors of the Bataan Death March were housed, and saw the survivors themselves. If these are the opinions of two individuals who've been there & done it, that counts for a lot in my book.

I read this book about a month ago called "Battlefield Chaplains", about well, battlefield chaplains during WW2. One chapter includes letters sent to parents from the chaplains and vice versa. One letter from parents to a chaplain on Iwo Jima just about ripped my heart out:

"Did he die quick, with a rifle bullet or was he blown all to hell with a mortar or torn up by shrapnel. Did he last long enough to see the flag go up on Suribachi? ....We spent eighteen years raising this boy and it took eighteen months for the Marines to finish the job, and we have an engraved certificate to show that he died for liberty. You will have to admit that it is a damn sorry swap."

I am probably not making much sense, but I had to get this out. I do not want my brother to go to war.

Too good

This t-shirt from Cafepress.com.

This incest case out of Austria is about the most horrific thing I've heard of in a long time.
This man is a monster and he should be very very glad I'm not the judge nor a juror in this case. I would be all for nailing his balls to the wall and setting the room on fire. And that might just be too kind a punishment.

10 Ugly Things About the Immigration Debate

I found this article at CNN.com and like it enough to post here.
It's thought provoking, and right on the money (at least in my opinion).

Oh, and Happy May Day!