My Big Fat Cuban Family: A Cuban-American Blog

Bee-ing Ourselves

Spring weather here in Southern California is like no other. The first thing I do when I get up in the morning is open all the windows and doors and let the fresh air in.

This is how the trouble started...

I left the slider in our bedroom open the other morning, and a bee got in the house.

I didn't know that that's what had happened. I just heard Lucy's screams coming from the upstairs bathroom. Jonathan quickly reacted by bolting up there to defend her from whatever impending doom was about to befall her. I lazily called up the stairs, "Are you okay?" (That was so lame. I know. Shut up. If it had been a serious emergency I would have moved much more quickly, but that's not important right now.)

Jonathan came back down in a few minutes with a smug look on his face. "Catastrophe averted," he declared.

And then I forgot about the yelling and the averted catastrophe and I got distracted by whatever it was that I was doing and just got on with my day.

It was much later when I went upstairs to take a shower that I came across this:

Apparently, he had just trapped the Bee Invader between the screen and the bathroom window. He left this post-it up there to let us know not to open the bathroom window until the Flying Trespasser had given up the ghost.

We didn't move the post-it or open the window for a couple of days. Look how obeedient we were!

We just waited until it became a zombee.

(I guess you had to be there.)

The Biggest Insult

My kids are generally pretty nice to each other. Of course, there are the occasional sibling fights that crop up when someone's in a foul mood or has had a bad day and chooses to take it out on those closest to them.

For the most part, they get along great and are friends. The exception being that the older ones would take advantage of the gulibility of the younger ones and taunt them whenever they had the chance. They're still doing this (but that's not important right now).

This usually happened at the dinner table and it went something like this:

• One of the two younger ones, usually Jonathan, tells some sort of joke.
• One of the other siblings: "That's not funny."

This became the biggest insult in our home... for years. "That's not funny," or even worse, "You're not funny."

The highest praise in our family is to get a laugh. So then, the highest goal (especially at dinner time) became to make the other siblings think something was funny. Extra points if you could make them accidentally spit food or pass a liquid through their nose. (I know. Terrible mother. Shut up.)

Believe me, this can be a tough crowd.

Once the Biggest Insult was out there, the un-funny one, sometimes Lucy, but most of the time, Jonathan would kind of do an emotional retreat and come out swinging the next time.

This scene repeated itself over and over on through the years and on many occasions. But, as Nietzsche once famously stated, "What doesn't kill you makes you stronger." This has been proven true in our quest for the dinner table laugh.

Fast forward to present day. My kids have been hanging with friends and playing Improvisation games for a long time now - it's what all the cool homeschool kids were doing, at least at our house. As an aside, I think each of them has an extremely well-developed sense of humor. I know I'm the mom here, but I promise, it's true.

A couple of years ago, Adam began teaching an Improv class at their high school. Lucy did it last year and this year, Jon collected a group of students to perform as a fundraiser for their drama program.

I know he's my son and everything, but I can genuinely say this with no equivocation: HE. IS. FUNNY.

I guess all that dinner table abuse really paid off. ;-)

I Have a (Cuban) Superpower

I get my nails done regularly.

What I mean by that is that I usually get a regular manicure and pedicure at my local nail salon. And, yes, I suppose I could just buy some polish and paint them myself, but I really enjoy taking the time and pampering myself that way. (Or I may just be shallow and spoiled.)

So, every other week I trot into my local nail salon and I'm faced with the Wall of Polish.

And even though I always like to wear RED, (of course!) the color choices within the reds can be pretty overwhelming.

So, I do my best to pick out the best red that suits me. Not too dark. No glittery stuff. Not too pink. Not too orange.

So I make my best guess as to which red polish will work for me, and I stretch out my hand and reach for it...

And I end up choosing THE SAME ONE. Every. Single. Time.

Shut. UP.

I am convinced it's my superpower. (Or part of my Cuban DNA. But that's not important right now.)

Famous Last Bites: A Cautionary Tale

Marta here. It's summer and the Orange County Fair is in full swing here in our little corner of the world. My Lucy went with her friends, her camera, and her appetite. What follows is her account of the crap unfortunate food choices available to her.

CAUTION: Not for the squeamish.

- - -

    I’ve tasted regret. And it’s covered in powdered sugar.

    Hello. My name is Lucy. And this is my story.

    After passing through the ticket booth and tripping into the noisy, musical, aromatic world that is the OC Fair, good judgement snuggles onto the warm back burner of my brain.

    The options are overwhelming. The proposals are intriguing. The smells are bewitching.

    I’m speaking, of course, of the food. The battered, sugar-coated, chocolate-covered, chocolate-filled, crunchy, greasy, untidy, confusing food. Forget the cotton candy and the snow cones! The grossest, most unappetizing crap delicacies become the very thing my life was missing. Until this moment.

    Quite frankly, I’d like to know at what point in the evolution of Fair Cuisine did the word “deep-fried” become the saving grace of… everything. Twinkies. Oreos. Brownies. Klondike bars. Avocados. Frogs legs.

   

    Befuddlement is a good word. My friends and I stood in front of the billboards, blinking slowly and reading off the options. We soon accepted that the question "...but why?" would never be answered.

    To make sense of the billboards, I tried to categorize. The Favorites and The Classics fit in nicely with The Must-Haves (ice cream cones, funnel cakes, giant turkey legs… you know, healthy stuff.) while The Curiosities teetered on the edge of I-Would-Never-Eat-This-Anywhere-Else and I-Just-Don’t-Care-Anymore.

    Before they could say “You’ve got something on your lip,” I’ve just bought ten minutes of quality time with a deep-fried Snickers bar.

 

    You see, this is a place where bacon takes a magical journey and ends up frozen, covered in chocolate, and tossed into a little white box. With a side of deep-fried butter (which is topped with generous portions of whipped cream), they had the nerve to call it the “Coronary Combo.”
    And I ate it. With some help.

    Real friends will eat the rest of the crap food that your own heart can't handle.

    We traipsed and we took pictures and I tried to “walk it off.” Then someone suggested ice cream. Which turned into a frozen banana covered in chocolate and peanuts. A subtle transformation, really. Some people just never know when to quit (ahem).

    A long day made even longer by good company, good memories,“good” food... and then we saw it.

    Have you ever found yourself staring at something, trying to understand what you’re witnessing... but your brain refuses to translate the information into something reasonable?

    Yeah, me neither.

- - -

May the 4th Be With You

In 1977 when I was young and adorable (This is NOT a lie), a film was released that changed my personal perseption of movie making forever. (This is NOT a lie, either.)

It was only playing on a few screens and there was no advertising for it. It was completely word of mouth. We had friends who dragged us to this screening. Apparently everyone was dragging friends. The friends had no idea what the film was about and it was too hard to explain, so the dragging was happening en masse.

Star Wars. Episode IV. A New Hope.

We didn't call it that back then. We just called it Star Wars. I still am a bit unsure as to the number and official titles of the films, but that's not important right now.)

Happy Star Wars Day!

This is the kind of stuff we uber-geeks live for. May the 4th be with you! *salutes appropriately*

So today I'm in touch with my inner-Star-Wars-geek and I am all about The Force. Or in this case The Fourth. May the Fourth. May the Fourth Be With You. Get it?

Just for today I will endulge my inner-geek. And I'll post a few star wars related videos and links.

And even a photo of Darth Vader that I took on Hollywood Blvd. last week.

Yes. I caught him while he was texting. How cool is that?

Sweet, right?

Here's more Vader for your entertainment pleasure. Here's the one where he's being a jerk:

And here's the one where he's failing the tom-tom gps ad:

I could do this all day long.... (and maybe I will..)

Here's the Star Wars Help Desk...

And of course, the Darth Vader Volkswagen ad.

If you're Star Wars Uber-Geeks, (like we are) you must have a favorite line from the movie, like:

"That's no moon." or "The Sand People are easily startled but they'll soon be back, and in greater numbers." 

What's your favorite Star Wars quote? (Dig deep!) Please share it.

If you get stuck, cruise over to Wookipedia today and get your fair share of Star Wars trivia.

And, oh yes....May the 4th be with you.

(Thanks for playing with me.)  =D

Hot! Hot! Hot! (a mini-rant)

On Monday, the 27th of September, we here in Southern California experienced the gosh-darndest Hottest Stinking Day of the Year.

This is the thermometer (excuse me, Comfortmeter) in our backyard.

For those of you who are impaired when it comes to reading old-school-liquid-filled thermometers, the red liquid (possibly alcohol or mercury; both expand when heated, which is one of the things I learned from having homeschooled my children for so many years, but that's not important right now), is registering just past the 112 mark.

Which put the temperature in our backyard at a scorching 113 degrees. Without a breeze. It was brutal.

If you live in places that routinely get this type of heat like Palm Springs or Las Vegas or Phoenix, you would most likely call me a whiner and tell me to get over it.

The thing is.... I live in Mission Viejo, California. The Bubble!

I have not chosen to live in any of the aforementioned desert communities. So when we get record-breaking heat here in our little suburban bubble, I'm going to complain about it. Loudly.

And do nothing. (Who can work in this heat?)

And sit very still.

And not cook.

Or do laundry.

And try not to die.

And call my mother who is 96 to make sure she's alive.

She knows I do not tolerate heat well. Hearing my voice on the phone, she immediately laughs.

Luza: "Estas derretida?" ("Have you melted?")

Me: "No, Mami. Y tu?" (<--You probably caught on to that from your high school Spanish. "No, Mami. And you?")

Luza: (again with the laughing!) "A mi me gusta el calor, yo soy bacteria." "I like the heat, I am a bacteria."

She spent a few more minutes fully mocking my inability to deal with the heat, and singing her own 'I'm a Bacteria' praises.

I hang up.

Now I am hot.

And I am fussy.

And I'm been taunted.

By my own mother, who even though she's 96 still wants to keep her Queen of the Hill Crown intact.

So to all of you who are calling me a whiner, and to my own mother who is amused by my discomfort,  I just have two words:

Shut up. That is all. Rant over.

 

Mooove it!

One of Lucy's creative writing classes involves creating a literary magazine. In fact, I think the name of the class is actually "Literary Magazine" or Lit Mag for short. (<--That's cool & hip student jargon in case you were wondering.)

The title of this fledgling Lit Mag is The Invisible Cow.*

[*The Invisible Cow refers to cows that graze in the fields on the climb up to the Mauna Kea Observatories in Hawaii. It gets very foggy up there and the road is not lit at night. The cows in the surrounding pastures sometimes lay down on the warm pavement and BLAMMO! some unsuspecting driver invariably hits a poor cow, and then wonders, "Whoa! What did I just hit?"]

 

But that's not important right now.

Meanwhile back to the original story here; Lucy and The Invisible Cow Lit Mag.

To illustrate some of the articles, she was asking everyone she knew to draw a cow. Everyone she knew includes her parents.

One of Lucy's parents is analytical, realistic, and extremely literal.  

The other parent is childlike, prone to silliness, and a bit whimsical.

So, today's question is: Which cow was drawn by Eric and which one was drawn by Marta?

(I know. Shut up.)

Why it's weird to be me sometimes...

I love blogging.

And I love that I have a certain amount of fame (little tiny "f" - I'm not completely delusional, but that's not important right now).

So I went to my regular checkup with my dentist last week. After the hygienist completed the ex-rays and cleaned my teeth, the dentist came in to look at everything which is when I saw this in my open file:

 

That's my Coming to America Story that was in the OC Register last year. It's peeking out from underneath my dental ex-rays. Yes, my DENTAL EX-RAYS.

I'm thinking it's actually more Twilight Zone-ish than accidentally cool.  =D

How To Throw a Virtual Birthday Party

My daughter, Amy Kikita, spends a lot of time online.

Today is her birthday (27) and I wanted to do something special to celebrate. "No time," she said. "I have a ton of work to catch up on."

Fair enough. I guess it's good that she has a work ethic at all....

But I also know that in between uploading and downloading and keywords and doing the online internet marketing stuff she does, she also checks her Facebook Page.

*insert lightbulb over head here*

I got excited when her other Facebook friends agreed to play along. 

So, this is an example of what she found when she logged on this morning.

 

I think we made history today. This is the Very First Virtual Birthday Party I've ever thrown.

Thanks everyone for participating (I will keep loading photos through the day if you want to send them to me or post on Facebook).

So, Happy Birthday, Amy Kikita! Enjoy your party!

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 
 
  

 
 
  

For the record, I'd like to mention that the clean-up after this party is a snap! =D

HAPPY BIRTHDAY, AMY!!

Mother's Day Blog Shout Out

Kikita here.

In case you didn't know (because you've been so busy getting ready for "Kikko de Mayo") Mother's day is THIS SUNDAY.

I know what you're thinking: "¡Ay Kikita! I'm not ready! I don't know what to get her!"

Never fear! Kikita is here!

(Ok, I really can't take the credit for this because it was Mami's idea, but that's not important right now.)

What should you get YOUR Mami for Mother's Day you ask yourself? What about some face time on your favorite blog? Send us a few lines about how cool your Mami is and attach a picture of you together and we'll post them over the weekend. (Yes, you will definitely still need to send her flowers, but what a fun gesture to be on a blog that you love!)

Here's an example for your reading pleasure:

I have the coolest Mami in the whole world. She is my favorite traveling buddy. She taught me how to be smart and funny and the most beautiful Cubana ever! She is a magnificent cook and I am lucky that she lets me hijack on her blog sometimes. My Mami is so cool. She wrote the book on coolness. I only hope that I am half as cool as she is. Happy Mother's Day, Mami!

Got that?

So, grab your favorite picture of you and your Mami and then email it (and the couple of lines) HERE.

Do it.

Now. =D

The EPIC Mr. Don't Touch the Banana

The following post was written by Kikita, whose appreciation for bananas has led to endless laughter and entertainment.

I can't tell you where or how it all started, but it started. I can only guess it happened on facebook because that's where most things happen these days.
Let me be clear about something . . . I am not particularly fond of the taste of bananas. Ok, that's not entirely true. There have been several years where I absolutely loathed bananas, but now that I'm an immature adult, I have accepted them for the goodness that they can be.

It IS possible that the banana thing started shortly after the monkey thing. (I LOVE monkeys. I have several monkey stuffed animals and I can do a FABULOUS monkey sound, but that's not important right now.)

For all intents and purposes, I'm not sure that it really matters where the banana thing started. What IS important is that it DID start and was kept alive.

Typically, I will start working on the family Christmas video in late August or early September. As it just so happens, late August found me at a Willy Chirino concert.

It was there that I met my inspiration.

Every year I struggle with making sure the video is relevant to our Cuban-American family NOW while not forgetting and celebrating that we are still Cuban. But now the majority of the family prefers speaking in English, so they relate to a Cuban song in Spanish less and less. No, that doesn't make things easy.
But I had found my answer.

I started story-boarding and planning and ran into a few hiccups such as "what about the family that will NOT be at Thanksgiving?"
But I did what I could with what resources I had.

I am so grateful that my big, fat, Cuban family will do what I ask of them without question and will go for it. Participation was key in pulling this one off. And I knew it would be EPIC.

After Thanksgiving, I got to work. And, thanks to the help and support of some "real, live" editors (Thank you Mr. Simpson, Mr. Young, & Mr. De Castro), my plan was coming to fruition in ways that were even better than I could have expected.

 

This has to be one of my most favorite pieces that I have ever cut together. I love it because it's wholly Cuban (every good Cuban-American knows this song), it's fun, it's Spanglish, and it's . . . well, it's EPIC (even if I do say so myself).

It even inspired the title for this year's video: "ORO PARECE"

That is the beginning of a Cuban riddle that goes:
ORO PARECE
PLATA-NO ES

It's a play on words. "Oro" is gold. "Plata" is silver, but "platano" is banana.
IT LOOKS LIKE GOLD
SILVER IT IS NOT / BANANA IT IS

So, ladies and gentlemen, without further ado . . .

Mas café, por favor.

My mom is back from Miami.

She spent the entire summer there and she has stories.

Lots of stories.

A plethora of stories. (I know. The acorn does not fall far from the tree. Shut up.)

So we've been talking.

Or should I say, she's been talking. And talking. And talking.

My job is to keep food and drink on the table in between stories.

My mom, like any good Cuban, tells a great story.

And because she's 95, she tends to repeat her stories at times. ;-)

I'm a little burned out on my-summer-with-Fernando-in-Miami stories.

But she's here for the entire weekend.

So now, it's Sunday morning and I have another full day of we-went-to-the-Palacio-de-Los-Jugos-a-few-times stories to look forward to today.

There's only one way to get through this. Happy Sunday, people! =D

H/T Mica. Thanks, amiga!

I see Cuban people, mama-baby.

I told you there was Elvis.

And I told you about the whole Vegas-Wedding-Renewal-at-The-Graceland-Chapel thing.

I finally got the photo of my big, fat, Cuban family with Elvis. (Or The Elvis Tribute Specialist Du Jour.)

 

And then, suddenly and without much warning... he left the building. (I guess that's just his "way.")

"Man, I really like Vegas."  ~ Elvis Presley

How Many Cuban Girls Does it Take to Get ONE Photo?

So, remember when Amy and I were in Las Vegas a few weeks ago? While we were there I had gotten it into my head that I wanted to take a picture of us in the elevator.

But let me explain....

The elevators at Bally's (where we were staying) were mirrored. And you know how much I love Now-and-Then type photos.

Somewhere, I remembered, there was a photo of Amy and me that I had taken in a mirror. I'm pretty sure it was taken in Las Vegas. I wanted to recreate that shot.

I remember that I had the camera and I was pointing it at us in the mirror. It was quite good. And I remember liking it a lot. (Where is that photo? I know I've seen it recently...)

On our way out for the evening I tried to take the shot, but I wasn't sure it was coming out just right.

"Let's do it when we get back."

So, it's after midnight (which means nothing to most people in Vegas) and we're both exhausted and it's super-stinking-but-it's-a-dry-heat hot. Still I insist we have to do this photo shoot in the elevator. (Where is that original photo? I know I've seen it somewhere just recently....)

We get into the elevator and at the last minute A Strange Person gets in. (Of course, this is not at all strange in Las Vegas, land of Strange People, but that's not important right now.)

Amy and I both sort of panic when he asks, "Going up, or down?" (Argh! He's speaking to us! What do we do?? What do we say??)

At the same exact time: I say, "Down." She says, "Up."

We exchange a quick glance and AGAIN at the exact time time: I say, "Up." She says, "Down."

I'm the calm and quick thinking one... "Umm...so, is it after midnight?" I ask Strange Person who might be wanted in a few states - he's got a shifty look to him, who then goes off about how it's after 3 am where he's from way down in South Texas, "way down by the Mexican border" - like I was really interested in just how far he had to run to escape his chain-gang in south Texas that he was from and seriously, can't he see that all we want is for him to vacate so we can  have this elevator to ourselves so we can take the stupid picture and just go to bed?

Of course, I did not let on to Strange Person in the Bally's Elevator After Midnight* that I really did not care.  This made my (not as cool as I was at that moment) daughter collapse in a fit of laughter once Strange Person in the *B.E.A.M. (=D) had made his exit.

I was still very focused on trying to get the photo I wanted. She was not cooperating very well. In fact, she was seriously handicapped and was doubled over laughing so hard at what will forever be known as the Elevator Antics At Bally's.

Exhibit A:

 

Me? I was intent on getting that photo. (Darn it! I know I have seen it just recently! It's right on the tip of my brain. (As in that's how you would have something on the tip of your tongue in the same way.)

If I could get Amy to cooperate, I would just take the photo and then hunt for the original when I got home and do one of my Now-and-Then posts. (Where was that photo? This was sooo bugging me!)

I surely was completely incapable of blogging about the entire Bally's Elevator Scene with Strange Person. I'm just not that articulate.

Finally!

We got the photo I wanted...

I realized way later in sort of a slow-motion a-ha moment where I had recently seen the original mirror photo.

You are probably much quicker on the uptake and may have already noticed it...

See the first photo on the left of my blog header. That's Amy and me. In Las Vegas in 2006. We took the picture in a mirror. We. Did. It!

 

Shut up. I know.

"Ya, KIA, Ya!"

I drive around my suburban neighborhood in a minivan.
It's actually a KIA Sedona. And I like it. A lot.

We just call it The KIA. And that has become its given name.

Adam, who is 22 and who has, shall we say, a different driving style than I do, mocks me whenever I am driving and I accelerate to pass someone.

"Ya, Kia, Ya!" He shouts as if he were driving (no pun intended) a team of horses.

Mom accelerates.
Adam shouts: "Ya, KIA, Ya!"

It's even better when he does it with a Cuban accent, which makes it sound like he's yelling at the KIA to STOP.

"Ya, KIA, Ya! Por favor, basta ya!"

(Sorry, you have to actually speak Spanish to get that one and it's kind of impossible to translate. Just trust me on this. He's asking it to please stop.)

We laugh every time. (But then, you know, we're easily entertained...)

So, I had been thinking of getting a personalized license plate. (Okay, a VANITY plate. =D)

My original one, Smrtqbn (that also happens to be my Twitter name in case you want to follow me, but that's not important right now) has expired and I was trying to come up with a new plate.

SIDE NOTE: We applied for Cuba2Go, which is the name of my online business Cuba To Go!, and I got very excited about that, but the Braniacs Who Work At the California DMV wouldn't approve it (I am so not kidding about this!) because it sounded (wait for it....) racist to them. (Racist?? Seriously? Look at the stuff that has slipped by them!!!)

We even showed them extensive documentation that Cuba to Go! was indeed our business name and was REGISTERED WITH THE STATE OF CALIFORNIA as such, but no go.

Which now left us pondering other clever combinations of letters to make some kind of a mobile statement as we drove around town in The KIA.

How about "Ya, KIA, Ya!" ?

Yay! How cool is that?
We got kind of excited about it, until we put the letters together as they would appear on the license plate....

It was my 95 year old Cuban mom who was the first to say it: "Parese algo Japones."

Yep. YAKIAYA sure sounds like a Japanese surname.

Shut up. I know. So, who needs a vanity plate?

I have other ways to recognize my KIA.  ;-)

Mother's Day Without Mom

The following post has been brought to you by none other than Kikita the Awesome.

As you well know, Mami & Co. are touring Washington DC and Adam and I couldn't join the trip this time around. This means we have been left to our own devices and sometimes our devices can be rather silly.

Now, I'll be the first to to admit that Mami has "got it going on." (I daresay she wrote the book!)
She is the epitome of coolness.
What you may have only caught glimpses of, though, is that (in her infinite coolness) she has a total geek side. You may have guessed this from how much we love Lord of the Rings. (Or simply by her constantly stating that she is an "uber-geek.")

But then, LOTR IS pretty cool, so it may not count as geeky enough.

Well, there's more. Mami is also very into old school Star Trek. Any one of us kids could tell you that her favorite Star Trek film is "The Wrath of Khan" and that she always cries at the same part:

She loves Star Trek so much, that there was a time when I happened to be in Vegas during a Trekkie Convention and Mami was hoping I'd not only go, but bring her something back. (Regretfully, I didn't make it that far down the Strip on that trip.)

Of course you know where this is going. Since Mami was gone, Adam and I decided to do what we probably would have done with her for Mother's Day. We went to the movies.

Having been raised as Trekkies, Adam and I sat in the theater thinking "Wow! there are so many references to Mom's favorite movie!"

Too bad she couldn't be there. She would have loved it. I know that now you're probably thinking to yourself, "But Kikita, why didn't you just wait for her to go see it?"

Bueno, because "the needs of the many outweigh the needs of the few . . . or the one" (even if that "one" is Mami. =D)

Besides, if she wants us to take her to see it for her upcoming birthday, that can be arranged. ;-)

We love you, Mom!

Oh, the places you'll go...

I love my camera.
I take it with me wherever I go.

(Except for that whole incident when it crashed and burned and I was going to go meet Desi (*sigh*) and I didn't have a camera so I had to get a little pocket size one because of course I just had to document that particular meeting and now I carry the little one in my purse most of the time except for when one of the kids asks to borrow it which is the whole point of this post.)

Amy Kikita borrowed my camera. The little one.

She had places to go, she said, and things to do and she was going to document it all, and blog about it and so she needed the camera to take pictures because even though her phone takes pictures, it's really kind of lame.... (I know I'm a little wordy here today.  I have not had an internet connection for days and I'm a little crazed and it shows, but that's not important right now...)

So I was a little surprised when:
1) She returned the camera with all the pictures still on it.
2) She had not blogged about anything related to what was on the memory card.

Curious.

Sooo, I found these on my camera and decided to post My Interpretation of the events of her Big Outing...

She and Sheila went to the Aquarium of the Pacific...

where they went specifically to pet the giant bat rays because when would you otherwise get to pet a giant bat ray in real life? And there were no other sea creatures at the aquarium, only birds...

And so they were befriended by two colorful magic birds whom they named Chuli and Lalita - they weren't really sure if they were Cuban or African birds and the names seemed to work on both levels...

Kikita and Chuli share a moment...

Expecting to find fish at the aquarium, they were surprised, but not disappointed when they instead found a rare American Bald Eagle...
They called him Ambrose.

Their foray into aquarium life having confused them, (because of all the birds and no sea creatures) they decided to have lunch at Outback Steakhouse...

and drown their sorrows in beer...

and chocolate.

Having found sustenance in the gooey chocolate concoction, they decided to take in the culture at the Museum of Latin American Art...

where they had to scale The Endless Stairs of Doom...
 
Sheila apparently collapsed at the final step...

But they were rewarded for their brave quest when they stumbled upon The Suitcase of the Lambs...

Difficult to understand? Here's a close-up which explains it more clearly...

Okay, then. That was all quite random, wasn't it?

Don't know if I'll ever find out the actual events of the day.

But, inspired by their visit to the art gallery, I created this piece of art using wordle:

(did I mention that I took a muscle-relaxant earlier? Even so, I crack myself up.)  ;-)

Spring-Breaking

We're Spring-Breaking this week. I'm pretty tired from the whirlwind of just-before-spring-break activities

We attended a Passover Seder at the home of some dear Jewish friends...

And, of course, participated in the traditional Egg Dyeing Ritual at my niece, Helen's house on Sunday...

It seems most of our activities last week revolved around plates-with-circular-indents, but that's not important right now. ;-)

Now that we're on Spring Break, I am taking a few days off from my online activities to relax and regroup with my husband and kids and catch up on some other projects I've been working on.

Plus we're making plans to attend a Tea Party (ahem..) on Wednesday.

I'll be back in a day or so and we'll do a comment drawing for some cool CubaToGo! stuff. 

Until then, umm...talk amongst yourselves and (because it's my blog and I can post random stuff if I want to) please enjoy my very favorite of all-time Veggie Tales Silly Song, The (bilingual!) Dance of The Cucumber.

It's genius. =D

How to Cha-Cha

You know those uber-dorky people who have a dictionary and an atlas sitting near the dinner table so that they can look stuff up when they start arguing during dinner about ways to pronounce words, or the capital of someplace, or what exactly a rhombus is?

We are those people.

By the way... In geometry a rhombus or rhomb is a quadrilateral whose four sides all have the same length. The rhombus is often called a diamond, after the diamonds suit in playing cards.

Yes. Us uber-dorks argue about this kind of stuff. And I'm Cuban, so arguing is like breathing to me. ;-)

When I was growing up it was that same way. The dictionary and the atlas were staples of our meals much like black beans and rice. We eat this stuff up!

But now that we are post-modernists living in the 21st century, we've added the cell phone, which is usually off-limits during meals, but that's not important right now, because now there is Cha-Cha.

And Cha-Cha knows EVERYTHING.

How it works: You text 242242 and ask your question. ChaCha texts back the answer super quickly.

In the past couple of days Cha-Cha has given us the following information:

(I was having a disagreement on the costuming for our upcoming Bye, Bye Birdie show with someone when they suggested the girls wear poodle skirts and I argued <there I go again!> that poodle skirts were pretty much gone by the time the Ed Sullivan show was happening. I was right. =D)
The Ed Sullivan Show aired from 1959 to 1967. Ed Sullivan died in October of 1974. Thanks for ChaCha'ing!

And we also learned this fun fact as I argued (of course I did!) that Alice Cooper was not his real name...
Alice Cooper had his name legallly changed from Vincent Damon Furnier in 1975. ChaCha!

So, we're arguing and ChaCha'ing and arguing and ChaCha'ing and I'm thinking..

"What could be more Cuban? Arguing and ChaCha-ing!" .... My dad would have LOVED this! =D

The Taming of the Do - Part 1

DISCLAIMER: The following post may sound like a commercial for different hair products, but it's not really. I just added the photos and links because I'm a giver.  ;-)

Hair products are a big thing at our house.

We have to have different kinds of shampoos and things because all of our hair types are so different.

Lucy just got her long, waist-length hair cut and is sporting this adorable do:

She swears by this:
 
It's called it's a 10 miracle leave-in product. Our hairdresser, Kate, turned us on to it. It totally does what it says it will do.  Seriously great stuff.  (Thanks, Kate!)

Jonathan LOVES having curly hair. (This is just before I made him get it cut. He insisted I document this for posterity. "It's totally EPIC, Mom!" =D)
 

He uses a combination of things to keep the curl from getting too wild:

The Schwarzkopf got2b glued is a water-proof type-gel (totally affordable at $4.95 a tube at Target). Keeps those curls nice and smooth. (Thanks to Isaac for the tip!)

My sister-in-law, Michelle got me hooked on this for taming the frizzies:

Sabino Hair Solutions Moisture Block. Killer stuff. Especially if you're in a humid area. Totally works.

When we were growing up, my sisters and I used to set our hair ("setting" meant sectioning off the wet hair, gooping stuff on to it so it would "hold" and rolling each portion onto a hard plastic tube called a curler and then.... I don't think I can totally explain the drama of this process....I guess you just had to live it...*sigh*) with Dep or Dippity-Do. (I think they brought these products back when the whole hair-spiking thing started happening, but that's not important right now.)

In February, when my sister Alina was in Mexico (along with the rest of the fam) for Nicole's wedding, she was completely beside herself when she found the following hair products at the local drugstore:

Yes. That says "Gorilla Snot."  (Eeeww!)
Right next to its first cousin, "Camel Drool." (Double eeeww!)

Shut up. I KNOW. I wish I was making this up. Isn't that crazy-awesome? Or as Jonathan would say...

"That's EPIC!"  =D

The following commercial dramatizes the Classic Ancient Ritual of  "hair setting."

Thanks, Alina! This one's for you: