A Civil War Quandry

After another hectic week at work, I again wasn't in the mood for a super busy weekend. The kids too seemed ready for a break. We took them to movie night on Friday at Mason's school to watch Monsters vs. Aliens. They liked the movie but both wanted to leave before it was over because they were tired.

Our only outing yesterday was to take the kids to their soccer game. A new session is underway. The kids had a good time but lost by something along the lines of 45-0. Fortunately at this age having a good time is the point. There weren't a lot of subs and they were pretty tuckered by the end.

I'm trying to get back into a workout routine after a couple of weeks off due to quarter end. I am sore thanks to some voluntary lunges. I'll be spending the rest of the evening trying to walk as little as possible.

In exciting news, this year's Civil War has shaped up to be one of the most exciting since the real thing!
The Oregon State Beavers
will be Challenging the University of Oregon Ducks for the whole enchilada.

A trip to the Rose Bowl! Winner take all!

This exciting event almost didn't happen. Oregon had to come from behind to beat Arizona yesterday in OT.

Since Luis and I both graduated from Portland State, home of the lowly Vikings (this year at least), we root for both the Beavers and Ducks. Generally in the Civil War we root for whichever team needs it most. With a Rose Bowl trip on the line for both teams, we don't know who to root for. I'll be pulling for a good game I think and just root for whoever is on offense.

700 at $7

I know this is repetitive for those of you I already sent this message to via Facebook. However, I think it is an important enough message to repeat in order to ensure that I can reach as many people as possible. Many thanks to those who have already made a donation or have committed to making a donation. It truly will make a difference in someone's life.
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As some of you know, I am an avid reader, particularly of Ann Rule. It was in the course of reading her nonfiction true crime novels that I really became introduced to the issues of domestic assault and sexual violence. These are everyday people like you and me who found themselves in horrible circumstances that they didn't know how to get out of. The problem of domestic assault and sexual violence struck such a chord with me that I knew I had to get involved somehow. That's why 3 and a half years ago I joined the board of Portland Women's Crisis Line. Never in my life have I been surrounded by a group of people more dedicated to a cause and been so inspired by stories I've heard.

Just this week my hometown of Tualatin was struck by a domestic violence trajedy when Teresa Marie Beiser was killed yesterday by her husband. She had filed for divorce just last week and had two teenage children. Unfortunately its only when horrible things like this happen does this issue receive attention.

This issue is blind to gender, economic group, ethnic, and religious groups. I can guarantee that everyone knows someone who has experienced either domestic assault or sexual violence first hand. This isn't something that is going away. In fact, in hard economic times especially, it is getting worse.

Portland Women's Crisis Line is the oldest agency of its kind in Portland and one of the first five rape relief hotlines in the United States. As a way to strengthen our services and be a more financially stable organization, we've launched our first-ever annual campaign, 700 @ $7.

Each call to our crisis line costs PWCL $7, and we're recruiting 700 individuals to pledge $7 a month (or $84 a year) to help meet this cost. When we reach our goal, we'll have covered the cost of 8,400 calls, which is just about a third of the 26,000 calls that we answer each year. $7 is about the cost of two lattes these days, and sharing that with PWCL will ensure that survivors of domestic and sexual violence will have continuous access to expert information on safety planning, emergency housing resources and much needed support and compassion. Gifts of any amount to PWCL are completely tax deductable.

Signing up for the campaign is easy - just visit http://pwcl.org/donate/be-a-700-7-donor/ to get your pledge started. If you'd rather not sign up online but are interested, please let me know and I'd be happy to send you an envelope instead. It's my goal to personally sign up 15 people, and I need 10 more to meet my goal. Please, consider being part of a community that believes that everyone has the right to live a life free of domestic and sexual violence.

I would also like to add that I would love for you do donate funds to PWCL this year in lieu of a Christmas gift for me. Seeing this organization continue to do what it does would be the best gift I could ever receive.

Many thanks,
Kris

The Scene from the Cruz House

It was a busy work week for me and a busy school week for Mason and Luis. Siena is always busy playing. The only outings of the weekend were a great steak dinner with Yaya and Papa Ron and dinner Saturday night to celebrate Junior's birthday.


I think there are many that may not appreciate it when I try to describe the strange, and often chaotic sights around our house. This is just a little sampling of an average day in the life at the Cruz house.


Mason has become quite adept with his building blocks. He still only builds things for cars though. Yup, there are blocks spread all over the floor. Luis is picking them up as we speak.

Mason has also been busy practicing his letters and numbers. Often his "Z" and "7"'s are backward but this appears to be a corrected version.
Since learning to write his name, Mason has been "tagging" everything in our house. Here's what his tag looks like. Let no toy go unmarked...

The kids each have their own little laptops. Here's a rare moment of them playing with them next to each other.

It was sushi for dinner tonight...the family favorite. Siena even uses the chopsticks. She must be part Japanese.

This is the krab salad, the kids' favorite. We have to buy a lot of krab salad. Note that Sushiland spells crab with a "k" and I feel that I must do so also out of loyalty to our favorite sushi joint.

We aren't ready for bed until Ariel has been properly tucked into her bed. Yes, this is how Ariel sleeps.

Trick or Treat!

Halloween day started with a soccer game. Mason scored his first goal! The bad news is that it was for the other team. Oh well. He had trick or treating on the brain.


As soon as we got home from soccer, it was pumpkin carving time. I didn't get to take pictures of this event as I was up to my elbows in pumpkin guts. I'm sure you can get the picture though.


Mason asked no less than twice every five minutes if it was time for trick or treating. Despite our responses that we had to wait until it got dark, he still kept asking. Finally...darkness set in and our little trick or treaters were ready to roll.

Here they are with their pumpkins. Siena's is modeled after Ariel (aka the Little Mermaid) but unless you're a fairy godmother, its hard to turn a pumpkin into a princess. Mason just wanted a happy pumpkin.

Today I went to a baby shower for little Aurora (Rory) Blythe Ham. She is my cousin Jay B. and his wife Chandra's newest addition. Of course, baby showers are secret women's things and I'm not about to break the code of our secret society. I'll give you a small glimpse though. We had a big cupcake decorating contest. Below are some of the entrants:

Yaya's work of art:

A couple of duckies:

A nursing woman and a c-section. So many comments...so little space...

And the winner!!! The Herbie cupcake (inspired of course by Mason). Yes, I was the proud designer of this masterpiece of confection and sprinkles.

It should be noted that Mason is very confused by the word "shower" in the context of gatherings. He has a mental picture of a bunch of women gathering together in an actual bathroom shower...

Caution: Blog Under Quarantine

Reading this week's blog may be harmful to your health.
In which case you can be like Luis, Mason, and I. Luis was first. He came down with the flu last Monday afternoon. I was a couple days later on Wednesday afternoon. Mason got it a day later. Siena has some sort of steel immune system and still has no symptoms. Therefore she's the only one of us with any sort of a social life this weekend.

I don't know for sure whether we have the official swine flu or not. You have to be tested for that. Based on what I've seen on the news and in reports, doctors offices and clinics have seen enough of people turning up with the flu. None of us are in the high risk category and weren't showing any of the warning symptoms, so we stayed home on the couch.

I haven't had the flu in years and now I'm grateful for it. Its not the worst thing in the world but it lasts for so many days and is relentless. Today, after a rough night with Mason (related to a bad dream, not the flu), 5 days of the flu, and 4 days without leaving the house, I'm feeling pretty down in the dumps. That's easy to do when you're tired and sick and done with being tired and sick. Time to start feeling sorry for myself though before this becomes the sob blog.

We got tickets to Disney on Ice to take Siena as part of her birthday gift. However, because all of us except for Siena had cooties, we really couldn't take her. Don't think this didn't send me to the depths of despair...luckily Gloria was able to take Siena along with Joel and Tristyn. I'm truely glad they got to enjoy the show. I'm just sad that I wasn't able to experience it with the kids. It was to be our first such show.

Gloria took our camera though and took some pictures for the blog.

Siena and Tristyn were entranced by the Disney spectacle before them. Siena got to meet her idols, the princesses, before the show started.

Meanwhile, back on the couch, the movie review is back. I'll spare you reviews of the daytime movies that we watched to kill time but for the fun of it, here's what I watched: Save the Last Dance, Better off Dead, Million Dollar Baby, The Great Outdoors, Sandlot, Rescuers Down Under (can you tell that the second half was Friday when Mason was home too), Kung Fu Panda, and lots and lots of American Chopper aka "motorcycle show".

Luis and I also watched Changeling. Apologies for the fact that the best picture of the poster I could find was the French poster. I know, if I had the energy to devote another 2 minutes to looking I could have found the American poster but tough. I've got the flu.

I'm a little predisposed to going into Angelina Jolie movies skeptically, what with the whole Brangelina innundation we've been subjected to the last few years. That and my general grumpiness when sick. However, this was an incredible story and well told. The movie was based on a true story of kidnapping and police corruption to the most unbelieveable degree. Had this not been a true story, it would be unbelieveable. Jolie was really good in this and Malkovich as well played a different type of character than he usually does. This movie rates a very high A-.

Pints, Parties, and Pumpkins

Birthday weekend for Siena and Papa Ron means a entertainment-packed couple of days. I took 100 pictures. Don't stop reading yet, though...I didn't include all 100. Just most of them...

Our weekend adventures starts Friday night at Gustavs. Friday was the "real" calendar birthday for Siena and Papa Ron (hereafter known as the "Birthday Buddies"). We all love a good German dinner and Gustavs didn't disappoint.

While I've sharply curtailed my alcohol consumption of late (what can I say...I sleep better without it), I can't pass up Gustavs 25 oz of German goodness. Isn't it a thing of beauty? Lets all take moment...

Papa Ron and Yaya at Gustavs.
And Mason enjoys a wonderful German strawberry lemonade (okay, we still need to teach him about German food).

Here's the birthday girl. She was very tired by this dinner. Celebrating ones 4th birthday can be exhausting!

After a good night's sleep with which go digest, fast forward to Saturday morning. There was a lot to do to get ready for the party. Yaya helped us clean up the house while she was here on Friday. And thank goodness too. We need to maintain the facade of cleanliness and tidiness.

Luis took the kids to their soccer game while I finished picking stuff up, wrapping gifts, and baking the cake. That's right. I bake. Sometimes.

Siena's one and only request for this party was that I make a cake. Specifically that I make a "pink one". Well, who can say no to that? Not this mom.

Even the Birthday Buddies got in on the action and helped with the pink frosting. Looks a little like Pepto Bismol, doesn't it?

Papa Ron was also kind enough to teach the kids how to pull apart the opening of balloons to make a loud obnoxious squealing sound. Isn't that great?

The spread. We provided the castle. Yaya provided everything else.

The Birthday Princess! Twirling!

The finished product. Yeah, it looks homemade. It sure tasted good though!

Yaya tried to steal Siena's tiara. Siena was having none of that though!

Presents! Siena's first Hannah Montana doll. Mason is supervising the present opening process.

Sara, Dulcina, and Kendra watch Siena open gifts.

More presents! Siena got a lot of nice clothes (which her parents very much appreciate). She also got a cool sticker book from Aunt Annette and Uncle Walt which Siena very much appreciated.

More toys and presents! I think Mason approves.

Jocelyn is trying to decide what to make of all these balloons!

Time for the birthday song!!!!!! Happy birthday to you......

Happy Birthday Dear Siena...............

And happy birthday to Papa Ron too - and his Tool Guy work mat!

She's a ROCK STAR!!!!

Heidi and her niece Jocelyn take in the sights. I think Jocelyn was taking a break from her new 3 week old baby sister Rory.

The sisters - Yaya and Annette.

Berren checks out Papa Ron's took mat. Looks good for a nap!

Mason liked the mat sticker!

Birthday party + new toys + kids = Messy House.

So glad I always do that pre-party cleaning thing.

The Birthday Buddies play with Siena's new princess stamps and coloring book.

Clean up! Clean up!

Whew. It was a great party. The kids and grown-ups all had a good time. But wait! Our weekend isn't over yet!

Not only does October usher in a slew of family birthdays, its also Halloween month! That means its time to visit our favorite pumpkin patch!

We met our friends the DeCicco's for breakfast at Elmers prior to our visit to the Roloff Farm. Giada enjoyed her polka dot pancakes so much that she needed to add some whipped cream to her hair for later!

And then its on to Roloff Farms. For any of you not familiar with the Roloff's, the are the family featured on TLC's tv show "Little People Big World". Its a great show if you have never checked it out and they live not far away in Helvetia.

In the red sweater is Matt Roloff, surveying the scene with the tv camera crew on hand.

Siena poses on the big chair. Mason took a pass on climbing up there.

Everyone had fun feeding the animals at the petting zoo though.

Well, Giada's not so convinced about the animals yet...

Siena found her pumpkin! Its a little lopsided and off-colored. Really, its a Charlie Brown pumpkin. But its hers and she picked it out all by herself.

Mason was Mr. Go Big or Go Home. He picked out the huge pumpkin that's in the cart.

The girls (Siena and Giada) went for a ride on the ponies. Short video of this event below.

Mason took a pass on the ponies. He was more interested in the baby lion that was on hand.

After ponies was the hay maze. Luckily the kids made it through and we were able to take them home later.

The triumphant hay mazer!

The Roloffs, as you'd gather from the show, are very down to earth and friendly people. Amy Roloff (the mom) was on hand to greet people and pose for pictures. She was very nice and had a nice chat with the kids.

And she signed our squishy banana! We had to wrestle this away from Siena who was using it as a telephone for Amy to sign.

Other Roloff kids were working today too. This is Jeremy, one of the twins, driving a tractor for one of the farm tours.

Chillin'. This was supposed to be a cute little picture of Giada and Sharon. Siena's rock star kicked back in though so she jumped on in.

There's the other twin Zach working another tractor tour.

This was the line of cars as we were leaving. This is a popular farm!

It was a busy weekend but a very good one.

Also, good thoughts and wishes to my friend Laura who has had a rough couple of weeks. Hope your operation goes good this week and you're back at 'em soon!!!