My Big Fat Cuban Family: A Cuban-American Blog

They only come out at night...

On the 23rd Day of the Month of September in an early year of a decade not too long before our own, the human race suddenly encountered a deadly threat to its very existence, and this terrifying enemy surfaced as such enemies often do in the seemingly most innocent and unlikely of places...

Mission Viejo, California.  =D

I have something to confess.
I have a plant in my garden that I'm a little afraid of terrified to be around.
I know. Stupid.
I try to ignore it. I'm afraid to transplant it. (I don't want to encourage it in any way.)
In fact, I only keep it because my neighbor gave me the cutting and I am being polite.

I know. How lame is that? Besides, where did this neighbor get the cutting? What if he's really a pod person and is handing out cuttings of exotic plants as recruitment tools for his home planet?? (I know. I kind of went straight over the edge there, but that's not important right now.)

It's kind of hideous in an exotic sort of way, isn't it?
And right around this time of year those fascinating, freakish, pinkish tentacle things threaten to bloom.

But here's the kicker: They only bloom at night.  Doesn't this just have all the makings of a horror movie?
Seriously. Not until after 9 PM. And I always forget, so I have to set post-it reminders around myself.

Because when she does bloom, which is always at night, it's quite a spectacular show, in a man-eater-life-threatening-pod-people-from-another-planet kind of way. (Seriously, how well do I really know that neighbor???)

Quite lovely (and scary beyond all reason!) and with a tempting fragrance. (oh sure, they give it a tempting fragrance if they want to attract the civilization they're trying to destroy.!)

I like to call her Audrey II.

She's beautiful, isn't she? In a sort of I-only-bloom-at-night-because-it-fits-in-with-my-plan-to-rule-the-universe way.

So I go out to check on her and she's happily blooming and I can feel a horror movie shriek trying to find it's way out of my throat when I suddenly think I heard her saying: FEED ME!
Or wait...Maybe I've just seen Little Shop of Horrors too many times..... hmmm.

Finding comfort in swirls of milk

Tuesday is the day we do Science.
In this case, Earth Science.  This is Jonathan's experiment and his write up.  I know I usually include recipes, but he asked me to share it, so I'm going to.
Here's an example of what 6th grade Science looks like in the Darby Home School...

What I used:

• 1 cup of milk
• red food coloring
• blue food coloring
• shallow bowl
• vegetable oil

What I did:

I poured the milk into the bowl and added the red and blue food coloring around the bowl.  I poured a little bit of vegetable oil into the center.

What happened:

Slowly, the red and blue food coloring started to spin away from the sides of the bowl and pulled toward the middle creating a swirl pattern.

What I learned:

I learned that the oil, mixing with the fat in the milk created a current on the surface of the milk that was marked by the food coloring.   This current spiraled in a counter-clockwise direction due to circular motion that replicates the rotation of the Earth in the Northern Hemisphere or the Coriolis Effect.

What Mom learned:

No matter how out of control my small life sometimes feels, there is Divine Order in the universe, the Earth continues to spin on its axis,  God is on His Throne and Al Gore is a Great Big Idiot.

I didn't say it was all going to be pretty. ;-)

Our motto? Laugh. Eat. Play.

The kids are out of school and in this part of the country it's like a feeding frenzy trying to get kids signed up for "camps."

Yes. That's the hip thing to do.  (of course, I am anything but hip -  sigh)

If you don't know how to just be with and enjoy your child or help them entertain themselves for the summer, you sign them up for "camp."  (Not a criticism, just a fact in my South Orange County white-bread world)

They can choose soccer camp, sailing camp, movie making camp, swimming camp, acting camp, art camps, theater camps, etc. Not only that, but a parent could easily spend thousands for that happy and memorable experience for their child. And you usually get a cool camp shirt, too. Good stuff.
I'm thinking that with those extra thousands I could be saving here, I can buy that little Mac Mini beauty and maybe just come up with some clever ideas for "camp" myself.  ;-)

I'm thinking theses could be really fun:

• Surf camp (for sure, Dudes.)
• Painting
• Cooking
• Swimming
• Stargazing
• Science
• Scrapbooking
• Movie Making
• Teen Fitness
• Sewing
• Improv - definitely
• Then of course, there are movie nights. I'm thinking a Danny Kaye film festival. (or maybe the Marx Brothers?)

I have tons of ideas for these and more.
Let me let you in on my secret:  I'm just pretty darn childish myself. 
Seriously. I come up with ideas for stuff I'd like to do and suggest it to my kids.

I've pretty much got all the resources I need including the willing victims students campers.

The truth is that we do something like this every year.  We like to call it. . . "summer."  ;-)

Now all we need is a cool camp song. . . hmmm. . . =D