Feliz cumpleaños, mi querido

RED DOG THE PIRATE

Red: As a young girl I had dreamed of marrying a redhead, and LO! You showed up and captured my heart. The first time I saw you, God spoke to me and told me that I'd marry you. You laugh, because I didn't know God at the time, but He knew us, and if He can speak to donkeys he can speak to confused teenagers as well. That's my story and I'm sticking to it.

Dog: As everyone knows, "faithful" is the natural adjective for a dog, just as "devout" goes with "Catholic", or "giant" goes with "redwood". FAITHFUL is God's banner over you, as well; it is the name that He gave you, and you are the embodiment of faithfulness.


Pirate: Pirates capture our imaginations with the adventure and romance of lives focused on making the most of the opportunities that arise. Like a pirate, you delight in wandering the seas of possibilities and discovering the treasures that are to be had with a bit of clever experimentation.



WooDY

What a propitious set of initials: WDY. It seems that your life simply conformed to the shape of your initials, first in a redwood forest, with an enterprise built around an ancient woodworking machine, then by a circuitous route through Silicon Valley to a comfy wood shop filled with sawdust and antique planes, and on down to Mexico, under a palapa, making beautiful objects to sell in a local gallery. But better yet, your passion for wood has found an outlet in teaching orphans to make and sell woodenware, giving them a skill that they'll be able to earn an income with when they're adults.

THE POET

Your poems are exquisite. Your essays are tender and funny. Your creativity is perfectly expressed in your writings, and your works are gifts eagerly looked for by those who receive them.

THE MUSICIAN

You've had that guitar longer than we've been married, and the sweetness of what emerges from the combination of you and the guitar is something that I can only hope to attain in our own relationship. You were born to worship, and you draw others to worship with you. You were born for joy, and you invite others to share the joy of music. I am blessed beyond my wildest hopes to have married a troubadour whose heart is fixed on God.


Estas son las mañanitas, que cantaba el Rey David,
Hoy por ser día de tu santo, te las cantamos a ti,
This is the morning song that King David sang
Because today is your saint's day we're singing it for you

Despierta, mi bien, despierta, mira que ya amaneció,
Ya los pajarillos cantan, la luna ya se metió.
Wake up, my dear*, wake up, look it is already dawn
The birds are already singing and the moon has set

Que linda está la mañana en que vengo a saludarte,
Venimos todos con gusto y placer a felicitarte,
How lovely is the morning in which I come to greet you
We all came with joy and pleasure to congratulate you

Ya viene amaneciendo, ya la luz del día nos dio,
Levántate de mañana, mira que ya amaneció.
The morning is coming now, the sun is giving us its light
Get up in the morning, look it is already dawn

El día en que tu naciste nacieron todas las flores
En la pila del bautismo, cantaron los ruiseñores
The day you were born all the flowers were born
On the baptismal font the nightingales sang

Quisiera ser solecito para entrar por tu ventana
y darte los buenos días acostadita en tu cama
I would like to be the sunshine to enter through your window
to wish you good morning while you're lying in your bed

Quisiera ser un San Juan, quisiera ser un San Pedro
Para venirte a cantar con la música del cielo
I would like to be a Saint John I would like to be a Saint Peter
To sing to you with the music of heaven

De las estrellas del cielo tengo que bajarte dos
una para saludarte y otra para decirte adiós
Of the stars in the sky I have to lower two for you
One with which to greet you and the other to wish you goodbye

Week Ending - betcha can't top this one!

This was my birthday weekend, and I was looking forward to a very special gift that I had specifically asked for. But first...

FRIDAY: Today the workmen came to tear down our fence because our black dog, Quila (short for Tranquila, which she is NOT) had pushed on it so hard in guarding our house from the dangerous and malevolent schoolchildren that pass by every day that it had given up the ghost and fallen over.

This, of course, meant that we had to keep the dogs chained up most of the day so they wouldn't run off and get into trouble, which is their normal MO.

What made the day particularly interesting is that the front end of a tropical storm came through just about the time that the welders started working to weld the posts. Yes, rain - a steady drizzle.

In the late afternoon, since the dogs had been on their chains all day, I decided to take them for a walk - in the rain - to give them a chance to "do their duty". Since I'm not strong enough to take both of them on a leash at the same time, I had to do the walk twice. We all came back thoroughly soaked (surprise!).

SATURDAY: The first thing I did when I woke up was take the dogs for (separate) walks again...in the rain again. On Saturday Tropical Storm Ivo had moved in closer, so we had wind as well. I was desperate to do some laundry and since we don't have a dryer (why bother when it's sunny 360 days out of the year?) I had David string up some twine in the guest bedroom so I could do a load of the most desperately needed clothes and have somewhere to dry them that didn't cut off our ability to walk around in our 850 square foot house.


On Saturdays I generally cook up a bunch of things to use during the week - rice, beans, and whatever else comes to hand. Although we were in the middle of a tropical storm, it was still too hot to cook inside, so I fired up the woodstove in the "summer kitchen" (which is where I've been doing all my cooking since the weather got hot) and put on a pot of black beans, a pot of rice, and 4 crabs that I had bought at the pescaderia (fish store) the day before. By this time the rain had stopped, but the wind had really kicked up, with gusts of about 40 MPH. I had to hold onto my potholders, but other than that it didn't affect my ability to cook.

THEN came my birthday present! Our priest had promised to teach me how to make mole (pronounced mole-ay for you non-spanish speakers), and at lunchtime he showed up with about 20 ingredients. He laid them all out and while he did almost all the work, I took notes. What most people in the States don't realize is that there are many types of mole, not just the one with chocolate. This particular mole doesn't have chocolate, but it does use FOUR different types of chiles, along with TWO types of nuts, bananas, and many other things. It took about an hour and a half to put it all together, and another half hour to cook.

After all that effort we were all hungry so I made a salad for us to eat:
1/2lb of good ham (not that watery stuff-use thick sliced bacon if you can't find good ham)
1 small (8oz) can of corn
1 bell pepper (I used yellow)
1 large roma tomato
1/2-3/4 cup of kalamata olives
3 hard boiled eggs

I cubed the ham and heated it up, then mixed it with the other ingredients and poured garlic italian salad dressing (purchased) over the whole thing. It was a major hit!


Part of the birthday present is that Padre was going to come back after the midday mass on Sunday (the third of 4 for him each Sunday) to have chicken mole with us. He told me that we should have rice and tortillas with it, so after he left I went back out and cooked up the chicken and made another batch of rice (because the first batch I made is for other meals this week). After those were finished, I deboned the chicken and also got all the meat out of the crab to use for later. So the result of all the cooking outside on a woodstove during a tropical storm was:
1.5 quarts of black beans
2.5 quarts of mole (yummy!)
3 quarts of rice
1.5 pounds of deboned chicken
1 pint of crab meat
And of course the salad...

SUNDAY: Our church has a fundraising program for the various groups in the church where one of the couples in the church makes tamale lunches once a month and tickets are sold, with the cost of the tickets covering the ingredients, plus extra which goes to the church groups. For some reason David had bought FOUR tickets this time, plus a friend of mine gave me 2, so we had SIX tickets for tamale lunches. Thankfully I had just found a recipe that uses leftover tamales to make a casserole, so right after church I got the 6 lunches and we hightailed it home to fire up the woodstove so I could heat up the chicken mole and the rice.

We had a VERY tasty lunch and I got a wonderful surprise. I asked Padre what recipe I should learn next and he said that he will come over in a week and teach me how to make a special kind of salsa that I've never heard of. It turns out that he LOVES to cook traditional Mexican ranchero food, which he learned from his mom, and he usually spends his day off each week cooking! So he's pretty excited that I want to learn this stuff, and I'm even more excited that he's willing to find the time to teach me! I'm hoping to have a series of occasional blog posts, "Padre's Kitchen", with the recipes and photos of these traditional dishes. I'm sorry I didn't take any photos while we were making the mole, but trying to watch Padre and take notes during a tropical storm needed my full attention. However, Padre said that soon he's going to come over and watch ME make the mole from scratch, to be sure that I have it down, so I'll do a post with the recipes and photos then.

After Padre left David and I settled in for a nice long summer's nap, and when we woke up we took the dogs for a walk. And enjoyed the sunset, of course!

Feliz cumpleanos to Kathleen Basi and everyone else whose birthday was this weekend! Now hie thyself over to Reinventing Mother to see what's been going with Wanda and others this past weekend.

Feliz cumpleaños!

Once upon a time, on May 5th, a baby boy was born to Anna & the Pirate. On the baby boy's first birthday, a baby girl was born to another set of parents who lived about 600 miles away.

Although both children grew up in close communities, initially their circumstances were very different: as a child he lived in a forest, and she in a suburban area close to a large city. However, they both went to Christian schools and when it was time to pick a college, they each picked the same one - a small Christian college in a lovely small city. However, although the college was small, their paths didn't cross because he chose to go on the semester abroad program that was offered, as well as attending another college for a year which was on the other coast of the country.

By the time he finally returned to the original college, he had learned how to play lacrosse and decided to start a women's lacrosse team with himself as coach (clever lad, that one!). She, being from a family which enjoys sports, decided to join the lacrosse team and the rest, as they say, is history.

They got engaged on the weekend of her college graduation, and were married within a year (he had graduated the year before). They stayed in the area where the college was located, renting at first and then buying a house in time to welcome their first child. They sold that home and moved to another one where they had two more children.

She was an excellent artist and every place that they lived (4 in all) she made into a welcoming and charming home. If Pinterest had existed at the time, the photos of the murals that she did in her children's rooms surely would have been on a lot of people's boards!

When they were first married she taught at a Christian elementary school, and later cut back on her hours to teach only art classes. She had a flair for motivating and encouraging children to be creative, and her own children produced some truly amazing works of art under her guidance.

In addition to her artistic skills her life is a testament to a quiet spirit. She is a shining example of calm in all circumstances (whether she feels calm or not, she offers calmness to those around her). She has made their home a haven of quiet in a sea of activity. She is truly a treasure and I am so blessed to have her as a daughter-in-law. Happy birthday, Rhonda!

Oh, and happy birthday to you too, Josh! You chose well, my son.