Time warp

Today I was invited to Elisa's class to share some of our family history and traditions.  Her teacher sent home a few letters during the past month offering for us to come in and talk about our family and I briefly composed an email in my head to answer it. But then I got another note that said Elisa would be sharing about her family on Tuesday, October 21. We were nominated first. And could I please fill out the questionnaire if I couldn't make it and send in a sample of our family's traditional food thanks very much. Never one to back down from this kind of challenge, I jumped into action trying to narrow down what we would talk about and what things I could bring in to visually pair with our history. Elisa answered that her favorite family vacation was Disneyland so I set aside our photo book from that trip so she could have something to show off. And then I thought about the food. What would it be? Nacho was off working for two days so he wouldn't be here to make something traditionally Spanish. And since it was all on me, I went with something that my mother would make: Mary's Sugar Cookies cut into jack-o-lanterns for Halloween. I mean, who would say no to one of those deliciously iced creations?

But I don't think it really hit me until I was done with our presentation and taking a photo of Elisa next to the dry erase board her teacher used to illustrate our family story that I realized just what we were talking about. When you think back to the origins of any family, it starts with a love story (hopefully). And then it twists and turns and jumps and pivots into something completely new and hard to recognize at times. This is our story. Our family. Four people. Mom, Dad, Elisa, Carolina. Two languages blending Missouri and Spain. And we have traveled--to Disneyland and camping trips and many places in between. We eat popcorn with smoothies on movie night and we love to bake cookies. That's us in a nutshell. And when I started to look at how that all adds up and then glanced back at the face of my beaming daughter, it all made sense. So here on the blog I thought it would be fun to revisit our story in as few pictures as possible. I think I did pretty good. It's the kind of timeline I see and still can't believe it happened to me. How did we get here? From that summery night in June of 1999 to now. It's all there. I'm glad I got to share it with the kids even if they mostly just wanted the cookie.