Blogging is fast becoming a vacation-only pursuit. Frankly, I'm impressed with myself for doing the minimum requirements of all the responsibilities I've taken on this year, so I can only feel a shade of regret (but absolutely zero guilt). I'm teaching full time (something I once thought impossible to do along with having kids) and I'm leading Adele's Daisy Troop and I'm teaching children's chapel at church. I've stepped back a bit from choir- a person can only do so much. They've been working on an extra-curricular concert (Rutter's Requiem Mass with the Presbyterians) and that's where I hit my limit. No is the hardest on-syllable word for me to say, apparently, but I said it.
Meanwhile, Miles has taken on a new responsibility: He's an acolyte at church, pretty much every week now.
Adele continues to accumulate reading and writing skills rapidly. She might be learning faster than Miles did at this age! She's taken on learning cursive, multiplication, and has been picking up big chapter books to read.
Adele's also begun Daisy Girl Scouts! This pic is from the cookie rally we attended, as week before our (very successful) first Daisy Meeting. We're saying the pledge, selling cookies, singing "Make New Friends" and I'm researching ways to earn badges. I find if I do what I can on weekends and take it one week at a time, I can avoid the overwhelm I usually experience when Trying to Do Things While Teaching.
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| We celebrated Robert's birthday party! Miles and Robert continue to be inseparable and it's adorable and also my heart hurts every time I remember that someday, we'll probably move from Pueblo. I don't know why I borrow trouble. |
There has been VERY LITTLE SNOW this winter. It's probably the most disappointing winter we've had. Probably three times we had snow, once with about four inches, every other time a couple of inches or less. Pitiful! I bought them snowpants and boot and everything this year, and apparently, to no avail. March IS coming, though, and as Jon says, Colorado is always one March snowstorm away from drought.
Last time we had snow, Jon found this little nugget in the street. Miles (who is nearly finished with The Goblet of Fire) is pretty sure it had a message for him.
We continue to exercise dogs and kids at Belmont in the evenings. This place is so dear. Adele is ready for a 20" bike; she's amazingly steady.
Late in January we attended the one-year anniversary Women's March- right here in Pueblo! About 1000 people came, which is excellent for Pueblo (that's like 1% of the whole city!). I saw a bunch of people I knew, from church and work and from around town, which makes this year's event much different from last year's.
I loved all the chicana and indigenous women's groups we saw. All in all, an inspiring and hopeful day.
I'm pretty pleased with myself for all that I'm doing, as it's all worthy stuff. I don't particularly want to be a girl scout leader, if you want to know, at this point in my life. But darnit, if my daughter wants to be a girl scout and if I have to lead in order for that to happen, I'm doing to be the best Daisy Troop Leader I can possibly be.
Teaching is better. I've had a bit of a management breakthrough. I'm also helped by the knowledge that the whole sixth grade team is struggling with this group, which is large and has a LOT of unruly members. And I'm really enjoying planning lessons to accompany The Watsons Go To Birmingham- 1963, and grammar lessons, and Civil Rights and Persuasive Writing lessons. And look at us! We're more than halfway through the school year!
The days are getting longer and warmer, so I'm back in my running shoes. Well, my new running shoes. I have reached an all-time weight high! That's what you get when you replace running with grading. But I'm back on the trail, and Koopa approves.
My church surprised me by actually acknowledging the news last week! I wish this had ever happened for any of the white supremacist rallies or officer-involved shootings in the news, but it's a start. They read all the names of the teens who were killed in Parkland last week, and we spent time praying aloud for the families and survivors. My own prayer that I add to these is that the survivors' efforts to wake our country up and get some changes made to challenge our deadly gun-worship are successful beyond their imaginings.
I've JUST finished teaching my ELA classes about The Children's March in 1963, and how children changed the world by walking out of their classrooms one day. If they walk out for any of the scheduled protest days in March or April this year, I will not get in their way.
I hope you enjoyed what will probably be my only winter update! But don't worry; spring break is coming in a month!
When Jon asked what I wanted to do, I just said, churches. I want to see churches. I have a real romantic attraction to old churches. So, we saw churches. First, the oldest church in the United States, San Miguel. We saw the original steps, built in 1610! 
Below and to the left, you see the Loretto Chapel, commissioned by French nuns for a girls' school in the 1870s. To the right, for something completely different, an adobe hotel and spa. 
It is the home of the miraculous staircase, so cunningly built that it didn't require a support beam. 
Finally, we visited the Basilica Cathedral of Saint Francis, also 19th Century. 
First, we stopped and admired the statue of Saint Kateri, the first native American saint ever canonized. 
All the saints on the altarpiece are New World saints. I wished I'd had longer to learn about St. Martin de Porres of Peru! It's nice to see Guadalupe looking as brown as she ought to look; too often she's whitewashed. 
I happened to have a dollar in my bag, and Miles said he'd like to light a prayer candle. He packed a lot of prayers into that candle. We prayed for Melissa, and for Papa (who went on a work trip today) and for our family, and for Miles' wrist to feel better, and and and... It's a bright candle, I think we're covered. :-) 
Outside, one of MANY many statues of Saint Francis. He's really everywhere. If you like Adobe, turquoise, Saint Francis, and (New) Mexican food (and who doesn't??!), come to Santa Fe! 
Below: the Plaza. People from surrounding reservations sit all around the border and sell crafts. 
As we were getting ready to say goodbye, we happened upon a military fort that had been turned into a park. It was almost a dead vertical, so a little bit tiring at 7199 feet, but the views were worth it. 
The landscape and buildings are just so lovely. One pleasant addition: because of all the groves of pine trees everywhere, we had a lot more birdsong than we're used to in Pueblo! On the road back, we stopped at Las Vegas, New Mexico, as our friends had recommended a restaurant. This mural depicting the history of the region caught my eye...
Charlie's is a two (fat!) thumbs up, by the way. Oh my. We felt we'd never feel hunger again. We brought baked goods and tortillas with us, because we couldn't not, Lent or no Lent. Below, my stuffed sopapilla and pozole. Thoroughly sublime. WOULD EAT AGAIN. 
On the journey, we listened to and read along with Death Comes for the Archbishop, a novel by Willa Cather roughly based on the lives of two French priests in the newly formed diocese of New Mexico. It is much better than I'd expected! I think I expected Cather to be grimmer, somehow... but this is exquisite, and so lovingly depicts the region that it formed the perfect backdrop against which to travel through northern New Mexico. Several times Cather describes places we'd travelled through or seen. And, there are just so many lovely little stories and thoughtful observations. I will leave you with one favorite from the Bishop himself: 
“Where there is great love there are always miracles,' he said at
length. 'One might almost say that an apparition is human vision
corrected by divine love. I do not see you as you really are, Joseph; I
see you through my affection for you. The Miracles of the Church seem to
me to rest not so much upon faces or voices or healing power coming
suddenly near to us from afar off, but upon our perceptions being made
finer, so that for a moment our eyes can see and our ears can hear what
is there about us always.”
That's the actual Rio Grande! I still can't believe where I live, sometimes. 
We started our trip at 
You could climb any ladder you found and pop into the dwellings and pretend you lived there. The kids scampered up and down ladders and we just kept up with them. It was about 65 degrees and partly cloudy and perfectly pleasant! Though we had a laugh that no matter how far south we go for our anniversary, we never get truly warm weather. Even the year we went to Charleston! 
There was a lot of birdsong, and softly filtered sunshine. We'd done a lot of driving, so we were all refreshed by the outdoor time. One of the things that a dry climate does is to make the outdoors seem terribly clean. There's none of the mud and leaf mold that I remember from forest walks in NY. There's a lot to enjoy about desert life. We stayed out till almost sunset, then grabbed some New Mexican dinner-- my second feast of the trip! The first was in Taos. Oh my word, I'm sure I'm five pounds heavier than when I left. It feels good, getting out on these Western safaris when we have a chance. We don't know how many years we'll be living out here, and I'd hate to think I hadn't taken advantage of an opportunity to see something I couldn't have imagined ever seeing, just a few years ago. 