Pilgrims and Pirates

My monday got off to a funny start. I was teaching writing to all 46 kids, and surprisingly had a good conversation going about writing captions to go with pictures in non-fiction. We were looking at a picture of a Pilgrim family having a meal, and we were brainstorming ideas to write for the caption. The end of conversation went something like this.
Boy #1: "The family is eating dinner."
Me: "We need to be specific. Look closely, what are they eating?"
Boy #2: "Turkey!"
Girl #1: "There's pie!"
Girl #2: "The Pilgrims are eating guacamole!"

I had a hard time not laughing. Sometimes I forget that almost the entire class comes from a family from Central & South America, until one suggests that the Pilgrims feasted on guac.


Thank you god for Squanto, and for our tortilla chips and guacamole.


Last week I changed my mind about my Halloween costume. I was really, really excited about the mummy idea. But then Kate told me it's going to look bad. And since Kate clearly knows all there is to know about Halloween, I decided to look for something different.

I headed out to iParty. The costumes there are ridiculous. The women's costumes were so slutty (I didn't really want to be a sexy convict in an orange mini-skirt), and the men's costumes were just rauncy. I actually looked in the teen section thinking they might be a little better, but they weren't. I don't think costumes were this bad when I was little, but maybe I don't remember. My mom made all of our costumes (the best was the year when my brother and I were a frog and a penguin), and once I got too old for full-body costumes to look cute, I still made my costumes by piecing together stuff I already owned or buying individual parts.

Anyway, I eventually found a pirate costume I liked. Except they had it in two sizes, and both seemed like they'd be too big. So I continued wandering, until I found the same costume in the girl's section, right between two costumes from High School Musical. Minus the fact that it shows a bit more of my belly than I'd like if I'm not at the beach, the costume is great. I headed over to target and picked up a "pirate pack," which includes a hook hand, sword, earring, and eye patch. Now the question is, do I bring the hook or the sword? I'll need one hand for a beer.