I dragged myself over to my neighbor Gina’s house this morning so she could do my hair, and she asked me about something we talked about the last time I was there, which reminded me that I never posted it on the blog. It really freaked me out so it’s definitely blogworthy.

A couple of months ago I was working at home and there was a loud knock at the front door. I opened the door to find a government-issue Taurus in the driveway and two special agents from the Department of Homeland Security. I was struck dumb. I couldn’t think clearly. They started asking me questions about a family friend who came to visit months before. I couldn’t remember his name or what month he was here. When I found my voice again I asked the agents what time it was and said that the school bus was due at 3:30 and that they could come with me if they wanted to. I guess you don’t stop being a mom (or being hospitable) even when you’re struck dumb.

Once the blood started circulating to my brain again I answered all of their questions. The kid is a college student in Canada. Yes, that’s him in the photo. He is the son of my sister-in-law’s brother-in-law. He was here for a week or two during his school break and then he went back to school. When? I don’t know…it was cold out. Must have been winter. All he did when he was here was use his computer, watch TV, sleep, and eat. They asked some questions about Ben too. I’ve always thought that if you’re honest and law-abiding you’ll be fine, but I’ve lost some faith in our judicial system in the last couple of years. And you never know, Ben could be a secret agent.

The agents wrote everything down in their official notebooks, gave me their cards, and asked me to call them with the kid’s address and phone number. I immediately called Ben and tracked down the info, and then called the agent back. I asked him if I had done something wrong by inviting the kid to come for a visit and he said, “If I thought you did something wrong it would have gone down a lot different at your house.” That statement leaves a lot to the imagination.

We finally heard from the kid a couple of weeks ago and the issue was that when he returned to Canada he was supposed to turn in a white card at Immigration. Apparently he didn’t do that, so they came looking for him. He took it to the embassy and he’s all set, but I’m still amazed that the Department of Homeland Security has the resources to go looking for a college kid who didn’t turn in a card. Maybe it was just because he’s a young Muslim man. In the old days everyone used to come here on tourist visas, overstay their visa and then figure out how to get legal. Times have changed.
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I have pictures just like this of Aliya, but Adlani has never once set his action figures up classroom style and read them a story, or laid them out on dishcloths for nap. It must be a girl thing.

I had a chance to visit Adlani’s class for an hour last week and his teacher, Maria, made him Estrella del Dia (Star of the Day) since I was there. It was so cool to see how Maria uses games, songs, and repetition to teach Spanish. I told her that I think I could even learn Spanish from her class. I learned about 15 words while I was there and I still remember them! When we picked Adlani up before vacation Ben brought him out without his boots and snowpants, so Aliya and Ben went back into the school to look for them. Maria was still there and she and Aliya carried on a conversation in Spanish about the missing snowpants and boots. Ben was blown away. He hasn’t really heard Aliya converse in Spanish with a Spanish-speaker. I told him (AGAIN) that if he had been talking to her in Arabic she’d be fluent in that too. Oh well.

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As I said in a much earlier post about the “no peeing” sign, when Aliya asks me a question, I usually answer it very honestly because I always want her to come to me with her questions. But nobody’s perfect, right?

When we were putting up the Christmas tree Ben cooked a beef tenderloin for dinner. When we took it out of the package it turned out to be two long skinny pieces of beef that had been marinated. Aliya was like, “Ew! What’s that?!” I told her that it was cow tongue. She said that she didn’t like cow tongue and I told her that it’s a Christmas tradition that I always cook cow tongue when we put up the tree. She said, “Did I eat it last year?” I assured her that she did and promptly forgot all about it. I guess she must have eaten it because I didn’t notice her hiding it under her broccoli or feeding it to the dog.

A couple of weeks later we were on the way to school and she started talking about traditions. I think they had been talking about them in class. She said, “I know one of our traditions! We always eat cow tongue when we’re putting up the Christmas tree!” I laughed so hard. The poor thing. I hope she didn’t throw that one out during the class discussion.
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I can’t believe this. I was doing end-of-year cleaning on the blog and I found a draft of a post about our annual weekend at camp with the Libbys! I still can’t believe that I never posted these pictures but I’ve searched the posts and I guess I never completed it. I’m sorry Libbys!!!

Written in September:

I’ve finally recovered sufficiently from the 2nd annual Libderrazak weekend at camp to post the photos. Actually…considering that we packed 11 people and a dog into 600 square feet for 4 days, there were only a few minor altercations and nobody threw up this year which is a definite improvement over last year. The kids did a lot of fishing and kayaking, the grown-ups mostly sat around and drank sangria. For me the highlight of each day was R & R…rest and reading. We had a really fun scavenger hunt which was won by the all-male team of Jarod, Adlani, and Ben. Ben learned all about nature, like what moss and ferns are and where to find worms. It was a great time and yes, Libby’s…you can come back next year!

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