A youth group was coming down from the states so we had to come up with something for them to do. It took a little thinking but my husband finally had a bright idea: picnic tables! There are benches at Bezaleel and there are tables, but rarely are there tables with benches. Also, there are wide porches at the school, but nowhere to sit down. This has bothered us since the very beginning: we need places to sit and visit! The youth group would be coming with some money for a project, so after running the idea by the people in power, my husband ordered enough wood for four tables.

It only took a couple days to make them and they turned out gorgeous: large, spacious, and back-breakingly heavy (thanks, in part, to the still-wet wood) so that they can’t “walk off.” Nobody here had ever heard of picnic tables before. For lack of a better name, we’ve taken to calling them mesas del campo (country tables).

Everyone is in love with these tables. Like, crazy in love. One of the parents took pictures of them and wondered how much they cost. Kids keep pointing out places on campus where they need a table. In assembly this week, the director had to explain to the students that no one class owns their own table—rather, they are for everyone to share.

This little misunderstanding is probably my fault. After baking class
last week, I told the girls that the tables were really heavy, but if
they could carry one up to their dorm, they could have it. 

By “they” I meant the entire girls’ dorm, but they took my words literally. (Oops.)
 
They strained and squealed and lifted and bit by bit that table moved up the hill.
 
After watching them struggle a bit, my husband took some boards over so they could lift it more easily.
 
We could hear them screaming and laughing the whole way up the road.

There was some money leftover from the visiting group, so my husband is making two more tables this week. (When I called to check on his progress, he reported that he had already made one. It took him two-and-a-half hours.) The school leaders want him to make six more at the end of this month.

Way to hit the ball out of the park, honeyman!

A couple weeks ago, at the end of that particularly excruciatingly sluggish week, my husband and I and a couple friends checked out a local, pick-your-own blueberry farm. Actually, it’s not really open to the public, but we know a person who knows everyone here, so with a little string pulling and name tossing, we got ourselves an appointment with the blueberry bushes.

Turns out, they weren’t the most loaded berry bushes. There were more loaded bushes elsewhere on the property, but they had been picked the day before. Really though, I didn’t much mind. I was picking organic blueberries in Guatemala and that was enough to make me squeal happy. My husband and I picked seven pounds between the two of us, and at US$1.30 a pound, it felt like a steal.

Back home, I got the two pie pastry disks I had made earlier that morning out of the fridge and set about making pie. I almost never make blueberry pie since using up all that painstakingly picked fruit in one fell swoop feels obscenely extravagant. Instead, I usually opt to freeze my berries in one cup bags so that a few berries can flavor a whole bunch of food, such as oatmeal, granola, fruit salads, etc. But with no big freezer, all the berries had to be used up within a couple days, so pie it was. (I did freeze four 1-cup baggies; old habits die hard.)

Despite not being a blueberry pie expert, the pie was a smash hit. I used Elise’s recipe as my template and made adjustments as I went. I worried a little that the filling would be runny, but it was perfect: it held its shape while still being saucy juicy.

For dessert that night, we ate thick wedges of warm blueberry pie with vanilla ice cream. It was all I hoped it would be…and more.

Ps. The next day there was this blueberry cobbler and the rest of the ice cream. And the next day there was blueberry baked French toast. And in between there was granola and oatmeal with blueberries.

Blueberry Pie
Minimally adapted from Simply Recipes.

I have no food processor to simplify the pastry-making process, but a perfectly excellent pastry can made with just your own two hands and a bowl (and some measuring cups).

1 recipe (two disks) rich butter pastry
5-6 cups blueberries
1 tablespoon lemon juice
½ teaspoon lemon zest
1/4 cup flour
½ generous cup sugar
1/4 teaspoon cinnamon
2 tablespoons butter
sugar and milk, for top crust

Roll out one of the pastry disks. Use it to line a 9-inch pie pan.

Put the berries in a large bowl. Add the juice and zest and gently toss. Add the flour, sugar, and cinnamon and toss together. Tumble the berries into the pastry-lined pie plate. Dot with the butter.

Roll out the remaining pastry disk. Cut slits in the top. Lid the pie with the pastry. Crimp edges. Brush the top crust with milk and sprinkle liberally with more white sugar.

Bake the pie at 350 degrees for about 45 minutes. Once the fruit juices begins to bubble over, place the pie on a baking pan to collect the drips. (Don’t do this earlier—you want the bottom crust to get as brown as possible). The pie is done when the crust is deep golden and the berries are bubbling madly. Cool to room temperate (or almost). Serve with vanilla ice cream.

None of my children are particularly athletic. They’re active, yes, but they’ve never shown a propensity for organized sports. Which is perfectly fine with me. Sports aren’t my thing either. I’d rather watch the children run around the back forty with machetes and zero-turn mowers and bikes from the comfort of my cozy kitchen, cup of strong, homemade coffee in hand, than watch them from a hard-as-stone bleacher bench while whistles shrill and buzzers blare and kids beg for please a cup, just one cup! of toxic orange soda.

We did egg them on a little, back when they were wee-tots. My older son did one year of karate and my older daughter did a season of ballet. But neither of them wanted to continue, so I said pfttt and that was that.

But then we entered the soccer-crazed land otherwise known as Guatemala. The older children shied away from the sport, clumsy big oafs that they are, but my younger son, the biggest clumsy big oaf of them all (or so we thought), became obsessed.

We bought him a soccer ball for his February birthday, back before he knew what such a ball was for. Since then, he has developed an obsession for the sport. Actually, I’m not sure how much he understands the game—it’s the ball-and-foot action that he’s so in love with.

He is always kicking something. If his soccer ball isn’t around, it’s a basketball (until it went flat) or one of the hard plastic balls that cost Q3 each (being hard and plastic and cheap, they don’t have a long shelf life) or his lunch box or his pillow or a random shoe. Anything that can be kicked will be kicked.

We’ve made a no-kicking-balls-in-the-house rule, but it’s like he’s under some sort of compulsion: he. can. not. stop. Out of frustration, I’ve hurled the offending balls up into the farthest, rat-turd-ridden reaches of the ceiling corners. His father has booted them out of the house. We’ve sat the kid on time out. We’ve packed the balls up. We’ve confiscated them. We’ve explained and yelled and begged and reasoned. He’s doing a little better about carrying, not kicking, the balls through the house, but not much. Sigh.

The neighbor kids have taken to playing rollicking games of soccer on our concrete patio. On the one end is a beautiful flowering bush that serves as a goal and that now looks rather beleaguered. On the other is the two-foot drop off. The playing field is small and hard, and the porch pillars get in the way, but no one seems to mind the limitations.

For yesterday’s game, my older son and his friend Joaquín (and later my older daughter) made up one team. The other team was comprised of my younger son and Fernando, with the oldest neighbor boy Jorge (who is brothers with Joaquín) as their goalie.

Of course, I cheered for the little boys. They held their own amazingly well. The big kids put the emphasis on power kicks while the littles thrilled in fancy footwork, passes, and team work.

So all that stuff I said in the beginning of the post about not having athletic kids? Turns out, I may have one after all.

‘Course, we could get back to the states and he might forget all about his love affair with fútbol.

But if he doesn’t, there’s a small chance, just a teeny-tiny wee one, that I might be willing to endure those hard-as-rock bleacher benches … if it means getting to see this boy of mine have a good time.