Our motto? Laugh. Eat. Play.

The kids are out of school and in this part of the country it's like a feeding frenzy trying to get kids signed up for "camps."

Yes. That's the hip thing to do.  (of course, I am anything but hip -  sigh)

If you don't know how to just be with and enjoy your child or help them entertain themselves for the summer, you sign them up for "camp."  (Not a criticism, just a fact in my South Orange County white-bread world)

They can choose soccer camp, sailing camp, movie making camp, swimming camp, acting camp, art camps, theater camps, etc. Not only that, but a parent could easily spend thousands for that happy and memorable experience for their child. And you usually get a cool camp shirt, too. Good stuff.
I'm thinking that with those extra thousands I could be saving here, I can buy that little Mac Mini beauty and maybe just come up with some clever ideas for "camp" myself.  ;-)

I'm thinking theses could be really fun:

• Surf camp (for sure, Dudes.)
• Painting
• Cooking
• Swimming
• Stargazing
• Science
• Scrapbooking
• Movie Making
• Teen Fitness
• Sewing
• Improv - definitely
• Then of course, there are movie nights. I'm thinking a Danny Kaye film festival. (or maybe the Marx Brothers?)

I have tons of ideas for these and more.
Let me let you in on my secret:  I'm just pretty darn childish myself. 
Seriously. I come up with ideas for stuff I'd like to do and suggest it to my kids.

I've pretty much got all the resources I need including the willing victims students campers.

The truth is that we do something like this every year.  We like to call it. . . "summer."  ;-)

Now all we need is a cool camp song. . . hmmm. . . =D

I'm Luz's Daughter

Today my mom turns 93.

Last year we thought it would be fun to throw her a surprise party.  When she came through the door and we yelled "Sorpresa!" we had a moment where it occurred to us it might not have been such a great idea to surprise the 92 year old like this.  LOL
But she loved it and immediately rose to the occasion.
Here's the fam trying to get it together for a portrait.
It's WORK, let me tell you.

My mother's name is Luz Aurora Verdés y Perez-Puelles.

She was married for 60 years to my dad, Rodolfo Verdés.

Together they had 6 kids: Ofelia, Helen, Rodolfo, Miriam, Alina, & Marta.

She has 5 in-laws who all adore her.
And 16 grandchildren who range in ages from 43 to 11.  Four of the grands are married to wonderful people.
She has 7 great-grandchildren - ages 6 years to 1 month.

That adds up to 38. This is just the immediate family. She has friends scattered all over the world.

A few years ago in 2002 we had a family reunion which included her big brother, from Miami (93 then himself). Her baby brother and baby sister, from Havana (both octogenerians). Their childhood friend from Puerto Rico, also in his 80's.  Their last name is Perez-Puelles. We affectionately call them "Los Perez-Puellones." 
My cousin Waldo traveled from Cuba to be here with his dad. His sister Maria traveled from Miami. We had not seen each other since we were little wiggly things back in Cuba. 40 years is a long time.
Why?
Why did we go to all this trouble?
The answer is always the same -We did it for my mom.  It was a labor of love.
Probably for my kids too. I think it's important for them to see us honoring the older generations. I want my kids to honor their Cuban roots.

During the week of the reunion, Amy was everywhere with her camera. Documenting every airport pick up, every arrival, every hug. She was still shooting video the day of the party.
These are my mom's people. Her brothers and sisters.  The day was rich in love, rich in food, and even entertainment.
Amy & I were racing around behind the scenes cutting video and scanning photos and using new footage almost immediately. It was so sweet for my uncles who had not seen us since we were very young girls. The emotion was so thick, it was visible. We had so many wonderful laughs together. We were all so pumped and so happy to be here.

I was remembering this as we were preparing for this birthday.
She will be leaving quite a legacy.
I say all this by way of introduction. Here's a portion of the video we created for the reunion. I think it's appropriate because everything we do for my mom.... we do for love.

With a nod to Bryan Adams, Sting, and Rod Stewart.
So today we honor her, who is the glue that holds this beautiful family together.

"Felicidades, Mami." Te quiero.

(there's a lot of black at the beginning.. wait for it..) 

Dance as if EVERYONE is watching...

Besides taking our food very seriously, we Cubans enjoy our music even more.
We are big fans of "old school" Cuban music. Particularly Celia Cruz and Beny Moré.

My niece, Kelley, got married in May, and Amy (of course) filmed the wedding.

Everyone you see in this is related to us somehow. If you've been reading my blog, you're probably already starting to recognize the usual suspects. Because this is part of our Christmas film, the clips that are cut in are from different times and different weddings and different conga lines. (Yes, I'm the bride with the butt-bow. It was the 90's =D) 

Kelley & Jay blew everyone out of the water when they danced their first dance to the Beny Moré classic, "Castellano, que bueno baila usted."   WATCH THIS...

We can't help it, it's in our blood.

Cucufate Pictures Presents . . .

An explanation.

My mom was in Miami last year visiting her big brother (she's almost 93 - what are these people made of??).

She was helping him clean out closets and things and found an old box full of old 8mm and Super 8 film reels.  There was footage of my parents back in 1950. There we were as small children playing in the sand in Varadero in 1956. There was Christmas, 1956 with my uncle dressed as Santa Claus riding in on horseback. 

It's such beautiful stuff. We are working hard at preserving these old films and creating timeless family heirlooms. This is super important to me. And it just so happens that my daughter is an amazing film editor. (Tomorrow's Memories is her film editing business)

In this stash, we found some footage of Christmas on our farm in Cuba, but the film had been double-exposed. Amy was really loving the artsy effect and so she created the same feel with more recent family films.  The babies are all adults now. There are new members to the family. The song she chose is poignant and sweet.  The feel is timeless.

Did I mention she is an amazing editor?

This is the just the 2 minute opening of our family Christmas film this year.
And yes, we realize we're violating some major copyright laws here, but I really wanted to share. =D

Enjoy.

Hammer Time

DISCLAIMER: The following post will probably only make sense to Cuban-Americans (and probably only to my immediate family). Read at your own risk. =D

I am the youngest of six. Four older sisters and one brother.
One of the beauties of being a Cuban exile, is living and growing up around people who are bilingual. It was always a party (it still is)!

It is not just that we can go in and out of either language.  It is that translating Cuban idioms is pure comedy. (well, maybe you just have to be Cuban to "get it.") The Cuban people have a way of saying things that are very picturesque and in my family we LIVE for these literal translations!  I think someone even coined the term "Cubonics."

Technically, they don't make any sense in Spanish either, which is just the beginning of the fun.

If someone is a little vain, we say, "Se da lija."
Translation: "He sandpapers himself."

If he's a good guy, we say, "Es un pan."
Translation: "He's a piece of bread."

"Come in and take a seat."  "Entre y tome una silla."
Translation: "Between and drink a chair."

"He's cute."  "Que mono."
Translation: "What a monkey."

Cubans love nicknames too. Or at least making a diminutive out of one's name.
Hence, Cubans who meet me for the first time sometimes call me, "Martica." One of my mom's cousins used to call me 'Martilla" (NOTE:  the Spanish word for "hammer" is "martillo").  My sisters started calling me "Little Hammer" as a form of torment and eventually as an endearment.  (BTW, NOBODY else gets to do this with impunity)

My kids love this. Especially Amy, who does an amazing job on our Christmas videos.

She insists that the titles read like this:

She sandpapers herself just a little. =D

Language Lesson

Cucufate. n. (koo-koo-fah-teh)
1. To confuse things in such a way as to cause confusion all around you.
2. a screw-up.

We have been using this term idiomatically in my family as far back as I can remember.
We have taken to calling everything we do a Cucufate (big screw-up). This might be one of those things that is very specifically Cuban.

A few years ago we had an extended family reunion with dozens of names represented.
We just called it "Cucufate Reunion 2002."  I even created a logo. It works for us.

I think it's cool because it puts a light-hearted spin on some potentially annoying situations. And of course, who doesn't screw up every now and then? We just chalk it up to another Cucufate.
My mother, however is Queen of the Cucufate. I guess that makes me a sort of Reigning Princess. Yep. When we screw up, we do it royally! ;-)

Some examples of Christmas Cucufates would be:
From Rudolph the Red-Nosed Reindeer - "Olive, the other reindeer," would be a Cucufate.

From 'Twas the Night Before Christmas.. - "when up on the roof there, a Rose Suchak Ladder."
Cucufate again.

When my Aunt and Uncle come to visit (my mom's siblings) we call it the Cucufate Olympics because since they're all going deaf it becomes ALL-CUCUFATE-ALL-THE-TIME.  Take the time when my mom tells my uncle to call his daughter, "Llama a Ileana." and he gets a puzzled look because he thinks she's talking about the weather. "que llueve mañana?" Are you catching on to the Cucufate madness?

I know it's not just us. When Eric was wearing his Cucufate shirt in Key West, the Cuban salesgirl in the market made a comment on it. "A Cucufate was just a big mess," she said.  I nodded. I didn't have the heart to explain that we had taken it to a whole new level.

So it is only fitting that in making our Christmas videos we call ourselves Cucufate Pictures.
I'm especially proud of how Amy totally knocked off this logo. One day I will figure out how to upload it to www.Youtube.com and you can see it in motion with the stars coming in to the music. Trust me. It's fabulous.  (sadly, today's not that day)

But my mom insists on telling everyone it's the logo from MGM.  See what I mean?

Y 2 Que?

In 1979, after President Jimmy Carter opened up travel between the U.S. & Cuba, I had a cousin go to Cuba to visit family.
She brought back the most amazing treasure for us: A suitcase full of our family pictures.

This is going to sound odd to some, but I was 24 years old and had never, before that moment, seen baby pictures of myself.  You have to remember that we left Cuba with just the most essential things. And my parents were convinced all the political nonsense would be over in no time.  We would just wait it out in the states.  Well... we're still waiting.

So when she delivered that suitcase....it was like buried treasure. My sisters and I pored over that trove.  Pictures of our young parents during their courtship.  Documentation of birthday parties, Christmases and summers in Varadero.  It was such an amazing gift. This was our life... pre-exile.

My parents celebrated their 40th Wedding Anniversary (December 31st - My dad never forgot an anniversary =D) that year. My gift to them was a chronological slide show - using a Kodak Carousel Projector and some music taped onto a cassette, I synchronized slides I had created of our treasured photos with some Cuban music.  I did this manually.  Considering what a "ghetto" production it was.  It was still a huge hit.

Fast forward to December, 1999.

My parents were then preparing to celebrate their 60th anniversary.  We were going into a new millennium.  Adam and Amy were both taking Video Production in school.

In the first week of December, I innocently asked them if they thought we could maybe put together a video slide show with some music to show on Noche Buena.  An updated version of the one I had done 20 years before. There were so many more people in the family, it would be kind of fun for everyone. We got very excited and started pulling out old Christmas pictures, which we would include in this video.

Then, the unthinkable happened. My dad passed away due to complications from his diabetes on December 11, 1999. Now we had a funeral to arrange. But we were still going to have our Christmas Eve party.  It became more important than ever to celebrate our Noche Buena.

The small video project then took on an urgency and a life of it's own. My kids and I worked day and night to pull pictures, create titles and edit. They got extra credit at school for their production.  What began as a 4 minute slide show grew to 40 minutes. 

We showed it on December 24th as a memorial to my father.  We laughed together. We cried together.  The men lit up puros in his honor. And a tradition was born.

We called it:  Y 2 Que? (we still believe that title was divinely inspired)

Amy is teaching Lucy how to edit using Adobe Final Cut Pro and both Macs. That's a TV on the left that they hook up the digital camera to, so they can see what they are capturing.  Amy has begun calling Lucy, "Goddess of the Sub-Clip."

We have graduated to making dvd's. There is still an urgency to making the "Christmas video" that has never quite left us. Through the years we have uncovered old super 8 films from the 50's and 60's and used them in our productions.

The tradition continues.  Everyone is already anticipating the production. We don't just "have Christmas."  This is a unique way we CELEBRATE our family.

I will write more another day about our video productions, but not today. I have to go cry now.

In nothing are we as rich as in our memories.