Category: Events

WordPress users, I have a question for you: is “upgrading” really…well, hard? I always read we should disable any plugins and I just don’t want to ruin anything I’ve worked so hard to install (I say hard because I’m not the web wiz I once was, and frankly, WordPress still intimidates me, heh).

OH! And another question: has anyone switched from the Default URI structure (http://yoursite.com/?p=123) to the Date and Name Based (http://yoursite.com/2007/05/21/sample-post/) structure without messing anything up? I’ve wanted to do this for a long time, but I’m afraid it’ll ruin the whole setup of the calendar and archives and all that stuff. Please let me know about this, I’ll REALLY appreciate it!

This is kind of off-topic right off the bat, but I’m so incredibly sad that I won’t be seeing Bob Barker on The Price is Right after June 6th. I’m so sad that I never got a chance to actually be ON The Price is Right. John and I always wanted to go. (And to Family Feud, too. We’d so PWN the opposing family.) But he had a good run. I like how he said he wanted to retire while he was still “young”. He’s 84 :). I wonder who’ll take over? Whoever it is, it won’t be the same.

Thank you so much to everyone who answered my questions! It was fun reading all your answers and “meeting” some new (well, to me!) readers! If you still haven’t answered the questions don’t be shy! Click here!

Well Jaylen’s Pre-K field trip was on Thursday. They went to watch Disney on Ice at the Dodge Arena. He said he had so much fun. He couldn’t stop talking about it :). They had pizza at Peter Piper afterwards and then they brought them home around 2:45. I’m going to be so sad when he leaves Pre-K–he’s had such wonderful teachers and I’m going to miss them. They always say he’s such a well behaved boy–I think they’re partly to thank for that :).

Friday felt like any other day, even though it was Mario’s day off. Usually Fridays (and Sundays) are spent out of the house, or doing something productive (like cleaning or building something) but since Mario was helping Chris do something he wasn’t here most of the day. He said if he got out early enough we’d go watch Shrek the Third. He was done by 4 so he came and showered and then we left. Well, actually, Eenan didn’t go because he insisted that he was going to watch it (twice) for his UIL and Millionaire’s Club field trips. And Mary offered to watch Alaethia for us, too. So it was only Mario, Mom, Jaylen and me going.

Although it was, what? The first day it was out we naively thought we’d get to get tickets for one of the shows at least, even though it wasn’t for the early ones. I drop Mario off at the front to get the tickets and go find parking. As I’m parking I get a call and it’s Mario. All tickets were sold out, even the ones at midnight. Bummer. The first time he actually wanted to go to the movies and it’s frickin’ sold out!

We decided we’d go to Target and just buy a movie and have Movie Night at home. We picked up some Gardettos, Scoops tortilla chips, some pizzas, a game for the boys’ Game Cube (TMNT), and Arthur and the Invisibles. We were overcharged for the game (it was on sale) so we ended up getting $20 back. Thank goodness I check receipts — Mario was already walking out the door!

The movie was really cute. Mario and I enjoyed it a lot and so did the boys. Eenan kept saying the little girl “Invisible” (can’t remember what they’re really called at the moment) was “beautiful” LOL.

Saturday was the day to get rid of the rest of the junk we had left from the yard sale. I packed up the trunk as best I could, including the stuff Karina’s mom was going to buy, and only took Alaethia and Mom with me. The boys stayed with John.

First stop was putting gas in the truck, because my husband likes to play this little game where he leaves my truck on empty to see if I’ll actually make it to the corner of the street to the gas station. Grr. He always does that. Even when he leaves me his car because he “just wants to take the truck for once.” Drives me insane.

I get to the gas station and my heart stops when I notice how much it costs: $3.09. WTF?! I don’t even think it got to that much at the end of school in 2006 when gas prices were through the roof. It took $40 to fill my truck, which is A LOT for the Equinox.

Anyway, I met Karina’s mom and she took all my stuff, even what I was leaving at the Goodwill, so that was cool. I still have some stuff to look through and put away in our little storage unit, but God I feel lazy. Especially since it’s so darn hot out.

I didn’t have much luck finding anything while thrift shopping on Saturday. I got a cooling rack for cookies for $.50, a new pack of cleaning gloves for $.50, the Amy Coe pillow case Mini Blanket (I found out it’s a Mini Blanket and not a pillow case. It’s too cute!) that goes with Alaethia’s crib set (Flutter Mod) for $2.50(originally $9.99), a cute roll of wrapping paper for $1.00, and a brand-new huge bottle of my favorite current lotion, Johnson’s Soothing Naturals for $2.00. I can’t remember what else I got (oh! Now I remember, I got Mario 2 sealed, brand-new packs of Nicotine gum because he was supposedly going to quit smoking for $3 for both), but in all it was $11.30. Enough to get a stamp on my card for speinding over $10. I frantically look for it and to my horror realize that I’m missing the first stamp I got two weeks ago, when I barely found out about the card program. You get your card stamped whenever you purchase $10 or more and on your 10th visit, you get $10 free towards your purchase! Now I’m back at square one!

I dropped off a drink for Mario at work, then we went to visit Gramma, who’s doing very well, and then we went to Wal-Mart. We left early, at 10:30am Saturday and still didn’t make it back home till 4:30pm that evening. It never fails!

I got up early (for a Sunday) at 9:30am to the boys fed and Eenan ready for and dropped off at CFF. I ate a quick breakfast and started getting myself and Alaethia ready for Noelia’s shower at 2pm. I made good timing, especially since I wanted to leave at 12:45, just in case.

Mario picked Eenan up from CFF and then guess what he did? Since he was watching the boys he wanted to take them out somewhere so he took them to watch Shrek the Third!! Without ME!

I was even more annoyed when he, once again, took my truck without my knowledge and left me the Neon with low tire pressure and NO GAS. He’d given me $20 to spend “on myself” but that ended up going towards gas in his car!

I also stopped for some pens for the bridal shower since they were short some, so I guess it was good that I was a little late leaving the house.

The bridal shower went really well. The games were really fun (I stupidly changed purses to match my outfit and we ended up playing two games having to do with purses: the first one was a weight one–whoever had the heaviest purse wins. I TOTALLY would have won had I not exchanged bags! And the second one was a scavenger hunt and you guessed it–everything was in my other bag!). There was even a funny one where there’s two girls: one has a roll of toilet paper in her legs, the other has a stick. The one with the stick closes her eyes and the one with the roll “leads” her to put the stick in, well, the hole LOL. It was hilarious!

The other two games were Guess the Spices and the other was the White Stuff game (where you determine what each white powder is, like flour, baking soda, anything you’d use in the kitchen). I won for the Guess the Spices one ;).

And since they had a Money Tree in place of gifts, Noelia made out like a bandit! While we were sitting around the table I jokingly told everyone, “I’m going to just throw a party and have a money tree, too!” LOL

Mario had a pretty good time with the boys; he even took them with him to a job he had to do and they behaved well! As soon as they got home, though, Jaylen started acting up. I’ve been having such a tough time with him when before it would be Eenan who’d act up. I’m so afraid Jaylen’s going to end up with Middle Child Syndrome, where they sometimes act up because they don’t feel like they’re getting enough attention :(.

I’ve got no plans to leave the house today (well, except to pick up the boys). I really need to finish this week’s laundry and finish tidying up the living room but I really want to just read. It feels like a never-ending battle!

I finally have time to blog and whaddya know, I can’t! I’m currently typing this in Word (9:00am).

I hate the cable guy right now. Namely, the cable guy who came over yesterday to fix the few channels that weren’t showing from our box and ruined everything. My channels are now working correctly, but for some reason he ran a new line to the pole and totally effed up Mary’s cable at her house—the box in Noelia’s room and the regular cable in her bedroom. Oh yeah, and the Roadrunner as well.

Alaethia decided that last night was the perfect time to fall asleep at 2am. Grr. She always does things like that when I absolutely have to stay awake the next morning after Mario and the boys are gone. I feel so darn sleepy right now.

So, I guess I can update a bit since I haven’t really since last Saturday. Lord knows I have the time right now. The Little Miss won’t be awake for at least 15 more minutes.

Sunday, the 6th – Mario and I spent all of last Sunday morning and afternoon putting together our new TV table for the living room. We cleaned up a tangle of wires and several piles of dust bunnies from behind and under the old entertainment center. Everything looks much neater now and there’s a lot less free surface on the TV table to leave junk on. That’s always a plus. We also freed up at least 10 cubic feet of space since getting rid of the old entertainment center.

We went to Home Depot (accompanied by John—Mom stayed with all the kiddos) to buy the stuff for The Bathroom Floor Makeover. Some 16×16 ceramic tile, adhesive, grout, a step ladder (yay, now I can finally reach the highest cupboards in the kitchen!), and a few other things equaled to $125. Our bathroom is kind of small, so that seemed like quite a lot but what can you do?

We went to an impromptu party on the way back home. It was a Communion party for one of Mario’s co-worker’s little girls. We had some posole and John and I talked about the fight from the night before and how I was more like Oscar de la Hoya (hitting and going crazy) and he was more like Mayweather (running around like a sissy after getting a little punch in) LOL. It was John’s analogy, not mine!

I tried not to leave the house unless I absolutely needed to the rest of the week. 1) because of gas prices (going to and from town will guzzle up a quarter of a tank) and 2) because I had a lot to do around the house and leaving would only prolong housecleaning. I did, however, go to Goodwill on Monday with John to drop off all the dishes, breakables and trinkets that didn’t sell at the yard sale.

Remember how I said I shouldn’t take my junk to a thrift shop I frequent because I’d buy it back? I almost did just that! I told John, “Let’s look around real quick,” after getting the stuff off the car. I ended up finding a really cute Fondue set, which I’ve always wanted for $5. Can’t WAIT to use it! I also got the boys a brand-new Golden Book of Poems for $1.

One of the items I’d donated was a ceramic Care Bear. I’d glued it back together after it came crashing down on the floor once. Since Noelia gave me another Funshine Bear exactly like the one I’d glued back together I took that one to Goodwill. As we were walking out I noticed they were bringing a shopping cart out from the back. That only means that they’re bringing out “new” merchandise. I scuttle over to the cart and tell John, “Oh, look! This Care Bear looks just like mine!” As I get closer I notice IT IS MINE. The one I’d just donated LOL. Told you I’d end up doing that!

I spent most of last week trying to gather all the junk leftover from the yard sale and what I didn’t take to Goodwill to distribute it wherever it needed to go. Didn’t help that once again the darn news didn’t tell us that it was going to rain so a lot of the stuff got wet. I had to let a lot of the clothes air-dry and some of the toys, too. I was trying to find a place to take the clothes to where they just give them to the needy and I had no luck until I remembered Norma C., one of Mary’s co-workers. Her church gives the clothes, toys, anything to needy people. So Mary took all the clothes and small toys. In all she took a good 10-15 bags of toys and clothes combined.

I still have a few things left to take to Goodwill that I didn’t notice the last time I went, so I’ll save that trip for this weekend.

(Grr. It’s already 10am and the darn cable guy STILL hasn’t gotten here. Alaethia already woke up and had a bottle and went back to sleep. I could have spent all this time sleeping! I KNEW Time Warner would do this to me!)

Mario had his day off on Friday, of course, so after picking Jaylen up we went straight to pick up Mario’s paycheck. It was pretty depressing. He made a pretty good amount this time but most of it went towards the bills. I was so hysterical over how we’d make ends meet that I was already talking about trading in my Equinox for a smaller, less expensive car. But Mario talked sense into me and told me, with the size of our family, the truck was the most practical vehicle we could have. And, as always, he was supportive and made me feel so much better about being poor LOL. He also took us to the Taco Bell/Long John Silvers restaurant, which was really sweet of him since I know he doesn’t really like either one and both are my favorites :P.

(Mother’s such a bad influence! We’re watching the DIY channel and they’re showing how to make really cute things out of polymer clay. Well, she wants to go to Michael’s—which’ll use up that quarter of a tank I was talking about—to go buy some. And some paints. Lately she’s been the one nudging me to go places when all I want to do is stay home and save gas!)

We bar-b-q’d that night (it was Jorge’s idea), which I didn’t mind at all since it saved me from cooking! I tried going to sleep early that night but of course Alaethia had other plans. I didn’t take a shower till really late and had to wake up the next morning to go run errands.

I deposited money at the bank to pay bills (damn bills!) and then I drove Mom around all over the place to get a check and then find a bank that would cash it. We ended up going to her own bank, which she was positive wasn’t going to cash it *scowl*. We went to JC Penny next, where I was going to buy myself some capri pants from Mario for Mother’s Day and got Mom some Capri pants for herself. I bought two blouses with $20 Mom gave me for Mother’s Day. I didn’t try them on at the store since there was a line a mile long for the fitting room, so unfortunately when I got home and finally tried them on I didn’t like how they fit.

We bought Gramma an outfit and some snacks for the kids and then went to see her. We spent some time with her and fixed her closet a bit and then went to have lunch again at the Taco Bell/Long John Silver’s restaurant. (And then I wonder why I don’t lose weight!)

Mario, bless him, tried to surprise me for Mother’s Day and got me a PSP. He’d overheard me saying how cool John’s was, so he thought I wanted one for myself and got me one. He told me he was going to Sears with his co-worker, Ricky, since Ricky was buying one for his son. He kept going on and on about it and said he wanted to get one. Since I thought he was talking about getting one for himself I told him John said he didn’t really like how you browsed with it online and then he said, “Well, darnit, I got you one for Mother’s Day.” Aww. I told him to keep it, since he never gets anything like that for himself. He tried. He really did try to love it and use it but he got bored really quick. That’s why the boys have the Xbox in their bedroom—Mario got bored of it REAL QUICK. He’s currently getting offers from guys at work (I think he’s selling the PSP + game and all the accessories for $250?).

We stayed home Saturday night and watched Spiderman 3 (shh!) with the kids. We had some brownies and ice cream and just sat on the couch together. It was great—we hadn’t had a night like that in quite some time!

I woke up around 10:30am Sunday morning, Mother’s Day. I noticed Mario disappeared for a while but thought nothing of it. When I got out of the shower he tells me breakfast is on the table. He’d gone over to his Mom’s to surprise me with an omelet he’d made and fruit—my favorite breakfast!

John, Mario, Mom and Alaethia stayed at the house while the rest of us went to church. It was a lovely service—long, but nice. They even sang “Las Mañanitas” and “Wind Beneath My Wings.” All around us people were crying silently and sniffing. I was emotional but held it in and was proud of myself for not bawling. Eenan had been acting up, so I told him to sit down and listen to the words of the song and after a few minutes he turns around, tears in his eyes, and wraps his arms around my waist and says, “I LOVE YOU, MOM!” I couldn’t stop the tears from flowing after that LOL.

We came back after church and this time Mom and John stayed with all the kids while Mario and I went with Mary and everyone to the cemetery to visit Mario’s maternal grandmother. We visited Grandma Ofelia, his paternal grandmother, next. She immediately told us to leave upon noticing that we didn’t have Alaethia with us LOL.

After visiting for a while, we came back home and chilled out for a bit. Noelia invited us to the Olive Garden and Mario quickly started making excuses about not going. He’s the only person on Earth that I know that doesn’t like Olive Garden. He said to take Mom with me and it can be a Mom’s night out. Plus Andy LOL. I, of course, took Aly with me since Mario was already becoming panic-stricken about looking after her. The boys are no problem since, you know, they can basically look after themselves.

It was a 2-hour wait at Olive Garden. I had to have Alaethia in my arms since it was hot and steamy with all the people that were clogging up the waiting area. We eventually made it in to the benches inside with the cool air, after we’d been waiting about 45 minutes. It was actually an hour wait, so it wasn’t that bad.

I ordered the Seafood Alfredo, which is one of my favorites. It was a really nice meal and a nice evening altogether. It would have been much more enjoyable had Mario been there, but I’m not going to force him to eat something he doesn’t want to eat.

Alaethia spent the whole time, since we left the house, sucking on her bottle and didn’t finish one ounce. It was like she was just sucking on it for comfort. I really do think she’s teething. When she became inconsolable in the car I gave her her pacifier, even though she doesn’t use it. Well, to everyone’s surprise she used it for a good 15 minutes until she fell asleep.

I half-jokingly told her, “You’re finally, at 3 months, using your chupy! You do know I’m going to take it away from you in three months, right?”

We got home later that I thought we would. We stopped by Subway to get Mario and John some meatball subs and then at Noelia’s friends’ house to drop off Noelia’s wedding invitation. By the time we got here I was exhausted and had a huge pile of dishes that had slowly accumulated throughout the week (please tell me I’m not the only one who puts off chores like that!). Since it was Mother’s Day I thought, “I’m not doing dishes today!”

The boys had Monday off from school. Inservice day. After Mario left to work and giving the boys breakfast, I cuddled up with Aly for a nap. Until around 10am when I heard Jaylen yelling at Eenan. At least I got about an hour’s worth of a nap.

I had lots of places to go that day, like Target. I knew though, that if I went without John I wouldn’t hear the end of it, so I waited for him. Then I remembered that the stupid cable guy was supposed to come by and fix my nonworking channels and I had to wait for him from 1-5pm. Greaaaat. I spent the whole afternoon washing all the darn dishes (I made a vow not to let that happen again!) and did laundry, too.

4:30 rolled around and John had already gotten home from work. Mom told us to go ahead and go, she’d watch the boys. I didn’t want to get home super late, and I knew I was, so we went. We got Alaethia in the car and left.

Post office first, forgot Mario’s PSP so we went back home, then went to the Mall to return my blouses, couldn’t find a white long-sleeved shirt for Jaylen’s field trip, John went to a few stores, then we went to Target. Our last stop was H-E-B to get groceries since we were low on everything. We got home at 8:30pm. I’d bought a ready-made lasagna since I wasn’t going to have time to get dinner ready but Mario didn’t get home till 11:30pm anyway. Hate when he does that. He could at least call and let me know he’s going to be late!

Which brings us to now, 12:12pm and still no signs of the damn cable guy. They called Jorge, to let him know they were coming to Elda’s to fix her problem but they haven’t called us. What fuckers!

(3:03pm) I got Roadrunner back up. All it took was a call to reset the IP address. The cable, however, is still not fixed. We’re still waiting for the cable guy. So yes, I stayed awake and I’m dead sleepy right now for absolutely nothing. They supposedly didn’t have a work order for our address at all. GRR.

You know global warming’s taking it’s toll on the world when New Mexico is ‘yellow’ (65°) and Texas is Flaming Hot Cheetos ‘red’ (88°) on the temperature map on the news. There’s yet another red tornado watch box to the North West of us.

I started this blog yesterday, May 8th sometime in the evening. Obviously I never got a chance to finish it. Now that I’m freshly showered, drank some nice warm chamomille tea to soothe my throat (I’ve got an annoying sore throat), and have Mario occupied with dinner (a sandwich) I’ll try and post as much as possible. I’m going to do this in “chunks” of days since I probably won’t cover everything tonight.

I’ll start from Thursday. The night I last posted we were hurled by a thunderstorm. A bad one. I didn’t believe we were going to get much of a storm, since we hardly ever do when they’re announced on Channel 4. Well, that day I’d been watching the Weather Channel and they mentioned “strong, severe thunderstorms and 40% chance of rain”.

Nah, I thought to myself. Nature wouldn’t do that to me. Not the night before my Yard Sale. Not when all the stuff I’m selling is already outside in nice organized boxes!

Nature hates me. It rained so hard and it was over as fast as it started. Most of my crap was outside, drenched.

I woke up in a mood the next morning. I didn’t sleep much; if I recall correctly I think I slept a total of 3 hours and it wasn’t because of Alaethia. And not only was a lot of my stuff wet (though, thankfully, not as much as I thought would be) but Mario and I got lazy and didn’t work on the signs the night before, nor had I put the neon-colored price tags on any of the merchandise. The kids were in a fairly good mood, though I did have to get after them a few times. Once they were off to Elda’s to leave to school, I started getting everything that was inside the house outside, and woke Mario up to at least help me set up the tables.

Mom came over and watched Aly for me while I waited for Mario. He never woke up. When he finally did, he said he was already late (“Why didn’t you wake me up early?” Can you believe him!?) and couldn’t help, sorry. I could have gouged his eyes out. I ended up having to take down the huge, heavy wooden table down all by myself and had to move it with Mom’s help. I am so grateful Mom was there to help. I couldn’t have done it all on my own, especially with Alaethia. She slept a good long time that morning, but still, we had to keep an eye on her so I did most of the work myself after the tables were set up since Mom was watching her. Noelia woke up about half an hour later and helped me out a lot. Thank goodness she’s very organized–she helped me put things into piles and helped me keep focused. I was so stressed I couldn’t think straight.

I put up signs at all the “main” corners, which made a total of 3 signs. If I’d thought it out better, I would have put signs up at stores, the City Hall announcement board and the post office, but nooo, I didn’t think it through. I didn’t plan much, even though it felt all I was doing last week was for the darn Yard Sale.

People started arriving even before we got the tables fully ready. My good friend Karina from our middle school days came over with her mom and took a LOT of stuff off my hands. The people who usually come to our yard sales came by and were impressed by how much stuff we’d accumulated since the last time we had a yard sale, which was about 3 years ago. The weather was merciful too, thank goodness. It was breezy and overcast until around 3 o’clock. Then it got a bit warm but not to the point where we couldn’t stand it. Jaylen was such a good boy that whole day. He found (yes, found) a brand-new “Dig Out Dino” set Mary had given him about a year ago. It’s a block of clay where you dig out and gently brush away clay from dinosaur fossils. He was so proud that he found all the pieces and had Jorge help him put it together. When Eenan got home from school he went straight into the house to do homework and then played video games. All my babies were well-behaved :).

Even though we were selling everything super cheap and didn’t get to take everything we were selling out, we made pretty good money. Mom didn’t have much stuff to sell, but even she made some bucks. The only bad things about the day was 1) the two ladies (I remember one was pregnant) that came by with a little boy who stole a huge Ziploc full of Spiderman toys and one of dinosaurs. So RUDE. I mean, c’mon. The bags were a dollar each for a huge amount of GOOD toys! The vintage Spiderman toys that I was so opposed to selling in the first place were in there!

And 2) Two of the kittens died. One overnight and the other in the afternoon after I got home from picking up Jaylen. I felt guilty all day thinking I may have run him over, because he was fine before I left, but I don’t think I could have run him over. I would have run over the other one too, because they were always together and slept on top of eachother. Poor things :(. John and I think it’s something genetic having to do with Brushka.

Jorge and Big Mario were outside with us (Mom, Alaethia and I) during the yard sale, so that was cool. We had company. The part I hate about Yard Sales is having to clean up afterwards, after you’re already tired and just want to shower and lay down! Thankfully Jorge and John helped :).

I was so thrilled that Mario was going to be home the next day (Friday) but nope, he had to go in to work since he had a huge system he was working on. I was grumpy all over again. It was easier taking everything out this time since everything was already laid out on the tables. Noelia came out to help again and we made sure to bring ALL the stuff that we didn’t take out the day before. I didn’t sell as much as I would have liked, but we did do well again. What I don’t like about Yard Sales is the people who come to you and ask you to drop the prices even more. That happened several times. A dollar was too much for some of those people!

Noelia, Mom, Alaethia and I sat outside on the front porch (with the fan this time!) and just chit-chatted during breaks. Mario called around 1pm and said he was coming home. Yay! He and Jaylen went to pick up McDonald’s for everyone, which was awesome because I was starting to shake and wouldn’t have had enough down-time to make something to eat. After Noelia left to work the rest of us sat outside and then Elda and Jorge arrived. Jorge ran over a box of toys with his truck. I jokingly told him to pay up–$50 LOL. He said he’d trade his labor (helping me put stuff away) for the cash he owed for the toys :P.

When the day was over we put all the clothes and toys that were left away. Next came the task of separating stuff for thrift shops and giving the clothes to the needy. I felt so lazy though. I was so thrilled that once the Yard Sale was over I could just relax and stress only about normal, everyday things, but nope. Next came worrying about where everything was going to go and getting the rest of the house looking decent. I still had boxes laying all over the place and piles of laundry to fold and put away and dishes to wash that I hadn’t had a chance to do because of the yard sale.

The next day was Saturday, which was the next One Photo An Hour day. I’ll get that, and the days after that, typed up tomorrow. I’m so tired. I hope Aly feels like going to bed now. She’s all hyped from the movie Mario’s watching (he’s sitting on the couch with her while I type this up). She’s so cute. She’s recently started trying to sit up, laughs and squeals (and squaks LOL) all day long. I love how she flutters her big eyes when she’s “holding conversation” with you. She’s also been sleeping in her crib for a little over a week now, which is a Godsend since I’m sick with Jaylen’s leftover cold and don’t want to get her sick.

I feel accomplished. I did good today. I deserve some ice cream. Too bad I already had some :(.