Category: Family

I don’t know what gave me the desire to want to actually use and mess with my website (this website that I’ve been paying for and never use, heh), but I downloaded my FTP again and started fixing things here and there. I’m so sad that for some reason (Vista, maybe?) my radio.blog player won’t upload the new music I wanted to put in it. Oh well. I’ll figure it out later, I guess.

Tons has gone on since I last updated. TONS. Big, life-changing, monumental stuff. It’s amazing how much can go on in 3 months. That’s WHY I didn’t really want to update. Not much good happened. I won’t go into detail–because really, I’d like to forget a lot of those things. Lets just say two Saturdays spent with friends (& family) Downtown turned into a complete disaster. Miscommunication & misunderstandings almost caused 2 couples to split up, mine being one of them. It wasn’t really just those two nights in particular that began the domino-effect of problems–everything really began months before but neither of us ever noticed. Or tried not to, in my case.

I’m completely embarrassed that those who follow me on Facebook were witness to some of the drama. These past three months have shown me that sometimes some friends can be closer than family (SOME), family can turn their back on you at the drop of a hat and people you thought you knew–well, you realize you still have a lot to learn about them. I realized who my true friends were. I realized that my comfortable little life could have quickly been swept from under me, even though I never did anything to make that so.

It was just a strange and crazy 3 months. My birthday didn’t feel like my birthday. We went to IKEA, which was a trip we were super excited about & bought some pretty awesome stuff–but the happiness was short-lived when we ended up getting into an argument there. I was on the verge of divorce by Mother’s Day. (I was going to try and avoid mentioning that, but it’s part of my history so I guess I should.) By the end of May, Mario and I were reconciling. By the first week of June, Mario was leaving to training for 3 months. He was gone for only 2 weeks and I realized I missed him like crazy. I wished the past 3 months could have been rewound and we could have spent those months loving each other and spending time together with the kids. The kids didn’t really notice much; well, the younger 3. Eenan did and even tearfully asked me once while Mario and I were separated if our family was breaking apart. I told him no, that we were working on it, not to worry. And thankfully, we did.

In all my years on this planet, and all the years Mario and I were together I never, ever thought we would get to the point we were at. I never understood how people could be together for so long and then *boom*, they split up. I never thought it would happen to us in a million years. I’m just glad we could come out of that. We still have a lot to work on, but I’m glad we can help each other and do it together.

I don’t know if it was something in the water, the alignment of the stars/planets, but SOMETHING caused just about every couple I know to fight and split up; most splits were over petty things. That’s what was most frustrating: witnessing all these things and knowing it all could have been prevented somehow.

We got to take a little trip to Del Rio, TX while Mario was getting ready to leave. Took the kids for tours around the city and took in the beautiful scenery & old buildings. Took them to the Whitehead Memorial Museum, which they surprisingly enjoyed. We even got a chance to visit Lake Amistad–gorgeous, gorgeous lake!

And since Mario’s been back and while he’s looking for a new job we’ve been cooking together, watching movies almost every night and spending time with the kiddos, like in the old days. I’m so grateful for Jorge and Maggie, who adopted me while Mario was gone LOL. He was only gone 2 weeks but it felt like months. They came over Sunday night and it’s official: Maggie and Jorge are expecting!! We are all, of course, hoping it’s a girl!

Adan, Aide & their kiddos moved to Dallas and I miss her terribly, as Alaethia misses her Best Fwend Bellie :(. She became one of my best friends in recent months and I miss her so much!

Our newest home improvement project is the kitchen! We’ve gotten a spiffy black countertop installed and purchased a few new cabinets. Next is picking our wall paint and sanding all the existing cabinets down and painting them white. I CAN’T WAIT to see everything done!

I’m still, somewhat, doing my workouts. We were supposed to finish our round of P90X on the 28th of June, but we stopped the week of May 17th, then started again 3 weeks later, only to do 1 week of P90X and start on Insanity at the beginning of this week. Mario, John and I went jogging on Sunday and, as I suspected, got majorly painful shin splints. So I was already injured Day 1 of Insanity (which was the Fit Test, and only 20 minutes). Yesterday’s workout was Plyometrics & I further injured myself, not to mention the agonizing soreness in my calves. I couldn’t even walk this morning so I let the guys know I wasn’t going. I found out later we weren’t going to end up working out anyway ’cause our workout partner is out doing work in preparation for the hurricane. Yes, we are waiting for Hurricane Alex to make landfall sometime this evening. Not here, in Mexico, but we’re going to get lots of rain and wind. I just hope it doesn’t flood :(. My bedroom, which leaks from a window when it rains a lot has already started leaking. I just noticed the bottom of my side table is warped :(. I love the rain, but I hate the leaking!!

We’re going to watch a movie before the lights go out LOL. I really do hope everyone’s safe. And I really wish to start updating again! I think it would be better than updating Myspace & Facebook every half hour, heh.

Just updating really quick to wish my Emily a happy birthday in this last hour of the 24th :). We’ve had a good day. We visited Sally and Quentin and she made us an amazing breakfast that Emily really enjoyed. Alaethia, my little bird, picked at her food as always and was much more interested in playing with Quentin and his toys. We visited Mary and her coworkers and everyone cooed over how pretty the girls are :).

I picked up the boys, John came over to do laundry and I got ready for Taekwondo. It as Ernesto teaching today and he put on a chest protector and was my Target as he taught me sparring techniques. I was super tired by the end of class, to say the least. I got home and washed up and made Emily a brownie fudge cake. Mario picked up Dominoes and we had a nice little dinner at the in-laws’. John and Mom were there, too, of course and Elda and the boys came over. It was the cutest watching Emily make her squinty smile s she watched the candle burn while we sang her happy birthday. And she had a blast feeding herself cake and smushing it all over.

Jaylen’s sparring equipment came in so I picked it up. He’s excited. As I was walking out of the school Ernesto tells the two teens there, Salvador and Junior, how well I was doing my mula kick. It was nice to hear :).

And in closing I ant to say I just feel so blessed to have Emily in my life. All 4 of them. I still remember when I found out I was pregnant with her; it was such a shock and I was so scared. But she is the apple of all our eyes. Happy Birthday, my tiny buddy :). I love you!

01/01/10 – New Years – I stayed up a little late but woke up early (and woke the girls up early) to go over to Mary’s to help embarar (spread) tamales. She was shredding the pork off the bone with her fingers for the pork ones and she’d already seasoned the deer & beans for the other two batches.

Sonia, Mom, Elda and myself helped Mary spread the masa on the tamales. I suck at that LOL. Not to mention what a perfectionist I am; the whole thing had to be even and perfect! I didn’t even get a picture of the mountain of tamales. We were too busy eating them. But I only had 4 (I can usually eat up to 6 or 7!).

Mario was still in a mood from the night before. He stayed holed up in our bedroom pretty much all day. I chilled at Mary’s with Mom, the kids, Andy, Noelia, Sonia and Elda for a good while.

When Mario finally got out of bed we had the moms watch the kiddos and we went to Walmart for a few things. I wanted some cheapy boots, because I have nothing nice or warm to wear for winter (I’ve only got flats and sneakers) but of course, they didn’t have my size.

We get home and I decided to make Velveeta cheese dip (with Rotel & ground beef) for dinner. Hey! It’s got all the food groups (chips made the grains one LOL!).

Aide and I sat in the dining room and chit-chatted about everything and looked through a little Izone album I had since Eenan was a tiny baby. Emily looks exactly like he did back then, aww :).

When Adan, Aide and their kiddos left we got all comfy on the sofa and watched “The Half-Blood Prince” on Blu-ray (one of my gifts from Mary :D). Mario hadn’t seen it and he actually enjoyed it.

I started my 365 that night. I highly doubt I’ll keep up with it, but we’ll see LOL.

Mario and I stayed up till 4am that night, even later than New Years the night before! We’re such an old married couple. We were sitting in the living room, across from each other on the sofas looking for pictures of kitchens we liked on Flickr and Ikea.com LOL.

01/02/10 – Girl’s Night Out – I spent most of that day cleaning. John had come over and kept bugging me to make banana muffins, so I made some. We had Sebastian, one of our neighbors here most of the day; he’s Eenan’s age. He’s always here, poor kid. I don’t mind, though.

We went to pick up Subway for lunch, ate really quick and then Aaron came over to play video games with Jaylen for a bit. I continued with cleaning but oh my gosh. I have so much to go. The living room & kitchen were clean, but a corner of the dining room’s a storage unit for now. I still need to go through all those boxes of Alaethia’s old clothes and hang up what I’m going to use for Emily.

I texted Mario and asked if he wanted to go out. He said he’d already made plans with Jorge so to make plans of my own. I called Sally up and she invited me to a bar-b-q at her friend Monica’s house. I got ready in record time (heh) and drove over to her house. We switched to her vehicle and made it over to Monica’s. It was a CRAZY night. We played Flip Cup, which I’d never played before and we played with this really crappy champagne so I got tipsy really fast LOL, but it was fun!

We ate, had some laughs and talked about high school and old crushes and by the end of the night polished off almost a whole block of Philadelphia cheese and salsa with tiny wheat crackers.

We wanted to get some drinks somewhere so we went to Woodreaux’s. Neither of us had ever been there, so we figured we’d try it out. As soon as we walk in, a surly short dude with a black cowboy had and a huge mustache pulls my sweater from my shoulder. I scowl at him and shake my head when he waved us over to his table.

Sally and I sit at the bar and browse through the menu and talk about how weird that guy was. She says, “I thought you knew him. Thought he was one of Mario’s friends.” I tell her, “I have no idea who he is,” and we just laughed about it.

10 minutes later the dude comes back. Tries to literally pull us off the bar stools asking if we want to dance. We both say no and he insists. We again, politely decline and he leaves. Sally and I can’t help but laugh. We decide that if any other creepy guy approaches us again we’d pretend we were lesbian Life Partners LOL.

Well, that completely goes out the window as we’re finishing our drinks and the same dude comes up to us and begs us to dance with him again. We couldn’t stop laughing from how uncomfortable we were! He told us just about every lie and line in the book. Couldn’t stop talking about how beautiful we were. Even mentioned how he was a widower. Uh huh, sure. I started getting really mad once he kept insisting we see his truck. He kept raving how we’d love it. Um, no. I kept staring at the bartender, asking for help with my eyes LOL. He finally got the hint and directed the crazy dude to a couple who was already getting up to leave. Bartender tells Crazy Dude, “Look, this girl in the purple? She LOVES to dance!” So Crazy Dude goes over there and embraces both the guy and girl as they’re getting up. We took the opportunity to run out of there like bats out of hell LOL.

We got to Sally’s and retold the story to Pete, Alyssa and her boyfriend. Buahaha. It was insane but truly a night to remember!