Category: Daily

I got up early and started making breakfast. I had a buffet of regular pancakes, banana pancakes, omelets and bacon available. Sally was coming over later, around 9:30am, so that gave me enough time to have everything ready. Mario ate breakfast and left to work. He was going to work a half-day only, so that was exciting :).

Sally got here and we ate and talked for a good while. She said we spent a lot of time eating but I would have felt horrible just getting straight to work and not even chatting. She’s such a doll, though. She gave me such great advice and even moved everything around in my closet to make more space. She even brought me two Rubbermaid storage boxes she’d bought at Target! She also foamed up the crack at the bottom of the closet floor, which I’d been asking Mario to do for the past year! I was so sad she had to leave so soon, but she also had things to do and it was her dad-in-law’s birthday.

Mario got home around 1pm. He wanted to take a nap, but asked if I wanted him to do anything around the house first. I said SURE! You don’t have to ask me twice! He began disassembling Alaethia’s crib to turn it into a daybed for her. He finished and John, who was in the living room, went to help him move it into Aly’s room. They couldn’t get it into the room at all! The hallway curves weirdly so they couldn’t make a complete turn to get the bed inside. So there’s poor Mario disassembling the crib again in the hallway, then dragging all the pieces into her room and reassembling them. He was not a happy camper after that so he wasn’t too thrilled when I asked him and John to help me (and by help me I mean they did it all since I can’t move anything heavy myself) rearrange the furniture in my bedroom. John went home and Mario went to sleep when they were done while I looked through old magazines. Mario and I had 11 magazine folders in total. Most are his. He needs to look through all of his and I still have a few folders to go through, plus a pile of junk to sort and put away.

I made up Alaethia’s daybed all pretty with her Amy Coe bedding and then I took a shower. Everyone started arriving a while later. Much to Mario’s protests he went with me to buy fireworks for the boys. While we were at the ATM we ran into Rolando and his family. Eenan was sad he missed him; I told him to go with me!

Mom spent the whole day making buñuelos and burritos for everyone. We all ate and then started taking chairs out to watch the fireworks. Just about everyone stayed under the Party Porch since it was drizzly and cold. The boys had a blast with their fireworks (under adult supervision of course—I was freaking out scolding everyone even like that LOL) and kept their hoodies and shoes on for once.

I felt so left out LOL. Everyone was having some sort of mixed drink. I’d never wanted a Margarita in my life so badly. How strange that my pregnancies with both girls have caused me to crave alcohol (not that I drink any while pregnant of course). Jose made me a virgin salty dog. It was alright.

Mario made the mistake of bringing out his shot glass that’s like 5-6 shots in one. A boy we didn’t know, Mario and Adan all took full shots of Vodka from it, instigated by Jose. I kept telling Mario not to do it, but he never listens. At least 5 people did walk away with incriminating photos and video LOL.

When midnight neared people started going crazy firing their guns into the air. I hate that about where we live. Yeah, it’s almost like the boonies, but it is a very-populated, residential area. Some of our own relatives brought out their shotguns and at first were shooting into the ground and then started shooting into the air. I herded all my kids inside and made them stay here while I helped Mary, Elda, Mom and Mona clean up. I gathered all the dishes, washed them and got in bed with Alaethia. I was a bit upset with Mario because he was out there with the gang, but I got over it. Not before lecturing him on gun safety and how dangerous it is to shoot into the air. Heck, I learned my lesson last March! The whole conversation was a bit pointless though seeing as how he was quite drunk. John had come over towards the end of the night and Mario was telling us all this story that he’d just told the night before to the exact same people that were at Adan’s. I even repeated word-for-word to John what Mario said about a second later. He didn’t believe me, which was funny.

As soon as Mario got into bed he was OUT. First time we’d ever gone to sleep “early” for New Years!

I woke up and went on a cleaning frenzy. It was really the first day since I started my Christmas vacation that I could actually concentrate on tidying up. I was so behind on everything that just maintaining cleanliness wasn’t going to be enough; I’d have to clean hardcore in order to start maintaining! That’s what working does to me; I get lazy. I don’t know how other women do it to be a full-time mom and wife, hold a job, work and still have a clean house.

I took a break and checked my Myspace for a while, then cleaned again. I was just folding towels and telling to John I should call Sally when my phone starts singing “Girls Just Wanna Have Fun”. She read my mind! She asked if I wanted to meet for lunch at Olive Garden and I said of course. Mom was thankfully already over and offered to stay with the kiddos.

It was so nice seeing her. We hadn’t seen each other since Quentin’s birthday on the 6th. We talked about friends, my pregnancy, her work, my work and our marriages—those conversations are always interesting, heh. She said it was so different actually saying Emily’s name now that we knew what she’d be called, because she’s so used to just Eenan, Jaylen and Alaethia.

We talked about our houses (she wants to re-do her kitchen and I want to get my bedroom more organized) and she asked if I needed help. I said yes, sure! She said she’d be over the next day, at 7am. I promised I’d have breakfast ready.

She insisted on treating me at Olive Garden. She spoils me. I wish we could have hung out much longer but she had to get back to work. We said our ‘see you laters’ and I stopped to put gas in the truck. Can you believe I filled up with $15 (gas was $1.39 at this time)!

I stopped by Target to buy the 500gig external that was in the ads, but of course they were out. I got my inspection on the way home, finally. I’d needed to get it since October—how I dodged that bullet with the cops over here, I have no idea, but I’m grateful. How sad that I never went to get it because it takes too long and sure enough, they took about an hour or more. I got home and started cleaning again. I went into the bedroom and for once didn’t feel overwhelmed. I figured out how to rearrange the furniture; even drew a diagram. I feel really accomplished but I still have a lot to go.

Mario called on his way home from work and asked if I wanted to go to Adan’s for a bar-b-q they were having for his birthday. I said sure. Mom stayed with Alaethia, the boys stayed with Mary. The guys are so funny. So many pics nad incriminating videos were taken LOL. Jorge, Jason, Adan, Mario, two of Adan’s friends, 3 of his cousins, me and later Mirella were over. We probably would have stayed much longer, but since I had to be up early we came home at midnight. Alaethia was sleepy by the time we got home (yup, Mom still hadn’t put her to bed, can you believe it?) so that kind of worked out for us.

Gosh, I like being home. I woke up at 5:30am to snuggle with Mario and realized that’s the time I’m usually getting up for work. Bleh.

I woke Mario up to go to work. I meant to get up and make him breakfast but I was so exhausted from cleaning and staying up late that I went back to sleep until 11am with Aly. The boys actually let me sleep; Eenan told me he’d prepare their cereal (without spilling a thing!). What a big boy he is *tear*.

Aly and I woke up and I fed myself and Alaethia breakfast and started washing the pile of dishes. Mom was just waiting for us to wake up so she could come over, and then just sat and watched me clean. She says she supposedly comes over early to help out with the kids, but the boys were practically strangling each other and all she did was sit there. Argh. Anyway.

I asked the boys what they wanted for lunch and they said fish sticks. They always want fish sticks, which is why I hardly buy them. They ate 15 fish sticks each! Alaethia actually ate 2, which is really magnificent for her since she’s so picky.

I got all the kids ready so we could go to the post office, our bank and then INB bank to add cash to Mario’s gift card from his mom. He wanted to buy a scope or something like that from Cabela’s, but I didn’t want to use my Cabela’s card and he only had $60 on the gift card. I was going to add more, but it turns out I couldn’t. I ended up using the card for diapers at Target and used the rest for groceries at H-E-B and told Mario to use our debit card for his purchase. I thankfully didn’t take as long as I thought I would at H-E-B. I got everything we needed, including extras like Lunchables, drinks, and chips. Stuff like that never ends up in the cart when the boys aren’t with me LOL.

I went to Dollar General to get a few things I can only find there (like my dryer sheets) but I didn’t find a paint pan or rollers. Oh well. Mary invited us for dinner when we got home. Aly was in pain and moody so I put some drops in her ear and gave her Tylenol and before long she fell asleep. She was still a little feverish on and off. We spent time at Mary’s letting the boys entertain us. Eenan was reading the ingredients on his bar-b-q Lay’s chips and said mes-kweet instead of mesquite LOL. That set off a memory of the boys. They’d been pissed at each other a few days before and instead of yelling and getting into trouble started writing each other notes on Post-Its. Eenan wrote “You’re ugly” and Jaylen replied, “Eenan your stoopid”. It was hilarious. But they got scolded for being mean to each other.

I think it was this day (how sad that I can’t remember) that Mario and I decided that the baby’s name would be…

Drumroll please…

EMILY!!

Yes, a very common name, which is unusual for us LOL. We just like it. Out of the 100,000+ names we read in that baby book, that’s really the only one that stuck out to me. It’s just cute and so girlie and Alaethia says it really well! It could also be because one of her favorite shows on Noggin’ is Little Bear and one of the characters is Emily LOL. We’re still not sure about the middle name, but I’ve got quite a list to whittle down.

I got started on laundry, bathed Alaethia, got Mario’s dinner ready and then Tommy and Yadira came over. Once they were gone I washed dishes and did more laundry. Can we say “nesting”? I’ve never had such huge rushes of energy for cleaning in my life. Needless to say, I was tired and my back was killing me. I rested on the sofa with my feet propped on a pillow and Alaethia came over and sat next to me. She had a little bag of hers with a compact in it and began putting makeup on herself, then me and then her sister, which means she was smoothing the pad around my belly LOL. She is so cute. I’m sure she’s going to be an amazing big sister. She gave her kisses and called her “Emma-lee”. When she got bored of Emily and me she asked her Daddy-O if she could put make-up on him “just one time”. Of course he let her ;).