Category: OPAH

I’d been wanting to do one of those One Photo an Hour/A Day in the Life posts, but I never remember or my phone dies or something else like that. I decided to try on this day, but only after already having made breakfast and showering, of course LOL.

So I drank my coffee and straightened my hair, all while Ruffles was knocking on the door, trying to get out.

Around 11:00am:

Around 11:30am:

The birthday boys were on a mission to spend their birthday money. We stopped to pay John’s car at the bank and then went to Target:

But they didn’t find anything. Instead, I found some garden things and little garden stones for the girls to paint in the Dollar Spot :).

We went to Barnes & Noble next. We were at the light at Ware Road and a car stalled in front of us. It was the most heartwarming thing seeing people from across all 3 lanes of traffic stopping to help these people move their vehicle. You don’t see that very much anymore.

We got to Barnes and walked the isles and flipped through a few books but they didn’t find anything. It was 1:00pm so picked up some pizzas and we ate at home with the rest of the family:

The kiddos were all nice and full and all except Jaylen and Justin sat with Mom to watch their Disney shows. We went to Walmart next, where we walked for what seemed like forever until they decided on Nerf guns. I was pretty proud of them choosing something other than games; especially since they had more than enough to buy a video game each .

We got home and they all started putting the guns together. I went outside with the girls to paint their little butterfly “stepping stones” around 4:00pm:

I snapped this just as Emily dabbed her face with the paint LOL. She’s so cute ♥!

I watered my little flowers as they finished painting. These are some of the survivors of 1st hail storm. I’m so happy they made it!

We went back inside and washed up. It was almost 5:00pm. I kept telling myself NOW I shall sit! But I passed by the girls’ room and saw this:

So we started cleaning. I use the term “we” lightly, heh. I didn’t get an “after” shot because…I forget why. But imagine the room with no toys on the floor and nicely organized in boxes in the closet, vacuumed, and beds made :).

It was almost 6pm and I told myself, OK, seriously now. SIT. And I did. And I totally had intentions of just kicking my feet up on the ottoman and blogging but the boys came running inside for some drinks since they’d been hunting each other with the Nerf guns. They left trails of dried mud, so I cleaned them up. Then the girls wanted snacks, so I made PB&J sandwiches. And then Jorge got home. We tried cuddling and just shutting our eyes for a few seconds, but someone was arguing with someone else so we got up to stop the commotion. We literally laid down about a minute :P.

I made dinner and then we had cake for the boys, finally! I think I was more excited than they were! I LOVE that cake!

I can never get a pic when everyone is smiling LOL! We watched their shows on the TV the rest of the evening until it was time for bed. I’m pretty sure I ended up passing out whilst watching TV.

As you can see, I kind of forgot about the hourly photo thing. But this is my Saturdays in a nutshell when it’s my weekend with the kiddos. Some of the busiest, loveliest weekends ever :).

Posting my One Photo An Hour a bit late, as usual. I decided to start extra early that morning, at 1am, since I was up anyway:

1:00am – Feeding Alaethia and reading a book (currently Sushi for Beginners by Marian Keyes). This is the usual time Alaethia falls asleep.

7:00am – Time to start the day. Aly has a bottle and once she’s asleep and in bed I get ready to iron and make Mario’s breakfast and get the boys some cereal.

8:00am – Browsing Target.com to look for a new TV table. We need more space in our tiny living room and wanted to get rid of our 6-year-old, huge entertainment center.

9:00am – My breakfast: French Vanilla Shredded Wheat and some coffee.

10:00am – Looking for something to wear so we can leave already.

11:00am – At the bank to deposit all the coins from the yard sale.

12:00pm – Arriving at the Goodwill where John pointed out that the sign said “InsuranceClams” instead of Claims!

Didn’t have a very successful thrifting day this time. Got a Making Memories album with accessories (brads, flowers, metal embellishments, etc.) for $6.50, some Rat treats for Mario’s rats ($.99), a brand-new box of 64 Crayola crayons for the boys ($.99), a cute crackled glass vase ($.50), and some thank you cards ($.27). Mom got the boys a HUGE case of sidewalk chalk for $2.00!

1:00pm – Our next stop was the mall. I’m leaving a note to my dear neighbor in the parking lot, who parked ridiculously close to my parking space. I took a picture of their license plate just in case they hit my door. I’ve learned my lesson–I got a huge dent in my door the last time some bozo parked super close to me at the mall. The first and only casualty my Equinox has suffered! And it wasn’t even my fault–that’s what gets to me.

2:00pm – When we were leaving JC Penny (where I bought some cute capris for $10.81 with an awesome coupon I had!) we stalked Spiderman per the children’s request. He was nice enough to pose with them to Jaylen’s delight.

3:00pm – Having some Taco Bell since we were starving by now. Since Mario works nearby, I was picking a snack up for him, too.

4:00pm – Saying goodbye to the Equinox as we’re leaving in Mario’s Neon. My battery died for some weird reason, after only having the truck for a year. Thank GOD we were close by to Mario’s work. He came over to check the car but the jumper didn’t work. I walked over to his work and picked up his car. He’d go over with his co-workers later to check out the car. We were going to drop some stuff off to Gramma but totally forgot everything in the truck :(.

5:00pm – Leaving Target with our new TV table :). This is John struggling with the incredibly heavy box.

6:00pm – We finally get home and Jorge and Mary are at the carport trying to get the PPV channel to work since we’d all pitched in for the fight. Jorge brought over his 32″ TV but since the box wouldn’t cooperate on that TV we had to bring out our little 27″ LOL.

7:00pm – I could have sworn I took a 7 o’clock picture, but I couldn’t find it on my camera.

8:00pm – I walked into the boys’ room to check up on them and the room was a disaster. To their disappointment I made them start cleaning up ASAP.

9:00pm – Watching the pre-big-fights and eating and holding Alaethia.

10:00pm – Alaethia fell asleep after having a bottle. She slept from 10pm to 7am the next morning! First, and so far only, time she’s done that!

11:00pm – Watching the fight. VERY disappointed with the outcome!

I’m finally getting around to posting this — incredibly late, but posting.

I slept in Saturday morning since Mario was home so I started at 10am again, just like the last time.

10:00am – I’d just finished feeding Alaethia and it was time for a diaper change.

11:00am – Mario and I had Menudo at Mary’s house then got ready super quick to go to a Liquidation Sale at Greg’s Ballroom. It was incredibly disappointing. I wasn’t too happy with the $6 entrance fee for each person, either!

12:00pm – On the way back home from Greg’s Ballroom. Mario ended up buying a Lock-Out set and that’s it. The morning was chilly and gloomy and it was quickly becoming colder and rainy.

(no picture)

1:00pm – I completely forgot to take a picture for 1pm since I was holding Alaethia and was watching Mary, Sonia and Noelia put the kids’ Easter baskets together. All I ended up helping with this year was curling the ribbons LOL.

2:00pm – Mom and I had plans to go thrift shopping that morning, but since we were waiting for Jorge and Vito to get here we didn’t go anywhere. We found out there were still a few hours before they got here so we went. The weather was awful by this time. The boys stayed with Mario and Alaethia went with us.

3:00pm – My scrapbooking booty! I was so disappointed the first half our we were thrifting since I couldn’t find anything. All I had was an olive-colored pillow that matched the ones I bought a while back at Target and some cute, stripey placemats (also from Target). Just as I was giving up and was getting ready to pay they bring out a huge shopping cart full of Marcella K scrapbooking stuff, still brand-new in package! I got a whole bunch of stuff and paid only $5 for everything since they were 50% off! I could have easily spent $60 at Target for that stuff. In all, I spent $13!

4:00pm – We carefully made our way to Gramma’s nursing home since it was raining hard. She was doing much, much better than she had been when I visited her on Wednesday. She was cheerful and kept laughing at our jokes.

5:00pm – Back at home and spending time with the family. Everyone was passing around some photo albums and my new batch of Winkflash pictures I’d brought over. Love when family gets together like this.

6:00pm – We got hungry for snacks and pigged out on the ice cream Mario and I brought over: Dreyer’s Butterfinger and Chocolate Chip Cookie Dough.

7:00pm – Time to feed Alaethia. She’d been up for a good while, mingling with everyone, so she was starving by this time.

8:00pm – Finishing up making invitations for a small party we’re having for Jaylen’s 5th birthday. Lots of stuff piled up on us this month, and for the next few months, so we’re having a small, modest party at a pizza place.

9:00pm – Jorge, Mario, Mary, Noelia and I made a quick spur-of-the-moment run to Wal-Mart (Mom stayed with my kiddos). We hadn’t had dinner so I munched on Combos while Mario and Jorge munched on teriyaki beef jerky.

10:00pm – I got into the shower after cleaning up when we got home from Wal-Mart.

11:00pm – Watching George Lopez’s new comedy on HBO while we were in bed (and while Alaethia was having a bottle). This was also around the time Mario went to Whataburger and picked up a sinful dinner for burgers for us. We planned to just not eat dinner, but we were starving and too lazy to make something at home. And then I wonder how I gained 2 pounds!

We stayed up for another 2 hours since Alaethia refused to go to sleep, and to let the food “go down” of course!