Author: Yajaira

So I just realized I totally published a draft of this post instead of saving it as a draft. Out of practice much??

Anyway, Summer 2015 unfortunately came and went in the blink of an eye.

We didn’t travel much because we’re saving money. Add to that: school shopping for the girls. Then our dryer crapped out (it lived a long life), and then Jorge’s car battery died. But such is life. I’m just truly glad we were able to bounce back from all that instantly!

We did have a trip to the zoo. Julien said he’d never been there so it was a must. The zoo isn’t as…lively as I remember it, but the kids still had fun. And there was a Dinosaur exhibit so Julien loved that :).

We had the Food Truck Park Block Party in June. The kids weren’t home that weekend so it was a welcome distraction. I was getting over the only cold I managed to get this year so I slept a good 3 hours before going in to work that Saturday.

I told myself I would take pics with my co-workers, but we didn’t get a chance AT ALL. It was madness, but a huge success. We were so busy I didn’t even get to snap a photo of the event, so I stole some from the internets.

It was so packed and crazy!!

My goal was to do something fun with the kids at least once a week, and trips to Ben and Jerry’s are always a treat (literally!) and one of my favorite things to do with the kiddos. They love it :).

And although we never got to visit the water park in Pharr, we visited the Splash Park nearby.

The girls did a lot of cooking. I mean tons. Emily could probably make French Toast all on her own, sans the actual cooking on her own part. She’s pretty good at flipping them, though!

Even Jaylen, Justin and Jorgie would get in on the action. Eenan helps stir once in a while, heh.

Fourth of July was a huge hit :). Jorge and I had gone over one weekend while the kiddos were with the other parents to help Javi with the yard so, you know, the place wouldn’t catch fire from the fireworks. We saw some pretty amazing things while we were out there, 2 of them being:

Dina, Briana and the kids were here for the 4th and Javi was hosting us at his house. We visited Gramma (4th of July is her birthday!) and hung out with her a while before going to Javi’s.

The whole family was there and it was the best!

It was a great time :).

We had a family trip to the beach on July 18th. It was something we’d planned in advance, but we like to procrastinate so the actual PLANNING part didn’t happen till that morning, so of course, everyone was running late.

We stopped for breakfast:

And we had 2 stops at Walmart because we couldn’t find flip-flops in the boys’ sizes. Once we arrived at the beach, got settled, popped up the tent and got allllll the kids slathered in sunblock, everyone had a great time.

After several hours at the beach, we all decided to get going. I love the beach, I just loathe the getting cleaned up part. There are always so many people at the bathrooms. We decided last-minute we’d rent a room and stay overnight. The kids, of course, weren’t happy because they left all their electronics at home, but they got over it and were happy to rest before dinner at Senor Donkey. The kids had their own suite attached to our master bedroom, so it was awesome and we were all comfortable.

We had to stop by the one market on the island to get some contacts solution for me and then we chilled out before we went to bed. I usually can’t sleep at hotels, but I slept like a rock!

We had a great time! Hopefully we can really plan ahead next year and make a week out of it!

We seem to have crammed our “going-out” nights into the last week of Summer. We’re comfortable with just being home most of the time, but we figured it was our last hurrah before a busy school year began again.

After a great weekend of French-toast-making, Lilo-and-Stitch-watching, banana-bread-baking weekend, the kiddos were off with their other parents for the final week of summer :(.

My boss, Gerry, EZ and I had done a photo-shoot the week before for Santa Fe Steakhouse. The owner invited us to try out their new drinks and appetizer menu that Monday so I picked up my love after work and we met everyone at the restaurant. Everything was amazing!

We got done there and went straight to McAllen Food Park to get some skewers from La Caravane. I didn’t even get a photo ’cause we were THAT hungry.

We got home and made a joke about going out. And then we decided, you know what, why not go out?? So we convinced John to quit being a hermit (he’d been going through some stuff) and the 3 of us went to Suerte Bar and Grill downtown. We’d never been there, but I follow them on Instagram and LOVE the photos of their drinks and the decor is just right up my alley!

The work week went by, which also consisted of appointments for Mom. Jorge got a call from Briana, who was terribly sick with Strep and fever and couldn’t see a doctor. He got one of his co-workers to bring some antibiotics from Reynosa and we made a quick road trip to Austin that Saturday to drop them off.

We’d kept it quiet and surprised Dina when we got there :). Jorge had let Joe know we would be in town so we met up with him on 6th Street and he gave us a tour. He took us to the “tamer” part of 6th St.

I’m an old lady, so we didn’t stay out long, and plus, Jorge was tired from the long drive. I was happy to crash out when we got back to Dina’s.

The next morning we lazied around and then got ready for lunch at Chuy’s. Briana already sounded 100x better, thank goodness.

It was hatch chile week and I made the mistake of ordering hatch chile enchiladas! They looked delicious, but were so hot my mouth was on FIRE.

We made a trip to the mall that contained a Hallmark store, which was a little far, but my love is the best and always goes above and beyond for me <3. We ended up finding the Rainbow Brite Itty Bittys!

And then it was time to drop everyone off and rush home to pick up the girls since the next day was the first day of school! So we cranked up the music and karaoke’d our way home to these beauties:

I officially missed updating for July *sigh*. But we’ve had a busy month and when I’m not with the kiddos, I’m with the husband and there’s always something going on. Add to that, that my laptop officially croaked and my iPad keyboard died, too 😭.

Eenan’s birthday was July 30th and we officially have a 16-yr-old, ahhh!

I have a huge event (nauseatingly, teeth-clenchingly-potential-disaster huge) tomorrow and more activities on Friday, so I need to mentally prepare for that…and buy a dress…ugh. At least I have coupons!

So, hopefully this won’t be the last time I update this month. I hope to update about the end of June and July’s happenings this weekend. Perhaps after I have lunch with Sally, donate blood and visit Gramma this Saturday. Gotta get back to work (on lunch break!).