Author: Yajaira

I’ve been dreading/excited about this event simultaneously. It’s one of my favorites, but the work it takes to get everyone on the same page and the fear that some won’t even arrive drives me to a headache, neck pain and is enough to make my chin break out.

Something I’m working on this year is not stressing about work (as much) and not working from home.

So I didn’t work on my lists or correspondence to my vendors or layouts or anything during the Christmas or New Year’s breaks. Usually, I’d stay up the night before set-up till almost midnight making sure the layout was perfect, just to change the whole thing the next morning when people cancelled or when my boss looked it over.

Today, I worked on my emails and layout at work, got it done as best as possible and printed everything else I’d need. Then my boss and I had a quick lunch at Johnny Rockets.

I was sad to find out they got rid of my favorite grilled cheese bacon sandwich, but this BLT sufficed :).

We went straight to the exhibit hall afterwards and the parking/unloading was exhausting on it’s own.  (A vendor had a friend drop off a “few things” to us yesterday but they ended up being a literal truckload!)

We had a line of people waiting to register when we got inside and it was about an hour of hustle and bustle. I still remember my first time during this event 4 years ago–the adrenaline and nerves are still exactly the same!

Things changed even more than I thought they would regarding the layout, but if all goes well and everyone pending shows up tomorrow, then we’re right at the number we were hoping for.
My boss and Alexis and I took turns going out to the floor to see what the vendors brought. Most of my favorite people are here, thank goodness. The lady who does those awesome miniatures from pasta de maiz has so many cute Catrinas!

When she told me to pick mine last year I kept telling her I’d “be right back” at her booth but I was always busy! By the time I did go back she sold out of all the ones I liked. (Didn’t stop me from picking a few others hehe.) She called me over tonight as soon as she set up and I chose these ^_^.

We closed up shop at 7pm and were out a little before 7:30pm. I called the boys to check how their 1st day back at school  went and Jaylen gave me a rundown of his day. We were on Facebook messenger last night working on one of his projects since he didn’t work on it during the break and they were back at Mario’s. He told me about how his PS4 seemed to have just died, too.

Speaking of dying, our poor old (Va)cuum fishy died yesterday. RIP, buddy :(.

The girls enjoyed their last day of freedom with Jenny and the girls, so they were thrilled :). They got to go to Bounce, watched “Annie” and played and ate pizza at Jenny’s. Gotta plan something for them when I’m not so darn busy :(.

I got home, got updates on everyone’s day, changed and then made dinner (Emily helped. And John washed the lettuce lol) while I spoke to Eenan.

I forgot he was supposed to continue his “grounding” for failing a class once school started again but he reminded me, ha.

Got the girls ready for bed since tomorrow is their first day back. I’m now relaxing with Jorge and trying my hardest to leave that layout and vendor list in my work bag, heh. Wish us all luck tomorrow!

I had already made a “New Year’s Resolution” to myself that I would post a little something every day (just like I made a pact with myself that come January 1st, it would be the 1st day of the rest of my life that I ate 100% healthy and just tonight Emily, Alaethia and I polished off the last of the New Year’s Eve queso dip *sigh*); but it’s already the 3rd day of January and I’m really not even sure if I’ll end up finishing this post, heh.

But anyway, since the last time I updated, the kids were all at the other parents’ houses. Jorge and I chilled out a lot and I cooked a lot. That’s usually when I try new things; when the kids are away. It’s a good distraction and we can try foods the kids wouldn’t regularly eat willingly, heh.

So Sunday I made this:

Right after we watched “10 Things I Hate About You”. Always one of my favorites. Heath Ledger *sob*.

Then Jorge humored me on yet another one of my ideas: a solar-light jar that I’d like to hang from a tree. So we took apart a $1 solar light from Dollar Tree, I puff-painted a Prego Jar and voila! It worked :).

The next 3 days at work would be a hectic blur of e-mails in Spanish, since the Mexican Artisan Expo is coming up next week. Literally, that’s all I did for 3 days.

Got home and made dinner on Monday night:

It was a hit with the guys :). I can’t remember what brand the packet was, but it was a Tuscan sauce you add sauteed chicken and rotini to. It was tasty.

I went to visit Minnie from Hidden Treasures after work Tuesday since she had a Puppy Brite she was clearancing out. I was hoping to make it on time to look around but her shop was closed. She surprised me with the FREE Puppy Brite and told me about her future plans for the shop.

She’ll be leaving January but will return February with Hidden Treasures. I’m happy she’s staying. I owe her for starting me on my obsession, heh.

I had ordered 100+ photos for $.10 each from Walgreens when the sale came around. I ALWAYS miss it, and haven’t printed any photos in about 2 years! So I took advantage. That night, after making dinner, I went through my scrapbooking stash and took a whole bunch of stuff out for a scrapfest :). Jorge sat at the table playing a game and John sat at the table using his phone, so we sat there and joked while I cut and pasted away.

The weather was dreary and cold on the 31st. I met my love for lunch anyway since I needed to remove my face from the computer. The e-mails were so monotonous and the office was as cold as a meat freezer (it always is *sob*) I just had to get away. So we went to Texadelphia, since he didn’t want to have Jason’s Deli -_- . I was trying to go for a “healthier” choice and picked a chicken sandwich on wheat bread but it was drenched in so much vinaigrette that it ruined my sandwich. The fries and queso were great, though!

I picked the kiddos up from their dad’s that evening, dropped them off with Mom and met Jorge at HEB to buy the New Year’s Eve stuff. It was raining by this time and the girls were sniffly so fireworks and s’mores outside were out of the question. Jorge’s boys ended up staying at their mother’s (where they did do fireworks and 2 ended up coming back sick, grr).

We decided to make queso dip, pigs in a blanket and watch some TV. The kids were ok with it. We also got some Welch’s sparkling grape juice for the kids to toast with us at midnight ^_^. I didn’t want wine, but Jorge convinced me, and the d’asti I love was on sale so I got it.

As soon as we walk in the door Mom comes in to help unload groceries…and immediately drops the wine bottle. I couldn’t believe it.

Sally and her George were supposed to come over but George worked late and then plans changed so they ended up doing their thing. I know I’m getting old because I was perfectly ok with chilling with Jorge and the kids watching Cristela and snacking on stuff :).

It sucked that Jorge’s boys weren’t here, but I was happy to bring in the new year with the rest of the family. When midnight came around, we toasted with the kids, gave hugs and kisses all around and went to bed a while later, hehe.

We spent Thursday feeding the kids and spending time with them. Jorge even found the last episode of Season 1 of “Selfie” on an app on his iPad and we watched that. Then it was gingerbread time. The kids’ dad gave them 3 boxes of gingerbread projects to do and this was the 1st:

We gathered all the kids to watch “The Book of Life”.

It was as adorable and colorful as I thought it was going to be :).

My poor Jorge had to work Friday :(. I spent the day lazying with the kids ALL DAY LONG. Well, after going to Walmart to get some cereal and other groceries.

I put the ingredients for beef stew in the slow cooker and then the kids and I watched all of Season 1 of “Friends”. And then my last Christmas gift from Jorge came in: my Keurig!

You would think someone who loves coffee as much as I do would have asked for one as soon as they came out, but I’m such a cheapskate I couldn’t justify spending money on one. We have one at work that Ivan provided for us in the copy room and it really is convenient. My love just so happened to get this one for a steal so I’m THRILLED!

Jorge calls around 5:30pm that their company party is that evening…and that spouse are welcome to join. I was suddenly extremely grateful I had the foresight to make dinner in the slow cooker. I had about an hour to do my hair (which was in all it’s curly, lion-mane glory) and find something to wear. After several runs bath and forth between my closet and the laundry room, I found an outfit. Mom served dinner to the kids and then Jorge and I were on our way to the Blue Onion.

We had such a good time; they even had a trivia game for the employees. And the food, OMG, the food! I could gorge on the pita and hummus all day!

We slept in a bit today and then I dropped off Jorge’s wallet to him at work and I ran errands. My day consisted of ordering more pictures ($.09 at Walgreens till 11:59pm!), watched the first episode of Dr. Who with the kids and cooking and got a head start on the laundry. Jorge walks in and says, “What are you doing?? That’s my job!” and made me stop, heh. We’re watching a UFC Fight while the kids either lazy around on the sofa next to us or are playing Xbox.

Well, what do you know, I wrote a whole post and I may actually publish it. This should have probably been my “resolutions” post, but it really is the same bullet points as they usually are: eat healthy, exercise, lose weight, not stress, be a better fiance/mom/daughter/sister, be nicer to everyone around me, etc. I hope to accomplish those and if I could shave off some debt and save money it would be the cherry on top ^_^.

I can’t decide whether December’s been a month that has gone by fast…or slow. It’s kind of a combination of both, I guess.

Since the last time I posted (which was almost a month ago), we celebrated Tony’s birthday. It was an Ugly Sweater themed party but Jorge wasn’t too keen on the idea and I figured, When else am I going to use an Ugly Sweater? So we opted out.

And then our boss let us know that our annual Staff Party was…Ugly Sweater themed. Lord Jesus LOL.

I took the girls to the Inaugural Lighting of the Christmas Tree at the Convention Center.

They were fantastically patient, since it started at 6pm but after speeches from the Convention Center director and the Mayor (whom the girls personally met and felt super excited about) they didn’t actually light up the tree till around 6:45pm. Their restraint scored them a trip to nearby RGV Cupcakes :).

December 3rd was the final day for our Latina Hope, er, “semester”. The morning went by without a hitch, the ladies did their presentations and then it was over and time for some Wing Stop! Michelle and I made our way over there and EZ and Anabel met us. Yum.

Another Inaugural event was happening that weekend, the Holiday Parade. We’d made plans to go, even though we had no idea what to expect since the weather was iffy, Jorgie was still sort of hobbling around with his crutches even though he’d gotten his cast removed, and Mom was going with us. I was skeptical about her and those stadium seats, but she wanted to see Mario Lopez on the float, heh.

It was an all-day event in itself preparing for the parade. I fed the kids, got ready and headed to HEB to buy snacks. Got home, packed a bag with snacks, got everyone ready and then we braved the traffic to drop Jorge’s parade ticket off…since he forgot it that morning and he’d be meeting us at the event.

The traffic was insane since the streets were closed but we dropped off Jorge’s ticket without a hitch. Well, until, of course, I’d turn on the wrong street due to a “right turn only” sign, grr. But we still made it through the hoards of walking people and the buses transporting people to the stadium. Very slowly, but we made it. All the kids looked out the windows in awe and Eenan said, “Is this what it’s going to be like during the Zombie Apocalypse??” Yes. Probably.

Even with our tickets and parking, we still had to walk all the way around the parking lot and out to the main street to get to the stadium. Poor Jorgie was sweating by then and Mom was exhausted (due to her usually sedentary lifestyle) by the time we reached the stadium. We took potty breaks as soon as we made it in and the kids were amazingly well-behaved and ate snacks while we watched the Posada and Nutcracker performances. Jorge made it after finding parking pretty far away and said it started sprinkling on his way to the stadium. But it dwindled down and we enjoyed the show :).

It was a great show :). We had to wait till the very end to leave, since people rushed by and didn’t bother letting poor Jorgie down with his crutches. I wanted to visit my workplace’s booth and see TR3N perform, but the rain was coming down. By the time we got to our car and drove Jorge to where his car was parked it was pouring. There was no way we’d make it to the park.

So we got home and ate and chilled out :).

The kids decorated the tree the next day (December 7th):

And I made a Taco Casserole. I’m going to have to post that recipe, it was amazing! Certainly not diet-friendly by any means, but pretty amazing!

We had leftover tortillas the next day, so I made the girls some quesadillas.

The evening didn’t go without incident; my little Emily–always my little helper in the kitchen–cut her finger pretty deeply lifting the lid on a can of beans. John flew in to the rescue because I really was panicking. She always wants to do so much more, but we had a lecture about how she’s 5 and can only do so much around the kitchen. *sigh*

Alaethia’s Country Christmas performance was on Tuesday the 10th. Mom, the boys, Mario and Mary joined Emily and I. Her class did such a good job, even after they had technical difficulties with the song starting up ^_^!

It was also Family Reading Night afterwards so the girls got to test, scored some free books and even got some face painting done.

It’s all about food at our house. Alaethia requested “Boats” on Wednesday.

And she also requested that we work on a snowman for the Snowman Contest the library was holding. She saw the entries during Family Reading Night so I picked up some supplies at Michael’s after work and got to it. They were due THAT FRIDAY. Aye.

I was slowly receiving my orders, which were my Christmas gifts from Jorge and Mom.

I already had this Rainbow Brite since sometime around the early 2000’s, but I won an auction for her hair piece.

Now I have a few duplicates, which I’d like to post for sale, but first I need to get into my boxes and see which duplicates are nicer to keep, heh.

On Friday, the 12th, I went to lunch at Feldman’s, on my own since Jorge was working in Brownsville and I needed to get a gift for the White Elephant gift exchange at the staff party that evening. If you’re in my area, I highly recommend the Friday Special there, which is this insanely delicious lasagna:

I ended up running into EZ and Michelle, who were also looking for a gift during their lunch hour hehe.

Jorge got home that evening and we got ready to go. He was not happy at all about wearing an Ugly Sweater, or a Santa Hat, but he was such a good sport ^_^.

He’s totes adorbs!

We had such a good time with all my coworkers and the White Elephant game is always a blast. We ended up with a Starbucks giftcard I stole from Gerry hehe.

We had a Karaoke after party, where Michelle and I sang “All About that Bass”, I sang “Cowboy Take Me Away” and then Gerry, Michelle and I sang “Pour Some Sugar on Me”. It was a blast!

Dina, Javi, Briana and the kids were visiting and were already waiting for a bit when we got home. We stayed up chatting on the porch for a bit until I started nodding off and we came inside to sleep. Everyone was pretty exhausted.

Alaethia had her UIL competition so I chilled out with Jenny, Mary and Emmos in the cafeteria while she competed. The girls left with Mary (Mario’s weekend, unfortunately) and I went back home and started cleaning. Once Dina, Briana and Javi got back from visiting their peeps, we chilled out here. Jorgie and I made the Taco Casserole for everyone and it was a hit again :).

We hung around all day Sunday until we went to Noni’s for some delicious menudo. We watched the kids play outside for a bit and then we headed home. Jorge would be away for the next 2 1/2 days so we had to get home and get him ready.

I got a chance to have lunch with Sally while Jorge was gone ^_^. We hadn’t seen each other in forever and it was nice to catch up.

The girls had some great news that day, too: they were one of the winners in the Snowman Contest! They got a $20 gift card from Target, so naturally they asked to go to Target to buy Shopkins that evening, heh.

It was a long 3 days without Jorge. He was working away at a ranch so he had horrible reception and I couldn’t randomly text him like I usually do. I had a pretty hard time sleeping, which is saying something since I sleep like a rock when he’s home, heh. The girls and I were glad when Wednesday came around and he got home :).

Fast-forwarding: I had only done a very small amount of Christmas shopping, so we literally shopped at the last minute. So I went to donate blood like I’d promised Sally on Saturday the 20th.

Then braved the masses at the mall. Yes. The mall. I wanted to get Jorge some colognes so there I went. Luckily, I found perfect parking after a few cruises around the parking lot. And I was already there, so I finished the rest of my shopping for the adults. I went to Target for a few other sales and then we were 75% done. The rest of the shopping was done by both Jorge and I at Best Buy for the big boys and he even made a run on his own to Toys R Us for a pickup truck Julien asked for that we COULD NOT track down at Target. He got the last one!

I took Emily to an optometrist appointment on Monday the 22nd. She’d failed her eye test at school and after the extremely long wait at the appointment, they let us know she’s got pretty high astigmatism and needs to see a specialist. Poor baby. She was pretty upset about needing glasses =\.

Work went buy at a snail’s pace it seems on Tuesday and Wednesday. A lot of people were on vacation, so it was just a handful of us to say the least.

While the kiddos were asleep we stuffed stockings:

Then Jorge filled an extra stocking we had with random junk and gave it to John. John quickly got to work on his “Maguiver Kit”!!

We worked on Christmas Eve to get Friday off, but we got donuts and then got to go to Lonestar BBQ!

My kiddos left that evening to spend the night at their Dad’s for Christmas Eve, and Jorge announced that we were going to pretend we weren’t 100 for once, so we had dinner and drinks at Cheddar’s.

Then we met Tony and Billy at Skean-Dhu.

We hadn’t seen Billy in a while so we caught up and had some laughs. I was proud of myself for staying up past midnight for once, heh.

We got home and wrapped the last of the presents. Jorge kept asking, randomly, where John was and he even posted on his wall on Facebook. We saw the lights of John’s car beam in the window so we got the brilliant idea to grab chairs from the dining room, put them directly in front of the door and sit like two angry parents waiting for their kid to come home, arms crossed and all. He unlocks the door and we keep ourselves composed. As soon as he swings open the door he grabs his chest in fear, seeing our legs and thinking that we were duct-taped, bound and were being held at gunpoint or something. Then I said, “Where have you been, young man? We’ve been worried!” He exhaled audibly, glad we weren’t dead LOL. Not exactly the outcome we were hoping for but it was hilarious. We laughed about it after his shock wore off, hehehe.

The next morning, we had breakfast. It’s always somber and strange when they’re not here for Christmas morning. But we picked up the kids to start our Christmas celebration :).

We had happy kiddos, thank goodness. We ate Delia’s tamales like we traditionally do. We visited Gramma and then I helped the girls bake on their LalaLoopsy oven.

We had fun :). Emily announced that, next year, she wanted to buy gifts for a less fortunate family and buy them food. She made my heart swell and a lump form in my throat :*). So proud of my babies!

Our kiddos left back to the other parent’s house since it’s their weekend, so I did a lot of cleaning and my grocery shopping yesterday. Aunt Nora and Linda visited yesterday and we caught up a bit. Then I cleaned the house just in time to relax with my love in the evening :). It’s been a great weekend. Gotta get through the next 3 days of work and then it’s 4 days of relaxation! Well, somewhat, heh.