Category: Music

Sun., Apr. 12th – Woo, Easter Sunday!

I actually woke up early for once and took a shower right away. Dad visited for a while–a very little while. He got nervous–I guess–when everyone started arriving and was gone after 5 whole minutes of seeing us. Kind of isn’t worth the gas all the way over here if you ask me. Granted, I don’t know how much time he was alone with Mom *cough*.

I sat outside with everyone and let my hair air-dry for a bit and then came in to flat-iron my hair. It was so hot outside it felt as though I hadn’t showered. I’m so not looking forward to summer *cries*. It was so hot that poor Emily had 2 bottles of water and she usually doesn’t like it.

Jose was the bar-b-q cook and Mary, as usual, made all the sides. The food was delicious. Immediately following, we took the little ones inside while some of the adults hid the eggs for the egg hunt. Then they stampeded like a heard of buffalo and looked for eggs. Mary got golden ones and if you found one, you won $5. That was a new addition to the egg hunt this year. Alaethia found one and Jaylen became really upset because he didn’t win a prize during the egg hunt when he has every other year. Eenan was indifferent; he was just having fun. Jaylen felt better when they played the ring toss game and he won some water grenades LOL.

We proceeded to the carport next for the games. The adults played first LOL. We had a Pass the Orange game, where you can only use your neck and chin to pass the orange to the next person. Whoever had the orange when Mary yelled, “Stop!” (she wasn’t watching) was out of the game. It looked hilarious…and quite inappropriate LOL. Andy was the only male who played, and I think he won!

We played the Egg & Spoon race and then the Egg Toss where Mario and Jorge became over confident and were one of the first groups to drop their egg LOL.

Next the kids hit the 4-year-old Spongebob piñata next LOL. Elda had bought that thing 4 years ago for one of Brandon’s birthday parties and they didn’t get to use it. So we finally did.

After that the kids got to open their Easter baskets. Alaethia had a blast opening her stuff with her Nina Noelia and Nino Andy. Andy and Noelia are Emily’s Godparents, too, and I got a few pictures of her with her stuff and in the dress Mary got her. She was naked the rest of the time except for a diaper because it was so hot. The boys got DVDs and lots of cool fun stuff in their baskets so they were thrilled. So was I–I haven’t watched Bolt yet LOL.

The kids (and some adults) cracked eggs and then played with the shit-ton of water guns Jaylen received in his basket from Cat and Annie. Alaethia, Matthew and Belle spent most of their time at the refill bucket playing with the water. Everyone had a blast.

When almost everyone had left we went inside to have dessert at Mary’s. She made her famous Banana Cream Pie. Yum.

Aide, Mom, Sonia and I chilled out inside and then went outside with the few men that were left. And they were drunk LOL. They were sharing stories and being weird. Grandpa was even hitting on Mom. Then he asked to adopt Emily. Mario had to escort him to the car because he didn’t want to leave when Sonia was ready to!

When all the women left and the boys were playing at Mary’s and the girls were asleep I read some of my book, Eclipse. Yes, I’m still on it. When Mario finally came in we watched Bedtime Stories with the kids. We had pickles and popcorn; Alaethia loves movie nights. And the movie was so cute! I love Adam Sandler :).

Mon., Apr. 13th – He boys had another day off of school and Mario was off work. My dad-in-law and Mom stayed with the boys while I caught up on sleep. Emily’s doing much better; although she does wake up every 3 hours on the dot, I’m so glad that she’s stopped having those strange 2-hour spans of awakeness like she used to.

While I was asleep Mario had gone to get his old job back. Everything went smoothly, thank goodness. He tried calling his current boss to let him know but he didn’t get ahold of him.

It was Sally’s birthday so I called her but got her voicemail. I feel so distant now. I know life (work, marriage and kids) is a constant, but I wish we could hang out at least one a month or something. I feel the way I imagine she did when it was the opposite: when I was working at she was at home with Quentin.

John came over and asked if I wanted Kumori for an early b-day lunch. But of course! We waited for Mario to get here, loaded Emily in the car and went. Mom and the in-laws stayed with the other kiddos (nobody else likes sushi LOL). I had my regular Fiesta Roll and an Ebi-shitake thing, which sounded like they were stuffed mushrooms but they ended up being little fried mushroom patties. It was ok, but I probably won’t order it again. I should have just gotten the expensive Maui-wowie roll but I didn’t want John to spend too much. I’d feel guilty.

We went to Game Stop to get Jaylen’s present from us and his present from mom. He wanted Gears of War from us, which I wouldn’t have allowed him to get at all had I actually researched what it was! Bad parent!

From Mom we got him a Worms game for the PSP, the Sims Kingdom for DS and another game I can’t remember at the moment. He was going to be thrilled.

I received my Hugamonkey sling that afternoon! It worked like a charm! Emily curled right up and slipped into slumber.

We went to Jorge and Maggie’s for a little bit. 3 of 4 kiddos went with us; Eenan, of course, didn’t go. We stopped for food first at Star’s. Maggie and Jorge were cleaning up and boxing up stuff so we felt kind of like we were in the way and Jaylen had to get bathed and in bed for school the next day so we came home. We watched a movie with Jason and Adan and Alaethia couldn’t be more thrilled since she got to eat more popcorn LOL. We went through 4 bags of popcorn and like, 4 huge movie pickles. I came to the realization that one day I will have two huge teenage sons and they will eat me out of house and home.

Tues., Apr. 14th – My birthday!! 27 years old already. I actually don’t feel old, even though I’ve been married 10 years and have 4 kids. I feel really good and I seriously have a feeling this year will bring tons of great things!

I had a good day. Everyone wished me a good day. I didn’t think we were going to do much since we were broke and I was okay with that. Mary called in the afternoon and told me to get ready because she was taking us out to dinner to celebrate. She said I could pick any place, so I picked Cheddar’s because I’d really been craving one of those Maui Margaritas!

Mom, our kids, Mary, Mario, Andy and Noelia were all there to celebrate with me.

I ordered my Maui Margarita and the Beer Battered Shrimp plate. We had some laughs with our waiter, Dwight. He was hilarious and so good with the kids. I was a little upset that the boys were seated at a table that was near but still separate from us because there was no other table that would accommodate all of us. They enjoyed the extra space, though, and I imagine they felt pretty grown up sitting on their own.

Emily was fed and changed right before we arrived so she slept the entire time we were there. Alaethia had fun eating her ketchup (she could eat it all day if we let her) and fries and then, since the kids’ food came first and she finished early, began playing with a little boy who wandered to our table.

Before we left they sang “Happy Birthday” to me and then we had the most sinful chocolate cake. It wasn’t really cake, it was more like fudge smothered in caramel and a glob of vanilla ice cream. It was sooo good. I felt super full afterward.

Andy and Noelia gave me a gift card to Old Navy, yay! And from the boys (or Mary LOL) I got a beautiful silver cross necklace and a gorgeous little silver bracelet that has “Love” engraved all around it. So cute!

Mary, Mom and the boys went home and so did Andy and Noelia after we finished eating. Mario, the girls and I went to Jason and Adan’s to have some drinks. Mirella bought some Parrot Bay rum to drink with pineapple juice and it was really good. I chilled out with Aide and the girls for a little bit but she had to go to sleep to get up early for work the next day. The rest of us watched Beowulf while we had some drinks. Emily slept through the entire movie and Alaethia ended up falling asleep, too. Mario and I got home and put the girls in their beds and had some long-awaited alone time :).

Wed., Apr. 15th – I woke up and made Mario breakfast. I went back to bed when he left to work and had lunch when I woke up. Yup, lunch LOL. John came over and told me about all the things he was going to get me for my birthday but didn’t. Dork LOL. It would have been wonderful LOL.

I picked the boys up from school and, along with Emily, went straight to Eenan’s optometrist appointment. Jaylen did his homework while we waited and Eenan kind of just slothed around, literally. He kept throwing himself on the floor and laying there every time we moved somewhere else. Emily was a doll. Eenan most definitely needed his glasses. I can’t believe how bad his vision is. He’s going to have to wear them all the time.

I expected to spend about $20…but spent $77! Supposedly polycarbonate lenses are mandatory for kids under 18; some kind of law the lady said. That was $60 right there alone.

I was going to go to Old Navy right after the appointment since it’s right across the street and shop with the card Andy and Noelia gave me, but I already felt awful for spending so much money. Emily was also about to wake up at any minute, so I decided to go straight home.

When we got home my dad-in-law helped me get Emily and her car seat off the car and surprised me with $50! I felt bad taking it but he crunched it in my hand and made me keep it LOL. I will save for treadmill, I hope. Or use it wisely for something else should I need to.

I cleaned while Mario watched Emmy. When all the kiddos were asleep I spent some time with Mario :). That’s what I like about not working: I don’t have to be on a time limit all the time like I used to be. I can spend time with Mario whenever I want instead of going to sleep at 10pm like I used to in order to be up on time for work the next morning.

Thurs., Apr. 16th – I had Emily in her sling most of the morning. She cooed and smiled the whole time before she took her noon nap. I passed her on to Mom so I could clean what I couldn’t while I was lugging her around. I got ready to go to town again. I picked up the boys and took Mom to the pharmacy. First stop was paying John’s car and then visited Gramma.

I get to the parking lot and Mom goes off on her merry way and leaves me with all the kids to herd together. I’m usually ok, but when I have to get the stroller down like I did that day, it makes me nervous because Alaethia tries to run off after her.

Gramma’s doing pretty good. We sat with her and we talked about the kids and just chit-chatted.

We went to Walmart afterward and it wasn’t as bad a trip and I thought it would be. It was a little confusing since they’re remodeling or something and it was a little difficult finding a few things because they were moving sections of the store around. The whole store has a less crowded feel but I guess that could be attributed to them removing the fabric section from the crafts department. Darn. And I never bought the Strawberry Shortcake fabric for the girls, nor did I buy any extra Transformers fabric for the boys :(.

We did find little square pieces of fabric for Eenan’s Castle in the Attic project. We’d use the fabric as wallpaper for inside the castle. We were going to construct it out of cardboard and hot glue. Let’s see how it goes.

We got home and I put Emily in her sling. Mario was already here. I got to make dinner with her in her sling and washed dishes. I ate and then cleaned. I gave her to Mom for a bit so I could finish cleaning. I tackled the pile of junk on my desk. I didn’t get it all done, but I threw out tons of stuff. I felt quite accomplished.

I put her to sleep in her sling again once I got her back from Mom and began uploading pics to Flickr. I wanted to have the blog updated by that night, but alas, it didn’t happen. As I was sitting at the kitchen table with Emily on my lap and typing away on the laptop, Alaethia walks up to me and asks for her “Toshieh” which means “slippers” in Chinese, or Mandarin actually. She’s too darn smart! I love those Ni-Hao Kai-Lan cartoons! She’s learned so much from them. She even knows Yeh-Yeh means “Grandpa” in Mandarin and calls her Bimpa that sometimes :D.

Fri., Apr. 17th – I had an early appointment but it was fast, thank goodness. I was really tired from only sleeping for about 4 1/2 hours of broken sleep. I got the mail and to my horror realized Mario and I both went over our texting limit–$100 extra on the bill! Just wonderful!

I spent the free time I had that day sorting through my external hard drive that has all my music on it and deleted tons of stuff that didn’t even belong to me. When I used to upload for everyone for their MP3 players or iPods their music would somehow end up in my folder.

I got a call right after I’d picked the boys up from school that his glasses had come in and were ready for pick up. I took the opportunity to pick out my frames so I wouldn’t have to make another trip all the way over there. It was nice spending some time with just Eenan. He’s such a hilarious kid! Takes after his father.

We went to Old Navy this time since I didn’t have Emily with me and Eenan walked around with me while I tried finding some nice blouses. I still have some pounds to lose so I was being really picky. Eenan was being really helpful, even giving me some fashion advice like not picking out this one blouse because it looked too “old lady” LOL. He’s so cute.

I ended up with two blouses (exactly the same but one in plum and one in teal), black flip-flops, white flip-flops and I only had to pay $5 extra after using my gift card. Too awesome!

I got home and Mom, Mary, Elda and the little ones were chilling out on the deck. Big Mario had been working on leveling the cement for when the floors would go in and Mario was helping him out. We had a bar-b-q and just chilled out talking and eating outside. Elda gave me a really cute Fossil wallet for my birthday :). It’s such pretty colors.

Eventually everyone went in and it was just Elda, Mom, Jose, Mario, me and the girls. We talked about a lot of stuff, including the incident with Adan, Buddy’s passing, and other stuff. Adan joined us later and Jose lectured him LOL.

Sat., Apr. 18th – It was Jaylen’s 7th birthday!! Mario had to work for half the day. We spent all afternoon getting ready for Jaylen’s celebration (does every other Mom with 1+ daughters take 2-3 hours getting ready, or is it just me?). I made sure I had all the essentials (packed diaper bags, camera) and we were off.

We stopped by Game Stop to get a Castlevania game we saw cheap for Eenan, just so he wouldn’t feel left out. Then we all met at Cracker Barrel, where Jaylen chose to celebrate. He especially wanted to go because you can play checkers while you wait LOL. The food and conversations was great, and it was just really nice to spend time with the family. It never gets old.

We ate and then sang Happy Birthday and had some yummy ice cream cake from Dairy Queen, courtesy of Mom. Our waitress was really nice and helped us out a lot. We stayed a really long time, just chatting, playing checkers and talking. Annie gave me a cute planner when we were leaving and Mom got me a huge box of chocolates from the shop for my birthday. We walked around the shop and I saw so many cute things I wanted! I’m hoping to go back for this frame that inspired me to paint the bathroom baby blue. But that’ll be another project to do after the living room’s complete.

I’m not sure what we did afterwards…we might have gone to Jorge and Maggie’s but I’m not sure. I’ve gotta ask Mario about that one. My brain’s turning to mush now that it’s 1:33am (on May 6th now). One day I’ll be able to catch up with all these entries!!

We woke up and began tackling the fiasco with Mario’s paycheck and his bosses. Long story short: we didn’t get to deposit before the bank closed at 1, so some fees from bills we paid would be showing up on Monday. So we kind of just lounged around festering in our bad moods.

We were sitting outside with the kids and parents, watching TV (well, I was on my laptop trying to update) when Adan came over. They wanted him to go over to the office and fix the printer because they couldn’t print out the checks until it was done. I asked to go with them, to assure that the checks were given out but Mario didn’t want me to make a “scene”. Hmph. Needless to say I was pissed that they left without me.

I was in an even worse mood when I plugged in my external to start installing more of my programs and I realized it had also somehow contracted the Trojan. I hadn’t plugged that thing into the laptop in over a month, and it had the Trojan in two different music folders. One was mine, one was Angela’s. So I just deleted all the music. Well, tried to, anyway. It makes the computer think the files are open so it doesn’t let you delete them. I had to transfer all my crap to Mario’s now-empty external and when that was finally done I formatted my hard drive. It was taking forever, so I left it running while we went to Jorge and Mona’s to celebrate Anthony’s 22nd birthday party.

Elda made shrimp cocktail and yummy cake. She also had Lucky, Mona’s son, create such a beautiful video chronicling Anthony’s life from birth until he passed away :(. I tried my hardest not to start bawling, but when Eenan started crying and Aly started crying because she saw Eenan and everyone else crying, I couldn’t hold it in anymore. I was glad Elda got copies of the video for everyone since at the end Matthew kept running and coughing in Alaethia’s face for some reason so I couldn’t pay attention trying to hold him back.

Elda had blown up a whole bunch of balloons with helium and had us write a note to Anthony. We went outside into the cool breeze and let go of the balloons. When we saw the last one float over Tom Gil and into the sky we all went inside to have cake. We came home around 9pm because Mario needed to go to the Dodge Arena to remove the mics. Adan went with him. I was bored. They left around 9:15 and got back and 11:30. When they get here he stands next to me, takes a deep breath and asks, “I know the answer’s probably going to be no, but Adan wants to go to Whiskey’s and I was wondering if I could go with him.” I kind of just stared at him…and got a brilliant idea. I said, “Sure. Go ahead. But I have LOTS of things I need to do tomorrow and you need to go with me. We’re going to Target, Ross, and Walmart, to name a few. And we might meet up with Pete and Sally. And there may be other places. I’m just warning you.”

I looked at Adan who looked at Mario and said, “Doesn’t sound like a bad deal, dude.” Mario thinks about it and says okay. Now let’s see if he actually keeps his promise.

Well that didn’t last long. The giddy happiness I felt on Friday is no more. I don’t usually write about our hardships on my blog, but I can’t get this out of my head. I have to vent.

The situation at Mario’s work turned into yet another drama and in the midst of it all Mario had to hand over $150. Out of his own pocket. $150 that we needed for bills. His paycheck was going to be short as it is because of his vacation pay (which, after 2 years of him working there, they still haven’t increased), so we were going to be cutting it close as it is. But I would have budgeted. Now I have no idea how we’re going to make it till the next paycheck. I’m going to have to withdraw money from my Target Visa, which I didn’t want to have to do at all. Which will then raise the finance charges, which will ultimately cause us to have to pay much more a month. John said he’d lend us the money, but I feel totally, well — for lack of a better word — weird borrowing money from my little brother. And then what if we can’t pay him back? No, no. I’d rather just take the risk with my Visa.

How the heck did we get to this? Everything was peachy and now I’m panicking, worrying about what’s going to happen next. I’ve been looking for jobs left and right even before this happened, but everything I want is either taken or I’ve been overlooked. I’m not used to that. I’m used to wanting something, going for it, and having it in the palm of my hands. I don’t want to have to call the Career Services department at my old school because then they’ll be calling me EVERY DAY to go in for interviews to jobs that are either too far away or just suck. Blah.

And on top of it all Alaethia still goes to sleep at 2am. If she falls asleep before then and I think, Awesome, I’m putting her in her crib and going to sleep! she’ll wake up as soon as her head grazes the softness of her mattress. I’m totally thinking of taking up Maggie’s offer of working with her. The plus is that it’s close by. I’ll be going in in the afternoon, but the shitty thing is that I won’t be getting out till 9pm. There goes all my time with the kids :(. The pay isn’t anything to celebrate about, either.

And I don’t know how I’m going to do it, but I’m GOING to watch Harry Potter next week.

Right now would be the perfect time to fall into some money, like an inheritance left to me by some long-lost relative. Or winning the lottery. Not state lottery; I’d be happy with $500 off a scratch-off. Or finding a $100 bill on the ground somewhere. I wouldn’t feel guilty about taking it because there wouldn’t be anyone around…

Okay, enough of the day dreaming. I just have to keep thinking positive! That’s it. We’ll make it. We’ll figure it out. We always have. And that reminds me of the song that Mario had me listen to a few days ago. I’ve been absolutely in love with “Hey There, Delilah” by The Plain White T’s. He said he thought of me when he heard it, aww :). It’s funny how it’s sort of fitting right now.

(P.S. I added the radio.blog on the right as you’ve probably noticed. After messing around with it for a while I ended up with those two awful lines of numbers up at the top. I can’t be bothered to fix it right now, as unsightly as it is. And I had to resize it to fit in the column so it’s sort of hard to see the text, but enjoy anyway.)