Category: OMG

01/01/10 – New Years – I stayed up a little late but woke up early (and woke the girls up early) to go over to Mary’s to help embarar (spread) tamales. She was shredding the pork off the bone with her fingers for the pork ones and she’d already seasoned the deer & beans for the other two batches.

Sonia, Mom, Elda and myself helped Mary spread the masa on the tamales. I suck at that LOL. Not to mention what a perfectionist I am; the whole thing had to be even and perfect! I didn’t even get a picture of the mountain of tamales. We were too busy eating them. But I only had 4 (I can usually eat up to 6 or 7!).

Mario was still in a mood from the night before. He stayed holed up in our bedroom pretty much all day. I chilled at Mary’s with Mom, the kids, Andy, Noelia, Sonia and Elda for a good while.

When Mario finally got out of bed we had the moms watch the kiddos and we went to Walmart for a few things. I wanted some cheapy boots, because I have nothing nice or warm to wear for winter (I’ve only got flats and sneakers) but of course, they didn’t have my size.

We get home and I decided to make Velveeta cheese dip (with Rotel & ground beef) for dinner. Hey! It’s got all the food groups (chips made the grains one LOL!).

Aide and I sat in the dining room and chit-chatted about everything and looked through a little Izone album I had since Eenan was a tiny baby. Emily looks exactly like he did back then, aww :).

When Adan, Aide and their kiddos left we got all comfy on the sofa and watched “The Half-Blood Prince” on Blu-ray (one of my gifts from Mary :D). Mario hadn’t seen it and he actually enjoyed it.

I started my 365 that night. I highly doubt I’ll keep up with it, but we’ll see LOL.

Mario and I stayed up till 4am that night, even later than New Years the night before! We’re such an old married couple. We were sitting in the living room, across from each other on the sofas looking for pictures of kitchens we liked on Flickr and Ikea.com LOL.

01/02/10 – Girl’s Night Out – I spent most of that day cleaning. John had come over and kept bugging me to make banana muffins, so I made some. We had Sebastian, one of our neighbors here most of the day; he’s Eenan’s age. He’s always here, poor kid. I don’t mind, though.

We went to pick up Subway for lunch, ate really quick and then Aaron came over to play video games with Jaylen for a bit. I continued with cleaning but oh my gosh. I have so much to go. The living room & kitchen were clean, but a corner of the dining room’s a storage unit for now. I still need to go through all those boxes of Alaethia’s old clothes and hang up what I’m going to use for Emily.

I texted Mario and asked if he wanted to go out. He said he’d already made plans with Jorge so to make plans of my own. I called Sally up and she invited me to a bar-b-q at her friend Monica’s house. I got ready in record time (heh) and drove over to her house. We switched to her vehicle and made it over to Monica’s. It was a CRAZY night. We played Flip Cup, which I’d never played before and we played with this really crappy champagne so I got tipsy really fast LOL, but it was fun!

We ate, had some laughs and talked about high school and old crushes and by the end of the night polished off almost a whole block of Philadelphia cheese and salsa with tiny wheat crackers.

We wanted to get some drinks somewhere so we went to Woodreaux’s. Neither of us had ever been there, so we figured we’d try it out. As soon as we walk in, a surly short dude with a black cowboy had and a huge mustache pulls my sweater from my shoulder. I scowl at him and shake my head when he waved us over to his table.

Sally and I sit at the bar and browse through the menu and talk about how weird that guy was. She says, “I thought you knew him. Thought he was one of Mario’s friends.” I tell her, “I have no idea who he is,” and we just laughed about it.

10 minutes later the dude comes back. Tries to literally pull us off the bar stools asking if we want to dance. We both say no and he insists. We again, politely decline and he leaves. Sally and I can’t help but laugh. We decide that if any other creepy guy approaches us again we’d pretend we were lesbian Life Partners LOL.

Well, that completely goes out the window as we’re finishing our drinks and the same dude comes up to us and begs us to dance with him again. We couldn’t stop laughing from how uncomfortable we were! He told us just about every lie and line in the book. Couldn’t stop talking about how beautiful we were. Even mentioned how he was a widower. Uh huh, sure. I started getting really mad once he kept insisting we see his truck. He kept raving how we’d love it. Um, no. I kept staring at the bartender, asking for help with my eyes LOL. He finally got the hint and directed the crazy dude to a couple who was already getting up to leave. Bartender tells Crazy Dude, “Look, this girl in the purple? She LOVES to dance!” So Crazy Dude goes over there and embraces both the guy and girl as they’re getting up. We took the opportunity to run out of there like bats out of hell LOL.

We got to Sally’s and retold the story to Pete, Alyssa and her boyfriend. Buahaha. It was insane but truly a night to remember!

So.

I just renewed my domain for another year. And I’m still paying for monthly hosting so I guess I’m keeping the site another year. Me and my packrat tendencies; I’ve had it so long (2001, or 2002–don’t remember) that I can’t bear to get rid of it. Even though I’ve hardly updated in the past year and have missed blogging about TONS of details of the girls’ lives…I just can’t get rid of it.

I’ve made a promise to myself that I’ll try updating again. I’m just so out of…practice, I guess you can say, that it’s kind of odd for me to try and update like I used to. I’m going to aim for at least once a week. Let’s see how that goes LOL.

So I’m going to try right now. I’m drinking my coffee and eating a bowl of sugar Cocoa Crispies. I just finished feeding Emily her baby cereal and she’s doing her Funny Face in her high chair and drinking her bottle.

Okay, scratch that. Alaethia woke up so I moved Emily to her play pen so I could stick Alaethia in the high chair to eat her breakfast, which consists of strawberries. Yes, she’ll be 3 in January (already, OMG!) and I’m still having trouble trying to get her to eat breakfast and sometimes to eat in general. Fruit is always my back up.

Took a break there to get Alaethia situated in the living room to watch her Noggin–I’m sorry, Nick Jr. And I dusted the shelves in the living room and moved 2 more from my bedroom to the living room…don’t know if that was a mistake or not, after last night (I’ll get to that in a bit, heh). I’m so happy that this year I’ll get to actually put up a few Christmas decorations. I just need to FIND them.

We had everyone over last night, Jason, Mirella, Brianna, Jose & Elda, Adan, Aide & her kiddos and Mom & us of course. It was a nice night but the moments that’ll stick out in my head are when Jaylen & Jason were tossing a pillow back and forth & my Disney Jasmin snow globe broke. I left a gel pen uncapped and it stained the sofa bright blue. I almost had a heart attack but a few baby wipes did the trick–I love Enduro-suede sofas! And then–the climax of the night–the moment I walked into the bathroom and Alaethia and Belle were happily tossing cat litter all over the bathroom…again! They’d also dumped the cat’s food into the toilet and replaced both the food and water bowls with soggy litter. My whole world closed up; I didn’t know where the hell to start cleaning up. Mario, at first kind of rudely, had to take over and did a pretty good job cleaning up. Alaethia got reprimanded; I’m hoping this’ll be the last time she assists with that.

(OMG this darn cat just scratched my legs again!!!)

I guess this is enough blogging for now (it’s taken me about 3 hours to type this up little by little!). I just put Emily to sleep by singing “Morning Lullabies” by Ingrid Michaelson to her. They both love that song when it’s time for bed.

I need to do more laundry, wash dishes, vacuum the living room and practice everything for Taekwondo. Our Yellow-Advanced test is on Nov. 28th, 2 1/2 weeks from now. *gulp* I need to work on the form because I get mixed up if someone else is doing it at the same time or if someone even TALKS. I need to time myself and make my movements stronger and stiffer. I also have to work on my side-kick. That kick’s the devil. I get everything else except that. Oh yeah, and I also can’t get the Mula kick with my left leg and my left leg’s the stronger of the two, which is odd for someone who’s right-handed like I am. This is why I want one of those standing targets; so I can practice here at home. They’re expensive though and right now, let’s just say the bad economy finally reared its ugly head at us. Not cool now that Christmas is coming up!

Ok, ok. I won’t stall on my chores any longer. And Emily’s up already. Nice LOL.

Wed., Apr. 29th – I’d been anticipating the coming of April 29th probably even more than my birthday. On April 29th the Peñitas Walmart finally opened, which meant no more 30 minute trips to Sharyland for groceries or other necessities! It meant being able to go and buy milk, bread or any other things you may realize you need late at night. It meant faster trips and less headaches!

John and I’d made a date to go to the Grand Opening at 11:00am. Mom stayed with the girls while we went. (I can’t remember if I took Emily that morning or not.) There wasn’t much going on, so I figured we either missed everything or the events weren’t scheduled till later. We saw a few characters, like Elmo and Cookie Monster, the Twinkie guy, Hygeia Milk guy LOL, and a few others I can’t remember. We walked around, memorizing the new layout, trying out samples (we practically ate lunch there LOL) and of course, buying just a few things. They made a big ol’ deal about how this new Walmart was going to be a more “Hispanic” Walmart, which stirred up a bit of controversy of course, but the only big “Hispanic” difference was the new treat shop called “Flor de Michoacan”. They were supposedly going to be shipping Mexican products over here and selling them to keep business here instead of having people travel to Mexico, but I didn’t see any different products other than the few things in the “Latino” section LOL. It’s much brighter than the other Walmarts I’ve seen, the isles are much spacier, there’s an arcade (not that I’d let the boys wander off on their own), and the layout’s much more convenient. All toiletries, groceries, and cosmetics are on one side, while electronics, toys and housewares are on the other side. I really like it.

John and I went home and when I picked the kids up from school Mom, all the kids and I made another trip to Walmart so they could all check it out. All the festivities were over by the time we took the kids, which sucked. The only character the kids got to see was Chester Cheetah, and Alaethia was terrified of him. She screamed, “No! That’s not the Cheeto kitty!” when I was coaxing her to calm down.

Some NBA star was going to show up to sign autographs and a band was setting up outside, but we were all tired and the boys were getting antsy. So we just went home.

When Mario got home we made another trip to Home Depot to get a few more odds and ends for the living room, like the door knobs and deadbolts. We tried looking for Germ-X and masks, but like Walmart, they were completely sold out, too. Everyone was truly panicking over the swine flu.

We got home and I spent time with the girlies while searching for Re-ment stuff on Ebay. Ever since I saw Rachel’s Re-ment pics on Flickr, I became somewhat obsessed LOL. I’d ordered the Merry Strawberry Fondue set and once I had it in my hands it was all downhill. I want them ALL!

Mario and I chilled out on the patio waiting for Jason. We kept debating whether we should buy a mallet and a hand saw since Mario was having a difficult time installing the laminate wood floors without them the night before. Mario spoke to Jason, who just so happened to be at Walmart and he was picking up a saw for us. Adan, Aide and Belle came over and lent us their rubber mallet and Mario and I got started on the floors. We decided that no matter what, we were going to finish that night.

My job, aside from making sure we didn’t have any repeating wood-grain patterns, was to figure out how to lay the actual planks. Mario was the muscle who installed them. It took me a while, but my math skills finally kicked in and I figured out how to lay the planks without cutting too much and wasting the wood. In some rows we didn’t even have to cut anything away. I’m a genius!

We started around 10:00pm and finished around 2am. Mom, bless her, stayed watching Emily and Alaethia while we worked. Alaethia, out of nowhere, started sniffling and was moody. She stayed awake till we were done. We went straight to bed when we were done. We were exhausted but it paid off!

Right as I was tucking Alaethia into bed I remembered that I had laundry in the washing machine. I told her I’d be right back as she nodded off into sleep. I tossed the clothes into the dryer as quickly as possible because I had this weird feeling; a bad feeling. I ran inside and into my room and found poor Alaethia covered in vomit. I was thinking the worst: was this the dreaded swine flu? I wrapped up her sheets and placed a towel on her bed and the trash can next to it. I gave her a quick bath and I washed my hands and Lysoled everything. Just as I was wondering what the heck could have caused her to get sick, she started heaving again. I didn’t know what to do; she was so scared that she was swallowing desperately, trying not to throw up again. I couldn’t help but feel nauseous myself. I didn’t sleep very much that night worrying about her. She woke up two more times after that.

Thurs., Apr. 30th – Mario and I celebrated our 12-year “All Together Anniversary”. I couldn’t believe it’d been 12 years since that day he’d tried tricking me into telling him I liked him and he called me and asked, “Can I have a crush on you?” I still get all tingly thinking about it after all these years :).

I waited for the boys to get out of school and took Alaethia and Jaylen to the doctor. Alaethia hadn’t developed a fever, so that was good. Jaylen had a lingering cough and I didn’t know if it was allergies or not so I thought it best to take him in. I was so not looking forward to being at the doctor’s office for 3 hours like that last time, but it had to be done. At least I could start reading “Breaking Dawn”. That’s one thing I realized about being at the doctor’s office: that was when I’d actually get ahead in reading, I was there so long LOL.

I read while Jaylen and Alaethia played with the toys. I don’t usually like them to play with the toys there, because tons of other sick kids had been playing with them throughout the day, but I had an arsenal of antibacterial items since the whole Swine Flu thing.

Amazingly, we were only there for 40 minutes. Jaylen just had a slight cough and Alaethia didn’t have any type of flu (or cold or anything for that matter), so that was a big relief. I still wonder why she got sick, though?

Later that evening, Jason came over and I went with him and Mario (while Mom stayed with the girls, Mary had the boys) to the new Walmart. They got beer and munchies and I got some Jack Daniel’s Down Home Punch drinks. They were okay, but not as good as the watermelon ones. I can’t find those darn watermelon ones anywhere!

When we got back, we watched TV and I surfed the web while the girls slept. Then the guys (Mario, Jason, Adan) started playing Call of Duty 4, so that was my cue to go to bed LOL.