Category: Outings

I’m so bad at updating everything. Well, except of course Twitter/Tweetdeck, which automatically sends everything to Myspace and Facebook. I’d started the whole 365 thing on Flickr–not joining the groups or anything, just for myself really–and I think I got to day 7 or 8 and that was it! I was hoping at least keeping up with that since I do a crappy job of keeping up with this blog. Oh well!

Mario and I were supposed to be working on the plans for our hopeful, future kitchen/dining room remodel, but he says he was waiting for me all day to talk about it and I was busy. Of course I was busy! I was getting the rest of the stuff I needed for Alaethia’s birthday this weekend (and I still forgot the helium tank, 2 bags of tortilla chips and mayo) and then I got home and cleaned and then I took the boys to Taekwondo. Luis, the instructor, gave them kind of like a pop quiz. The boys almost ended up having to go back to the white belt class for extra practice! They’ve gotta perfect their form by Thursday or else!

Anyway, so yeah. After I made dinner and fed all the kids (Rolando included; he came to visit after TKD) I came over to the living room where Mario was on his laptop so we could start jotting down plans for the remodel. We’ve been sitting here for at least 2 hours on our respective laptops and I keep bringing it up but he says now he’s not in the mood. Makes me so mad!

Well, since he won’t hear me out, I’ll jot down my ideas here. We’re both thinking of completely flipping the dining room and kitchen, kind of like what Sally and Pete did at their house. So when you’re walking in the from the living room, it would be living room, dining room and then kitchen. The only problem is the darn bathroom! It’s right next to the dining room right now, which I HATE! We’re thinking of completely flipping the bathroom around making a tiny hallway for it. I was thinking of making a partition wall next to the hallway, so that it’s not RIGHT THERE next to the kitchen when we remodel. But I don’t know. Mario doesn’t like the idea because he says it’ll take away from the cabinet space. We’re going to have so much more room anyway if we do flip it!

And in the dining room, I want to make that awkward angled wall a mostly chalkboard wall with a cork board on one side, with a nice moulding around them/separating them. I also want a credenza or hutch or something with shelves and doors to hide the kids’ game boards, crayons, notebooks and anything else they usually leave lying around in the dining room. BUT, Mario doesn’t like the idea of cabinets in there. Poo.

(…1 1/2 hrs. later…) Well we finally went in there, measured and taped things off. We’re going to have to do some major changes in there to get the counter space we want. Like moving the hallway entrance (to the bedrooms) from the dining room to the kitchen (were the awkward wall is) and then the rest of the space on that wall will be chalkboard for the kids! The bathroom doorway will be moved completely to the opposite side with a partition wall so the door way’s not THAT close to the kitchen. We’ll have a top-to-bottom pantry where the bathroom door used to be and we’re going to hopefully have enough space for an island with cabinets for the bigger appliances and pots/pans and a space for my cookbooks. I’m so excited, you have no idea. Unfortunately, though, we’re going to have to do it all little by little since we’re on a tight budget. But we can do it. Just gotta have a little patience with our situation…and each other LOL.

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!

Sat., Dec. 19th – I had a hard time sleeping the night before, but I had a good breakfast, got the kiddos fed and, along with Mom, left to town. Had to go to the bank, pay a bill, Target for Emily’s diapers and a new make-up bag for me (only $0.97!), and Sprint for screen protectors for my Centro that they didn’t have.

The kids were getting hungry so we went to eat at Taco Bell. It feels like we’re never going to leave a place when I’ve got all the kiddos, and that day I only had 3, so you can imagine LOL. Alaethia was being picky about her food as always, Emily was quickly becoming bored and Jaylen kept making Alaethia laugh. Loudly. We finished up as quickly as we could, dropped off some food for Mario since he was really busy at work and hadn’t had a chance to take lunch yet, and then we went to Gramma’s.

We walked into her room and were a bit taken aback that she was wearing an oxygen mask again. She seemed really down and when I asked if she was okay she shook her head and said she felt dizzy. She was in better spirits by the time we left though, since we made her laugh and the kids entertain her. I just prayed she wasn’t feeling sick for Christmas.

We went straight to Walmart after Gramma’s. I hate grocery shopping. That takes forever with all the kiddos, too. It was wonderful getting home, but not so much because I had to put all the food away and make dinner LOL. If I remember correctly, I think I popped some Dijorno’s in the oven.

Sun., Dec. 20th – Mario had to unfortunately work that Sunday. When the kiddos took a noon nap I locked myself in my bedroom while Mom watched the kids in the living room and I got to wrapping presents. The plan was to wrap every last gift that was in my closet, at least.

I was on a roll, and then Eenan called at 1:30 that they were almost home, about 2 hours away and they’d really like enchiladas for their arrival. Shoot. I scrambled everywhere looking for all the ingredients. I didn’t have cheese! I had to go over to Elda’s and borrow a bag from her. We got to talking and then I realized they’d be home in an hour LOL. I got everything done on time, though, thank goodness.

We went over to the in-law’s to eat and chit-chatted about their trip. They brought back the cutest little gloves for the girls! I’d never seen gloves as teeny as the ones they brought Emily!

I wasn’t going to get much else done wrapping-wise, so I left the remainder of the stuff on my bed for when we got back from Andy’s birthday get-together at Golden Corral.

I went straight to Maggie’s to get some beautifying done and when I was on my way to the restaurant with everyone Mario calls that he’s not feeling well and won’t go. Darnit. Oh well. At least the kiddos would have fun. It’s Eenan’s favorite restaurant.

We all meet at Golden Corral. We get down and there’s just no way we were going to be seated within in the next hour. So we go to Furr’s. Eenan was throwing a fit about who-knows-what, Alaethia was complaining about being in her car seat, Jaylen was bothered by Eenan’s noise and Emily was crying for a bottle when I was already driving. OMG. It was awful LOL. I was glad to get to the restaurant. All the kiddos ate what they wanted and the adults had some chatting time. I had the most unhealthy brownie a la mode drenched in hot fudge LOL.

I wasn’t too happy to get home and find out that Mario had been snooping in the gifts, so he knew exactly what Blu-rays the kids and I got him! I wasn’t counting on him being home since he was supposed to meet us at the restaurant, so I didn’t even think to put those away. Argh. Oh well LOL.

Before bed I flipped through a few of my Scrapbooking magazines. I really wish I just had a few hours to scrapbook. I have so much awesome stuff and haven’t even used it! And pictures galore too, thanks to the awesome $0.10 print sales Walgreens has every-so-often!