Category: Outings

Out of the House

It’s been a few days since I’ve blogged, as usual. I hate when I do this, especially when interesting things happen like they did the past few days and then I can’t remember anything. Damn this Pregnancy Amnesia.

We got Jaylen out of school half an hour early (right before lunch, which is his last “class”) so we could eat lunch with both of them in the cafeteria since Eenan had been wanting us to do that since school began. We came back home to waste time, then went to Burger King to get our meals and went to the cafeteria to meet Eenan. We were 10 minutes late, thanks to the new girls at the drive-thru window, and I was sure Eenan was freaking out because we never got there. He notices us right away and screams, “Mom! Dad!” and runs towards us with his tray full of untouched pizza. We sit at the Parent Table and he says, “I thought you weren’t coming!” We ate, finished, and threw our stuff out. Since it was the last day of the Six Weeks and they didn’t have any tests or anything new to do, we signed Eenan out and brought him with us. We had tons of stuff to do, like pay our car note, and pay all our other bills (which we’d brilliantly thought to save money for the last time Mario got paid and thankfully most get paid online). One of the only bills we have to pay at the store is our Personal Plan from JC Penny. We made the payment and I noticed they were having a huge sale on pants and jackets, so we checked them out. Both my boys had a growth spurt after we bought them jeans for school, so although we can pass Eenan’s over to Jaylen, Eenan is left without. We found some cute green Camo ones and some dark jeans. They’ve both been so into Camouflage lately. I also can’t help but buy them the same clothes all the darn time. I don’t do it on purpose, but if I find a deal I’ll get them the same thing, in their sizes, of course. To tell you the truth, almost all the clothes they own are matching. And yes, I admit it; I dress them alike. They haven’t complained about it yet, heh.

We checked out the jackets and coats and they were still super expensive for being 50% off and of course the ones we liked were out of Eenan’s size. Jaylen still has his (reversible) jacket from last year but Eenan lost his good jacket this year so he absolutely needed one. We decided to give up and went to Target, where we bought Cars and Walmart to get pool cues and chalks.

My dad-in-law acquired a FREE 9 ft. pool table from a friend the day before. It didn’t have anything at all–no balls, triangle, cues, nothing–but hey, it was a free table and blue! Mario had borrowed $5 from his dad the day before and he said as payment he’d buy all the billiards supplies. I love pool. I admit, I’m the crappiest pool player, but I still love it.

We didn’t find the triangle at Wal-Mart, so we decided to check the other one later. Mario had spoken to Jorge earlier in the day and he said he had a whole set of pool balls and he could have them. Cool. Free balls!

We all got our hair cut after that at Mario’s friend, Manny’s wife’s salon. The kids and Mario desperately needed cuts and Mayra did a great job on them. Jaylen left his a little long because he wanted a Faux Hawk, but he’s yet to let me smush gel in his hair =\.

I got a haircut too, since the last one I got about a month ago was a total hack job. The lady supposedly cut my hair so it’ll look nice when it’s curly, but she failed to tell me she left it totally uneven and you could tell when it was flat ironed. I just had Mayra cut it straight across with whisps at the front. Lovin’ it.

We took showers when we got home, then went to Jorge’s, who got a pool table for pretty cheap as well. Maggie was working, so I spent a few hours watching the guys just play pool, which I didn’t mind since I had a bag of Fritos, bean dip and a bottle of Nestea :). Jaylen went along with us, but fell asleep as soon as we got there. He woke up later though and played with Jorgie and Justin. Eenan was spending the night at Mary’s, as usual, so he didn’t go.

I had a good time. I hadn’t seen Maggie in forever and it was nice catching up. They also played this trick on Mario with some online Ouija board and he totally bought it, my poor Love LOL. Maggie had already told me about it and told me not to say anything. It was almost painful watching Mario get all excited and freaked out about it :P.

I don’t remember much from Saturday morning. I started paying all our bills online sometime around 3pm, which was also around the time Big Mario arrived from the ranch with a BABY Texas Spiny Swift, just like Liz.

I decided to sign up for an online Home Depot account. I figured since we didn’t have to make the payment till the 19th, I’d just set it up and pay it later so I could leave to town before it got too late. Well, I sign up and for some reason it moves my payment date from the 19th to the 12th, which is the next day and is a Sunday! Payments don’t go through on Sunday, so I got all my junk together, John went with me while Mom watched the boys and we left to town.

I paid Home Depot first and then we went to Target. I needed to get some Play-Doh stuff and Magna Doodles that were on sale for the boys for Christmas. The deals were too goo to pass up and it was the last day they were on sale. I also got Mario a t-shirt with a squirrel in front holding up two nuts and under it it says, “Bigger than Yours”. He loves shirts like that :).

We went to Ross next, where John wanted to strangle me because he loathes Ross, but I wanted to check if they had any nice jackets for less than $30. I found a few in Eenan’s size, and then happened upon a black/gray/white Camo one in the size I needed and it was only $11.99! We checked it out, because you never know with Ross, and it was fine so we got in line, which was surprisingly not 100 ft. long like it usually is. We hurried out of there and got some crickets for our lizards at Pet Smart and hurried home.

We were having a get-together for Mario’s birthday at Chris’ that night, so Chris came over to pick up some cash to buy the stuff we’d need that night. Mario got out of work, came home and we went over to Chris’. Eenan, once again, didn’t go because he was spending the night at Mary’s. That boy doesn’t go anywhere with us unless he’s threatened.

It was nice and chilly that night. The girls and children were inside the house while the men chit-chatted outside. It was only Nancy and Jorge’s wife (I, for the life of me, can’t remember her name right now!) and me and we had a pretty good time talking about pregnancies, weight gain/loss, our husbands and other girl stuff. We didn’t leave till around 1am that night so I was super sleepy. It didn’t even feel like it was that late though since I’m sleepy all the time now!

Half-Asleep Ramblings

We didn’t do much on Halloween night. It was actually kind of, dare I say it, boring?

I made the worm cups, which sadly were only enough for the kids since I didn’t buy enough chocolate pudding. Mary made Mummys, which are weeners surrounded by Pilsbury croissants. Mario said he’d try his best to get out of work early, but of course that didn’t work out so we didn’t end up going trick-or-treating. Every Halloween, when we’ve taken the kids trick-or-treating, Mario’s the one who drives and tells us which houses to avoid. I don’t know who the heck to trust in these neighborhoods, so I didn’t even try it. The kids didn’t mind though–Elda invited them to go trick-or-treating at her Grandma’s and other places, but they didn’t want to go. Instead we (Mom, Mary, Noelia, the boys and I) passed out candy to the kids of the neighborhood. Eenan was on a sugar high so he was screaming, “We have candy for sale, People!” and we kept correcting him that it wasn’t for sale and he was scaring the people away by screaming but he didn’t care. Jaylen saw a classmate and later on during the night Jason and Mireya brought Brianna over, who was a little Geisha and looked SO cute and like the real thing!

There weren’t any more trick-or-treaters after 8:30, so I brought the kids in and bathed them and put them to bed (which was really hard considering how much candy they’d had).

I can’t remember much from Wednesday and Thursday (damn this pregnancy amnesia). I think all I did on Wednesday (or was it Thursday?) was go to H-E-B to pick up the Whipped Cream I was missing for the pumpkin pie I was craving. Since I had Jaylen with me, he of course just *had* to ask for something so I got ice cream (chocolate chip cookie dough) and ice cream cups. He apparently forgot about them because he hasn’t asked for any till this day.

All I did on Thursday was accompany John and his death mobile car (with Jaylen in tow) to the Lube place to get some things done to his car. Of course it overheated on the way over there and that’s because we didn’t go far at all. Total of the three things John got done to his car? $59–and he still needs to get his radiator flushed which is another $65. I was so afraid we wouldn’t make it home on time to pick up Eenan, but thankfully we did.

I was so relieved when Thursday night came around because that means that Mario’s off on Friday and I’ll only have to cook enough food for dinner for only that night; I usually have to cook a meal plus some for Mario’s lunch the next day for work. It also means one more day for the kids to have school before the weekend comes along.

I made nachos that night (not regular nachos, these have beans, cheese, veggies, and ground beef) and had the kids fed by 7:30 (we usually eat at 8pm). I get a call around 8:30 from Mario: he’s done at work but is going to Jorge’s. NICE. I hate it when I make the effort to cook (which is like, every night) and he calls and tells me he’ll be home late. At least give me a damn courtesy call letting me know that I shouldn’t slave over the damn stove and the kids and I should have sandwiches or something.

I did everything that needed to be done that night, took a shower and was in bed trying to sleep by 11pm. I was exhausted but no matter how much my eyes wanted to shut and go to sleep, Alaethia was kicking and thrashing around in there like crazy so I could not sleep! I was up till 1:30, just laying in bed, wide-eyed hoping she’d get tired soon but she was just too active. I called Mario at 1:40 and told him to get home because he’d be dropping the kids off the next day since I hadn’t been able to sleep. I assume it would be okay since he’s so darn used to sleeping late and waking up early for work. He got home at 1:53, and I didn’t end up finally falling asleep till 3:30am.

The alarm went off at 6:30am the next morning. What does Mario do? Turns off the alarm and goes back to bed. I’m pissed of course because I’m so darn sleepy but get up and get the kids ready and drop them off. I was so mad at him, but the kids were more pleasant that morning than they had been all week so I stayed calm. I came back from dropping the kids off and took a long, much needed nap.

Mario and I both woke up at 11:15 and went to pick Jaylen up. Mrs. T. said she owed him a special present since he helped her with a bunch of posters. I don’t know what it was exactly that he did, I think it had something to do with coloring, but he was beaming with proudness. I’m so glad he’s comfortable with school now and actually enjoys himself :).

We picked up some Burger King for lunch (because it finally opened!) and came home. We chilled out, Mario and I had an argument, we cleaned out the turtle tank and then it was time to pick Eenan up. When I got back from picking him up, we went to Home Depot to get a new spray hose for the kitchen sink. The old one had totally died and stayed on making the water pressure an annoying drip. Mario installed the new one when we got home and it worked perfectly again.

Eenan slept over at Mary’s and Jaylen fell asleep early. The kids had eaten dinner early (Star’s burgers and an ice cream cone they had coupons for for having perfect attendance) and we ate some turkey pot pies. LOVE those things. We watched the most recent episode of Heroes and then put our three-shelf bookcase together for our bedroom. We’re getting a little more organized in there which is a huge relief. I still need to buy some baskets to organize the closet shelves better and some kind of vertical rack for my pj’s and t-shirts so I can get rid of the extra massive chest of drawers we have. We just aquired a brand-new bassinet from Yadira and a playpen from Big Mario’s friend (which is great since I lent Ricci the boys’ playpen back when we were still in speaking terms and never got it back) so we need all the space we can get. We’re doing pretty good right now. I still need to get the rocking chair back in there–eek!

We woke up early and I saw Mario off to work, then got the kids and myself ready so we could accompany Mary and Mom to the new Premium Outlets in Mercedes. It took forever to get there, a while to find them, and a bitch to find parking but it was worth it. The stores we got to see were great and we got great deals at KB Toys, where we found toys like Sonic the Hedgehog ones that the kids LOVED and had been wanting for a couple years now. I was disappointed that Old Navy wasn’t open and there won’t be a Sanrio store at all, but it was still cool.

We came back home to drop the boys and Mom off, then Mary, Yadira, Angela, Matthew and I went to Danett’s babyshower. It took so long to start, and there were ladies who were being evil about the games (Jesus, some people take shower games so seriously!) but it was alright. The food was great and we got to see Annie’s sisters, two of which are pregnant (one was the shower girl).

And now we’re home, and I should be getting ready for bed. Goodnight!

This is the Best Day

Upon entering the bathroom to inspect Jaylen’s bootie (he asks me to, to make sure he’s wiped well) he says, “This is the best day!” I ask him why, expecting him to say because it’s Halloween or because of all the candy he received at school but he says, “Because I did Regular Poop!”

He got better about 20 minutes after the cool bath I gave him on Friday night and he promptly fell asleep (this, of course, was after Over the Hedge had already finished). I instinctively woke up every hour-hour and a half to check up on him and thankfully he was fine.

He was so cute though. He was slumped over next to me on the couch while we were watching the movie when I started coughing hysterically. He reaches over and pats me on the leg to calm me down. I tell him, “Aww baby, you’re so sick and here you are worried about me.” He says in his crackly voice, “I’m worried about you and my sister.” How sweet is that?!

The Mucinex I gave him, however, totally messed up his stomach. He woke up Saturday morning with terrible diarreah. I felt so bad for him. He went through his whole drawer of underwear almost.

I felt bad leaving him, but I had the baby shower to attend and although he wanted to go, it was at a fancy place and there was no way I was going to take him. (Though I’m sure he would have behaved better than Eenan would at an event that would take that long.) He and Eenan stayed with Mom, who’d be giving Jaylen his medicine (not the Mucinex, never again!) and giving them lunch shortly after I left.

I was going to the shower, which was for Mario’s cousin Betty, with Mary and Noelia. We stopped by Target first to get Mario a jacket he wanted that was on sale. Noelia thankfully found the only one in his size tossed off to the side so I grabbed it and we dropped it off to him. It was the second day of the sale at Mario’s work and man were they busy!

Mary needed to get some Amoxcil for Angela (who’s insurance sadly doesn’t go into effect till December just like my boys’) so we went to Mexico to pick some up.

We were going to a pharmacy that’s right across the street from the bridge. Thank God, because I didn’t know how far I could walk! The horrible pains I was having before had gone away, but I was afraid they’d come back from walking too much. Anyway, we got to the pharmacy and while Mary paid for the meds, I looked around at the junk food and got some chips (Tostitos?) that we used to eat back in school and some sugary things like Gansitos, which Mario loves (I don’t). I felt nauseous the whole night before and barely ate breakfast, but I opened up the bag of chips when we were on our way to the baby shower and ate the whole thing. I hate feeling nauseous. Thankfully I can count on one hand how many times I’ve been nauseous this pregnancy *knocks on wood, just in case*.

The baby shower was really nice. They decorated everything simply but it looked so nice. They had a rubber ducky theme going on since Betty’s having another boy (her 3rd baby as well). They’d told her up until two weeks ago that she’d be having a girl, so of course she was thrilled. Well, she goes for her 8 month appointment and they tell her she’s having a boy after all. I heard the aunts saying she’s going to try for a girl, because she was really upset that she wasn’t having one this time. This is the reason I’m still waiting to buy all the adorable pink things I’ve seen; I want to be absolutely sure that I’m having a girl. I have a feeling I am, and have had a feeling this whole pregnancy that she’s a girl, plus two positive sonos that showed she was a girl but I haven’t been given a sono of her privates! If only I had that picture in my hands and I could “see” for myself, I’d feel more at ease. Betty’s the 4th woman I know this year who’s been told she’s having this baby and ends up with the opposite gender.

I won the first two games of the baby shower: a nursery rhyme fill-in-the-blanks and a Purse Scavenger Hunt. Since I won two at Venessa’s the week before all the aunts kept saying stuff like, “Why should I even bother when Yajaira’s going to win?” and other stuff like that LOL. I decided to just not give it my all on the third game since I was sure they’d never invite me back to another shower :P. It was fun. I came home with a Bath and Body Works lotion, sponge and shower gel and two foot creams/sprays. Yay!

As soon as we got home I got the kids dressed up in their costumes for the Jamaica. Jaylen hadn’t gone to the bathroom for about two hours, so that was a relief since I wasn’t sure there were bathrooms at the place. The boys were all thrilled; Eenan in his Shadow Ninja costume and Jaylen in his Darth Vader one. Mom came along, and Mary was babysitting Matthew and Angela so they came along too.

Halloween '06

There weren’t many games to play so we just got some waters, nachos, a turkey leg for Mario, and a fruit cup. The kids went on a train ride where Mary gave them half a pickle each. It didn’t occur to me at all that it would mess up Jaylen’s stomach, again, until they were around the corner. By the time they got back, he’d finished the whole thing.

The kids were moody since there was nowhere to sit and it was still light out so it was getting hot fast. We said hi to Yadira, one of her co-workers and Jaylen’s teacher, who were all volunteering at booths and then we left. Mary stayed behind with Angela and Matthew and I brought the boys home. We had just gotten to the driveway (we went walking, it was less than a block away) when Eenan freaked out over some bees and knocked Jaylen over. Poor Jaylen went skidding on his wrists since he was holding onto his water and a bag of candy they’d given him. I bandaged him up when we got inside and he just rested on the couch. He was still doing good diarreah-wise, but still looked down.

Eenan went to church with Mary while Angela stayed with me till Tommy picked her up. The poor thing had a fever, so I gave her Tylenol right before Tommy got here. Poor kiddos :(.

Mario got home later and we watched The Neverending Story, which the kids hadn’t ever seen. Eenan left half-way to Mary’s to sleep over and Jaylen stayed up for the whole thing. He ended up falling asleep on the couch so Mario moved him to his bed and we watched TV a little longer till we started to get sleepy. I went to bed first, and as soon as I felt Mario get into bed I hear Jaylen call us. He said he’d check what happened. The poor thing had an accident in his bed; the diarreah was back full-force thanks to the darn pickle I stupidly let him eat. We changed his sheets and put the dirty ones in the wash, wiped down his (plastic-covered) bed with Clorox Anywhere spray (love that stuff), gave him a quick wash down in the shower and put him to bed. He was fine the rest of the night but I still woke up every two hours to check on him.

I woke up to Jaylen looking really sad and telling me he was running out of undies again :(. I felt so bad. I made pancakes that morning hoping the bread wouldn’t mess up his stomach too much but the syrup must have made it worse. I had some errands to run and groceries to get, so Mom watched the boys while John and I went to McAllen.

We picked up John’s guitar first then stopped by Circle K (or Stripes, whatever) to get something for Mario to drink and snack on at work. They were super busy again so he appreciated the gesture since he didn’t even have a chance to get anything and they don’t usually go out for lunch at all on Sundays.

We went to Target next, where I got the boys a pair of jeans each (can you believe they grew out of all their jeans already!?) and I got a 20″ TV for our bedroom that was on sale for $89.97 (put it on my credit card, eek!). We went to Ross next, which John loathes, but I love. Everyone talks shit about it but I love buying nice clothes for half the price they usually go for (I owe my huge collection of cute T’s to that place–they usually have the exact same ones places like Wet Seal have for half the price!). I do hate that the damn store’s been turned upside down and it takes forever to pay for the stuff though.

I went with the intention to buy a huge bolster pillow to make sleeping easier but I only found one and it was torn. I figured I could sew it, wash it and make covers for it but only if they’d give me a good discount. While John goofed off and took pictures of ridiculous things I found two cute maternity blouses (one in black and one in pink) and a pair of khaki cargos with pink stitching. It came out to $28, which I was super ok with. They wanted to sell me the pillow for $9, even with the tear so I said nah. I’ll go back and check again later.

My feet were killing me, but I still had to get groceries so we went to Wal-Mart first for house supplies and toiletries and then to H-E-B for the actual food. I remembered to get Jaylen his Gatorade and soups and my pumpkin pie. Dumbass that I am I totally forgot the Whipped Cream! You can’t have pumpkin pie without whipped cream! I also bought all the stuff I’d need to make Dirt Cups for the kids’ classes, which are cups full of pudding, crushed Oreo’s and a worm on top :).

Mom had made burritos so I didn’t even have to make dinner–yay! After giving Jaylen his Gatorade and soup, he was doing much, much better and I prayed for the best since he had school the next day. He hates to miss and I like that he’s gotten perfect attendance so far, but I wasn’t going to allow him to go if he kept having accidents.

Thankfully he did just fine at school the next day. I told his teachers about it and they told me they’d call if they needed me to pick him up. I asked how many kids were in each class and there were 20 in each including the teachers. Crappy thing: they weren’t allowing anything like cupcakes or anything homemade, but were allowing bags of candy. Grr. I understand they’re doing it to be safe, but I would not poison my child or his classmates AND I’d already made the expense for the Dirt Cups and would have to make an additional expense since they wanted candy instead. They’d also stated they were only allowing children to dress up in Fairytale costumes but c’mon, who was going to dress their kid up as Peter Pan, or a Prince or something? I figured I’d send the boys off in their costumes and if they didn’t like it, I’d happily take them a change of clothes.

I picked Jaylen up after school and we made our way to the Dollar General, where I was hoping I’d find cheap, good candy. WRONG. I spent $13 just on 3 bags of candy that I was praying would be enough for both classes. As soon as we got home I started seperating the candy and putting it into the candy bags (thank God I still had unopened bags from last year that I didn’t use). After stressing out and getting exactly 20 of each candy for each class, I had just enough for 40 bags.

I picked Eenan up and we chilled out at home for a while till John got here. Jaylen’s tummy was doing great and Eenan was thrilled that his new DS had come in. Mary’d sent his old greenish one to get repaired and instead they sent us a brand-new red one since they didn’t have the green one. He didn’t care–I think he likes this one even more. Mom watched the boys while John and I went to the bank so we could both deposit. He wanted to go to Target, so we went really quick where he got some stuff for his guitar and bought us both some Starbucks. My little brother has his own money and is buying me Starbucks–he’s growing up *tear*.

I started on dinner when we got home: chilli. I’d been craving some good chilli and found a seasoning packet for some. It was delicious!

Chilli!

Mario got out of work late since it was so busy and ended up staying even later since the guys were having some beers. I got everything ready for the next day, even though my feet were killing me. They don’t swell up, but they just ache really bad at the end of the day. I took a shower and went to bed while watching TV. I love that there’s a TV in our bedroom now; I need the white noise to fall asleep when Mario’s not home.

I need to have some lunch (leftover chilli!) and then start on those Dirt Cups. Since I didn’t make them for the kids’ class I’m going to make them for us here at home. Hope everyone has a great night of Trick-or-Treating!

[edit @ 2:36pm] Alaethia’s got the hiccups! [\edit]