Isn't it time for a new photo?

Yes, it's been almost a year since we took this picture. I know my kids have grown, Emma is missing two teeth, and we just need a beautiful, professional family portrait that we can cherish for one more year. I'll call you soon Jenny!

Family Vacations Part II - Sacramento

We spent about a week in Sacramento visiting family we had not seen for the last four years. We had a good time and visited some of our favorite places.

This is one of our favorites, Old Sacramento. It still has that old west feeling and I think all the buildings are original though some have been renovated. This place is right in front the Sacramento River and still has that old railroad running along.

Emma having a good time on the carousel.


Pedro proving how good he is at shooting.

Visiting our compadre Shwartzeneger (spelling is right?) in the Capitol.

One of my most favorite places for a good homemade ice cream! It's a classic.

While there, Pedrito turned 2 years old. So we had cake and ice cream with the family.

Doesn't he look happy?

The next day, it was Laura's birthday!

This is Marisol, my sister-in-law, showing off her brand new, first grandchild.

Here is Laura, her husband Marco Antonio, and Alex and Alexa, my daughter's twin...I mean, cousin :)

This Erika, my husband's niece and her baby.

My sister in law Rosa and her son, Daniel. Sitting on the back of their house.

The Delta King Hotel and Restaurant, right on the Sacramento River.

The Aviles clan. Aren't they lovely? I especially love the one with the beard and the red shirt. He is the reason I have all those beautiful kids ;

Family Vacations Part I - Las Vegas

I know, it's been about a month since we went on vacation and I'm just barely posting about it, I will try my best to do it more often. We got to Vegas on a Saturday and found our hotel (El Cortez) and got ready to go on a long walk around the casinos...

You can see Pedrito approved of the hotel beds and was HAPPY!

My husband couldn't pass up the opportunity to browse around the Coca Cola store :)

I still think it's amazing how flashy and creative the casinos are.

Sorry, out of order. This was on Sunday after we went to church, we wanted to see the Vegas Temple. I thought it was beautifully located with the mountain on the background, too bad it was closed and we couldn't walk around its grounds.



Waiting for the show on Treasure Island to start. Too bad I didn't know it would be quite different since the last time we had been there, about 8 years ago. Too many "sirens" dancing and dressed in less than modest outfits. It definitely wasn't something for the kids. :(

Yeah, you can see the excitement in my kids' faces. I guess we must be doing a good job on teaching them about standing in holy places. They pretty much hated Las Vegas and questioned why I would think of taking my family there with so many worldly things all around us.

Pedro standing next to the Eiffel Tower...Some day we'll go to the real one. :)

Anyway, after so much whinning on Saturday, we got back into the Spirit on Sunday after attending church and remembering we can stand in holy places anywhere...Yes, even in Vegas.

Judgement Day is Coming!

While on vacation in Sacramento, California, we saw this truck on the freeway. Interesting...! I guess "Eternity Trucking" must have good connections with a higher power since they have solved the mistery that all wicked people are afraid of.....Judgement Day!!! And now they/we know...May 21, 2011. Hey! Wait a minute, wasn't suppossed to be 2012? I guess we'll see who nailed it, Eternity Trucking... or the Mayans...

Pueblo Grande Museum

On Friday we decided to go to the Mesa Main Library, one of my favorite places, and just get some nice, interesting books. When we got there, we saw this board about Culture Passes and so I asked about it at the Front Desk. She explained to me about this wonderful program where you can get either 2 or 4 FREE passes for any of the participating places (Mesa Natural History Museum, Phoenix Zoo, Phoenix Children's Museum, The Bead Museum, Pueblo Grande Museum, The Science Center, Arizona Youth Museum, Phoenix Art Museum, Mesa Arts Contemporary Art Galleries, Heard Museum, and a couple more... So we Happily got our free tickets and off we went to Pueblo Grande Museum. It's right in the middle of Phoenix and a little bit hard to get to (I got lost for about 20 min.), but to me it was well worth it (Hey! It was free!). We had a great time reading about the Hohokams and all the wonderful things they did to adapt to this desert environment, I mean, who would build miles and miles of canals to bring water to the desert using only a stick and some stones to remove all the dirt!! This people were truly AMAZING! Pedrito enjoyed the outdoor trail (3/4 miles) the most since he got to walk and push the stroller. We spent about two hours there and then headed back home. I love when you get to experience something new, learn a piece of history, and it wasn't even planned... :)



Friday was only 97 degrees but we were still sweating and VERY thirsty, can you tell my kids were ready to be in the shade again? :D

It's funny to see so much of the modern world around this little piece of history. Behind me you can see part of the ruins.

My four loves strolling along the trail

This is the inside of a pit house replica. It was so nice I told Erik to look carefully so he can, sometime, build one for our family :D

Erik and Angie having a little fun with the planes. Yes this museum is very close to the airport.

Time to Renew

Well, when it rains it pours. My photo camera broke awhile back and has not been replaced. Yesterday I thought the kids where messing with me while I was vacuuming and when I saw fireworks realized that it was the vacuum having a short circuit and then it went dead. Our lawn mower expired when last year we tried to cut some overgrown grass in our house in Maricopa and I made the mistake of not trimming it down first with the weed eater. Now even the lease contract on my house has expired! Time to renew I say...

Get a NEW camera!!!!

Get a NEW lawn mower!!!!

Get a new vacuum!!!!

and...

Definitely RENEW my Lease Contract!!!!

BUT.........................one at a time. :DDDD

A clean house

Mr. Mess

Mr. Clean

Well, it's May and everybody who lives in AZ knows what that means, triple digit temperatures are coming like a runaway train. I love those times in between, like right between Fall and Winter and right between Winter and Spring. Too bad those beautiful, perfect times don't last too long. So, yes, I have turned on the AC tonight because I feel desperate, trying to gasp for fresh air.

Anyway, yesterday we (Pedro, Angie and I) were watching the short video about Stephanie Nielsen called "My new Life", and I loved it. It was so inspiring to see this courageous woman coming to terms with how her life has changed after the airplane crash and how her husband and her kids are the fuel that keeps her going on everyday. So much suffering, so much pain, so much frustration, and yet...so much LOVE, so much patience, so much humility, so much FAITH... I tell you, this woman is inspiring. So once the video was over, and I was holding back my tears, I turn to see how my husband reacts to this beautiful video, and he says: Did you notice that even with her injuries and four little kids, she still manages to keep her house very CLEAN? W H A T ? Of all the beautiful/uplifting things he only chose to see how clean her house was?

I stare at him....kiss him right on the lips....and manage to keep my mouth shut. I go to the kitchen and what do I find? Well, Pedrito on a chair next to the stove where the pot of rice was, just grabbing the rice in handfuls and shoving it in his mouth, well, only half, the other half was on the chair, on the stove, and all over the kitchen floor. It just seemed so ironic. One day, I will have a clean house, but for now, I'll just do my best with two teenagers, a preschooler and a toddler.

"Birthday Girl"

Unbelievably Angie has turned 13. I don't know how but the calendar tells me it's been 13 years since she was born. We decided to take Angie and her friends to see the movie she really wanted to see: "Alice in Wonderland". I first took the whole pack to Cici's Pizza so they could all have full tummies and be happy. They played at the arcade also and Angie took several pictures while being there, just to accidentally erase them later. After that we went to the AMC Theaters and saw this fun film (I love Johnny Depp, what can I say?).

I loved every minute of being with these wild creatures :D; it's not often that they go out together, parentless (except for Angie of course) and they seemed like a mixture of butterflies, parakeet parrots, and howler monkeys :D. The point is that Angie had a fun day celebrating her birthday with her best friends, and her mom felt she was thirteen again for about four hours. And then the clock ticked midnight and my old, wrinkly self, showed up again.

HAPPY BIRTHDAY ANGIE !

Angie the Runner!

It really stinks not having a camera to capture those special moments but oh well...
Yesterday was an exciting day; Angie was selected to compete in a City Meet Competition and she participated in the Hurdle Race (75 meters). I couldn't believe when she first told me since she has never run before, but I guess she was even more surprised than me about qualifying for this event. So we made plans to be there in her very first race and around noon Pedrito woke up from his nap crying, and crying and crying. He spent almost two hours like that and then he fell asleep. He didn't look good so I decided to go watch Angie run and then take Pedrito to the doctor after that, but as soon as we got there he started to cry and cry again. So Pedro, Emma, Davieth and Karmina stayed at Mesa High (that's where the competition took place) and I ended up going to Urgent Care. My poor baby had a "bilateral ear infection" which means both ears were infected and even though it was hard to tell if he had a fever, once the nurse checked his rectal temperature, we found he actually had a fever of 102 degrees! So I got his medication and went home around 7 p.m.

As soon as I got home I got news of what happened to my Angie at the race: She won third place!!!! Yeeaaahhh!! Not bad for a first timer. My husband said she was going strong but one of the runners fell down and she kind lost her speed when she saw what happened but she could have easily come in second place. I am so PROUD of Angie! She amazes me so much! Up until now she has been the athlete of our family and I think she gets that from her dad. I can't wait to see how many more surprises she will give our family and I WILL be right there to encourage her to do her best, and to cheer her up when things don't go too well. Like I said,

I'm proud to be your mom.

P.S. : I will soon have some news about Erik since he joined the wrestling team.

He comes home exhausted after all the practices but is excited about

this sport. He likes strong, physical sports that do not involve running.

I think he found the perfect match :D

All is Well...

It's been 3 days since Pedro had knee surgery. My poor husband was complaining while waiting for the OR that his hand was hurting because of the IV (he hasn't been hospitalized for about 40 years and is not used to having some nurse stick a needle in his hand and then secure it with tape) and I was laughing about it since being a woman with four children you kind of get used to the whole drill of being admitted, change into hospital gown, have IV line secured to your hand for 5, 10, 24 hours?, get ready for excrutiating pain and endure until you have a baby in your arms, right? Well, my husband is not used to all this, so he was having a hard time with the IV, he wouldn't even let me touch his hand because "I might hurt him". Well, after he had surgery and we came home, the REAL pain began. I felt so bad for him, every little movement was painful and even having his leg up on pillows would hurt him. But he was a good trooper and endured to the end. It's been three days and he is SO much better. He even walked without his cane or crutches today. I am so PROUD of him. I hope he can feel completely better soon, he is really ready to go back to work, driving his truck and going around the valley, not sitting in the office sorting papers. We'll go back to the doctor's office on Thursday and see what's the next step.

So with all the doctor's appoinments and the chaos that our family goes through, all is well...

Here I go again...

It's been about two months since the last time I posted anything, life is just kind of busy and suddenly time is gone... What has happened since the last time? Well, my camera is broken and I can't take any pictures, my little girl Emma turned four, and most recently, my husband hurt his knee at work and now he is on crutches, waiting to see the orthopedist next Tuesday to see if he will need surgery, and he is on light duty at work, which means he is simply sorting papers, that nobody else wants to do, and he gets to do it for EIGHT hours. He feels like a bird in a cage, since he loves to be out and about, and office work simply is not for him, BUT it will have to do for the next several weeks until his meniscus has healed and then he will be the best TRUCK DRIVER again!

In other news,

we went to see The Princess and the Frog today,

I took Emma, Angie, and my two little nieces Davieth and Karmina.

About 20 minutes into the movie, Emma kept telling me she was tired and

wanted to go home, Davieth ended up asleep, and only Mina and Angie

really enjoyed the whole movie. I personally didn't like it that much.

It was a fun day with the girls and the best part of my day was...

Going for a nice Valentines' Day Dinner at the church.

Since we go to a Spanish Branch, the whole thing was small and intimate,

(just the way I like it) and then they brought some dance instructors,

who made everybody get up and learn how to dance merengue, salsa, bachata

and cumbia. Since Pedro couldn't dance HE told me to dance with this

other brother who was there by himself and it was just plain fun.

The poor sisters missionaries had to restrain themselves to not join the fun.

So to close this post, I just want to say:

HAPPY VALENTINE'S DAY!

To all my family and friends. I love you!

:D