1st week down...

Isabel's first week went pretty damned good! When I went to pick her up on the first day, she had so much to tell me. She made friends, she has two teachers, she got to play on the playground, she had Jello for lunch, etc. etc. I'm so proud of her! There were no problems at all during the week. She went to bed right at 9:30 each night (which in a week or two I'm going to move up to 9:00pm) with no complaints! Seeing how we were going to bed pretty darned late this summer, this is great.

There was one small hurdle, though... On Thursday I received paperwork from the ESL (English as a Second Language) program at her school. They did an oral test on her, and she qualifies for help through the program. I was kind of hurt and disappointed when I received the paperwork. I felt like I did something wrong. The next morning, though, I went and spoke with the ESL director, and I signed the permission slip. She is going to have someone go into her classroom and give her extra help as she needs it.

Tomorrow Olivia starts all day prekindergarten! I'm excited for her! I have to go home and iron her uniform and label all of her school supplies. I'll post pictures of her first day as soon as I can!

Freakin' a bit here...

I've been bursting into tears randomly all weekend. Tomorrow, August 17th, my first born will be heading off to all day kindergarten. On Thursday, we went to meet her teacher and see her classroom. I was fighting back tears the entire evening. But, the closer we get, the harder it becomes to squelch the urge to cry.

I'm usually not a sentimental person, so these last couple of days have been really hard! Even though my heart is breaking at the thought of walking away from her classroom tomorrow morning, I'm also excited for her. Isabel is beyond prepared for tomorrow. She has checked her backpack a bazillion times. She asked me to make sure her tennis shoes were still in the box. She has been practicing writing her name like crazy, even though she's been able to do so since she was three. She loves change, and adapts quickly to new environments. She's going to have a blast tomorrow!

At least I hope she does... If she has a bad day and doesn't want to go back, I'm likely to let her stay home with me forever! ;)

Wish her luck tomorrow!! And then its Olivia's turn next week!!

Crazyness!

Things have been kind of crazy around here... Can you believe Isabel is going to kindergarten in less than a week?? And the next week Olivia starts her all day pre-k program!! Oh my gosh... The last few weeks have been spent searching for school supply bargains, scheduling doctors' appointments, searching down immunization records for Isabel...

Sheesh!!

Today Isabel has her check-up with her pediatrician. Olivia is spending the day with Jose's mom. I'll post an update as soon as we get back from the doctor. Adios!!

Pictures and doctor's update...

Here are some pictures from Olivia's 4th birthday party. :) Here she is with her little pinata. We had one little pinata for the small kids and a HUGE one for the bigger kids.

Isabel and her BFF Juliana posing for a picture while Olivia blows the candles out on her cake.

This is the park where we had the party at. Isn't is beautiful?? Everyone thought it was an awesome park.

And here is a picture of the bounce house we rented. That is Olivia and my mother-in-law sitting by the entrance.

Anyways...

We had our follow-up appointment regarding Olivia's wheezing episode the other night. The pediatrician said that at this point, he is almost certain it is asthma. He put her on a preventative medicine (Pulimicort) and also said that we are going to have to postpone her oral surgery until her lungs clear up.

So...

Any cool plans for the weekend?? We are invited to another party at the same park where we had Olivia's. I'm kind of excited. It is for a little girl who is turning two. I hit up an AWESOME sale at the Children's Place and bought her two outfits (skirts and halter tops), matching hair pretties, and sunglasses for $25! :)

Have a nice weekend! TGIF!

Haven't had much to report...

I've been kind of busy getting used to being back at school and having homework and tests and projects due!

Olivia's party was AWESOME. We could not have asked for nicer weather! The park looked beautiful! Once I get somewhere with a faster internet connection, I'll go ahead and upload some pictures of her party. She had so much fun. She says her favorite part was the bounce house!

Last night she gave me a scare, though! I ended up rushing her off to urgent care, where they said she was having an asthma attack! We haven't had the "asthma" word thrown around in a good 9-12 months. I had hope we were over this! Apparently not. She got bad, and she got bad FAST. She went from a little bit of coughing in the morning to non-stop coughing by 5pm and deep, scary-sounding wheezing.

They took her vitals at the urgent care clinic, and within seconds two doctors were in the room and they said she needed a nebulizer treatment and steroids. They also told me I need to talk to her pediatrician and see about getting her an official diagnosis so that she might be put on a preventative med. She is needing the nebulizer treatments every four hours like clockwork right now. We'll see how things go in the next couple of days.

Other than that, I can't really think of much to report. Take care everyone!!

Party planning committee

I can not wait until the new season of the Office starts! That is TOTALLY not the direction that this post was headed in my brain, but what can you do about it?

Also, totally not related, but one of those things I feel compelled to talk about, last night I caught a brief-but-entirely frightening glance of my mother-in-law and her beau participating in the horizontal cha-cha. My eyes, people! My eyes! At the moment I felt like gouging them out of my head! But then I realized the oh-so-horrible mental image has been forever etched into my memory. Eyes or no eyes I'm still going to remember it. Ewww...

Why the fuck would they not lock the damned doors?! Really?! What the hell?!

(sigh)

Anyways, now for the real reason for this post: Olivia's 4th birthday party is on Saturday!! I'm so excited! It looks like everything is going as planned! We're having it at a park, and I plan on serving fried chicken, Mexican-style rice, potato salad, macaroni salad, chips and dip, chips and salsa, and diced fruit. It kind of sounds like a lot of food, but if everyone that is invited shows up, there will be a lot of people.

I already have the goody bags made, and all the candy for the pinatas ready. Parties make me so happy!! I can't wait!

Math woes.

Monday was my official "First Day Of School". I was excited and a tiny bit nervous as well, but all went well! I am taking Intro. To Algebra, or MATH 921B. Unfortunately, when I took the placement test, I failed the math portion miserably and this course is a refresher class to get people prepared to take Intermediate Algebra.

Right now, things are super easy. Seriously. We are adding and subtracting. No joke, people. We did greater than or less than yesterday. Um... I totally thought I had masted that skill in 5th grade, but apparently not!

Today I also start Human Growth & Development. It is a FIVE HOUR CLASS. FIVE HOURS!!! I'm going to go crazy cooped up in a classroom for five hours! Wish me luck! I can't afford to let my attention stray, because in a class that long I bet we cover a LOT of material!

Not much else to report. Olivia's birthday party is on Saturday. Her birthday is actually today! She is a four year old now!!! WOW!

Speaking of Olivia, since I'm going to be going to school full time in the fall, we had a decision to make. Day care? Preschool/day care? All day preschool??

At first, I was totally against the all day preschool idea. I think its a bit much for some five year olds! I couldn't even fathom the idea of putting my four year old in a classroom for 8 hours a day!

But then I started reading the information packet the principal gave us. And I brought it up to Jose to see what he thought. We've talked about and talked about and talked about it, and we decided to sign her up.

Economically, its the better choice. Daycare/preschool is $110 a week. The all day preschool is $300/month. Religiously, its the ideal school setting for us, and I'm even considering switching Isabel to the school for first grade.

Anyways, time to run... 10:15, time for class! Peace!

YAY!

The local news station had a Twitter message offering tickets to tonight's show of High School Musical at the local children's theater. I e-mailed them right away, and they were kind enough to give me three tickets! I'm so excited! I know that Isabel is going to LOVE it! I'm a little apprehensive about Olivia, so she might wind up staying with my mom. Movies are almost pushing it for her, so I don't know how good she'd do with live theater, you know what I mean??

Not much else to report. I have to go pick up the tickets by 5pm at the news station. The show starts at 7pm! :)

Back to school... and dentist woes.

Sorry, dearest blog, for I have been neglecting you lately. The weather has been fairly nice, and we've been spending quite a bit of time enjoying the great outdoors!

Anyways...

I've postponed mentioning this next tidbit, because I wasn't 100% sure it was going to happen. Now that tuition has been paid and classes start on Monday, I guess its safe to bring it up.

I start school on Monday!! How exciting and nerve wrecking is that?! Jose thinks that we should be taking advantage of him working out of town and making decent money, and what greater way to take advantage of the situation than for me to go to school and get a degree?

I'm going to be a full-time student starting in the fall. Right now I'm only taking two classes, human growth and a math refresher course. I still need to buy my text books, but I can do that on Friday as soon as Jose deposits his check into the bank.

I've bought mechanical pencils, notebooks, folders, and pens. I'm excited in an utterly geeky way. I can't wait to start doing homework and taking tests!

Wish me luck!!! :)

And now, a rather depressing bit of news. I took the girls to the dentist yesterday. I cried when I got the news. Olivia is getting her two front teeth pulled, and three crowns on her back molars. Isabel is getting one tooth pulled, two crowns, and four cavities filled.

I *knew* Olivia was going to need some work done. That was a given, seeing how she's been having dental work done since she was a baby. Isabel came as a shock to me, and I'm so upset with myself. Ugh.

The dentist and the receptionist were VERY, VERY nice (our first time there). The receptionist told us we ARE NOT the only ones in this boat, and that a lot of the time it is FAR worse. It made me feel slightly better, but I still suck. :(

They recommend us going to the hospital and getting all of the work done in one visit. If our health insurance okays it, that's the road we're going to go down. If not, I guess we'll be making lots of trips to the dentist!

We'll see. Wish us luck in that area, too!

Take care!

We're home from our little vacation!

After LOTS and LOTS and LOTS of driving, we've made it safely home! We sure had a lot of fun! We swam like crazy in Phoenix, met Jose's family and visited Disneyland in California, and enjoyed the sights in Las Vegas!

The highlight of our trip was Friday, when we went to Disneyland. The girls were in awe the entire time we were there! We rode rides all day long, and also caught the street celebration parade TWICE! LOL!

I'm posting some pics on here, and there are even more on my Myspace.

We had fun, but I'm glad to be home!!

On Saturday, we also were lucky enough to check out the Swap Meet. We got some GREAT deals, including EVERYTHING we need to baptize Karina's son. We bought everything (suit, shoes, socks, undies, undershirt, and the little box thingy with the candle and stuff in it) for $70! Here in Omaha that stuff would have cost me over $200!

Tomorrow I'm taking him to Portrait Innovations to get some pictures of him in his little suit. I'm excited! LoL!

Where might we be, you ask?

PHOENIX BABY!!!

Wait, wait. It gets even better! Jose is taking me and the kids to Disneyland! We're freakin' stoked!

I can't wait to share pictures with you guys! I'm so excited. Sorry for the crappy cell phone pics, but I had to share SOMETHING.

I'll update more if I get a chance. Take care!! Bye!!

The Cinco De Mayo festivities begin tomorrow!

Yay! Tomorrow our town's the annual 5 de Mayo parade! I'm so excited. It looks like the weather is going to be pretty good, too! I'm going to load up the wagon and lawn chairs tonight, so that we can leave early tomorrow and claim a good seat.

I guess I'm feeling nostalgic lately with all these photos from the past. Here were are at Olivia's 1st Cinco De Mayo parade. Olivia was 9 months old at the time, and Isabel had just turned two. The lady with the baby happens to be my mother-in-law, whom which I am none to happy with at the moment. Yeah, yeah. I know. What else is new, right?

I guess if you want to get technical, that wasn't officially Olivia's 1st Cinco De Mayo parade. The year before, at 9 months pregnant, I had actually MARCHED in the parade with my fellow co-workers. They were all fighting to hold down one of those huge, annoying balloon figures (Macys parade style) against the 45 mph wind gusts, while I was marching along with the little kids waving little Mexican flags. I felt kind of ridiculous, but whatever.

Anyways... back to 2009!!

Tomorrow I plan on taking the girls to the parade and to enjoy all the yummy Mexican food, and we'll go to the carnival Sunday afternoon. I bet the rides will be SUPER PACKED right after the parade, don't you think??

I hope to get lots of cool pictures tomorrow. Let's hope it doesn't rain! We have a busy day ahead of us!

Food dreams are taking over!

So, I forgot to mention that yesterday morning I was dreaming about going with Karina (Jose's niece, mom to the little boy that we are going to be Godparents of) to the buffet to eat some breakfast. But this was a special buffet indeed. I grabbed a waffle, and it was stuffed with a chicken fried steak and gravy!

Last night, I was dreaming about chowing down on some Kentucky Fried Chicken. It was soooo good.

WTF?! Why am I dreaming about food so much? Its definitely not because I'm depriving myself during the day! Hah! I kind of lost steam for the whole diet thing a month or so ago.

Sheesh... I must be a true fatty if food is even seeping into my dreamlife. And its not even healthy food. Stuffed waffles and fried chicken?! Give me a break!

Anyways...

TGIF! Tomorrow is Diana's niece's 2nd birthday. I'm excited to take the girls to her party. They are going to have a blast! In honor of the event, here are pictures of my girls at Maritza's party last year. They went all out and had a clown that made awesome balloon animals.

Dreams...

I've been having some weird ass dreams lately...

Last night, I dreamed I was at Once Upon A Child (kids' clothing consignment store) pawing through racks upon racks of clothes and they had NOTHING cute in my DDs' sizes. It was quite distressing! ;)

The other night, I dreamed I was in Mexico City and for whatever reason I had to pretend that I was the daughter of some famous drug lord. They were filling me up with all kinds of information in case anyone had any questions for me. It was weird. Even weirder was that I was young (like 6 or 7) but had the thought process that I do now at 24.

Weird, weird, weird.

I've also been dreaming NON-STOP about my BFF's wedding. I must be stressing about it or something, because I seem to dream about her wedding 75% of the time! My most recent wedding dream involved me waking up at 11am the day of the wedding, and I didn't have my bridesmaid's dress yet!!! I went to store after store after store and not one single store had a dress that even FIT ME, let alone the color I needed! I ended up in some ugly flowered dress. :(

Phew... it stresses me out even remembering!

Thank God, I already have ordered my dress. This is what I ordered:


Instead of the pink, it will be a gold color. The bride picked Tealness and Harvest Gold as her two colors. And I will be using the spaghetti straps that the dress comes with. Very cute. Simple. :)

Hmm...

We have quite a few childrens' movies on VHS and I'm starting to notice something. Whoever was Tigger voice in the New Adventures of Winnie The Pooh seems to be in every other Disney movie we watch!! I noticed it last night during "Hercules" and now during some "Little Mermaid" spin-off.

Anyways...

I'm having major in-law drama right now. Its pretty bad. They all, with the rare exception of my soon-to-be comadre, suck. In honor of her and her non-suckiness, here is a picture of my soon-to-be hijado (Godson).


LoL, that is his "CHEESE!" face. I have these kids all camera traumatized. He's pretty damned cute, isn't he? His 1st birthday is coming up next week! Birthdays make me happy!!

I'm blue and da be de da be da...

I'm apologizing in advance for this entry. But I have a theory, damn it, and I need to get it out SOMEWHERE.

Jose is from Jalisco, Mexico. To get all technical on y'alls, he is from a teeny tiny little town called El Bajio or El Pueblo de la Laguna, which is about 15 minutes away from a decent sized town called Lagos De Moreno.

In El Pueblo de la Laguna, there is a pig farm. (Ha, now you see where this is going??) Maybe "pig farm" isn't the right term, but its one of those barns filled to the brim with little piggies that they are getting big and fat to slaughter. This place REEKS. There is seriously a little swamp of pig poo behind this place. Flies are RAMPANT in this area. Its gross.

Jose's cousin and his wife went down to Mexico towards the end of March. His wife (along with others from the area) got REALLY REALLY sick. This lady complains that she felt like she couldn't breathe, and her whole body was in pain, etc etc. They never went to a doctor. She ended up taking some pills, and got over it after about 10 days.

Maybe these people are getting swine flu?? Maybe they've BEEN getting it and since they are either not seeking medical attention or if they are its not being documented no one knows about it? I mean, I know they claim that the first person infected with the flu was the small boy from Veracruz or wherever, but how do they know that for sure?

Hmmmm...

It makes you think, doesn't it????

Picnic!

We went on our very much anticipated picnic this afternoon. I woke up, cleaned the apartment as fast as I could, took a shower, and got the three of us ready to go. We had a run a couple of errands, and buy some goodies for our picnic first. We ended up with fried chicken from Wal-Mart as our "main course". LoL, the sandwiches didn't sound appealing any more this morning!

We fed the ducks and the fish an entire loaf of bread! The girls thought that was the coolest part. We also went on a small hike where Isabel spotted a big, ugly snake!! She was pretty shaken up after the run in with the snake (you'd have think it had tried to bite her finger off or something from the way she was carrying on!) but once she noticed the playground the snake was soon forgotten.

Picnic at the park!

Holy crap, it took me forever to spell "picnic". For some reason it looks so weird to me spelled like that, but according to spell check and a quick Google search its the right way.

Craziness...

Anyways, tomorrow we are planning to have a picnic lunch at the park. The girls are going to LOVE it! I think we might go over to my mom's house early to snag her picnic supplies now that I'm thinking about it. She has a really cool green picnic basket that has green plates and utensils!

I'm going to take the easy route and pack sandwiches for us. I'll do a couple of turkey sandwiches and a couple of PB&J sandwiches. A couple of bottles of water, some chips, and some fruit, and we should be set!

I'm still trying to decide what park to go to. I guess we'll see how far I feel like driving in the morning! :)

Park...

We went to the park this morning to enjoy the totally awesome temps that are in the mid 70s. It rocked! I'm so glad that Spring is finally here. Whoo-freaking-hoo!!! Summer time here we come!

I took tons of pictures today. I'm falling deeper in love with my camera every day. :)

(The pics are really small because wireless internet connection is slower than the cable internet was, so I resize the pics so that uploading doesn't take three years)


And, just for fun, this picture is from May of 2007. It is a picture of the girls on the exact same motorcycle as the above pic. :)

Harry Potter...

Oh my gosh, I just watched the trailer for the new Harry Potter movie (coming out in July - only 3 short months away!!!) and it looks AMAZING. I can't wait to see it! This is totally going to be one of those movies that I MUST see at the midnight opening! I will buy tickets as soon as they go on sale!

I'm so excited. Between the new Twilight movie and the new Harry Potter movie, I have a very thrilling cinematic couple of months ahead of me.

Gosh, I just reread that last sentence and realized how big of a dweeb I am. Sheesh.

Anyways, I checked out the Goodwill today on my home from running errands. I love thrift stores. Jose is less than thrilled by them, but oh well. Today, I bought the girls 5 VHS movies (Land Before Time 3, Winnie the Pooh, Air Bud, Problem Child 2, and 1 other), two calendars, a coffee mug for Jose, and 8 books for me. I'm a bookaholic! I need a big book shelf to display all of my recent book purchases!! :) It makes me happy to see all of my books on display.

Jose's family are amazed by how much me and the girls enjoy books. Its kind of sad that NONE of Jose's nieces/nephews in Mexico have any books at home (other than the bible). Next time I go, I'm going to try to take some Spanish books down to them!