Too funny not to post

So today is library day for our family. I took Tristan and Aaron to the library for preschool story time and they liked it. Tristan was a little shy at first but he does want to go back again next week. They do 3 stories, puppets and lots of songs, it goes for like 45 minutes and I think they did a great job at keeping the kids entertained. After that we went into the actual library to pick some books and take home with us. It was all fine until it was time to go and I put Aaron in the stroller. Aaron is usually a sweet boy that will do what ever mami wants him to do, but lately he has been a little bit challenging for me. He basically screamed for like 5 minutes and shook his whole body and rocked back and forth in the stroller, it was so embarrassing, I know that it would have been easy to just leave, but Tristan really wanted the books so we stayed in line and he kept screaming. Nothing made him happy, even cracker didn't make the trick. So I get out and he is still screaming and he doesn't stop until I put him in the car, he covered his face and sucked on his thumb... I just thought it was so funny then and I took video of him, I was actually hoping to get him on video screaming and crying but he didn't do it anymore. Here is the video so you can see what happened next.
I guess after almost 5 months he finally got into the terrible twos and I am screwed from now on. He loves to go places and we can't even come into the entrance of the neighborhood or he screams his head off because he wants to go somewhere else.
We will make the attempt to go back to a different library (one closer to our house) for Shayna and Victor to do some crafts after school. It should be fun :)

The Circus

So having a car and being able to go places has been wonderful. Yesterday I found a cool clothing store with great prices, specially for the kids clothes and when I was checking out I noticed they had free circus passes for kids and the show was in the afternoon. So I took all the kids with me after school. The circus was set up at the Humble Civic Center which is like 3 minutes away from our house.


You can't see it very well, but there are four guys on motorcycles in this pic.

I love free stuff so I didn't even care that I was all by myself with 4 kids. The show lasted 2 hours and they had all kinds of neat things for the kids, usually these kind of circus are kind of lame and the kids don't care, but they were pretty good. They even had the motorcycle bubble thing going on at the end which was the favorite event of the afternoon. They had a crazy funny clown and he kept the kids laughing the entire time, even me. I survived the whole thing without any threats of going home if they didn't behave, so it was all good.

Here are the kids in front of the Humble Civic Arena

Here is Aaron enjoying the show and popcorn.

Here is my minivan :)


On a different note, about 10 days ago my new niece was born and we are so happy she is finally here. We went to see her last Sunday so the kids could meet their new cousin and they all liked her a lot. Shayna has this thing for baby girls because she would love to have a little sister, watching her holding Carmen was kind of special. We didn't stay long since my kids are too loud and we didn't want them waking up the baby, hopefully when she gets more alert we will be able to spend more time around them again :)

My new dining table

Here is the picture of my brand new dining table. It is so big and nice looking, we think it fits our life style perfectly and the kids love sitting at the table to eat now. It is so nice to think about having people over for dinner too, we tried that with my brother in Law's family and it really doesn't work that great with a folding table.
The table is so spacious we can actually put all the food in the middle of the table and still have room for our dishes, you know like a normal family. We got the table and chairs delivered yesterday and Tristan and I worked on putting them together for a couple of hours. One of the pieces on the one of the chairs did not have the holes it was supposed to have so we loaded the car (I love that I can do that now) with all the kids and met Dan after work to go back to IKEA and replace the chair. The silly customer service people decided to put the chair together and had Dan waiting for like half an hour, he finally told them to PLEASE just exchange the chair and be able to be on our way...
We stopped at Jack in the Box to get something to eat at home, since I didn't have the time to cook a nice meal and sat at the table to eat together. It is so nice because I will be able to work on my sewing projects again and my cake decorating.

Carless no more.

Yes the title is right CARLESS no more!!! I didn't mispell it. So this is how my weekend went. On Friday I kept the car and enjoyed it very much, then to top it off after picking Dan up we drove to IKEA to shop for our dream dining table. We also had dinner there which was really nice because there were hardly any people at the restaurant and it was very peaceful, except for Tristan falling off the stool and bumping his head on the shopping cart and then on the floor (poor guy). They still had the table we wanted and we got all 6 chairs, but we could fit maybe 8 if we had to. It is dark brown and not very fancy, just the way we like them because we figure that we will have our little ones for a while and they tend to be kind of destructive anyways, this is a low maintenance table and will keep very well with the family. On Saturday we had decided we were going to finally go shopping for a car for me and drove all the way to Pearland. We discovered that it is a very nice small town with the country feeling and still they have Walmart, Target, Old Navy, etc all kinds of stores. There was a Minivan that we wanted to go check out and we liked it but decided to keep looking. We could not find anything else and got back home kind of sad and after talking and thinking about it for a while, we gave the guys a call and managed to get the price lowered. So we drove back down to Pearland and now we are a happy family with a 2001 Mercury Villager. I didn't take pictures yet because I want a picture of the whole family in front of it.
On the way to Pearland we saw a couple of interesting things on the side of the road like the heads of 6 of the Presidents of the United States (we could not figure out why they were there in the middle of nowhere), we also saw a bunch of structures made out of metal in the shapes of animals and bugs and some other stuff. It was a long day, we drove all over the place and the kids behaved very well considering the circumstances, we took them to Walmart afterward to get them a little something to show how much we appreciated their good behavior (I know, we spoiled them).

P.S. The table will be delivered here tomorrow, so I will post pictures of it then. We have been so patient waiting all this time for this two things and it sure feels good to get them, patience pays off.



This is a picture of the kids sleeping during our second trip to Pearland yesterday, poor guys they were so tired.

Good deals!!!

I got to keep the car today and I am telling you that I think there is a reason why I don't have a car right now... I love shopping and it would be dangerous to have me go out everyday spending money :)
I also took the car for an oil change so that was good. Now let me tell you about what I found. 3 tops, all three for $11.00 at a store called Burkes Outlet, they have a special on Fridays where they give you an extra 10% off, so that was great. I also found a cute dress for Shayna for $10.00 at Family Dollar that she can wear for Easter, seriously they have the cutest dresses there, you should give it a try, I have been buying Shayna's dresses there for years and she loves them too. I went to the Good Will store looking for books for Victor to read, since he has been reading all of Shayna's books and I got a couple of books for the other kids as well. I found a set of nesting blocks for Aaron for $1.99 and the rest of the books were $0.49 and $0.79. The kids were all excited when they got home and got their not so new books. Here is a couple of pictures of the little ones.




The kids were sick for like three days and Tristan and Victor had to miss school for a couple of days, we were going crazy at the house and I was more than happy to see them going back to school. The day I took Tristan back, his teacher told me about a special friend that he has in his classroom and told me all about how he holds her hand when they go to the cafeteria and makes sure she is OK, they like each other very much. The little girl is very cute and when I asked him about her, he smiles and got very shy. So cute!!! The teacher told me today that he is a very cute boy and very smart, which I have to agree with because just today he was working on some math in the car, I asked him to tell me how much is 1+1, 1+2, 2+3, 3+3.. etc, we tried different numbers and he always have me the right answer. I am so proud of my little boy. Heartbreaker and smart, what else can I ask for?

Sex book...

Dan has this book of the month club which he loves because he gets really cheap books, I don't like it because you always have to buy a book every month. Yesterday a box came in the mail with the book for the month and I was kind of curious to see what book he got this month since he has been reading them to me (Nicholas Sparks books). I opened the box in the kitchen while the kids were eating their snack and was very surprised to see the title and picture of the book, the title was "Sexo Tantrico" (Tantric Sex)with the picture of a naked woman and a man doing more than hugging in the picture and I was embarrassed since the kids were sitting right in front of me. I quickly put it back in the box and took it to the study to hide it. I knew it was a mistake but when Dan called I decided to tease him about it. I asked him if he had order the last book from the BOMC and he said yes, then I asked him if he had actually picked it and he said yes and was very proud of it. I started to think that maybe he really had gotten that book for me, since it was in Spanish. He told me that he had specially ordered the book for me this month and then I got a little offended and asked him why the heck he would get THAT kind of book for me. He was confused, I was confused :) Turns out they made a big mistake and he felt really bad about the whole thing. Later at night he send them an email explaining how embarrassing the whole thing was and to please send out the right book (a sewing book). The funny thing is that they answered back apologizing for the mistake and they said to keep the book as a GIFT!!! We are now the proud owners of a sex book :) It is going in the trash for sure. These kind of things always happen to us all the time.

Meant to be together.

So just before Valentine's day I was at the store one night and waiting in line to check out when I noticed a package candy bars. The interesting thing about this package is that it contained Dan's favorite candy bar and my favorite one. I just could not help but to smile and to think of it as a sign, yes even after all these years I still find signs that Dan and I are meant to be together. It is silly, but to me it means something special. So I bought the bag and came home all happy about it and Dan also thought it was kind of cool to see the two kinds of candy bars in the same bag, we have been eating a little bit every night ever since. He is a Reeses's kind of guy and I am a Kit Kat kind of gal.



About what happened on Saturday, I just can't help but feel bad about the whole thing, I could not sleep last night and got up to read the scriptures and tried to find some kind of comfort in them. I know that I acted wrong that day and things could have been said and done differently. I mainly feel so bad because I gave my kids a really bad example, as a Mom I am supposed to teach them and guide them in the right path and picking a fight with that lady was certainly not the right path. At family home evening I gave an official apology to all the members of the family and explained to them that what their mom did was not OK, it doesn't matter how mad you are, how frustrated you get... you need to turn the other chick. I can't get this guilty feeling to go away and I know that I can't find that lady and tell her that I am sorry, in the end it is kind of sad that you have to spend Valentine's day all by yourself, maybe she was having a really bad day and I just made it worse. In any case there was no excuse for my behavior and I did not feel proud of myself for what I did.

My Valentine's Day

Valentine's day started for me last night with Dan bringing goodies for everybody and roses for me (they are pink because I hate red roses, but that is another story), the cake was also part of the celebration... this morning I woke up late which I was planning on doing anyways and the house was so quiet... it was lovely :)
I took my sewing table apart and took it back to the store (long story too) and then went shopping for a couple of things but also Sunday clothes for the kids, socks and shoes that were very much needed and they all look so cute with their outfits. Then we went out for lunch to a Chinese place close by and we had fun eating lots of yummy food. Everything was just fine until... somebody got the best of me. We were coming out of the restaurant and I was trying to get a hold of Tristan who always runs out in the parking lot when I hear somebody honking and then I see this huge pick up truck making signs at me, I approached the lady to check and see if my kids were the reason for all the noise and yes it was. Dan was looking at me like "what is going on?" As a mom you can understand what having four kids means and how crazy it can get, especially when you are out. I only have two arms and can't keep track of all of them and I know that they are my responsibility but when you are behind the wheel you also need to watch out for little people. I told the lady to just be careful with the little ones and she rolled her window down and just started yelling at me telling me to be a better mom and to keep track of them and who knows what else, she made me SOOOOOO MAD. Here is where it gets ugly, I also started talking to her or should I say yelling at her, basically told her that I try to do my best but they are kids and it is hard and also that she should be careful because if she kills somebody with her car she could go to jail (I know, it was crazy), she told me I could go to jail to for not being a good mother and keep track of my kids, I could not take it anymore and called her "stupid lady" (I feel so bad now), she then called me a b%&$*!!! and she kept saying stuff, I told her to remember what it was like to have kids and some other stuff, it was horrible. I was shaking and almost cried she left in a hurry and then I talked to my kids and reminded them about the rules we have when we go out. When I got in the car I broke down and felt ashamed and embarrassed and felt bad for Dan who probably was embarrassed to be around me at the moment. Dan said that I over reacted and it was probably because I had so much anger in me with all the stuff that has happened to me lately, and he is probably right. There is no excuse for my behavior I know that, but all I have to say is that she was a bitter old woman who was probably mad for eating all by herself on Valentine's Day. I don't usually get this mad, I was a mess when I got home and had to cry for a little while until I calmed down, my heart was pounding and I was hurting but I am OK now.
Besides the little incident I had a fun Valentine's day and now I am ready to watch a movie or something.







Here are the kids in front of the restaurant and showing off their new clothes.

Walmart employees.

I don't mind going to Walmart and most of the time I get out of there happy with my experiences but some times there are certain people that just treat me really bad. I am sure that being "latina" has a lot to do with what happens to me, not only at Walmart but other places. Dan bought me a truffle chocolate cake, it looked so good and we sat down to eat when I noticed the flavor was not right, it tasted old and gross, so I went to check on the expiration date and it said "eat or freeze before 02/12/2009". I worked at a bakery before and I know they are supposed to pull those cakes out on that day, I also know that sometimes they forget so I took it back to the store to get a refund or exchange for another one, but I was only going through the front door were they usually give you a sticker to do a refund or exchange. The lady there asked me what was wrong with the cake and I told her, she then told me that the cake was probably just fine, I told her that she could have a bite if she wanted to and then pointed at the expiration date sticker, to what she replied that today was only the 13th, so??? I told her that I know what chocolate is supposed to taste like and that the cake really was bad, she then told me "you are probably just used to eating Spanish chocolate", I just stood there and looked at her, a bunch of very offensive thoughts came to my head and the only thing that came out of me was "what did you say?", she of course just smiled and I told her how ridiculous that was, I walked away thinking about what she said, I mean what does that even mean? Chocolate is chocolate, rotten food is rotten food it does not matter were you are from or what you are used to eating, the fact remained that the cake was bad and she only needed to give me the sticker. Some people just say the stupidest things or I just take the wrong way (the 2nd is probably most likely). While I was in line waiting to do the return I kept shaking my head and thinking about that woman and I thought about walking back to her and give her a piece of my mind, but she would have probably forgotten all about me already. I got the money back and did not feel like buying another cake, not because of the bad taste that cake left me but because of the bad taste that woman left in me, if that makes any sense. I have been living in this country for 10 years and I have encountered all kinds of costumer service, good and bad, for some reason being Hispanic has to do a lot with the way people treat me, you have to live it to understand what it feels like. Simple comments like does make me so mad because I don't really know what they mean by it, so I always assume the worst. Anyways I am sure you all think this was nothing, I just feel mad and wanted to write it down. Aveces solo quisiera regresarme a Guatemala donde nadie hace distincion de quien soy como me miro y si tengo acento o no, me pregunto cuantas veces yo trate mal a los pobres indigenas de Guatemala y talvez debi haber sido mas amable, pero regularmente trate a todos de la misma forma. Los gringos a veces me enojan tanto y pienso que Dan es el unico que es amable con los latinos. El haberme convertido ciudadana no ha cambiado nada en la forma en que la gente me mira y trata, la frustracion que siento aveces es tan grande que no lo puedo explicar y si no lo escribo no me sentire mejor, asi que aqui esta, ya lo escribi y aunque la gente no lo entienda a mi me hace sentir mejor. Tonta senora de Walmart...

Photo shoot with the kids

It runs in the family

There are some kids in the Brown family that fall asleep in unusual places, I have been able to take pictures of Victor sleeping in weird positions, but I found Tristan tonight very carefully sleeping on one of the steps going upstairs. He looked so peaceful there, I could not resist taking a picture.

Today I made my third diaper cake, this time I made it for my sister in Law Amber who is due anytime now. She is having a girl and I had fun decorating the cake with girly colors and I also spent some time sewing a couple of burp rags to go with the cake. She came over with the entire family to pick it up even her Mom who is staying with them for a while and they all seemed to like it. I am including the picture of the second diaper cake I made a couple of weeks ago, that one was for a boy. I really enjoy making these cakes and I try to add things that can be useful and cute.

Our busy day yesterday.

Yesterday was one of the busiest days we have had in a while. It all started at 7:00 am. We had an appointment with Dan at a college campus nearby to do the final interview and get all the paperwork ready for him to start going to school this spring... yes this might come as a shocker for a lot of people, but he is going to start going to school after all these years. We are excited and understand that it will be hard but we want him to do this, so we will deal with the stress and probably less time with daddy during the week. He will do online classes as well as a Saturday class.












So what do you do with 4 kids while you are talking to all this college people? One has an MP4 player, one has an mp3player, one has a security blanket and the other has a word search book to work on. We did the same thing last week so I guess this time they were all kind of sick of it and were acting like normal kids... We waited outside while he was busy inside and the kids ran and play and I took pictures. After that we went to a birthday party at place called Jumping Joeys and the kids as well as Dan had lots of fun sliding, jumping and running all over the place. Aaron is just a little dare devil and was having the time of his life. Later in the evening we went to a Ward Social were we celebrated Valentine's Day, I got to meet a new sister and ate cheese cake and then went to the bookstore at the Mall to buy "Our Town", which is the book I am supposed to be reading for the Book Club. We got some good Chinese Chicken from the Mall, and then watched some TV. It was a very long day and we did not want to go to Church but our callings are important to us, so we went. I have been sick this week and didn't feel like getting up early again :( but it went OK, we had only 6 kids show up since almost everybody has the flu now. Dan is sick, Victor is getting sick... I am getting better but probably will get it again.
So all in all we had a good weekend and are now ready for the new week.

Just Stuff.

I keep a journal on LDSJournal.com and have been using it since 6 months ago. It is a great way to keep writing like I used to years ago. The cool thing about it is that on the days I write on my blog and I don't feel like rewriting everything again, I just copy and paste it in there, they even let you paste pictures there now. Dan told me that after a while if you want to print your journal they even bind it for you, so I am thinking that is a neat idea to print my blog/journal. I love the internet!!!
So forgive me if some days you find things written in Spanish or if I just blog every single day :) I can't help it.



It has been very frustrating to find out that Shayna's result for the Gifted and Talented program wont do any good in her school, turns out they don't have a program for it and she will have to wait until she goes to High School to finally get some special program. Mean while her teacher has been looking for extra work for her to do at home and she gets special privileges like extra time on the computer to do research and things like that. She had to finish two projects in the last two weeks and it has been really fun.
Dan and I got both involved a little bit in the process. She made a Solar System model and wrote a story about a trip to Neptune. She did a wonderful job on both of those and she is very excited because at school her teacher went to the third grader classrooms to show off her model. The teacher also informed me that she scored a 100% on some test (TAKS/TEKS) that is very important in Texas, basically if they don't pass this test they will have to repeat 3rd grade. At least she has that covered :) The official test will be done in march and they are just getting ready for it nonstop.




Last week we wanted to bake something with the kids and I found what I think will be our favorite chocolate chip cookie recipe, they had lots of fun mixing and waiting for the cookies to come out, we also baked some brownies from scratch which was a first one for me :) Soon after they came out they all enjoyed them with a glass of milk.



This is what happens to Aaron's hair every time he is done eating, you kind find all kinds of food in there, scrambled eggs, yogurt, bananas, beans, butter, corn... the list goes on and on and on.



On Monday they had a special episode of one of our favorite TV shows, CHUCK. They had the show on 3d and we wore glasses to watch it, the show is not for kids but they all wanted to see what the big deal was... it wasn't that exciting really, but here is a picture of them enjoying the glasses.

Babies...

I have two sisters in law that are pregnant and one of them is having her baby in a couple of weeks, the other one is due in March I think. I am excited for them because they are both having baby girls.
We were talking with Dan about how we felt back in the day when we only had Shayna and how the moment felt right to get pregnant again. I was thinking about how you feel in those last weeks, nervous, anxious, happy, super excited, tired, etc... it is all such a cool experience. So I was asking Dan if he ever felt like "oh crap what have we done?" or if he was ever freaking out about having another littler one, and he never did. I think that we both felt like it was the right time and we were just so excited about what the new experience was going to be like, I mean Shayna was so much fun and cute that we wanted to have another one. It happened the same way with every single one of my kids after that. While everyone else was worried for me because I was adding one more mouth to feed to my family, I was just excited and not worried about a single thing, except for the health of my baby :)
The funny thing is that if were to get pregnant right now, I would not be happy or excited at first, because we are not planning on it, we don't feel ready for it and know that it just isn't the right time for #5.
Somehow I have this idea that in two years when Aaron starts PK, I will have more time by myself at home and it will be perfect to have a little one once again, it will be perfect because I will be able to give the baby all the time he or she is going to need and I wont go insane like I have with the last one. Believe me I was ready for Aaron, but somehow it turned a little bit stressful after he was born. We still love having four kids, but number 2 and 3 were definitely easier on me (mentally).
So I guess what I am trying to say is that I am happy the way things are right now for us, sure I get baby hungry, specially having my sister in law so close and knowing that she will bring her baby home soon, but at the same time knowing that I am not prepared for another baby brings me right back to reality and everything seems OK. Babies are a blessing, my kids are living proof of it, without them my life would be so different. I just want to enjoy my last baby so much without feeling guilty for not giving that baby the same attention I gave to my other ones.
Just to remind me how cute my kids were when they were born, here are their baby pictures.


Shayna, born in VA

Victor, born in WV




Aaron, born in UT


Tristan, born in VA

More drama... not really :)

I consider myself a glutton for punishment, I never give up and keep trying until I achieve my goal. What am I talking about? Well my issue with being new in the ward and trying to not get ignored. I honestly think that it is mostly my fault that people don't talk to me that much, also that having a calling in the nursery does not help me at all. I had a baby shower to go to on Friday and I decided that I was going to make myself known to as many people as I could. Of course when I got there I lost my cool and ended up sitting in the corner of the room were nobody else was sitting. I did talk to people that night and by the end of the evening I ended up getting myself involved in a book club and a play group. I think the reason why people were talking to me more is because I made another cute diaper cake and almost everyone thought it was cute and was so surprised that I made it.
Today in nursery was also better, since I wasn't sure the sisters were going to talk to me I pushed myself to make conversation with them and didn't stop until we ended up actually talking and having a good time. I didn't know if it was going to work, but it did. The same sister that had completely ignored me before, turned out to be very nice and we have something in common, she likes to sew and she offered to show me how to make this cute quilt that she brought to the baby shower. Believe it or not, this made my whole Sunday go much more smoothly and I feel happier now.
I remember being in the same situation when I first moved to Utah, it took me exactly a year and a half to make friends in the ward, sure I had my neighbors, who were just the best always making sure we were OK, but I also needed to be able to feel like part of a group of moms with young kids. It is very important for me to be in a group where people are going through the same things that I am and of course that they have kids to play with my own. I learned so much from those friends and I know that if I hadn't pushed my way into their little group, I would have missed out on a lot of learning experiences. I also know that after a while I will find good friends here and when the time comes for us to move again, it will be hard to say good bye.