There is beauty all around!!!

A couple of days ago I was trying to find a Rec Center close by (I never did find one) and found a cool website that has all these cool parks int he district. They have information on all of them and also maps on how to get there. It was around 10 am and I decided to just take off and have a picnic there. It was an awesome place to go explore and the kind of place to go walk for hours and also the kind of place that Dan likes to visit. It is called the Mercer Arboretum and right across the street from it they have the Botanical Gardens. It was about 25 minutes from the house and easy to find, but I did not plan it very well and Tristan ended up missing PK that day. The little ones had a lot of fun and also my mom had fun discovering a new place with me. We were there for 3 hours and really enjoyed it. My favorite part was the Botanical Gardens, I have this obsession with flowers (I love nature) and love to take pictures of them, close ups mostly because their colors are just beautiful and it makes me happy to see all of Heavenly Father's creations and I know it is silly but maybe I used to be a gardener in Heaven before I came here and used to take care of His gardens :) I know it's a silly thought but who knows. Anyways, I found a very cool place and I am planning on going back there with the kids to take pictures of them in their Sunday outfits, we'll see how that goes.

My Yard Sale Finds.

Like I said before, last Saturday we had a lot of fun at the yard sales and I found really good deals on clothes for Victor, shoes, a TV, a TV stand and bedding for Aaron and also a little play tent for the guys. It was all under $30.00 and that made me super excited. We have the TV all set up int he boys room and they love it. Funny thing is that they don't even play their V Smile game that much but it's an options that is available for them when they feel like it. Also yesterday I gave the boys all their toys back since I was getting sick of "hiding" them under my bed and they were so excited to see their toys back. The threat this time is that if they leave a mess on the floor I will pick it up and take it to a thrift store so they are trying really hard to keep the mess to a minimum.

Battle Ship Texas

After having an awesome time at yard sales today, we drove down to San Jacinto and finally got to see the Battle Ship Texas. That has been something we have been wanting to do for a long time. They were going to have some reenactment about the battle of San Jacinto, but we had so much rain last night that it flooded and they canceled that. So we ended up just going to see the ship. The kids were so excited when they saw it and could wait to get on it. I told Dan to go with the kids and I sat with my mom on a bench resting after a long walk (there was no parking so we ended up wlaking for like a mile or so and I had flip flops on). Dan and the kids had lots of fun and he took a lot of pictures of the kids. It started raining so we had to leave and walk all the way back to the car. We defininitely have to go back there and see the rest next year. I learned today that I shouldn't wear my flip flops everywere since the stupid fire ants can get on you so fast and they sure STING!!!

Shayna climbing all the way to the top.

Katie Mills

I was lucky enough to come to this country and soon discover the wonderful Malls that they have here (we also have cool malls back at home but I could not afford anything there), I have also discovered that not all malls are exciting and cool. Back in VA my most favorite place to go shopping was Potomac Mills, it was huge and very entertaining. It was an outlet mall so the prices sometimes were ridiculous (I mean that in a good way), especially when they had the end of season sales. When we were in Utah we were never able to find a mall as cool as that one which made us very frustrated.
Here in Houston they have the Galleria, which is different and cool but way too expensive for my taste. So one day I get a call from my cousin's husband from back home and he is pilot so he is constantly flying all over the place and has been to Houston many times, he was in Dallas this time and wanted to say hi so he started telling me about a mall that he has been to and it sounded interesting. It is located in Katy which is like an hour away from here and so Dan and I decided we were going to give it a try last weekend and we did. It was just as cool as Potomac Mills but the one thing that was frustrating was the food, too expensive, not very many options and it was not that great... then we understood why everybody was in line at Burger King :)
We walked the mall for like 4 hours and it was very fun. I don't know if it was me or what but the Burlington Coat Factory they have there seems to be the biggest one I have ever seen. The kids were great, I went to my favorite stores and found a couple of good deals for Shayna and Dan, he got some books and I even wanted to buy some baby clothes because they were sooo cute and cheap (6 onesies for $12 is a bargain). Shayna even did some rock climbing and we took pictures and video, she is such a brave little girl, she got a medal at the end because she made it all the way to the top three times. It rained the entire time we were there and on the way home we saw a lot of flooding in the area, some cars were under water and all we could see was the top of the cars.

Locked out of the house.

So yesterday I was so positive and happy and then today happened... it started out fine, but right after school I offered the kids to go play outside in the pool since the weather was really nice and the water had gotten a little bit warmer than yesterday. The kids had a blast playing in there. I have a little pool for Aaron so he wont drown, but he hates it and I had to hold his hand while he was in the big one, but he ran away from me and went under water a couple of times, he was fine.
My problems started when the kids decided they needed to go potty ( can't blame them, the water was too cold), but then my crazy child Shayna, the one that stuck a paint brush in her ear 6 years ago, the one that broke the desk for standing on it, the one that always manages to do something super crazy.... goes in and then runs back out with the phone ringing in her hands, it was my sister in law Tashia (don't feel bad it was not your fault). I talked on the phone but noticed that Shayna has this worried look in her face and after I am done she tells me that she can't open the door. I knew it right then that she had locked it before she went outside, don't ask me why she did it because I still have no clue, there is no explanation for these things that she does, she just does it to find out what will happen I guess and then she gets in trouble.
So I try picking the lock (I hope that is how you spell that), nothing... I try calling my sister in law Amber (because we gave them a copy of the house key) and nothing... I try again and she answers the phone, lucky me she is in the middle of a piano lesson so I just told her we had an emergency and if she could help us out that would be great, we were not going anywhere. Steven calls me later (Amber's husband) and tells me he does not have the key and he is about to drive by our neighborhood and offers to go back home and get the key and come back to help but there was no point since Dan was going to get home around the same time. So thanks, but no thanks, maybe next time it happens :)
So I am sitting in the backyard in my swimming suit, 4 kids that constantly need to go potty (Victor went like 6 times) and I also need to go potty. I had meat defrosting for dinner so obviously I wont be able to finish dinner on time, I have no diapers for Aaron who is luckily wearing his clothes now with no diaper, so he goes in his shorts like three times. The boys had a blue bucket in the corner of the yard that they were using as a potty. Shayna is banned from my sight because I just want to kill her (not really).
Finally Dan opens the door and we all go inside and he was nice enough to get some food for everybody since we were all very hungry.
What did I learn from this experience? I have to carry the keys with me at all times, I have to make 2 extra copies to give to Steven, so he can keep one in his key chain and the other one in his car, I will need to leave one window open in case this happen to me again.
I know is not a big deal, but it was frustrating and it put me in a bad mood. I had a cool activity to go to tonight and I went because I had already agreed to go with a friend, but now I am thinking that it would have been better to stay home and spend time with Dan. By the time I got back Dan was too tired to finish watching our shows and he went to bed to read a book and I am in a worst mood than before and with a headache. So here is my angry post for the month and I am hoping that tomorrow will be a better day.
Here is a couple of pictures of the kids playing in the pool yesterday, Aaron loves the water and he jumps really high up in the air and then falls in the water and splashes everyone. He also does this jump thing in the living room and it looks painful when he does it on the carpet, but he loves it.

My thoughts tonight.

I know it is one of those days when I just decide to sit down and write what I am thinking about. It's nothing bad, things are good and I am feeling very positive and happy. It must be a mixture of having my mom here and finally feeling like I am getting to know more people around here.
I still feel a little weird in the ward and don't know all the people there but it makes a HUGE difference to have a couple of people to talk to when I go to church activities.
They probably have no clue of how happy I feel because of them (my new friends Lucrecia and Tiffany) and how much they make me want to go and do stuff with them. It has been great really and I just wanted to write a positive note since I was ranting about lots of horrible feelings a couple of months ago. The greatest thing is having friends for my little guys, specially for Victor since he has a hard time playing with other boys and my Tiffany has a boy his age, he is so nice to Victor and he always seem to be genuinely interested in playing with him. I love it.

I also wanted to tell everyone what a great job Dan is doing with school, he is such a funny guy, he always thinks that he wont do well and then when he shows me his grades it's a different story, so far he has been getting 100%. He is starting to feel a little nervous again since he will be getting two classes at the same time next week. He will be going to the campus and we wont see him for a good 6 hours or so. So I will have to entertain my kids and my mom for half of the day and our fun adventures have probably come to a stop now since it is kind of hard to make your husband go and do stuff after a long day at school, but we knew what were signing up for, so it is all good.
Once again I got a little carried away and woke up feeling like I had to clean clean and clean. It wasn't that much I guess but, when you do a bunch of little things it adds up. I started with mopping the floor this morning, since my little rugs in the kitchen got all sticky underneath and realized that I need to get new ones, it was kind of gross (I do sweep the floors every day). I cleaned out my fridge since there were a couple of things that needed to be gone a couple of weeks ago? I hate it when that happens, it is just SICK!!! After that I did some dishes and started to make salsa (which by the way I will be posting the recipe soon). I had started to do some laundry and it was almost time to take Tristan to school so I took a shower and off we went. I went to a couple of stores and then headed home to have lunch with my mom and continued with laundry (the never ending story).
It was nice and warm outside so the kids begged me to set up the pool and I agreed (big mistake), 5 minutes later the sun goes away and I have 4 crazy kids freezing in the pool, they had a good time anyways. The poor little ones had their lips blue afterwards but they were still happy to have the pool out. I did pita pizzas for everyone for dinner and they were really yummy. After dinner we had FHE and then played the wii and sent kids to bed. I was multitasking tonight, doing laundry, watching Chuck and doing some flowers for my cake class that I have to teach tomorrow and now here I am waiting for my last load of laundry to come out of the dryer and enjoying the peace and quiet.
I know that I complain a lot, I know that I can be a drama queen but some times I just sit here and think that maybe just maybe I am doing a good job as wife, mom and daughter (I don't know about being a good sister :), is days like this one that makes me feel like I am not so lazy, but don't ask me tomorrow because I'll probably just take a nap in the morning after I drop the kids off at school, hey I deserve it.

The lame Easter baskets

Easter egg hunt.

Aaron and Tristan searching for eggs and my mom holding my friend's baby, he is such a cute baby. You can see the front of my friend's house with all the kids looking for eggs, by the way that is what all the houses look like here, they are so big and fancy looking :)


I know I am late with this pics but here they are. We had a good Easter and it was very simple but that's the way I like it. I made roast and mashed potatoes and for the first time ever made yams with marshmallows baked in the oven. There are some traditions that I just can't get into and Easter is one of them, I don't like the decorations, I had to finally put up this cute bunny I found last year on the front of the house so kids had some kind of decoration. I also for the first time made Easter baskets for the kids and got a couple of things to stuff them with and candy, not a lot. The thing that bothers me about the whole thing is that the bunny and the eggs have nothing to do with Easter or if they do, would somebody please explain it to me? I like coloring eggs but that is for a different kind of celebration that we have back at home in a different month. The reason why I decided to do the baskets is because I don't want my kids to tell me years from now that I never gave them one, I made it very clear that it was me giving them the baskets and not the bunny, because he just doesn't come to our house. They liked the baskets and the candy and I had a lot of paper and candy to pick up from the carpet the next few days.
My friend Lucrecia invited us to come over to her house for an egg hunt and the kids had lots of fun, that was the day we went to the beach. We came back home and took showers to get the sand off and then hurried out the door. It took an amazing half an hour to get that done, we don't even get ready that fast for church on Sundays. I hope everybody had a fun Easter and ate lots of food.

Here is Aaron with his friends jumping on the trampoline, they are all between 2 and 3.
I took pictures of the easter baskets but I think they are on the other computer so I will post them later.

Our trip to Galveston beach.

I had the crazy idea of going to the beach and asked Dan to take us there on Saturday. I checked the weather the night before and it looked like it was going to be pretty warm, but it was not the case and we ended up going to a very cold beach. The water was fine, but my poor mom was freezing the entire time and did not enjoy the trip that much. Shayna and Victor had some fun getting wet and jumping in the waves, they were either very brave or silly for it because I knew they were going to be very cold. And I was right. I think Dan, Tristan and me were the ones having more fun. Tristan and I were working on a sand castle and this time we had the tools to make it, it didn't turn out that great but it was fun anyways. Shayna sat in the sand to keep her body warm for a while and I made her a mermaid tail, Victor was climbing all over the rocks and Aaron was happy digging in the sand until the sand got all over his face, hands, nose, ears, eyes and of course his shoes. I ended up sending my mom, Aaron and Dan to the car while the rest of the kids and I looked for sea shells all over the beach, they found some cool looking shells and had fun doing it. I took a couple of pictures of the cool mansions they have in Galveston and a picture of the destruction left by Ike, there was a burnt house (that probably happened after the hurricane), there was this huge building that was probably some kind of business on the beach and the pier that was connected to it was all gone, as the rest of the businesses that used to be there. They seem to be doing a lot of recovering, but they still have lots to do and it basically looks like a dead town in some places. We are really looking forward to going back in a couple of months, or at least I am.Here I am with my sexy hubby, OK I know I look bigger than I am, but it is the swimming suit that I had underneath, it makes me look HUGE, there is no excuse for my face, that is just the way I look now :) LOL

Our Tuki Tuki is dead.

About 5 months ago we got lucky and found a cool bird at a yard sale. I thought it was going to last longer but I don't know what happened and this morning our little bird woke up looking very sick. Last night when we went to bed she looked fine so I was a little surprised when I saw her like that. We went to the park since my mom had a migraine and spent an hour and half playing with friends, but I could not stop thinking about Tuki Tuki and we had to come back home. I am glad I did because shortly after we got home she died in our hands...kind of. Shayna was holding her when she tried to fly away and froze up in the air and then fell on the couch. Shayna was a little traumatized by the whole thing and could not stop crying. We were very sad but glad that what ever pain she was having was finally gone. I told Shayna later that Tuki Tuki died trying to fly to Heaven, she felt a lot better after that. She wrote a nice letter and we put it in a box with some other little gifts and now she is buried in the middle of our backyard.
Dan was sad about the news too. He knew that I was upset about it and he took me out to dinner. After that we went to the pet store and got a couple of parakeets and brought them home. Shayna already saw them and she likes them a lot. We need to work on some names for them now.
We are very sad and we won't forget our crazy bird, she was full of energy and loved Dan for some weird reason. She used to make cute sneezing sounds whenever we sneezed and she knew how to open the doors in her cage.
A sad chapter in our book closes but a new one starts.
WE WILL MISS YOU TUKI TUKI

Car doing a wheelie

Houston Raceway

A couple of cars getting ready to start.


Friday afternoon after babysitting our nieces, we took off to the Houston Raceway in Baytown which is like an hour away from us. We got there a little early so we went to have dinner at McDonald's and filled our bellies with some food. The kids LOVE to eat out so that is always a good thing :)
On Fridays they have these races where you can go and take your cool car 0r motorcycle and go race, it is really fun and they have lots of people come and see. The entrance is only $10.00 per adult and kids are free (which is another good thing since regular price for a real race is about $30.00 or more). We spent 3 hours watching all the cars and motorcycles race, we even had our favorites. All in all it was really fun except the part when Victor made Aaron fall down on the bleachers and he ended up bruising his gums around his front teeth and bleeding a little bit. The boys were all excited and even Abuelita was cheering for some cars. We want to go back again and stay longer if possible. Here are some pictures and a video of one of our favorite cars of the night.Here is Tristan explaining to me how a car just won.

Those cars can go really fast. The fastest motorcycle reached a speed of 181 and the fastest car got to 169. It was loud and some times scary when the front of the cars lifted all the way up and then came back down and even sparks came out of the bottom of it, there were no accidents which made Victor very disappointed and he was the only one who wasn't very happy most of the time.
My cute kids smiling for the camera.

Listen to the still small voice :)

I need to let everyone know of a very interesting situation we had yesterday. We were planing on going to San Antonio Friday morning and tried to get reservations at a hotel online on Tuesday, but for some weird reason the website did not take our credit/debit card, so after trying like 4 times I gave up and told Dan to jut skip it since it seemed that we were not meant to go anymore. I was very sad since we had been planning this for a while and Dan happened to get a vacation day on Friday and just before he needs to start his Saturday classes on campus. So we decided we would just go find something fun to do close by. My brother in law Steven called us Thursday evening and asked if we could watch Olivia and Carmen in case Amber needed to stay over night at the hospital for some surgery. Needless to say we agreed and the next morning woke up early to babysit at our house. I was a little nervous since Carmen is only a few weeks old and she is breastfeeding but she did great and Olivia was having the time of her life playing with her older cousins. I had to cancel a get together with a friend of mine but she understood the situation and it all worked out great. Carmen took her formula and slept most of the time, Olivia played, ate and took a long nap, I guess she was tired from staying up late the night before. She didn't even ask for her parent which I thought she was going to do the whole time. I had fun playing with Olivia's hair after her nap, her hair got a little crazy and needed a little TLC, so I made a bunch of pig tails all over her hair. She looked really cute, hopefully Amber didn't have a hard time getting them off later.
When I was holding my niece in my arms I started to think about the whole thing and realized that my Heavenly Father gave us a sign that we needed to stay home so we could be here for Steven and Amber and I was so glad that the reservations did not go through that night. I am grateful that I was able to listen to the prompting of the Spirit and by doing so we were able to help them in a very stressful situation. I feel so happy that I was finally able to help them out and do something for somebody else for a change :)





PS. I feel like I also got a close look at what having 6 kids feels like, over all it is doable, but I need to let you know that no cleaning was done from my part (Dan did the dishes) and I took a shower at around 2 pm while my mom was holding Carmen and Olivia was taking a nap. How on earth does Lisa get it all done with 9 kids???

Time for haircuts again

For the last ten years I have been cutting hair for my family, it started with Dan but it wasn't that hard since he barely had any hair :) After Shayna was born it became my obsession to do different things with her hair and create cute hairdos, I even cut my hair in layers all by myself once, I didn't like that much so I had to go get it fixed. With the boys it is really easy because we just buzz it all off and then look cute, it is very low maintenance and fast.
It feels more like a chore now and it takes me 2 weeks to make up my mind and finally do it. But today we had more fun than usual with the boys. They just sat there the entire time and were easy to work with. We usually do a little Mohawk for them and take picture but since they were so good and patient Aaron ended up looking like Wolverine and Tristan had a bunch of squares on his head. I did finish the job and they are all ready for the nice weather outside. I love my fuzzy heads!!!

Guatemala muchies

We went grocery shopping with mom today and we found all these goodies from my country. I grew up eating all this things back home and miss them so much. Every time my mom comes brings me a little something just for me, but this time she couldn't. So I went a little crazy today and bought more than I should have but they are soooo good!!! Here is a picture of some of them.