Fall is here!!

My favorite season is here, I love everything about fall and the decorations so this is why I always get excited. I can't wait to finish the Halloween outfits, I can't wait to start decorating, I can't wait for colder weather and I can't wait for all the celebrations that come with this time of year!!!

Happy Birthday Tristan!!!

My sweet sweet sweet Tristan turned 5 today. He has been counting down the day since a couple of weeks ago. I can’t believe he is so grown up already. I can’t help going back to the day when he was born. I have been induced with all of my pregnancies except his. I begged and begged the doctor to schedule an induction but she said there was no need for it since there were no complications. I had to wait and wait until one day while I was busy sewing curtains for my Sister in Law Tashia, I started to feel some contractions, they were OK for a while but then they started to become more and more intense. Dan was at work and I was afraid that he was going to miss the whole thing. I asked Tashia to take me to the Hospital and she stayed with me until Dan got there. The whole thing was exciting for me since I had never had the chance to be at home and say “It is time to go to the hospital”. He made his entrance somewhere around 8 pm and he was a very easy baby to deliver. He was the fattest of all my babies at a whooping 7 pounds and 14 ounces. This little guy had the chubbiest cheeks and had the sweetest face with a green eye and a brown eye (there is a green spot on his left still). He was a cutie from the beginning and he still is. The day he came into our lives he made our family happier and things more exciting. Having 3 kids was not the hardest thing I had to do, I never saw it as overwhelming or anything like that, it felt like he was supposed to be there and join the fun.

These days he is still full of energy and can talk your ear off. There is no stopping him and I am not planning on doing that. He is a happy school boy in his 2nd year of PK and loves it. I asked him what he learned at school the other day and he said his teacher forgot to do any teaching that day, all they did was have fun and play games, he was not happy about that. I have been blessed with kids that love school and love learning and he is not falling behind on that subject.
Every time I see Tristan he has a warm smile for me and his love and affection for me can be felt very strongly. I know I am his favorite person in the whole wide world, I used to feel bad for Dan, but it actually makes me feel full with excitement that this little person adores me and it doesn’t matter if he is mad at me I can always get a hug a kiss and a smile from him.
His personality is so different from his siblings and he can surely make you laugh when he is talking to you about life, games and the ladies, he is a ladies man and he can’t help but to melt their hearts away. He had 3 “girlfriends” last year and we heard some interesting stories about them. I know we are in trouble with that boy.

We had a fun birthday celebration for him yesterday. Dan had school and I had the Super Saturday (craft day at church), but we were able to get all together after that and took him out to eat to the restaurant of his choice… MacDonald’s, but they were not accepting debit cards so we ended up going to Burger King. After lunch we went over to Chuck E Cheese’s and let them loose for a little while. At home we decorated the house for him and opened presents, which he enjoyed very much and then had some cake. The theme for his birthday was Shamu the killer whale; he adores him ever since we went to Sea World last year. All in all we had a fun day for him and I think we made him feel very special. This morning we found him sleeping in the hall way, where we sang “Happy Birthday” to him 5 times. We feel very blessed for having Tristan in our family and are grateful to be able to raise him and teach him all that we can; we hope he can grow up to be the best person that he can be. Happy Birthday Titi!!!

Sewing projects

I have been trying to keep busy lately, to keep thing off my mind. Crazy I know, but it makes me feel better when I am using my time to do something creative.
I just love patterns, they come up with this cute ideas and they tell you exactly what to get and hot to sew it, so really I am not that talented, I just follow the directions :)
During the weekend I made a bag for Tashia (my sister in law), she liked mine so much and she asked me to make her one, but it took me a few months before I was able to actually sit down and sew it. I had the material for months now and I felt really bad for not doing it. I also made her a couple of baby booties and they are on their way to her house, hopefully they got there already, she had a baby girl on Tuesday and I am so excited for her.
There are a couple of sisters in the ward that are pregnant and will soon have their babies, I wont be attending their baby showers but I am making them some Hooter Hiders, like the one Sister Butler made for me, and they are turning out really cute. They are great for nursing in public by being discrete.


Next week my Sister in Law Amber and I are going to start working on our Halloween/Renaissance Festival outfits and that gets me really excited, I will attempt to turn this fabric
into something that will hopefully look like this (the purple fabric is for Shayna and the brown one is for me), wish me luck.

I have Super Saturday this weekend and I need to finish getting ready for that, but there are so many thing that I need to finish before the end of the year or before it starts getting cold around here. Shayna requested a Sunday coat to take to church since the one that I made for her is finally too small (after 3 years of wearing it).

Here is what we worked on this week. Amber(my local Sister in Law) and I worked on this projects for a while. We could have finished it before, but due to sickness and unexpected circumstances we had to put it on hold. She came up with this idea for a Felt Board. I love it, it folds and I actually came up with the idea of putting pockets in the back to store the felt pieces. We already used it for Family Home Evening (last night) and Shayna helped me color the pictures. The plan is to make more pictures when we teach a lesson for FHE and that way we will have lots of characters from the Bible and Book of Mormon and the kids can be helpers during the lesson. The whole family thought it was really neat.

Independence Day

I think that even after becoming a citizen of this country, I still have the right to remember and show respect for my first country's Independence Day. On September 15th 1821, Guatemala got their independence from Spain.
I always liked the way they celebrated it, they had Marching Bands from different schools go down the street and the entire school would march with them, they also had a group of girls marching/dancing right behind the band. It was so much fun. Downtown they had the biggest and coolest schools do the same but it was way more exciting. I don't know that they do anymore, since they banned the whole thing just before I left Guatemala, due to the Peace Agreements they had at the moment, because a lot of the schools are military schools and they march with their riffles (not loaded) and they wear this nice soldier uniforms. But it was really cool. Every year I try to sing the National Anthem (I do it when Dan is not around), but his year was really hard, I tried to show the kids a video on line and sing it at the same time but the tears would not stop coming down my face. I know Drama Queen!!! But seriously it is a beautiful song, the words are so meaningful and I think they said that it was on of the most beautiful National Anthems in the World.
Happy Independence Day Guatemala.

I am so proud of Victor

This might not seem like a big deal to anyone, but to me it is a breakthrough. Victor my lonely child, who is so hard on himself because of his big expectations in life did something amazing this week. He has been working on reading the book Harry Potter and the Sorcerer's Stone. A couple of days ago I noticed that he had read a little bit over half of the book and then yesterday he came home with a huge smile on his face saying that he only had 6 pages left. He finished it a little bit later and then was jumping for joy and his treat was to watch the first Harry Potter movie.
The reason why this surprises me is because I didn't know he had it in him. He loves reading comics, and the little chapter books that 2nd graders are supposed to read. I never got anything challenging because he likes to jump from book to book without finishing the books. He does finish them eventually but he has this weird system for his books. Like I said before Victor is very different from the other kids and we have to deal with him in a whole different way. I think it is the fact that he might have OCD. I try not to be mean about it, but try to make him realize when his obsession with things are getting too crazy. So for him to be able to concentrate on this big book and a little bit more challenging than the other books he is used it is a big deal.
He wants to be #1 in his class so maybe this is pushing him so he can get there this year, last year he was 2nd. best in his class.
In any case we are very proud of him and hope that he can continue reading like he did this week. The great thing is that he actually remembers what happens in the book and when asked question was able to answer them, so we know he wasn't reading just for reading.
Keep up the good work Victor, you are awesome!!!

Too funny :)

Dan and I were in the study last night, he is letting me study with him and then I watch him practice what he learns on the computer. As he is getting ready to sit back and start reading again the chair starts making some interesting noises and all of the sudden he is falling backwards with a big grin on his face (it makes me laugh as I am writing this). I tried to hold on to him, useless of course, it was so funny I could not stop laughing and had to take a picture after this happened. Notice the broken leg under the chair :)