I needed to watch this today....

After a LONG day, (week, month... with more yet to come) I saw this posted on someone else's blog tonight and watched it. And cried. And prayed. And resolved... to be better. to do more. to be more grateful.

I don't know if you know, but we're going through a little bit of a tough time right now. Keith has had pain in his right leg since November and it's steadily gotten worse. Since the end of February, it's been harder and harder for him to even move. And for pretty much all of April, he's had to lay down almost all day long. We finally found out what's wrong - a disc in his lower back is half an inch out of place. There's pretty much nothing they can do to fix it, except surgery. He'll be having back surgery very soon to bolt two of his vertebrae together. He'll be in the hospital for a few days, bed for a while after that, and then a 3-5 month recovery till he's back to normal. And we have to hope that the disc being out of place for so long didn't permanently damage the nerve... because if it did, he'll still have the pain after surgery.

But we're alive. Our children are alive and healthy. And happy. We'll make it through and we'll be stronger for it.

SM iNSD BlogTrain!!

Hey everybody!!!! Welcome to stop #23 on the ScrapMatters' iNSD blog train! You should have just left Jennifer's blog. You're now back in Utah (and I don't think it'll be your last time here today). I'm so excited about being a part of this HUGE and super cool blog train!

By now, you know all about our NSD mega-collab at SM this weekend called "Moments that Matter". Make sure you get over to the store and check out all the new grab bags that have been released, along with the 40% off sale on almost everything else. You can get "Moments that Matter" free with a $20 purchase. And trust me, with all the goodies we've got over there, it won't be hard to fill your cart up. :D

With my husband's and my anniversary coming up in just 3 more days (May 4th), the special moment I want to share with you is the night we met. I've been thinking about it a lot lately, about all the little things that fell into place so that we could meet that night.

We met on August 1, 1998. I had just graduated from high school 2 months before that. My family had moved from FL to WV at the beginning of July, but I wanted to spend my last summer before college in FL. So I convinced my parents to let me stay there with a friend's family until shortly before I had to leave for college. Surprisingly, they agreed, and I spent the next few weeks hanging out with my friends. We are LDS and our church was having a regional singles conference July 31 - Aug 2 in Fort Lauderdale. My friends and I decided to drive over there (we were on the west coast) to attend the conference. The first night was not that fun. While it was advertised as a singles conference, and my friends and I were single, we were around 18-20 and it seemed like everyone else there was 35 and older. So we decided we wouldn't bother going to the dance Sat night, and we'd go out to a club instead. That sounded like way more fun. One of my friends (Kim) and I got ready the fastest and decided to go down and see how the dance was going while we waited for our other friends. We walked in and sat down on the outskirts of the dance floor (this was taking place in a big hotel).

Meanwhile, my soon-to-be husband was trying to convince his friends to go over to the dance. He was living in FL for the summer selling pest control. He and the guys in his apartment had thrown a disco party for all the people out there in their office. Then he heard about this singles dance and thought it'd be fun to go over and crash it. But none of his friends wanted to go. It took him a long time to convince them to go with him. When they finally made it over to the hotel, they went up to the front desk to ask where the dance was, and were told there was no dance that night. Needless to say, his friends were annoyed with him and they turned to leave. As they were walking out, some random guy stopped them and said, "If you're looking for the LDS dance, it's down that hall". They followed his directions, found the dance, and started dancing with all the girls who weren't being asked to dance.

Shortly after, my friend and I walked in. Keith saw us sitting down across the room and said to his friend (also named Kim), "You take the short one, I'll take the tall one", not knowing what we looked like or anything. And that was that. Keith and I danced that dance and then the next one, which happened to be the last one of the night. I told him we were leaving to go to a club, he convinced us to go back to his apartment for smoothies instead. We went and we stayed until 4 in the morning. As we were leaving, he asked for all of our phone numbers so he could stay in contact with us (he says now that he really just wanted mine but didn't want to make the other girls feel bad). He also says he was sending me signals all night long, but I had no idea.

He called me 2 days later and asked me out. We went on 2 dates in 1 week. He had to drive over from Ft. Lauderdale - it was a 2.5 hour drive, one way. He'd drive over after he got off work, take me out, and then drive back. Crazy, huh? I left a week later to go home for a week, then out to Rexburg, ID for college. He gave up his work bonus to leave early so he'd have a few days to spend with me in ID before he had to be back to school in Utah. We were engaged by Thanksgiving and then married in May. And that's that - we'll celebrate our 11th anniversary this coming Tuesday. Every now & then, one of us will say to the other, "Can you believe that we actually met?" I know it seems like my story was already long, but there's even more to it that I left out, that should have kept us from meeting each other that night. We really feel like it was meant to be. I made a scrapbook page with a picture we took that night (and please ignore the crazy drop shadows, it was one of my first pages and I was still learning lol)....



Alright, now that you've made it through my LONG story, here's the freebie you'll be getting from me (click the image to download) -


and here's the page I did with it....


**Links will be active until midnight Thursday night 5/6. Then all these blog train goodies are getting gathered up and put into the store!**

Well, I've taken up enough of your time! You can move on to your next train stop - Wendy's blog. Have fun on your "trip" today!!!

Recent funnies....

Maricela: "I sing INCREDIBLE" (after singing along to a song on the radio)

Maricela: "Elena, you have a pimple."
Elena: "No, Mari, you mean a beauty mark. It's a beauty mark."
Maricela: "No. It's a pimple."
Elena: "Mom, tell Mari this is a beauty mark!!!"

Me: "Mari, you need to go get your clothes for today."
(she comes out with a nightgown)
Me: "No, Mari, not a nightgown, an outfit to wear today."
Mari: "What's an outfit?"
Me: "You know, pants and a shirt. An outfit."
Mari: "That's not an outfit, Mom, that's a UNICORN."

I asked Keith to go get me a can of chicken broth to use in cooking the dinner. Our food storage is in a root cellar outside, so I usually ask him or Amya to get me something (usually chicken broth) I need from it because I hate going out in the cold and I'm lazy (Yep, I said it) and they're usually nice enough to fetch me whatever I need. So Keith was putting on his shoes to go get it and...
Amya: "Dad, where are you going?"
Keith: "To go get some chicken broth for Mom."
Amya: "Mom uses a LOT of chicken broth, Dad. Women don't got chicken broth, Men don't got dinner."

(Keith made me try a grapefruit he had cut up that he swore was sweet, knowing that I hate grapefruit)
Me (making a gross face while  chewing the NOT sweet grapefruit)
Téa: "Mom's making a face....Mom doesn't like the grapefruit....Mom's trying to spit out the grapefruit...Mom hates the grapefruit...Do you hate it Mom?...Yep, she hates it! Mom hates the grapefruit!!! (like she's a sports commentator or something)

silly boy

Keith made these delicious and wonderful cinnamon rolls for the second time last night. He started around 9 and I think the first batch came out of the oven around 11:30 pm. They looked so light and golden. I was looking at them and wondering why they didn't look exactly the same as last time. Then it hit me. "Keith, did you put cinnamon in these?" I asked him. "No...why?" was his reply. I waited. A few seconds later, "Aw, man!" Yes, he forgot to put the cinnamon in the cinnamon rolls. I think we'll forgive him though - they still tasted wonderful. Here's a pic of the ones that he made the first time...before baking. I never got around to taking a picture of them after they came out of the oven because we were too excited to eat them.

Night Owls

Keith totally surprised me with my Christmas present. While out in WV over Thanksgiving break, I was looking at all the Black Friday ads to see if there was anything worth waking up for. The only thing I really wanted to get was a laptop and there were some good deals, but since Keith had just surprised me with all of them joining me in WV, there wasn't any money for a laptop. When he asked me what I wanted for my Christmas present, I said a laptop, knowing he wouldn't get me one. Do you see where this is going? I don't know what I did to get the husband I have, cause he totally went above and beyond on this one. He got it from Costco, where it was on sale and then even more on sale as the display model was the only one left, so he got an even bigger discount. I don't know how he does it. This was the best picture I could find of my lovely gift and it doesn't even do my laptop justice - this thing is beautiful and I LOVE it.

We have definitely been putting this baby to good use. We installed Skype and used it to talk to my uncle in Germany. That was way cool. I've scrapbooked on it and it's AMAZING. And every night, Keith and I have been laying in bed, watching episodes of The Office, trying to get caught up. (And when I say trying to get caught up, I mean we jsut started watching it and now have 4 seasons to watch). This is one of the coolest things he's ever gotten me....I love my husband!!

And I love him even more right now cause he just went out and bought me a package of Oreos to eat while I'm watching. What an awesome husband I have!

good or bad?

The girls were eating ice cream sandwiches today and Keith told Téa to go get one for Maricela. She did, but she brought it to him with a big bite missing. Here's the conversation that followed:
Keith: "Téa, who took a bite out of Maricela's sandwich?"
Téa: "I did."
Keith: "Why did you take a bite out of her sandwich?"
Téa: "Because I wanted to see if if was good or bad. And it was good."

buckle up, it's gonna be a long ride

I realized the other day that I have not been updating like I used to. I've posted scrapbook pages and a few tidbits here and there, but I'm not keeping track of what the girls are up to... and that's what the original plan for this ole blog was. So I'm gonna try to stay more on track with keeping all y'all up to date with the goings on of our household. Here goes.......

Amya got her ears pierced this month! Or to quote her, she got her "earrings pierced". I think it sounds cute when she says it like that and Keith keeps trying to correct her. She was so brave. She sat right down, let the lady clean and mark her ears, and then counted down for her to pierce. It hurt a little bit, you could tell she was kinda cringing for the second one, but she was a trooper. Didn't complain at all, cause she knew it would scare the other girls.
We plan on getting theirs done too, but we're waiting to find a time when there are 2 girls working so that they can do both ears at the same time. That way it won't be as bad for the younger girls. Keith has said since before Amya was born that his girls couldn't get their ears pierced till they were 18. I fought him on this, as that was a rule for me and I HATED it, but he wouldn't give in. Then while we were in Hawaii, he saw some pretty flower earrings and said "Wouldn't those look pretty on my girls?" and that was that. He is such a softie! :)










Amya also started 3rd grade! I can't believe how old she's getting. We braided her hair the night before so it would be curly and she was very pleased. I think Spanish will be a little harder for her this year, as the Spanish teacher is pretty demanding, but she should be able to do it. We'll just have to practice speaking it more at home because that's where she's the most behind.











Elena continues to be our reigning dance queen. She dances all over the house. And it doesn't matter what type of music she's listening to - rap, classical, hispanic, jazz, reggae, etc. - she's got a special dance for everything. She goes right along with the beat and makes up moves that totally go with the music. We seriously need to put her in dance classes. In this picture, she's trying to do the chicken dance. A lady on the other side of the railing was doing it, and Elena was copying her every move. She also loves to try and do gymnastic tricks. Cartwheels, somersaults, hanging upside down, she's way into that.

She wears dresses or skirts EVERY day, unless we make her wear shorts. Even while biking, she has to look her best. :) She's learned how to tuck her skirts under her b*m when she rides so they don't get caught in the chain. She gave me a little scare yesterday. She was upset about something she was coloring, so she started to throw a hissy fit. She threw her head back and hit it on the cement blocks we have lining our front garden. Obviously she started to cry and I told her "That's what you get for throwing a hissy fit". Not
a lot of sympathy from me.
She came over to me and leaned up against me, so I started rubbing her head where I thought she had bonked it. My hand got wet. I pulled it away and, sure enough, it was bloody. I ran her inside and Keith and I washed off her head and tried to see how bad it was. Keith didn't think it needed stitches, so we just put pressure on it till it stopped bleeding and then borrowed some super glue from our neighbors and glued it shut.

In Téa news, that girl is CRAZY!!! I think she is, by far, our biggest tomboy. She is SO into doing tricks on her bike, playing in the mud, wearing Spiderman, Diego, Transformers, etc. stuff, runs around without a shirt on, and LOVES bugs. She has about 10 different tricks she does on her bike like standing up, riding with no hands, no feet, one hand, one foot, feet over the handlebars, etc. She is such a little stunt devil!! I love this picture of her riding with one leg behind - it looks like she's been amputated at the knee....crazy kid.


She also LOVES to color. She literally colors every day and does SUCH a good job. She tries so hard to stay in the lines...she gets this intense look of concentration on her face while she's working.
It is SO cute.

On to Maricela.....I cut her bangs yesterday. They weren't long enough to put back, but they kept getting in her eyes, so I decided to cut them. We think she looks pretty darn cute with bangs. Also, Keith decided it was time to potty train her. So she's been wearing und*es this week and doing pretty good with them. She doesn't tell us she has to go, we just make her go all the time. She's had a few accidents when we've forgotten to take her though. So I'm not too sure SHE'S ready to potty train, but Keith is. He thinks if we keep taking her, she'll eventually get the hang of it. We'll see how that goes.

so frustrating

I AM SO ANNOYED WITH BLOGGER! I have tried to get this posted three times now and it keeps messing up my post. So I decided to split the update into two posts and hopefully it won't mess up again. ARGH!!!!


So to finish up with Maricela, she gave us a scare yesterday also. She already had a doctor’s appt scheduled to have a wart removed from her finger. About 20 minutes before we had to leave, she was running around in the backyard and ran right into a pitchfork. She got a nice little puncture wound on her leg right where her leg meets her foot. We cleaned it out and figured the doctor could look at it too. So he did and said it should be fine and put some steri-strips on it to help it stay together while it healed. Well after she woke up from her nap, she was crying and saying her “footy” hurt. I thought it had just fallen asleep and tried to calm her down. But about 10 minutes later she was still crying and when I sat her down she cried even more. We quickly figured out that it was her puncture wound hurting her. She couldn’t put any weight on her foot at all and started to cry if it even looked like someone was going to touch it. I was afraid it was infected and we’d have to go back to the doctor’s.
But after some Tylenol she started limping around on it and by the end of the night she was running around like normal.
Keith was joking that it was more like a stab wound and now she can say she’s a true Mexican. Okay. Maricela is also a huge copycat! If anything is said in this house, it’s said twice because you can always hear her little echo. She ADORES her older sisters and follows them around all the time, trying to be just like them. So if Téa’s out doing bike tricks, you better believe Maricela is trying to do them as well.








We went to a demolition derby two weeks ago and had a blast! I was not too keen on going, but once we got there I had a lot of fun.






It was cool to see cars crash into and knock over the cement barriers and one even landed on top of a barrier! Keith and the girls really enjoyed themselves and we all had a good time together.

Last week we went to a ward luau and that was really fun as well. Amya kept calling it a lu-how. Anyway, Amya entered the watermelon eating contest for kids. It was a race to see who could eat the most slices in 20 seconds. While Amya didn’t win (she ate 3), she did go on to eat 7 more that night. I love the little bit of watermelon dripping off her chin in the picture. And Maricela had so much fun playing that she zonked right out as soon as soon as we got home. She loves this little chair.

Whew! I hope that was a good catch-up for anyone who cares and I’m really going to try to not get this behind again.

A Dad and his Girls

I made this page for another templage challenge, this time at a different site. Dani Mogstad is a designer I love (I've bought tons of her stuff) and she has a blog that I visit. There are challenges every now and then, including a template challenge every month. I usually get the template, but don't bother to enter the challenge since I never win anything. Since I just won that last challenge, I figured why not enter this one as well? So here's my entry. And even if I don't win, I'm really happy with how this page turned out.

For credits, click here.

hawaii pics

Remember how I told you we took over 1000 pictures while we were in Hawaii? That's a lot to go through. And a lot to choose from. But I've narrowed it down to 67 pictures and you can see them here. Let me know if you have any problems with the link or viewing the pictures. Enjoy! (Oh and keep in mind that I had no time to edit any of these pics. So they're all straight out of the camera shots, no photoshop fixes yet.)

And here's one of my favorites. We got very good at taking self-portraits.

General Conference 08

I had signed up to take the 'expert' scrapbooking class from Jessica Sprague back at the end of April, but I never did any of the assignments. It was nearing the end of school and I had so much going on that I was never able to get around to doing them. I finally sat down today and completed the first page. It took forever! There were so many intricate things she taught us to do on this one. I am loving learning more and more about digital scrapbooking. Hope you like the page!
Funny from today - I made dinner for Keith and the girls, and I wasn't sure how it was going to turn out. I kinda made my own recipe by combining a couple other ones. And it was a hit! All the girls and Keith loved it. After dinner Elena was talking about how glad she was that I had made dinner and how much she liked it. Then she said, "That dinner made me feel SO good! It made me feel like I have lots of friends!" So silly. Then later she was dancing and singing and asked me, "Mom, aren't you glad you have a daughter like me who loves to dance and sing?" She is so cute!

Happy Father's Day!

These girls sure do love their daddy! And does he ever spoil them! Keith picked out these dresses for them in Hawaii and was excited to see his girls wear their new dresses. Keith is such a great father. I'm really grateful to have him in our lives. I couldn't have been a teacher this past year without his help. I love you Keith!

And Happy Father's Day to my dad as well. I love him. And my girls love their Papa. They love for him to "shake" them and "check their teeth" and all the other things he would do to me and my sisters when we were young. He's a great dad and a great papa and we all love him a lot.

we're back!

So we got back from Hawaii on Tuesday and it was AWESOME!! We had such a great time. We left on May 31 and got back on June 10. We stayed on the island of Oahu and let me tell you, we explored that whole island. We put 835 miles on our rental car! I think eventually I'll do a big recap, but for now I'll just give you the highlights. We hiked Diamondhead (a volcanic crater), we snorkelled, we rented scooters, we went to the Hawaii temple and the Polynesian Cultural Center, we ate out, we went to the Dole Plantation and other museums, we snorkelled some more, we saw sea turtles, we watched the sun set, we went on an ATV tour and saw where movies have been filmed, we relaxed at the beach, we shopped, we celebrated my birthday, we slept in, we went to Pearl Harbor, we went to Chinatown, and I think maybe that covers it. We had so much fun. We definitely want to go back. And I would recommend it to anyone. Such a cool place. We took over 1000 pictures while we were there. Whoa. I don't think you want me to post them all (and I don't think Blogger will let me). But here's the June desktop I made with two of the pictures from our trip.


By the way, I got the desktop here.

the lamest blogger ever

That could possibly be me. Man - I had no idea it had been a month and a half since I blogged. It doesn't seem like that long ago...

Tomorrow's the last day of school. So bittersweet. I don't know if all of you know, but I won't be teaching again next year. While I had a lot of fun and learned SO much this year, I really feel like I need to be at home. My girls need me. I need them. I'm not being the best mom I can be right now and this is my only chance. I can always go back to teaching later, but this is my time to be with them. I will definitely miss the teaching though.

ON a more happier note, I'm going to Hawaii!!!! Without my kids!!! (Hmmm, I just talk about how I need to be with them, and now I'm talking about going somewhere without them.) Keith and I are leaving pretty soon and we are SO excited. This will kinda be a honeymoon of sorts for us, since we never really had one. We did go to Vegas for a couple days right before Maricela was born, but this seems even more special. And it's kinda our anniversary present, my college graduation present (did I tell you I just graduated?) and my birthday all at the same time. So you probably won't hear from me for a little while, but be prepared for when I get back. I have so much to catch up on and will hopefully have even more fun things to share after our trip!

take a guess...

as to where we are right now.....

disney friends

this is the first page i've done from our trip to disney in october.....

click here for credits

I'm not totally happy with it, but I'm tired of working on it. :) Oh, this is another 2 pager.

no walls

so I've mentioned a few times that there aren't any walls in our upstairs. Some of you may have doubted me. I wouldn't blame you - it sounds quite strange to not have walls in the whole upstairs portion of your house. While previously I could only have said half of the upstairs, as of today I can now say the whole upstairs. You heard that right - look at what I came home to today.

There are two bedrooms up there and a big landing halfway up the stairs. Before, just one room and the landing were missing their walls, but now the other room has succumbed to the same fate. It is FREEZING up there (not to mention in my portable at school cause the heater's broken) and really messy. All I can say is this better not take him two more years. If it did, I don't know that he would live to see it's completion, as I would most likely kill him from frustration before eh was able to finish. ;P What am I gonna do with him?

keith's take on the video

so, I made the mistake of showing Keith the video. He thinks this is proof that it's okay to act the way he does when he gets sick. This is what he said...

"Honey, it's true. It's a mancold. You wouldn't know because you're not a man. On a scale of 1 to 10, if you have a 2 (referring to how bad the cold is), we have a ten. You could never have a ten. Cause if you had a ten, that means we're dead."

He may be crazy, but I still love him...

keith doing his "karate"

Keith has this pretend karate stuff he likes to do with the girls and they just eat it up. I don't know how much more of an explanation I can give without just showing you. So without further ado........

november desktop

I was going to put this up with the last batch of pictures and forgot. So in case you were wondering, this is what my November desktop looks like. Mom, if you want to put it on your computer, just tell me and I'll email it to you. Hope you like it!