Another Year "Older"

Well, yesterday I turned 32! Yikes!! But honestly I still feel like I'm about 25 or 26. One of my friends today could not believe I was 32 :) Nice to hear! So I had a GREAT birthday. It started out in the morning, still laying in bed, Karina came into our room and with the sweetest smile said, "happy birthday mommy, I love you!" Melted my heart. Then Abel and Karina sang Happy Birthday to me and then I got my present...a digital SLR camera! Woo Hoo Baby! I have been wanting one for a very long time and have to admit, I have been very jealous of my sister (who has the same one I got) and all the awesome pictures she takes with her camera. Well, now I've got one too! I was so floored, I had no idea that was coming! Good job Babe!! Most of the day was just spent at home, but it was with the 2 people I love most in this whole world. Later in the evening we went out for dinner at the Maccaroni Grill. When we lived in Dallas this became my favorite restaurant to eat at. They are pretty popular there so you really were never too far away from one, but up here they are very few and far between. The closest one to us is about 45 miles away. But oh baby, it was worth it. They have the softest, warmest, most delicious Italian bread, fresh out of the oven, complete with olive oil for dipping...mmmmmmm....so good!
Then on the way home one of my great friends texted me and said there was a surprise waiting for me at home at the back door. So we got home and she had gotten me a couple of knives from the Food Network, awesome! She knows I love to cook and she does too so it was from one cook to another :) Also some popcorn tubs because we love "amish" popcorn and I think she was hinting that she wanted me to make her some :)
So it was a great birthday!!

Here are some of the pics I have taken with my new camera. I am sooooooooo amazed at the difference in the quality of pictures it takes. I can't wait to learn all it's features. So hopefully, and I say "hopefully" I will post more often now that I have my new toy :)

First picture from the new camera

Yoyo just being cute :)

Yoyo doing what he does best: being lazy

My beautiful roses from Valentine's Day

Just being random...trying out the camera

Beautiful girl :)

This series of shots is so funny...I don't know what she was doing except for just being silly :)

Fun project we made at my MOPS group today

Gift from my friend

9 Years = WOW!!

Ok first my apologies for the gap between posts. Once again, I have no excuse. Much has happened in three month's time but there's too much to update, so let's move past that, start anew and get to the good stuff!!!

So last week, on September 16th Abel and I celebrated 9 years of marriage! It has been awesome and hard and fun and trying all rolled into one. Not that it has been hard and trying with each other, mostly just with circumstances that have come our way.

Anyways...to celebrate our anniversary this year we went on a cruise to the Bahamas! You know how I love a deal, so because I had so many frequent flyer miles we were able to get 2 free airline tickets and then because we could book our airline tickets any time with no fee, we were able to get a last minute deal on a cruise for way cheap! So we went from Friday to Monday, visited Nassau, Bahamas and Royal Caribbean's private island, Coco Cay. We had a wonderful time, shared a table with some great people and had awesome food!! Oh yeah and we also, ran into a tree with a scooter, snuck into the Atlantas resort beach and then had to be rescued with another scooter because ours died...read on...

On the bus trip over to Port Canaveral to get on the ship

First view once we got on the ship

Pulling into port at Nassau, Bahamas

Atlantis Resort, Nassau, Bahamas

Lighthouse at the end of the beach in Nassau. I love the contrast in the colors of the water!

Nassau

A guy painting one of the other boats that was in the port

Atlantis Resort
Lobby of Atlantis
Aquarium in the lobby of Atlantis. They had about 7 or 8 huge windows like this in the lobby.

This is the beach we snuck into at Atlantis :) Sooooo beautiful and refreshing!
Throughout the resort they had areas where random fish would be swimming around and this one happened to have a bunch of stingrays in it.

Ok so here's the story of us running into the tree with the scooter. In Nassau, you have to drive on the left side of the road. So Abel is driving and we're making our way over to Paradise Island where the Atlantis resort is, and the whole time I'm reminding him, "stay on the left, stay on the left". We get to an intersection and we need to turn left. The light turns green and he proceeds but he's not turning into the left lane, so here I am going, "you gotta stay on the left! You GOTTA STAY ON THE..." BOOM!! We're jumping the median going right between a palm tree and a light pole!! Sad to say, my leg had it out with the tree! It felt like someone had stuck a hot iron on my leg from my knee to my ankle! At the time it was SOOOO not funny, but later that night we were definitely laughing at ourselves!! So we ended up going to Atlantis, but then at the end of the day our scooter wouldn't start and we had to have someone from the rental place come and rescue us :)


View of the ship while in port

You'll recognize this if you've ever been on a cruise! The stateroom attendants usually make animals out of towels each night when they make up your stateroom.

Two monkeys :)

One of the nights they had a midnight buffet and had a whole pig!

Random :)

When we got to Coco Cay, we had to take the tender boats over to the island, this is a view of the ship from the tender boat.

Pulling into Coco Cay

Walking along the shore, there was this random bird standing there as we rounded the rocks he was just standing there.

Iguanas, bathing themselves in the sun

Our table for the length of the cruise, minus Scott and Maggie...where were you guys???

Top row: Lauren, Allison, Abel

Bottom row: Dewald, Chantell and Me

Abel, trying his hand at steering the ship (just kidding)

Deal or No Deal?

I LOVE garage sales, love having them, love going to them, even better I love getting great deals at them. Up here in our neighborhood, for some reason the garage sales are few and far between (oh how I miss you, Champaign garage sales!) Every once in a while you'll find something that you like/want and it's an ok price and you'll pay what they're asking. Other times you'll find something that you really want/like and bargain with the people and they actually bargain with you!

A couple of weekends ago, I went to a little town called Peotone, IL about 20 minutes south of us because they were having their town-wide garage sales. It was rather cold and rainy that day but I decided to go anyway. My thinking was that if this little town was anything like Champaign, they would have their garage sales rain or shine...well, they sure did! And I scored big time on some stuff but my favorite place I stopped was at this one house where they didn't have anything priced. Now normally, this would bug the crap out of me and I would just walk away because I hate looking through stuff and finding something I like only to find out they want like triple the price I'm willing to pay. However, in this case, the wife had left the husband alone to tend to the garage sale and "left him in charge". Uh-oh, big mistake! They had boxes upon boxes of clothes, shoes, toys, etc..almost everything brand new. So I, with a few other ladies were rummaging through boxes of clothes and shoes and they whispered to me, "he only wants a quarter for each piece!" Jackpot!! So I definitely found some clothes and then, I spot this Ice Cream maker (some of you know the "famous" ice cream that me and my sister make) and I ask him how much he wanted for it and says to me in the most country accent you can imagine, "uhhhh...I don't know, my mother in law left it here...I guess like 3 bucks?" "SOLD" I said! (I paid $50 when I bought mine new!) I knew my mom wanted one so I got it for her, she was happy :) Among other things I found was a $3 tricycle for Karina, you know the old school red ones. Pairs of almost brand new shoes for 50 cents a pair...It was a great day!

Then last weekend we went to a community wide garage sale about 1/2 hr from us and found an almost brand-new patio set for $35. And ever since we had been with my sister and her kids that week in Indiana, my nephew Luke had this scooter and she wanted so bad to ride it, but it was a two wheeler and she couldn't balance on it. So at this one garage sale we found a 3 wheel scooter and it just happened to be Disney Princesses :) for $5.

....Love garage sales :)

You Want Me To Wait HOW Long???

So me and Karina, mom, Donneta and the kids came back from Indiana to my house on Thursday morning with plans to go to Shedd Aquarium, downtown Chicago, for the day because it was FREE! So as soon as we got home, we quickly packed lunches and headed for the train station to go downtown. We get off the train and walk over to the Aquarium and HOLY COW! Everybody and their mother (and father and sister and etc, etc etc) was there! I'm not lying when I say that the regular line was at least a mile long. It snaked around and around and around and we never really saw where the end was. There were two lines to get in, the regular line and the stroller line. So obviously we get in the stroller line, debating whether we really wanted to even stay when a staff member comes up and says, "ok folks, you're looking at a 2-2 1/2 hour wait and it is very full inside..." at this point I'm not even listening to her anymore and I'm envisioning 4 kids having a serious meltdown after only 20 minutes! So we unanimously decided that NO we would not stand in line because that would be a (come on, say it with me...) DISASTER! Oh yeah, and when the lady was saying all this, she also said that they had actually stopped letting people in at that time because it was so full! That sealed the deal. So instead we decided to go down by the lake and eat our lunch on the grass and then we headed down to Buckingham Fountain, Millenium Park, a coffee stop and then back on the train home. It ended up being a really fun afternoon even though we didn't get to see the fishies and the kids didn't even complain about it! Fun was had by all!

On The Train

Karina & Kolton on the train

Eating our lunch in front of the Lake

Karina and her Papi

La Familia Vargas

Grandma with the kiddos making silly faces

Me and Abel acting like dumb tourists in front of Buckingham Fountain

Kolton and Karina having a "moment" at the Millenium Park splash area

Luke "riding" the bikes

Karina eating her "smoovie" before we got on the train

Who Says Small Towns Are Boring??

This past week me and Karina took a road trip with my mom, my sister and her three kids to my hometown in Middlebury, IN. Most of you know this is a very small town and only about 3,500 people. Most all of my extended family lives there including my brother and his family and both sets of grandparents. The week was pretty uneventful but relaxing, until Wednesday. We had plans to go out to my uncle Myron's coffee shop and get some bags of coffee and then we were going head out to my grandpa and grandma's house for lunch. So we were in my sister's van driving on a back road when her battery light and "check charging systems" light came on. Now this light had come on at the beginning of the week but then went off and we weren't having any problems. So within about 5 minutes of the light coming on, all of the power stuff in the van went off, blinkers, flashers, lights and then it started sputtering and then just died all together! So here we are, 3 women and 4 children, stranded in the country. So my sister, Donneta, starts trying to call someone and her phone dies...great. Well we have 2 phones left. So we called my uncle who lives not too far down on the road we were on and he came and gave us a jump start. Also Donneta called my nephew Tyler and him and his mom Cheryll happened to be on there way home and were going to come by and follow us out to my brother Todd's workplace so he could check it out. So after only being able to drive about 20 mph, we finally get to Todd's shop and they decide it's the alternator. Wonderful. So I'm sitting there in the van with all the kids while everyone else is out under the hood of the van and I turn my head and all I see is my nephew Kolton's stark naked body right in front of me! He had wet his pants and just decided he needed to remove his clothing! So now, we have a broke down van, a dead phone and a naked kid! So Todd give us another charge so we could get out to my grandpa's house. We make it there, late for lunch, only to see a great surprise, most of my aunts were there to have lunch with us. Very nice! So we had a nice lunch all the while the van was on the charger and Todd was calling around for a new alternator. After several hours, finally found one. Great now we can go back to Todd's house where he can fix it after work. Oh wait, we didn't get coffee!! What is a girl to do?? Well, we gotta stop and get the coffee...do we dare? Yes! But first we have to get the alternator at Auto Zone. Done. Coffee Shop is next. Should we turn off the van? Maybe it won't start again...hmmmm. We'll take our chances. We go to the coffee shop and got some YUMMY coffee! Thanks Myron! (BTW...if you've never been to the Electric Brew in Goshen, GO! That's my uncle's coffee shop) Meanwhile I realized I forgot my phone at grandma's house...down to 1 phone. Get back in the van...oohh started right up. We're now about 15 minutes from home when the van starts shaking again and the light comes on. Ok and for those of you who know the Middlebury area, you know there are Amish people and Horse and Buggies EVERYWHERE! So we're chugging along at about 25 mph when, crap, there's a buggy in front of us. Ok at this point, we don't even have enough juice to speed up and pass a freakin' buggy!!! All of us are laughing our heads off because the people behind us were probably cursing us and saying..."Illinois drivers!! All they want to do is look at the Amish, *&#^@!" Heehee :) So finally there are no oncoming cars and finally we are able to pass the buggy, and when I say pass, I mean it in the slowest way possible! We could have had a conversation with them! So now we're about 5 min from my brother's and just wondering will we make it. Well, finally we do and we pull into the driveway, shut the van off and Donneta tries to turn it on...nothing! Whew! So all that to say this: my brother changes the alternator, problem fixed. The light was still coming on but it just needed a reset for the computer, so all was fine. Finally! So....WHO SAYS SMALL TOWS ARE BORING??!!