Uncle Jay Strikes Back!

There is no one on the planet who can make me laugh harder than my big brother Jay. So when he came to visit for the first time in a couple of years, I knew that we were all in for a great time...and boy did he deliver! First off, the title of this blog is a lie. Uncle Jay NEVER strikes back. In fact, he has mastered the art of taking a WWF looking blow to the head as if you had taken a folding chair during Summer Slam, walked to the top of a 20ft A frame ladder, and magnificently swan dived your body off hitting him precisely on the top of the head. He is the best. So after taking Cienna to the mall for her bi-annual birthday / Christmas shopping spree, he allowed both of the kids to manhandle him with a giant stuffed Narwhal like an absolute pro!

Bi-Annual Shopping Spree

Narwhal Bash Fest

The gifts just came on coming. After taking AJ on his bi-yearly shopping spree, he also bestowed the gift of purging on me. In addition to his amazing talent of theatrical beat downs, he is also somewhat of a savant when it comes to baseball cards. I expressed my anxiety over having several boxes of loose baseball cards that we had collected from hauling jobs over the years and the fact that I had resolved never to go through them for fear that I would accidentally throw out a Babe Ruth rookie card. My intention was to someday die and make the boxes my kid's problem. But alas, my brother Jay saved the day by staying up for hours every single night going through each and every card. He divided them into "binder quality" which we call "The Ultimate Freestyle Collection", categorized "box quality" which just means to hold on to them for future value, and "slops pile" which means they aren't worth the card stock they are printed on. I wish I had a video of how fast he went through the cards, because then you will realize how many years of my life he saved me in just a week. He is the Rainman of baseball cards.

AJ's Shopping Spree

He also bestowed upon us a gift for our game room. Vintage 49ers pendants that I remembered hung in his room growing up. This was truly a gift from the heart, as I know it was probably painful for him to part with them knowing that he would not be able to look at them on the daily anymore. But it was much appreciated and I will treasure them forever!

Bringing the Bay Area to ABQ

I also bestowed some gifts on my brother during his trip. The first was the gift of Wienerschnitzel. Man does my brother love him some chili cheese dogs. And chili cheese burgers. And chili cheese fries. Another blast from the past of our childhood and I am happy to report that they went down quickly and without a fight.

In His Happy Place

I also gifted him the experience of country club living. We went down to ACC where we floated in the pool, cocktails in hand, living our best lives. A long way from Cape Cod Village!

Living The Dream

Lastly, I shared with him everything New Mexico that I could find in my house for one epic picture to take home and share with his friends.

#turquoiselyfe

My stomach still hurts from laughing so much. I look forward to our next reunion (hopefully in the near future!)

Date Night With Tony's Doppelganger

Don't call it a comeback...Garth Brooks is still the man! Friday night Tony and I drove down to Las Cruces to see his doppelganger on his first tour in almost 20 years. Back when GB (and we) were young, we saw him at Arco Arena in 1998 and I never forgot how energetic and innovative his concert was. While he didn't run around as much (or hang from wires and fly over the stage) he did not fail to impress us once again!

The next day I got some "selfies" texted to me by our friends Lawrence and Kelly from the concert. You can tell that Tony and I still party like it's 1998 by our lack of awareness of A) how to take a selfie; B) how to find the camera at the same time; and C) how to properly pose for a selfie. And after seeing how fun these throwback disposal camera style digital selfies are, I doubt we will be practicing our selfie skills anytime in the future!

Cienna Turns Double Digits!

It's so hard to believe that it has been 10 years since our Cienna Elise was born. Oh how I wish at times I could go back to snuggling her as a baby or listening to her say everything with an unintentional french accent when she was 2. As with everything, there is always good and bad. While I sometimes yearn to hold my plump little baby again, I have no desire to change another diaper. And while it was totally adorable hearing her say "paypeh" instead of "paper" and "strolleh" instead of "stroller", I can still remember the epic toddler meltdowns where I thought her head was going to spin off of her shoulders. And even now, I so enjoy watching her grow into a beautiful, capable, strong minded young lady, but I can't stand when she rolls her eyes at me or interrupts me mid sentence because she already knows everything there is to know! In times of great despair, I would call my mother who would wisely tell me, "this too shall pass. On to something else of course...which is usually worse...but this too shall pass!" Oh how right she is. Now that Cienna has hit double digits, I am staring down the barrel of the teenage years. While toddler tantrums were terrible, I still had the ability to lock her in her room knowing that she wouldn't be able to crawl out the window or get hurt. Now if I lock her in her room I have to worry about her plotting how she is going to repay me for ruining her life!

I am grateful for her everyday.

At 10 years old you love:

-Any baking / cooking / fashion design shows
-To DIY perfumes, lip balms, and makeup
-To compete in level 3 gymnastics
-To train in grappling and boxing
-American Girl magazine and Girls World magazine
-Carbs (bread mostly), candy, ice cream, and that is about it. If you could just eat bread and candy all day you would
-Your new, big bedroom with new, big bed
-Shopping
-Jewelry
-Beados, Shopkins, American Girl dolls, Tsum Tsums
-Taking bubble baths with a facial mask, smelly body gels and lotions and music playing
-Spending my money
-Your Hoverboard
-Sleeping in on the weekends
-Pinterest


At 10 years old you do not love:

-Your parents telling you anything
-Flossing your teeth
-Brushing your hair
-Doing your homework
-The drama at school
-Fruits, vegetables, or anything that is even remotely healthy for you to ingest
-Saving your money
-Having chores (especially when NONE of your friends have chores...just you! Life is so unfair!)

And to that I will say what my mother also, wisely said to me...."life isn't fair. Get used to it. You don't always get what you want but you get what you need. When you are the parent you can make the rules!" And so it is....

New Year, New House!

2017 has begun with a bang in the Mazotti house. A new house. After 9 years, the time was right to make a move to a different area of ABQ, which if you have ever been to ABQ can be like moving to an entirely new city! While the move has been bittersweet for all of us, we know that it is the right one. We will miss our neighborhood and friends, close proximity to school, work and activities for sure. But we will not miss the crime, craziness and chaos that came with living across from a park in downtown.

The new house is like a little compound. It's private, but close to grocery stores, restaurants and amazing public schools. It needs updating, and the thought of unpacking makes me want to pull the covers up under my eyes and go back to bed. Eventually we will be settled. But for now, we are finding our new normal and (hopefully) our underwear!

Besides the awesome schools nearby (which Cienna or AJ will not be attending until 6th grade), what really sold me on this property was all of the on-site storage. Having been in the junk removal business for 13 years now, we have accumulated our share of "stuff." Ironically, what sold me on our last house was the neighborhood and how cozy it was for our little family of 3. After 9 years in our cozy house we were bursting at the seams! It was crazy to load items onto the moving truck that were still wrapped up in storage blankets from our move from Texas in 2007. I mean absolute craziness!

It's going to be an adventure for sure. One that I know will bring us many happy memories in the years to come, just as our last home did. No matter where we go or what we do, as long as we are together that will always be where we belong!

Our Last Holiday in the Hood

After spending the last 4 weeks packing up a storm (and coming within 20 minutes of forgetting our front row tickets to Peter Pan as a result!) it was nice to spend a few nights focusing on friends, family and festivities before the final push to move January 4th. One of the only things we love about our house besides our house itself, is the neighborhood we live in and the magical luminaria tour on Christmas Eve. I still remember the night that Tony brought me through the Huning Castle Neighborhood as we were killing time before picking up my mom and little brother Jon at the airport for the Christmas holiday. We had lived in ABQ for over 2 years and called it home, but I knew instantly that this neighborhood was where I needed to be. #homegoals
Several years passed before we were finally able to purchase a home in the exclusive and coveted neighborhood. With it came many, many setbacks. Our truck and trailer were stolen as I was unpacking only 2 weeks into moving in. Another vehicle was stolen the following year. And another the year after that. And another the year after that....we quickly realized that moving into an affluent neighborhood only showed the criminals that we had things to steal. It was a hard lesson learned.
One thing that never changed was our love for the neighborhood at Christmastime. Every year we would invite friends and family over to celebrate with tamales and cocktails before bundling up and walking the hood taking in the breathtaking luminarias. After 9 years, our last Christmas Eve was truly magical. We gathered quite a crowd and began our walk, stopping at our friends house to warm our bones by their fire pit set up in the driveway (and our bodies with a shot of tequila) while watching our kids swing from the tire swing in their front yard tree. Our next stop was at a fellow firefighter's house who was hosting a huge holiday party, offering us an amazing spread of food from their family's local restaurant. And we could not NOT stop at "drunk Santa's" house for a nightcap with their family who became like family to us over the years. It was everything we imagined it would be...which is a double edged sword. It is going to be hard to find again what we found with our Kit Carson house. But we are so incredibly grateful for the memories!

Santa Made It To Town!

Once again Santa blessed the Mazotti family with presents galore...more this year than ever before. Maybe Santa was trying to make up for the devastation of moving during the holidays. Maybe Santa was rewarding good kids. Maybe Santa just lost his damn mind for a week. We will never know his motivation. What we do know is that Cienna received a death trap hoverboard and AJ got an old school version of a death trap called a skateboard. And I? I got new Lululemon winter tights and the biggest Lush box of bath stuff that money can buy! Boom!

The grandparents gave Santa a run for his money this year! Pops bought AJ his very own Hungarian stamp "starter" set that they can work on together and this picture pretty much sums out how he felt about that....

And as for Cienna...well I have never seen a kid so excited about books in my LIFE!

Christmas 2017 was one to be remembered...both because of it being our last in our "starter" home but also because of how lucky we are!

South Fork Break

It is officially Christmas break, which for us means the calm before the storm that is a brewin! We knew that once we returned from Neverland it would be the great push until the great move to our new house so we made sure that fun was on the menu. And Neverland did not disappoint!

We skied....

We skated...

Some of us better than others...

We sported Diesel all over town...

And we had the time of our lives!

Oh...and we saw a robot.