Sweet & Sour

Another Halloween has come and gone and we can safely say that AJ has graduated from Disney Characters to Serial Killers in the costume department. Long gone are the days of Buzz Lightyear...hello Freddy Kruger! I am not sure where he comes up with these things since he has never watched a rated R movie, and I am praying that it is a phase. Knowing AJ, it is not. Cienna created her own character of Unicorn Girl which turned out adorable. We will call this the year of Sweet and Sour!

AJ as Freddy Kruger

Cienna as Unicorn Girl

Immediately following Halloween (and thanks to the dual language school they attend) we have to pay homage to those who have left this earth in body but not in soul with Dia de los Muertos or for you gringos The Day of the Dead. This is the day that we pack away the costumes and bust out the face paint to celebrate the dead!

Pretty Good Job If I Don't Say So Myself

The month of ghouls and ghosts is behind us and we look forward to the family holidays that we love so much. Playing dress up was fun while it lasted!

Best Birthday Party Ever!

Of all the crazy ideas we have had to celebrate our children's birthdays this by far was the EASIEST party we have ever bestowed upon ourselves! There was no noise. There was no mess. There were practically no kids! Yet we managed to make an 8 year old boy's dreams come true with a rolling video game trailer parked in our driveway.

2 hours of multi-screen gaming with all of the latest and greatest video game consoles and extra graphic and gore filled games that he can't play at home. With his best friends. I mean...not to toot my own horn...but this party was freakin' genius! As soon as the air conditioned trailer arrived AJ looked at us and said "I'll see you in 2 hours. I'm not eating, I'm not opening presents and I'm not using the bathroom." He and his friends ran off while us parents enjoyed ourselves at the first party that involved kids EVER. All I can say is #epic.

It Was As Though Jesus Himself Arrived At The Party

Completely Staged Photo Where I Drug Them Outside For 2 Seconds And They Almost Burned Me At The Stake

The Only Thing That Competes With Video Games Is Baseball

I'm Sure Wishing For The Trailer To Breakdown And Not Be Able To Be Moved From The Driveway EVER

Our baby boy AJ....Oh, AJ. At 8 years old you love:

Baseball
Video Games (Minecraft, Plants vs Zombies, Madden)
Diary of a Wimpy Kid books
Graphic Novels
Beyblades
The Green Bay Packers
Flag Football
Your Friends
New Balance Tennis Shoes (Seriously...It's The Only Brand You Will Wear)
Math
Going To Lobo Football Games With Your Papa
Bruno Mars Uptown Funk
Stranger Things on Netflix
Five Nights at Freddy's
Your Best Friend Augustine
Cheeseburgers (Meat, Cheese and Bun Only)
Hooters Wings
Smuckers PB&Js
Green Gatorade
Lottery Scratchers (Which We Won't Allow You To Have Anymore After You Showed EVERY Sign Of A Compulsive Gambler The First Time We Let You Spend Your Own Money On Some)

They broke the mold after you AJ. Anthony. Antonio. AtotheJMaz. What other kid do you know that has 4 aliases by age 8? Happy Birthday!

Independence Day Celebration

Yesterday we threw our 1st party at the new house to celebrate the 4th of July! Although the house is still in disarray, we love a good party, and a great party is was. After letting the kids almost melt in the bounce house, we let them cool off with a water balloon fight as we gorged ourselves with tons of food.

We stayed cool as well with lots of liquids...

And rounded out the night with a hike up to the top of the dam where we could see fireworks all over the city! It was an amazing way to break in the new house with old friends. It was a happy 4th indeed!

13 Years

Somewhere after the 10th anniversary, an anniversary just becomes another anniversary. I can only equate it to after you turn 21...the excitement that comes with a birthday starts to wear off, and while you are excited that you made it another year, it just doesn't have the same pizzazz that the previous years brought. You no longer stress about what you are going to do to celebrate, what outfit you are going to wear, how you are going to remember it. It's just another day that has come too fast, with hardly enough time to remember what you did the previous 364 days before.

I knew that our anniversary was approaching, but with so much on our plate there way little time to properly prepare. I'm not sure I even shaved my legs. I had not yet bought a card to write the words that become cliche year after year. The older you get, I guess less is more. So I was completely caught off guard when Tony told me the night before that I should be ready by 1pm. On a school day? Yes please! True to form, Tony walked in the door at 12:55pm after working all morning to jump in the shower. Although I was packed, I figured that I had another 20 min to get fully prepared. (BTW, "fully prepared" does not mean shave my legs. It means getting enough paperwork done to truly feel that I could relax for 24 hours!) At 1:15pm I was still typing away frantically as he walked in the office yelling "I told you to be ready at 1pm! We have to go!" I became irritated, he was stressed out, we were off to a great (and typical) start!

After speeding for an hour and a half, I realized where we were headed. A place that I had passed hundreds of times on our way to Colorado but had never been. A place that I had always wanted to go! Ojo Caliente! We arrived 25 minutes past our appointment times and begged for them to still take us. As I prepared for my massage, my heart racing from the speed of the drive up, the stress of our lives and me being completely irritated with my groom for cutting it so close, I settled in and tried to relax. Oh great, I got a talker. Just as I was anticipating the ending of my hour long massage she poured hot oil on my scalp and all my cares melted away. I started to think that I had completely lost my mind and sense of time. How could I still be in this room? This is the longest massage of my entire life! This is life! God, I love Tony! A 2 1/2 hour massage was just what the doctor ordered!

By the time I floated out of the treatment room I had forgotten all of the reasons that I wanted to be single again. As I gazed out onto the scenery, I was overcome with gratefulness. To my husband of 13 years, my mother in law for watching the kids for the night and for enough work to pay for what I could only assume was adding up to be a very expensive trip! We sat in the hot springs, covered ourselves in mud to bake in the sun, ate a fantastic dinner and told campfire stories with new friends from far away places. It was truly a magical 24 hours to celebrate 13 years!

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....