Mishaps or on the bright side...

So the last couple of weeks have been interesting. After we got home from Mexico the family went through some stomach problems that were eventually resolved. It took about 2 weeks, but everyone got better. So all is well, right? Last week as I was on my way to work on Tuesday morning, it was snowing and the roads had not been plowed. I dropped Arden off at the bus stop and I continued on my journey to drop Maya off. As I'm getting ready to stop at a stop sign only 1/3mile from my house, my car won't break and it starts to slide. I look to the right hand side across the street and there's a woman with two children walking to the bus stop. I see them just about everyday. I begin to worry. I'm tapping on my breaks, but I don't have control of my van. I'm just sliding. I really start to worry that I'm going to hit those children and the mom. I can almost visualize it, and I feel terrified at the thought that I'm going to hurt them. So, I manage to stir the van to the left hand side and by some miracle the car starts to slide to the left. The curb side finally stops my van. Afterwards, I drove to someone's driveway to see if there's any damage. Everything looks fine. A lady across the street asks me if I'm okay. I say, "yes, just shaken up a bit."
I got in my car and continued my journey. I feel that my car is not driving so well. It's sliding, etc. Later, I call my dad and I tell him what happened. He mentions that it must be the alignment and to take to get the van realigned. "It's only a $75 dollar job," he says.
The following day I take the van to the dealership. I tell them what happened. A couple of hours later they call me and they tell me that the $75.00 job is more. It's more like a $3,900 dollar job. To make this really long story short. I ended up calling my car insurance. They paid for the repairs(with the exception of the $500 deductible), but I now I will have a rate increase on my insurance.
On the bright side: I'll take hitting the curb side of the street and damaging my van over hitting a mother or the children.
That same night Maya was very sick all night with a really high fever (my children rarely get fevers), very lethargic, and lots of congestion. Newel and I got very little sleep that night and we were pretty concerned about her. We almost took her to the emergency room. The fever didn't break until morning. I took her to the pediatrician and he said she had pneumonia. He suggested to get an x-ray and make sure it was the correct diagnosis. It turned out to be something viral and by the end of the day she was getting into mischief. I was glad to see her getting into mischief that day. Also, Newel gave her a blessing the night she was sick and I know Heavenly Father heard our prayers.
This week as we were getting ready to go to work and school, the battery in my van was dead. The van was parked in a way that no one could get to the van to jump start it. On the bright side Newel was running late and he was still at home when this happened. So he was able to help me. And we got the battery changed...Oh, and the awesome part was that it was still under warranty! That saved us $100 bucks, since I just spent over $500 in the deductible of the van.
There a couple more mishaps that I don't remember right now, but I am grateful that I stayed positive and I tried to look at the bright side of the situations. I'm not always the most positive person, but these last couple of weeks have helped me see that through life's adversity we can still stay positive and see the bright side of a mishap.

November/December

One of the Saturdays the FL cousins were here, we took care of them and the other little cousins, while their parents went on an outing.
To make the time pass by quickly we had an unbirthday party. If it wasn't your birthday then, you could celebrate.

We started by decorating the house with random decorations I had . Then, we baked cupcakes and 5 of the 6 children helped. Can you believe Newel and I had 6 children under the age of 5? It was fun, but by the end of the day I was tired. How do moms do this on a regular basis?

While the cupcakes were baking, the children made party hats. They decorated them and some of the children even made hats for their mommies...not my children...

After the cupcakes were cool, we decorated them and then each child had a candle on their cupcake. I lit the candles and we sang 'Happy Unbirthday' to each child. That was a lot of fun and I think this activity was inspired too. It kept them busy for at least a couple of hours. After the 'party' they ate lunch, played games, and finally watched a movie.

So what's this photo of my children brushing their teeth? Yes, today I will claim them as my children. I get tired to telling them to brush their teeth or have to brush their teeth because the won't do it correctly. So, in November I bought them electric toothbrushes. What a life saver! Now they like brushing their teeth and it's no longer a war.

I don't have too many photos for November. My camera is dying (well, the lens is not working properly) so I didn't take too many photos.

We had an early Thanksgiving with the family, before the Romeros went back to FL. We missed them after they were gone, but I'm sure they were glad to be back home.

December came by quickly. I feel like time flew by. One of the first activities we had in December was attending our ward Christmas breakfast. Our children dressed up as shepherds. Even though Maya was not in the re-enactment of the Nativity, she enjoyed being dressed as a shepherd girl.
Arden was a calm shepherd boy.

Also, at the beginning of December, the cousins went on an adventure. We met up at the train station and rode to downtown on the train. We liked that. We had to be pretty bundled up because it was cold!

We walked through the streets of downtown SLC.
We walked around Temple Square and saw the lights. They are gorgeous!

We saw the Nativities around Temple square.


We visited the Visitor Center.



After our walk around Temple Square we ate at a Brazilian restaurant and thawed out a little bit. It was a nice evening.

This year for Christmas, we tried to keep keep it simple and tried to keep it focused on the Saviour. Unfortunately, now that Arden is attending school, they get fed all of that Santa Claus crap and it was more challenging to keep Christ as the focus. Can you tell I have issues with the whole Santa thing? I just don't like the idea of lying to my child about that. And in this country is 'Santa this' and 'Santa that.' I don't want to ruin my children's childhood, but I don't like an imaginary character taking all of the credit for the things that are good, holy, and wonderful about this season. It should be about Christ. So this year as I was packing all of the Christmas decorations, I threw out all of my Santa stuff (which wasn't a lot to begin with), except for the mug my little brother gave me many years ago. Santa is not welcome into my home. Enough venting.

We haven't had too much snow this year, so when it has snowed, the children and Newel have gone outside to enjoy the snow.

Oh, about keeping the Christmas season simple...it was simple.

Well, until it was the week before Christmas. I decided to have a gingerbread cookie decorating party for my children and some of their friends. It was also the week before school got out and that was a bit hectic. I hadn't finished all of the shopping and preparations. It's almost February as I'm typing this, and I still haven't sent out Christmas cards. So, a simple Christmas, turned into a hectic week for me.

Looking back, it was worth the stress.

The children loved having friends over, decorating cookies, eating icing, and sipping on some hot cocoa.

Aren't these the things that really matter in life anyways?


I hope when my children get older, they will not only remember the bad stuff about their mother like her impatience, her bad temper, but hopefully they will also remember that we did fun stuff too. Especially that I loved them.

Early Christmas

Since we had made plans to travel during our Christmas break, we decided to have Christmas a bit early. We celebrated Christmas on Saturday, December 19. The children went to bed as usual, but we told them Christmas would the be following day. That evening, I finished wrapping presents. Then, I made sure we had all of the ingredients for our breakfast. Finally, before I went to bed I decorated the children's room. Arden had been asking me to decorate it. We had Christmas lights around the room, but Huracan Mayita took them off, several times.

That evening, I carefully and quietly put the lights up, then I hung snow flakes that looked like they were falling on the children's heads. I thought it looked pretty cute. I thought Arden would think it was 'magical.'

The following morning Maya woke up super early, so I rushed into their room and turned on the lights. A little while later Arden woke up and saw the lights.
I was sure he was going to say, "It's so magical, mommy!" Instead, he said, "Why don't we put up more decorations?" Ha, ha, oh well.
After, snuggling for a little while in our beds, we headed towards the living room where their presents were waiting for them. They were excited.
While the children played with their toys, I started getting breakfast ready. We invited our family for our Christmas breakfast. We made crepes. They were great.
We had a really good time. They also had several days before we traveled to play with their toys and enjoy that time off.

I thought it was a good Christmas and Santa Claus was hardly mentioned that day.

The Rest of October...

We had the pleasure of spending time with our brother-in-law and sister-in-law for about 5 weeks. HB, who is in medical school was doing a rotation in UT and they stayed with us during those weeks.
We had a lot of fun with them. Arden and Maya were thrilled at spending time with their Florida cousins, and always having someone to play with.

I really liked spending time with my sister-in-law Karen. We had a good time together.
Also, it was good to have them here since the Romeros came about a week after my mom went back to FL, so it wasn't too hard on us not having my mom around. I really miss her.

After the children would wake up in the AM, they would play until, it was time for us to go to school/work or it was time for naps. Once we would return from school/work, the children would play and play for hours on end. They didn't get too bored of each other.

One of the activities we did around Halloween was pumpkin carving. That was fun. Each child and some adults had their own pumpkins to carve.

We did not only carve pumpkins, but we also made 'spooky' gingerbread houses. They were a hit!

Mia was a great little helper. She enjoys learning new stuff. She was a good pizza maker.


The more cousins we had, the merrier. A few times all of the cousins got together and had so much fun playing and eating together. What a feast!

We like food so much, we also decorated cupcakes around Halloween. We made spider and monster looking cupcakes, but they didn't last too long. They were devoured by the spooky hungry little people.

I think this photo is so adorable. Those cousins are too cute!

Around Halloween we also attended the community Halloween Party. We got there late due to bad weather, but it was just the right amount of time for our kids. They had a fun time playing in the jumpy house (with the exception of Maya who got a little bit scared). They played games, won some prizes, and got to wear their costumes. Oh, and I forgot to mention, they really enjoyed watching the pumpkins get dropped from the top of a firetruck ladder and be complete mush.

Finally, the real Halloween came. We enjoyed a delicious dinner at Wayne's Bar, courtesy of the Sullivan Family. After a lovely dinner and dancing, the cousins went trick or treating. Yes, all of the cousins...except for Jenny...she was in FL =(

There were so many of us! It was a lot of fun. At first we tried staying together, but there so many cousins, we let the older children walk ahead while the younger ones took their time going from one house to the next.
I even got into the fun and dressed up this year.





Life is good when you have your cousins around.

This is a photo of the cousins watching TV together. I think this was the day Newel and I took care of them while the parents too a trip to the temple. That was a fun day too. I wonder if I took some photos of that day...

So Girly

I love this little girl! This photo was taken in October. She's so funny. She loves to pick out her own clothes. This is the outfit she picked out on this particular day. Love it.