kitchen reveal

so... long story short, we live in the house my husband grew up in. his mom's kitchen theme is apples, which means i inherited her dark green wallpaper & light tan walls. not horrible, just too dark green for me. & light tan??! i think my legs blended in with that color. lol

forgot to take "before pics" so here's one of D in it making icing :)

I love red. specially my red Kitchen Aid Mixer. <3

& i KNOW that yellow isn't for everyone.

but i've always wanted a yellow kitchen.

yes that's sunscreen on the counter under the microwave! doesn't everyone keep sunscreen in the kitchen?! ;)

but i didn't just want plain yellow, i wanted a little something....

extra?!

a little something more....

emma?!

how about some pain in the butt stripes?!!

& one with some plates {& a fly swatter} on the wall.

{sorry for the crappy "night pic"}

i feel like maybe it's a little too bright...

but maybe just cause i'm not used to it...

honestly though, i really love it.

it's me.

it's way different than the rest of the house, maybe it needs painted too?!!

one room at a time emma... one room at a time!

it was photographed nice & neat just for you, but soon after i had to put my lovely "new" kitchen to work..

I think all the hard work, late nights, & under my breath cursing was worth the effort. i like it... & since i'm the cook, that's all that matters

{both colors by Sherwin-Williams. the brighter yellow is Cheerful Yellow & the lighter yellow is Fun Yellow}

take a walk

I love taking walks with this guy....

he loves to explore...

this is just beyond the barbwire fence north of our house. from here we can walk to the turkey buildings...

the river if we wanted to...

if I wanted to pass out & have to call someone to pick us up.

we don't go very far because our exploratory journeys usually take place during one of isabella's naps or later in the day if daddy gets home early so he can stay with her {but her monitor works really good so no worries}. she's not walking yet & she weighs about 30 lbs... I can barely keep up with D, much less carrying 30lbs of cute baby. besides, I enjoy the walk as much ad D does.

I love this tree.

 I know it's dead but it looks pretty cool. struck by lightning I assume?!

down this hill there's usually some cows to the north, a creek tho the west and the hwy to south.

so we head south, out of the "woods" & into a field. 

during this whole time what's his favorite thing to look for?

lizards? snakes? grasshoppers? nope.

lady bugs.

he's got jars of them.

in my house.

he's discovered that they like tomato plants & sunflowers so I've had to teach him how to walk around the plants in the garden, not just straight through them.

then we go east, up the hill

& head home sweet home... 

going up that hill is exhausting by the way. thank God for "look there's a lady bug!" breaks ;)

if it's not one thing it's another

all weekend I've been thinking I might bleed to death. being a girl, with girl problems is a pain. literaly. I've felt useless. paged my doc, because everything has to happen on the weekend, & he helped me feel a little less "freaked out". still gotta call him on Monday to follow up though..

now this:

swollen eyes. stuffed/runny nose. clingy. allergies? a cold because of this crazy weather? who knows.

she's a cuddle bug & I'm kind of incapable of doing anything that takes more than 10 or 15 minutes. that is if I can get 10 or 15 minutes without having to wipe a nose, butt, feed someone, eat something so I don't pass out, or clean up a mess. I don't mind. cuddling with this one is one of my favorite things to do. she's beautiful. she's almost one. unbelievable. the only thing I regret, is being in the middle of "spring cleaning". I have stuff out. just out. because I was organizing. now it's just out there. a picture is leaning against the wall in the hallway, just looking at me. wondering why i took it down 4 days ago & haven't done anything with it. sheets need to be put away, things need to be organized, cleaned. I was half way done with the upstairs. now I'll have to start over. weird thing is. I'm kind of looking forward to it. I also want to plant a small garden (D's idea). who by the way is the best child ever. he's a great helper. a great brother. my favorite little boy.

I've read the next 2 chapters in Created To Be A Help Meet, just haven't had a chance to type up my commentary for you. I will though. I promise. it's just kinda difficult with a1 yr old pounding on the keyboard!

mayhem

a few things:

• I did KINDA kicked the flu in the butt. 

i passed it to the kiddos.
and the hubs.
tomorrow it'll be 2 weeks of sick kids..
sicks kids.. no problem
we'll just bum around. take naps. sleep in the same bed.

• this past weekend i had an order for 250 cupcakes.

plus the cake top.
250 cupcakes? no biggie.
just have a plan & execute it cake factory style.

one man cake factory.

• a blizzard.

tons of snow.
snow i can't walk in.
snowed in. hot chocolate. movies. thank God for Hulu
snow that the dog gets lost in.
snow that closes everything down (including the pediatrician's office).

all this at the same time?!
mayhem.

but it got done. thanks for the help of my wonderful hands-on hubby.

the wedding was the cutest thing ever! loved it!
cake turned out great & looked perfect with all the decorations.
here's my week in pics... enjoy the snow! if you're not sick. ;)

oh yeah! My very own pioneer woman moment. someone brought a newborn calf into my basement to "thaw out." saved it's life. almost gave me a heart attack when it mooed and I'd forgotten it was in there.

who's got the coolest mom?!

my kids do!

{it's an airplane!}

=)

thanks youtube!

{dog ~ airplane}


and Sasha {here or here} for the inspiration

"busy, busy, busy"

I've been busy.
on June 13th (a Sunday) my brother came to stay with us for the 2nd weekend in a row.
I love my brother.
He left on Thursday June 17th because he had to work.
Friday, June 18th (The day Toy Story 3 came out) I got a phone call from my mother in law, her words were: "Mathew hurt his back really, really bad we need you to bring the Tahoe". I'm told it's not in me to panic so I just say, "ok I'll be right there" and head that way.
He reinjured a disk in his back that he hurt last year.
but more about that later.
right now i want to talk about me.
maybe even whine a little bit.
notice the day of the day Billy was here, June 13th.
Mathew has been living on the couch since June 18th.
Billy came back to spend time with him so he wouldn't get bored out of his mind Sunday June 20 through Wednesday June 23rd.
He came back again yesterday, Sunday June 27th.
He'll be here til Thursday July 1st!!!
Mathew is still hurt.
I haven't had the house to myself (with just the kids) in 15 days.
Things aren't looking up for me.
I don't know if I'll survive.
I did get to go to Arkansas to visit my family & Plato's Closet (with Billy) this last Saturday.
But I can't seem to keep up with the housework.
I live in my kitchen.
So, at fore mentioned Plato's Closet I bought myself this magnet for my fridge.
I deserved it.
it makes me smile.
I love it.

please take it seriously.
I'm begging.
although there is no point.
someone wants to eat something every second of every day.
Today alone I cooked a dozen eggs.
a few slices of bacon. I don't cook bacon so it was the microwave kind (maybe one day I'll tell you the story of why I don't cook bacon. It involves pig nipples and almost getting knocked down with a pig belly)
4 pieces of toast.
I cut up a very large (and very sweet and perfect) watermelon into small squares
I made a lasagna (I'll do a tutorial on it because it's amazing as well)
an apple pie (I'll do a tutorial on it too because it's perfect)
I put together 1 peanut butter & Jelly sandwhich
I served 4 plates of HOT apple pie al a mode
prepared 6 bottles
I think that's it
my poor kitchen
someone...
please...
call for help....


ps i think we might finally go watch Toy Story 3 tomorrow. We'll see... maybe

home

warning: this is a long one, with lots of pictures

I'm not sure if you've heard about tropical storm Agatha. I don't like it very much. It hit El Salvador, Guatemala, & Honduras. If you know anything about those countries you know that they are like their own little community. They are even working on getting something passed to where you can go back and forth to all 3 countries without a visa or passport. (That would be awesome for missionaries!)

The tiniest of those countries is El Salvador. El Salvador is about the size of New Jersey & as of 2009 approximately 6.2 million people live there. {via wikipedia/ElSalvador}

That is where I was born. Where my family is from... where everyone in my family besides my brother was born. It's not my "home", not it the way most people think of home. When I was 2 my mom moved to California from El Salvador and left me with my grandma. She wanted a better life for me, for us. (wow did I get that & then some! I'm so grateful to her) She would send us money & other things, lets just say I was the only 3 year old in El Salvador with some pretty cool Reeboks. She got settled in & when I was almost 5 she sent for me. I flew to LAX. I didn't have to go through the hard time of walking and riding in a vehicle to the US like most immigrants from there do. A lot of them die. According to the US Border Patrol, 1,954 people died crossing the US-Mexico border between the years 1998-2004. In the fiscal year ending September 29, 2004, 460 migrants died crossing the U.S.-Mexico border. In 2005, more than 500 died across the entire U.S.-Mexico border. The number of yearly border crossing deaths has doubled since 1995. Yet the statistics cited by scholars and the media are merely the number of known deaths and do not include those who have never been found, grossly underestimating the actual number of migrants that have died attempting unauthorized border crossings. {via-wikipedia} I hadn't been to El Salvador since. My mom still hasn't been back. But in September 2008 Mathew & I made a trip. I had to go in order to be able to get my residency ( I have the best lawyer for that by the way & I did end up getting it! I am now a resident with a green card! praise the Lord!). All the news about these countries makes me ache. Stories titled " tropical storm leaves six dead in El Salvador" and "Agatha leaves 82 dead in Guatemala, El Salvador". There are some disaster relief efforts, but have you seen the pictures of the sink hole in Guatemala City? Could you imagine?! Like I said, it's not "my home", but it is. I dug up our pictures. I haven't shared these because we use a disposable camera.We weren't sure what to expect there & didn't want to risk losing our digital camera. Mathew had never been out of the country & neither had I. My scanner is broken so I just took pictures of the pictures. These aren't that great, but with some editing I made it work

This is my uncle Nelson and his family. His wife Flor and his kids are Nelson (junior), the oldest, then Ronald, and Fabiola aka Fabi. They are who showed us around & picked us up at the airport, while we were in San Salvador.

This is the view from our hotel. It was right in down town San Salvador. That mountain right behind the billboard isn't a mountain, it's a volcano. It's dormant though.

we could also walk to Burger King if we wanted to

while we were there we grew attached to my family

Mathew grew specially attached to the kids.

one in particular!

I'm pretty sure he took this picture

In town everything was very nice and looked a like some place here. But out in the "country" we saw a lot of shacks where people lived and women were washing their laundry in the river... I hate laundry anyway. I couldn't imagine washing it in the river. I'm so thankful I have a washing machine. We didn't get any pictures of all that, I'm not sure why, but I found this on flickr and it's what we saw a lot of

El Salvador is so beautiful, yet most of the people there live in poverty. no, it's beyond poverty. Flickr has some really neat pictures of all of it.

we went to Puerto La Libertad and the fish market there

in the big metal bowl to the left of this picture are sea turtle eggs

look at that huge fish!

sting rays

this guy! this guy broke my heart. he'd been out fishing ALL morning and he only caught a couple of things. this fish he said was called the devil fish and you can only eat a certain part of it. meaning he probably wasn't going to get any money for it :( his shirt was full of holes & i just wanted to take him home with us & make everything all better. 

The beaches there are beautiful. We didn't go to one of the nicest ones but we still loved it.

and there he goes with Fabi again... I can't wait to see what he'll be like with Isabella when she gets older

have you ever thought about smuggling children into the country? My husband has.

Our trip made us appreciative of what we have... then we forgot about it & went back to our day to day. I'm going to frame some of these and maybe I won't take things for granted as much. I thank my God for giving my mom the courage to come to this country. For allowing us to be here & have a good life. Now I can give my children even more. We hope to go back and visit again, maybe once our kids are older so they can go too & see how lucky they were to be born in United States.