good night

this is kind of boring but I'm up so this is what you get. 


I had a good night so far. Get this, BOTH kids were in bed, in their own rooms, fast asleep, by 10:30pm. The last couple of days have been late days up with Isabella, and Douglas was up until midnight the night before because he had a hard time falling asleep for some odd reason. I was so happy that I was finally going to make it to bed before midnight! I went to "Mathew's bathroom", the one with the stand up shower, and walked to the hamper. There I stepped in cold water that soaked through my socks. I got aggravated but threw a dirty towel on it and let it go. I jumped in the shower real quick... A shower is supposed to be relaxing, specially after a day of "bouncing", climbing, and sliding, but my shower didn't last long enough to be relaxing. My hot water didn't last because it was after Douglas' bath & Mathew's shower. Also because all I was thinking about the whole time was just getting to bed. After my shower I got dressed in the bathroom because Mathew was already asleep and  I didn't want to disturb him. I put my glasses on and then went to the other bathroom, my bathroom, the tub only bathroom, or as Douglas likes to call it, "Douglas' bathroom". I needed to brush my teeth, get deodorant and lotion on and everything before bed. When I put lotion on I usually start like in my temple area, last night I did the same thing except I found my glasses there. I went into shock, it was like I didn't realize what happened. lol then I cleaned my glasses up and went to bed. Mathew was in the middle of the bed, not really a big deal, I don't take up a lot of room but the position he was in was weird, he was on his stomach with his left foot stretched out to edge of the bed on his side but his elbow is almost to the edge of the bed on the other side, my side. I slipped into bed, my back toward him which means his elbow was right in the middle of my back. NOT comfortable at all. So I asked him for some room. In his sleep he says "Emma, there is plenty of room". I contemplated going to get the camera to show him proof tomorrow when he's conscious but instead I turned around to face him and laid in the shape of an S so that his elbow didn't even touch me. Despite the cool shower, the lotion, and the elbow I think I was out in about 30 seconds. That was all that mattered; that's what made it, like I said, a good night.

WTH

We'd never been to The House of Bounce so I was very excited to take Douglas and see his excitement. I also like to watch him play and interact with the other kids. His face just lit up when we got inside and he saw all the inflatables. The main (and only) thing he wanted to go on was the giant slide. This is him after he'd only gotten 1/3 of the way up those steep steps and had accidentally slid back down them on this belly knocking kids down like bowling pins. Poor unsuspecting kids, they were probably thinking "WTH?!" (what the heck) Then Douglas says "Mommy I need help! Mommy come on!" Of course I went with him, I think secretly I was hoping he'd need my help. This morning when I was getting ready to go I put on a very light and airy jersey knit dress (it's so hot here!) and then thought that I should probably wear something I could "bounce" in, you know just in case. I went ahead and threw some jeans on under the dress. It probably looked retarded but I thought it looked kind of cute and that's what I have a pair of jeans for right? Times like these. I helped him all the way up. Then I was the one thinking "WTH?!" I wish someone would have helped me! I don't know how those kids do it! Like I said, those steps are steep! Really steep!

Now I was very excited about this, a little nervous. I mean I'm not 10 anymore. or 2 in Douglas' case. This is the view from the top. Kind of intimidating but fun looking. Douglas can barely contain himself, he says "ready?!"

This picture of him is right when we were starting to slide. you probably can't tell but he was all smiles.

and this one is of me panicking on the way down. What a lovely ceiling... not!

This thing is so fast! I was not expecting it! I got a burn on my elbow because I started flailing my arm trying to hold on to something while the other arm was holding on to Douglas. I think I might have even let out a short scream. I'm not ashamed. These kids are crazy! How do they not die of fear going down that slide?! it's like a short roller coaster. WTH?! At the bottom of the slide I look at Douglas expecting my little baby to cry or something but all he says is "go again?!!" again? WTH?! In a calm and persuasive voice (or so I think) I say "don't you want to try to go play on another thing?" but he doesn't want to. He just grabs my hand and starts pulling my toward Mount Everest again. So I put my big girl panties on and help him up there while trying to teach him how to do it on his own. My new friend Felicia has a little girl named Nya who is a month older than Douglas. Nya wants Felicia to go with her too. I warn Felicia but she didn't believe me.... her face was priceless. So the four of us on there were probably hilarious. Me & Felicia are all sweaty. Nya has mercy on her mom and tries other things. Me and Douglas on the other hand go up and down that slide at least a dozen more times.

Every time we're at the top I get that nervous feeling in my stomach and I don't want to go down. But it does gets easier and a lot more fun. Douglas though, he LOVES it, and I think that's an understatement.

Finally he learned to get up there on his own.

I went with him a couple more times before we have to leave and by then I think I got over my WTH feeling. Actually maybe not... there was this thing, remember those huge slides at a fair and the potato sacks you would sit on to made you go fast. Well it wasn't a potato sack but they had something similar. It's got a slick side and the side your butt goes on has handles and a pocket for you feet. All these little kids were using it and having a blast. Again WTH?! You couldn't get me (or Felicia) to try that. No way! Though I might have found out that I'm a bigger pansy that I thought Douglas was good and had a great time, and that's all that matters.

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.