What's Up?

I'm not even going to bore you with my excuses.

I'm just plain.old.busy. I don't have a maid or a driver any more and I do have 4 active kids so I'm just busy, busy, busy all the day long.

Christmas

Christmas was good. One of those where you decide ahead of time with your spouse that you're not going to spend a lot of money on each other. Yeah. I got Guapo an ant farm and some licorice, and he got me a new laptop.

I'll get him back.

New Year's

New Year's was good. We drove to Utah to spend it with all of Guapo's family-all 16 kids and 14 adults-and a huge snow storm that trapped us all in for a good 24 hours. It was lots of fun-our kids just love being with their cousins. And we have two new ones one the way-one is still an "it" but the other is a GIRL! There have been 9 boys in a row-Margarita was the last girl almost 13 years ago. So, that's exciting.

Cub Scouts

I was enjoying my calling as cub scout den leader a little too much-I think I told one too many people how much fun I was having, so I was released and called into a new Relief Society presidency (woman's organization of our church). Luckily, I was spared from planning monthly activities which would have made me a wreck the next two years, and was put in charge of compassionate service (keeping an eye out on those with health issues and such) and education (making sure the Sunday lessons are decent)-two of my favorite things, so I am happy. And I like the new president a lot, she and I have been running together the past couple of months. The other counselor is the re-gifter from this post- she's a cool lady, too (but I probably won't be giving her any gifts-unless I KNOW it's something she wants). I'm enjoying it, it's just a little more labor intensive than my weekly cub meeting and I miss the boys.

My House

I have stopped scrubbing the floors on my hands and knees once a week and washing eveyone's sheets once a week. Now I'm down to twice a month on those jobs and I admitt I haven't been in the kids' bathroom in quite a while-they are *supposed* to be doing that as one of their chores-but I have my doubts about it getting done properly. I just can't keep the house spotless without some professional help which I don't foresee happening (and I'm not saying I want it to happen). Oh well. I love having some time to myself in my own house-it's freedom for me (even if the floors aren't perfect).

Running

I am signed up to run the Ragnar So-Cal relay race April 14. What does that entail? Twelve women running a total of 200 miles in 24 hours of which I will be running 20.4 miles broken up into 3 legs. It's scaring the crap out of me (excuse me, I mean, horsefeathers). So, training for that is taking up a decent percentage of my free time.

Kids

Kids are good. Juan Carlos has this new thing were he is always going around with just one sock on, or one shoe on. Not sure what that's about.

Pedro calls hiccups, "hook-ups" which I think is adorable.

Margarita got a 4.0 her first semester of 7th grade-yay!

Julio is like a sponge for sport facts-I can't believe he's only been aware of American football for several months and he knows all the players, past Superbowl teams and scores, stats of all kinds-amazing.

Pets

Guapo installed an electric fence for Quakey today, and Tuesday he's going in to be neutered. Poor guy has some not-so-fun days ahead of him.

Kitty wants to only drink running water out of the bathroom sink-whenever I go into the bathroom there she is, begging me to turn on the water so she can drink from her water fountain.

Ronald is my good boy.

Hermit crabs make boring pets.

Winter

Even though we've gotten way less snow than normal here this year, I am loving being back in a 4-season locale. Love, love, love it.


That's all. Did I leave anything out?