Visitors from Springville

We love having visitors. We didn't have so many down in Small Town. I just can't imagine why what with the big shrimp and the monkeys...

Last week our friends that we had made while we were all living in Venezuela came down for a visit from Springville, Utah.

Highlights from their trip:

1. Seeing things we haven't seen before since we have lived in Big City.
Namely: Teotihuacan.

We all climbed the pyramids. I wasn't going to, being 8 months pregnant and all, but my competitive spirit got the best of me and I climbed the Pyramid of the Sun. I have to admit though, that all my kids, even little Juan Carlos (3 yrs old) beat me to the top.



Here's a cute one of my boys getting along for 30 seconds. I was pretty worried the whole time that one was going to push the other off, but much to my surprise, they both survived the close encounter.



Teotihuacan is teaming with vendors that approach you about every 5 seconds trying to sell all sorts of knick-knacks and "one-of-a-kind" artifacts. They really had a thing for our friend, whom they followed around like he was the only tourist there. Here's one following him even though our friend has NO interest in his merchandise:



I can't complain too much about the vendors as I did buy this new tablecloth that I love:



After our visit to the ruins, we had lunch in an honest to goodness cave.



Have you ever been to Casa Bonita in Denver? It reminded me a lot of it in that it was over priced and the food wasn't that great, but it was an authentic cave so I guess you've got to pay for that.

Oh, random side-note. Here's my new favorite Mexican road sign that we saw on the way to Teotihuacan:

Make sense? Good.

2. Eating out.

3. Playing Games. While we were living in Venezuela we would often get together and play games. Our game playing was severely limited due to a discovery that our friends became hooked on "24" last season, but have not yet seen the earlier seasons, most importantly, they have not seen season 1. They didn't even know who Nina was (gasp) !!! Or what a stand up guy President Palmer was, so of course we had to start watching it with them. So, #4 was:



4. Watching the first 9 episodes of season one of "24".

5. I almost forgot-eating homemade cream pies! Banana, chocolate and coconut. I really think think that our friends' visit was worse for my pregnancy weight gain than Christmas and New Year's combined-we'll see next week at my weigh in.

We had such a great time!

298

298.

The number of posts I have missed during the last 12 days according to Bloglines. Sorry MOFs.

My poor little blog has been neglected. :(

I have not had a baby, we have just had friends visiting for the last week.

I will be making a blogging come back.

Right after I take a nap.

The Name Game

Object of the game: To choose a suitable name for our soon-to-be born child

# of Players: Two. Me and Guapo

How the Game is Played: I suggest a name; Guapo shoots it down and proceeds to give me a name that he supposedly likes. This goes back and forth until I end up leaving the room trying to decide if he would actually name a child of ours some of the names he suggests, or if he just likes to see a very pregnant woman get riled up. I think it's probably the latter as our other children have fairly normal names (they are not really named Margarita, Julio, and Juan Carlos, in case you were wondering!), but he is SO CONVINCING, that sometimes I really don't know.

Some of his most recent suggestions (I apologize in advance if these are names of your children, but you have to admit, as a group of names they are not the most, ummmmm, normal to call a baby):

Guapo's names for boys:
Les
Guy
Sal
Zeek
Frank
Milt
Hank
Bob
Fred
Ralph
Gus
Bert
Ernie
Barney

Guapo's names for girls:
Harriet
Mabel
Ruth
Gertrude
Bertha
Mildred
Wilma
Freida

Winner of the Game: To be determined in 6 weeks!

Guess Who Came to Our House?

The tooth-fairy!!!

We never know if it's going to be the tooth-fairy or the "little-mouse" (Mexico's version of the tooth-fairy) who shows up. Julio (6 yrs old) received dollars instead of pesos for his first tooth, so we're thinking it was the fairy who visited.



I can't believe my little baby is growing up!

A Plethora of Muchacha Moments

Remember our fun-loving, ice-cream eating, flower-borrowing maid? Things finally came to a head in December and I decided enough was enough. Events leading up to the straw that broke the camel's back?

First silly, little, annoying things like this:

Everyday my soap dish and my hand soap were next to my sink and our toothbrush and Guapo's razor would be plugged in to recharge:

Everyday after she came through it would look like this:

Plugs not charging, soaps not by the sink.

Bigger things: after Guapo (who's a lot scarier than me) explained to her that she should NOT take our things to her room without asking (flower incident), we found these in her room:



The lily was cut from the garden; Guapo had been waiting to cut them until they were big enough.

I started to get the feeling that I was paying someone not only to annoy me, but also to hide my things from me.

This is hard to see in the picture, but at the top of the closet I found Julio's (6 yrs old) karate belt. He has karate twice a week (read: she knew he needed it) and she was no more than 4'10" tall which makes me believe she either had to throw it up there, or actually got a chair and put it up there. Either way, I was seeing red.

Why? Why, I ask you???

All of these things I was dealing with because I didn't want to go through the hassle of looking for and trying out somebody new, but the final straw came one day when I came home and Julio (6 yrs old) was roaming around the apartment complex by himself. I took him home and found the maid just hanging out (read: NOT looking for Julio) with Juan Carlos (3 yrs). I told her I found him out of the apartment and she said, "Yeah, he got away from me."

Well, that was it. Guapo canned her. We are now on the 3rd new maid in one week. I have more muchacha moments to share, but this post is too long already. I'll have to share at some other time.

7 months

Here I am, 7 months along now. I'm feeling fine, it's just getting harder and harder to bend over and the heartburn is a little rough, but other than that all is well.

Getting to Know My Laptop Again

I have been a lazy, bad, bad, blogger lately. We went on vacation to Utah and it was like I took a vacation from my computer too. My apologies, I have no good excuse.

Our trip was great. It was hard to come back to real life yesterday. Here are some highlights (please forgive me for this boring, grandparent-pleasing post)

Tubing at Soldier's Hallow (the easiest tubing EVER, perfect for pregnant ladies like me and my sister-in-laws):



Hanging out with cousins:


Getting money from Grandma Sue and Granddude:

to visit Build a Bear:



Guapo, my hero, took all three kids skiing by himself:


...while I went shopping by myself.

The shortest and coldest trip EVER to Temple Square. Living in Mexico has really thinned our blood.


We walked around while the first victims of the stomach flu waited in the Visitors Center. Ultimately 9 of 10 adults and 6 of 8 kids fell to the nasty bug. Luckily Grandma Sue and Granddude have 4 bathrooms in their new home. They were all well used:


And of course, how could we visit Midway without a trip to the bowling alley?

I bowled a "turkey" my last 2 frames to take down my hot-shot brother-in-law. Poor guy, getting beat by an off-balance pregnant lady. Man, it felt great!