PLAYING CATCH UP: A QUICK MONTHLY REVIEW

When I decided to do a monthly post I knew it would be a challenge but I didn´t think it would be impossible, but it has been harder to keep up than I thought. And now that I am a mother of 3, I think it will be even harder (At this moment I am trying to feed Avery while Clark is standing next to me asking to sit in my chair). No matter the obstacles, I am determined to keep up the blog, but I am so behind now I must resort to just a quick review of the past several months.

SEPTEMBER:

Celebrated Charlie´s Superhero 5th birthday

School started and Clark wanted to go too.

One Sunday afternoon we picked up 3 young Belgian girl tourists who were going to sleep in a not so nice park so following the Spirt we brought them home and let them sleep in our living room. (They couldn´t have been too bad because they watched High School Musical with us.)

OCTOBER:

After trying to convince myself not to, I finally decided to organize once again the ward Halloween Carnival party. This year was much less stressful and I didn´t yell at my husband once. I was very proud of myself. Charlie was a vampire and Clark was Spiderman.

We also went to a friend´s halloween party at their house.

See pictures below.

NOVEMBER:

The biggest highlight for November was that we attended a Stake Marriage Conference at a 4 Star Hotel with an all you can eat buffett and swimming pool. We brought the kids along and had a very good time.

My kids know about Thanksgiving but we still have not celebrated the holiday properly since both Leo and I work that day. Some day soon my children will eat turkey and stuffing.

DECEMBER:

This month was very busy. We first celebrated Clark´s birthday, then our anniversary and then on the 13th, Avery Susana was born, not to mention Christmas and New Years and all the happenings that go along with these holidays.

On Sunday the 12th, I woke up and I thought that my water had broken but I was in charge of the primary program that day so we went to church and then later we went to the hospital. At the hospital they determined that I had a small leak so they admitted me but since I did not start having strong contractions on my own, they induced me Monday morning and by early afternoon, Avery was with us. It has been such a blessing to have her with us. She is such a good baby and the delivery was the best of all three. The only problem is that I have had a stubborn cold for almost a month now, that just won´t go away and now Avery has it too.

Pictures from decorating the house for Christmas and Clark´s birthday.



Random pictures from December including pictures of the cool book Grandma and Grandpa sent of G & G reading ´Twas the night before Christmas.

Christmas morning opening presents.

Fun at the park during the Christmas break.

MY SPECIAL THANKSGIVING

I am ashamed to admit it, but since living in Spain I have never officially celebrated Thanksgiving. My kids have never sat down to a special turkey feast with all the fixings. They have never made Thanksgiving decorations. They have never watched the Macy´s Thanksgiving parade or American Football. Since we live in a country that does not celebrate this holiday and it is work and school as usual, it makes celebrating a bit more difficult. And I think I didn´t pay close enough attention to my mom to know how to cook a turkey or maybe I am just a bit lazy, but nonetheless this year I wanted to share some thoughts I have been having lately and share what I am most thankful for this year.

Besides the usual, which of course I am very thankful for, for example: family, friends, home, gospel of Jesus Christ, body, work and health etc, this year I am especially thankful for my children waking me up at night. Let me explain: Something I really enjoying doing is reading blogs of other inspirational women. Reading their experiences and feelings, makes me more exicited about being a women, a wife and a mother. One of the blogs that I read is written by a women who has a daughter who is three years old, but her daughter was born with a rare genetic disorder which dictates that she needs constant medical attention and that she must always be hooked up to a ventilator. As a result the little girl lives at a specialized hospital. This mother has never had the experience of having her daugther at home. She has never used her nursery, her crib, etc. She has never taken her daughter to the park to play or take her shopping. In one of her most recent posts, this women talked about the things that she misses most of not having her child with her at home. One of the things she mentioned is that she misses being able to wake up during the middle of the night to comfort her daughter when she is sick or cries etc. When I read this, it hit me very hard because this is exaclty what I have been complaining most about lately. Between Clark who has been sick with a cold and cough for a month, the baby in my belly that doesn´t stop moving and is always on top of my bladder and Charlie who just has bad dreams once in awhile, I haven´t had a good nights rest for about a month and so I had been complaining. Although I still miss a good nights rest, I have made the decision not to complain anymore and to actually give thanks because getting up in the middle of the night, means that I have my kids with me at home. It means that although once in a while they get a little sick, my kids are healthy and alive and are at home with me, and for that reason I should be thankful that they sometimes keep me up at night because at least I get to have this experience unlike other mothers who only wish they could.

To all the mothers out there, I invite you to give thanks this year for sleepless nights.

HOLIDAY HAPPENINGS PART TWO: THREE KINGS DAY

I am going to take this opportunity in this post to have a teaching moment for those who are not familiar with the Spanish culture. It used to be that Christmas in Spain was just a time to celebrate Christ´s birth and be together as a family. There was no Santa Claus, no present giving, etc. Recently, however, Santa Claus has become very popular and now even Santa Claus flies his sleigh to Spain to deliver gifts. I guess you could blame this change on globalization.

Instead of Santa Claus, up until recently the tradition here was that the Three Wise Men, or Three Kings as they say here, brought the gifts to the children just as they brought the gifts to Jesus. This celebration takes place on the 6th of January. The three wise men´s names are:

Melchor: A white old wise man with a white beard. His gift for Jesus was gold, representing his royal birth.

Gaspar: A brown young wise man. His gift was incense, reprenting the divine nature of Jesus.

Baltasar: A black wise man. His gift was myrrh, representing the suffering and future death of Jesus. (Until recently a Spaniard would paint his face black, but with the influx of imigrants from Africa you occasionally see a genuine black man but it is still common to see a white man painted black. It is not considered politically incorrect here.)

Just as Santa Claus brings toys and gifts to all the good little boys and girls, the Three Kings every year bring toys and gifts to all the good boys and girls reminding them how we should always carry the boy Jesus in our hearts.

Since the Three Kings is a Spanish Tradition and neither Leo or I are from Spain, and Charlie was still too little to know the difference, we did not celebrate the holiday with gifts until this year. So you could say that Charlie was very lucky this year: gifts for Christmas and more gifts a few weeks later. (Don´t worry we did not spoil him too much. We just halved the loot).

To start the celebration of Three Kings Day, on the night of the 5th, every city has a parade in which at the end of the parade the Three Kings arrive. Through out the parade the participants throw candy and toys to the people.

Another interesting tradition that has comeabout here is that since the majority of the people live in apartment buildings, as part of their holiday decor, they hang little figurines of Santa Claus and the Three Kinds climbing up a ladder or a rope from their windows. Since there are no chimneys, the people had to get creative.


Clark and Me at the parade. Clark loved looking at all the people and lights.

Charlie and Leo right up front trying to get more candy and toys.

How the gifts arrive.

The arrival of one of the Kings.

The arrival of another King.

Leo and the kids at the end of the parade with Leo´s mom Yolanda.

Early morning gift opening. Ben 10 was big hit for Charlie this year.

Every year the church throws a Three King Day celebration in which the Wise Men bring gifts for all the kids and throw out candy to the people and then we eat a traditional dessert served on this day: roscon.

Clark was a little scared this year.

A picture with all the kids.

HOLIDAY HAPPENINGS 2009/2010

I know it is now February but like they say, it is better late than never. I didn´t want time to go by with out documenting our holiday happenings. Overall, the holidays were very good and low key. Charlie had his Christmas program in which he sang about animals including a shark in a blue lake with the Three Wise Men riding on Seahorses. Interesting? Once again we almost had a tradegy with his costume for the program. This year he did not have to dress up as a shephard but we were supposed to buy him a light blue shirt and sew garland around the neck and wrists. I understood the shirt part but I missed the garland part because I thought they were going to give him the garland at the performance. Good thing I have a good friend who´s son is in Charlie´s class who warned me a few days before so will were able to avoid another breakdown on my part. (I have been living in Spain now six years, but I still have some problems sometimes. But it made me feel better when Leo after reading the note said he would have made the same mistake).

Once again Leo and I were in charge of the Christmas dinner for our ward at Church. We decided to focus on service this year, so Leo organized some service projects in which members went to a soup kitchen to serve the food and clean. Even Charlie participated and really enjoyed the experience. On the day of the dinner at the church we collected clothes and toys to take to a charity and then after dinner we had a service auction for the members to exchange services. It was a big success.
Christmas Eve dinner with Leo´s family was at our house and just like other years we didn´t start eating until about 11 at night. In Ecuador the tradition is to eat at midnight so at least I got them to move it up an hour. We had a gift exchange with the whole family and laughed lots. It was very nice.
Christmas day was very nice too. Charlie stayed up so late on Christmas Eve that we actually had to wake him up at 11:30 am. (That is ok because it gave Santa some time to do some last minute wrapping.) Charlie´s list for Christmas was very long this year but in the end Santa brought him a costume of Iron Man, some Star Wars swords and Ben Ten action figurines. Santa brought Clark a lion to ride on but it is the small sword of Charlie´s that Clark likes most. When Charlie and Leo play fight, Clark gets right into the action and starts to fight as well, with noises and all. Overall it was a very good Christmas. We are so grateful we have the opportunity to celebrate Christ´s birth and spend time with family and friends.


Charlie with his costume for his school Christmas program.

Charlie crossing the street with his classmates to go to the auditorium for the performance.

Waving to the parents after the performance.

Clark, on Christmas Eve with his Christmas PJs.

Charlie and Clarks favorite toy from Christmas.

Clark´s Lion which is still sitting in the corner.

The boys in action.

Charlie showing off his new action gear.

The boys in action once again. It is non stop fun.

Charlie posing with one of the Three Kings (I think Baltasar) in order to drop off his wish list for Three Kings Day.

HOORAY FOR HALLOWEEN

Once again halloween was crazy this year. Not because I was busy making home made costumes and decorations but because like the past 4 years I was in charge of the church ward halloween carnival. Although this year was a lot less stressful because we didn´t invite the other two wards which meant less people and less chaos, nonetheless I had my challenges. As I am not the best at delegating, I was in charge of everthing: food, decorations, games, prizes and contests. Luckily Leo was a big help. Making this year even a little more challenging was the fact that we couldn´t set up the room the day before because there was a baptism only 3 hours before the activity and in a small church like ours, the sacrament room is the same as the cultural hall, so we had to wait to decorate until after the baptism. However, to make things easier, Leo and I and the kids went to the church Saturday morning and spent 3 hours blowing up balloons and getting all the games and candy ready. Then we went home and I made cupcakes for the cake walk. Every year I tell Leo that I am not going to be in charge of next year´s activity and every year I end up doing it because I know the kids really look forward to it and it is the activity when more people who are not members of the church come. Watching the families have such a great time makes it all worth it.

Even the Bishop helped run the games.

Charlie aka Spiderman and his good friend Dani.

Clark slept through most of the chaos.

Spring Recap

Make a Smilebox scrapbook