Happy New Year

Happy Birthday, Brianna!

Yesterday was Brianna's 7th birthday. I can't believe my baby is already seven and I can not believe that I am the mom of a seven year old. How funny. I knew I was going to be working all day and that I had to close the bank, so I didn't really have anything planned. My mom was talking about how Brianna gets the shaft with her birthday being right between Christmas and New Year. Poor her, she does. So, my mom decided that we'd go over for cake. Then she told more people and cake turned into dinner, cake, and gifts. A mini surprise birthday party. Brianna wanted to spend the night at my mom's yesterday so it worked out well. After work I picked her up and we rushed over to my mom's. Everyone was already there and Brianna was really surprised. By this time, it was already past 7:00 pm. We ate (of course), the kids played, Brianna opened gifts and we all had a good time.
My mom had this delicious cake for her. Well, it was more like a fruit tart. It was so pretty and tasted DELICIOUS. Brianna's godparents took her a Strawberry Shortcake cake.
It was overall a very pleasant evening and a good time was had by all. Poor Alec is now asking when his birthday is. He also wants to be sung to and to blow out candles. It's not until June, so he'll have to wait a while.
You can see pictures taken last night here.

Well, I better get going now. Take care!

feeling: old!
watching: The Koala Brothers
what I should be doing instead of blogging: getting ready to leave

yvett and brianna

I very often hear that Brianna looks just like me. Lucky her. Kidding. Although I hear it, I'd never really thought of it all that much. Well, she's my daughter so I figure of course she's going to look like me. Yesterday, though, she got confused. She found an old picture of me and asked me when I'd taken that picture. I told her that my mom had taken it when I was little. Brianna was confused because she thought it was her in the picture. How funny. I looked at the picture and I guess we do look alike. I'll let you guys decide. The first picture is of me when I was six years old. This is the picture Brianna found. The second one is Brianna also six years old. What do you guys think? (click on the images)












Well, off to enjoy my day off. By "enjoy" I mean do laundry and all sorts of things I haven't done for more than a week. Take care.

feeling: in a good mood
watching: The Wiggles (ugh, except for that)
what I should be doing instead of blogging: sorting clothes

post holiday

Still recovering from Christmas and lack of sleep. Overall, everything went really well. Here, we celebrate Christmas Eve in a bigger way than we do Christmas Day. We get together for dinner on the 24th and hang around talking, eating, and just being together. Santa Claus comes at midnight at which point the kids go up to their room (since they really should be asleep). We bring all the gifts out, jingle some bells and someone will "Ho ho ho" like Santa. Then the kids come out and we all start opening the gifts that Santa just left.
We had tamales and menudo for dinner. The tamales were red chile, green chile strips with cheese and the sweet kind. I'd never had the sweet kind with pineapple before but they tasted really good. As for the menudo, well, my family kept saying how spoiled my brother and I were. Neither one of us likes the meat and so either my mom or my grandma has to serve our bowl and make sure there's no meat in there. I won't do it because if I see the meat, I won't eat the hominy either. They actually have a calf foot and tripe in that pot. Eww. So, anyway, my brother and I eat the hominy with a little of the soup and lots of lime. The table was full of things for the menudo. There was lime, bread, minced onion, oregano, and "chile piquin".
It was a really fun evening. We didn't do much more than just hang out and eat. You can find pictures here.
Christmas Day, we woke up late and later went to have lunch at my mom's house. After that we went over to Rodrigo's parent's house. The kids have been playing since. I feel like these are vacation days or something and we don't get back to "real life" until after the 1st of the year. My family will be getting together again this Thursday for Brianna's birthday and again for New Year's Eve. Ah, more eating and eating.
Last thing, Happy Aniversary to my mom and dad who were married 30 years ago today. Yikes, 30 years! Here's a picture of them taken on Saturday. . . . .












I hope everyone is having a good time! Don't you just love the holidays. . . . .

feeling: relaxed
watching: The Doodlebops
what I should be doing instead of blogging: playing Barbies with Brianna

the most wonderful time of the year. . . . .

So, is it the most wonderful time or the busiest, craziest time? I think it's a little combination of both. I still have a lot of things to do so I'll leave you with this little quiz for today. Try to guess the Christmas songs.

1. Quadruped with crimson proboscis
2. 5 p.m. to 6 a.m. without noise
3. Miniscule hamlet in the far east
4. Adorn the vestibule
5. Exuberance directed to the planet
6. Listen, aerial spirits harmonizing
7. Monarchial trio
8. Yonder in the haystack
9. Assemble, everyone who believes
10. Hallowed post meridian
11. Fantasies of a colorless December 25th
12. Tin tintinnabulums
13. A dozen 24-hour Yule periods
14. Befell during the transparent bewitching hour
15. Homo sapien of crystallized vapor
16. I merely desire a pair of incisors
17. I spied my maternal parent osculating a fat man in red
18. Perambulating through a December solstice fantasy
19. Aloft on the acme of the abode

Answers posted soon, I promise. Happy winter solstice, all!

feeling: hey, whatever happened to unkymoods?
watching: Higglytown Heroes
what I should be doing instead of blogging: secret wrapping

Apprentice finale

I don't know how many of you watched The Apprentice(s) this season. I watched both. Last night was the Trump version finale. I think it was pretty obvious early in the season that Randall would be the guy to beat. He just always seemed so good at everything he did and so nice as well. I wasn't a big fan of Rebecca at first when she kept defending that Toral girl. I think she did really well at the end, though. So, up to the finale I was convinced that both were going to get hired.
So, Donald Trump hires Randall and then asks him if he should also hire Rebecca. I thought "There's no way he can say no" then he said no. I was shocked! How rude is that? They would've both been working on different projects in different cities. I can't even imagine how much Rebecca must hate him now. He basically denied her an opportunity at a six figure salary. Yes, I still think he was the best person for the job, but I can't believe how selfish he acted. Really surprising out of someone that seemed like such a nice guy.

Read more here.

As far as the Martha Stewart one. The finale will be this coming Wednesday. I'm rooting for Bethenney. We'll see. Oh, and Jim's firing was the best. Martha has such a great way of being totally rude but making it sound nice.

I'm going to post again either later today or definately during the weekend because I have A LOT I want to share. I just hadn't had the time to sit here and actually type.

Last but not least, congratulations to Jenny for winning the Weblog Award for Best Blog Design. Yay!

feeling: busy
watching: The Today Show
what I should be doing instead of blogging: getting ready to leave

nominations

Ooh! I *LOVE* awards season. The grammy nominations are already out (but I'm not too interested in those). Today the Golden Globe nominations were announced. I was a little surprised at the lack of nominations for Crash and Memoirs of a a Geisha. Maybe I'm out of it, but I'd never heard of "The Squid and the Whale" or "Breakfast in Pluto". Hmm.... I have lots of movies to catch up on.
As far as television, those nominations went pretty much as expected. The one actor I had heard would be nominated for sure was Jeremy Piven for Entourage but I can't find his name on that list. OH, nevermind, I saw it. There is also a show I'd never heard of . It's called Weeds. Hmm, well, I don't have Showtime.
Hey, no nominations for Shopgirl either. I thought for sure Claire Danes would get it. Oh well.
So, what was your favorite film of the year? Is it on the list? You know, I haven't really seen My Name is Earl but I think I'm going to now. I think The Office has been my favorite show this year. How about you?

feeling: wishing for snow
watching: The Today Show
what I should be doing instead of blogging: finishing my coffee

weekend recap

My weekend was good. A real downer was that we don't get any good movies around here. This Friday I was excited about movie openings. Neither Memoirs of a Geisha nor Brokeback Mountain opened here in my city. ARGH! We were seriously considering driving to Phoenix to go to the movies. Then we just got busy doing stuff around the house.
I finally wrote out all my Christmas cards and we decorated the house. The house looks so nice and festive. The kids were really excited. This is the first year I have a chimney and so the stockings are where they should be. The mantel looks really nice. We have a Christmukah tree since Brianna made and put up some Star of David ornaments. How cute.
This Saturday while working around the house, I caught up on music videos. Aish, I am sooooooooo over Gwen Stefani. What's going on with her? I loved No Doubt and their ska/punk style but now she just seems so, I don't know, ghetto. In that new video "Luxurious", she gets some super tacky nails and is spraying her hair like we did in middle school. I was over her when she came out with that Hollaback song. I mean, she was in her mid 20's when I was still a teenager and now she's dressed like a cheerleader and singing a "Mickey" style song? Come on. You're NOT in high school anymore. I just wonder what poor Gavin thinks of all this. Or the other No Doubt guys. They would've never recorded these type of songs with her. Ok, enough ranting about that.
I also saw that Post Secret is huge now. Not only is there a book out now, but I also saw that there's a music video featuring some of the post cards. It's a song called Dirty Little Secret by All-American Rejects but I can't find a link to it.
Well, that's about it for now. Time to go to the post office. . . .

feeling: cold!
watching: The Today Show
what I should be doing instead of blogging: leaving the house

i'm back

Well, we've been sick. All of us. Ugh, it was the worst! The four of us here at home all achy, coughy, with no appetite. We're better now but still have a bit of a cough. That always seems to be the last thing to go. Rodrigo was amazing to have around. He kept bringing me goodies trying to make me feel better. He bought me a book I really wanted to read, a perfume I wanted, sacks of oranges, vapor outlet plugs, and lots and lots of things to drink. He was sick too but had to leave the house for meetings and such.
A good thing that came of this is that I could not eat anything at all. The only thing I ate for about a week was gatorade and oranges. Now, my pants are all loose.
Yay! I wouldn't recommend the flu diet, though. You suffer too much for it.

Wow, last time I wrote was before Thanksgiving. It went well. The day before, I was starting to feel sick so my mom and grandma offered to come over to help me clean. Well, of course that meant that I had to clean and they would come inspect. I thought they wouldn't be able to find things to clean, but I swear they were here from like noon until about 10:00 at night. They wiped down the headboards and telephones, moved the stove to sweep and mop. My oven was clean but they cleaned it "right" just to get it super dirty the next day. Oh, I wish all of you could've seen my house that day. I've never seen everything shine like that. Those ladies love cleaning more than anything. Since then, I've been calling them Merry Maids. Heh, heh.

In other news, my daughter has turned completely Jewish. I think it's cute. Her school has been teaching a lot about Hannukah. She's been going around singing "Dreidel, dreidel, dreidel I made you out of clay". Today she brought home a dreidel and some Hannukah coins. Tomorrow, she'll be making latkes in class. She wants us to put up a menorrah. How cute. I was raised Catholic. I'm glad that she's being exposed to different kinds of celebrations, though. I just wish I knew more about it when she asks me things.

Anyway, I'm going to try to change my template to something more in season. I'm going to get on that right now. Take care!

feeling: much better!
listening to: Him (Wings of a Butterfly)
what I should be doing instead of blogging: making a new template