End of Days (in Laredo)

I must admit that I cannot recall the details of Days 5-8 in Laredo. I remember taking Pumpkin to visit his Grandpa and Grandma Q at their house, and I also remember taking Pumpkin and his cousins Ed & Al to the Children's Museum on Tuesday (and finding it closed). Other than that, I'm drawing a blank pretty much up until the day before our departure: I can still clearly picture the Wal-mart shopping carts being propelled by heavy wind through the parking lot and into the parked cars. It was freaky having to dodge said shopping carts as I attempted to maneuver into a spot safe from their vicious and unprovoked attacks. hehe

Before I forget, here's a picture I took of Salsa's crack administrative team hard at work (aka watching telenovelas).

On Day 7, I decided to skip the wine dinner at Salsa's in favor of taking Pumpkin to an impromptu birthday celebration for his cousin Ed at Peter Piper Pizza. Alas, Ed's parents and his grandparents all neglected to buy a cake for his little party so there was no "cakey" and no candles to blow out, which was disappointing for Pumpkin though probably not as disappointing as it probably was for Ed. When I mentioned it to QT later, he said that pretty much summed up the story of his childhood too. How sad. :( it also explains a lot!)

All talk of sadness aside, the kids still managed to have a lot of fun at Peter Piper cake notwithstanding. Here's a picture of the happy cousins and their grandparents.


The other picture is of Pumpkin with yet another playrug, this one courtesy of his Grandma Toni... though she may not yet be aware of that fact, hehe. She actually gave Pumpkin another toy, but I took it back b/c it kept pinching his fingers (hence my last-minute trip to Wal-mart and the attack of the killer shopping carts). I ended up exchanging the toy for this rug, and he loves it! In fact, he loves it so much that I rolled it up, threw it in the back of the truck, and brought it all the way to Houston just so that he'd have something with which to play while in the hotel. Thanks, Grandma Toni!

Day 4: High School Daze

Things melt so fast here that it's easy to fall behind on one's blogging. Here's the scoop from our past few days in Texas.

On Day 2, Pumpkin and I met his Gwandma Toni at our usual fun spot for some air hockey and bad pizza.

The next day, I lunched with my sister Anne then met my Cuz (aka The Godmother) for a couples massage. We'd planned to chat during the massages, but we were both so relaxed that we just dozed off (at least I think I did). Ahhh...

Unfortunately, our relaxation was short-lived. After our massages, Cuz took me to pick up my truck, which was being serviced at the GMC dealership. After I got out of her car, she was getting ready to leave, and some dolt backed his F-350 right into her brand, spanking new Maxima crushing her car's bumper and trunk. What a shame. :( At least the dumbass had insurance!

Anyway, that evening, I took Pumpkin and his cousins Cas and Van to my sister Chela's house, as planned, for our HSM 2 party (that's High School Musical 2 for you uninitiated folks). We ate popcorn, drinks, burgers, and sweets while watching the big premiere! Ron had announced earlier that he wasn't going to watch the "stupid movie," but he sat through the whole thing same as the rest of us, hehe. Unfortunately, I was so engrossed in the movie that I failed to snap many fotos, but here are a couple:













Today is Day 4 of our Texas trip. Today, I permitted Ron to babysit Pumpkin for the first time ever while Chela and I met Coach Vic for some good ole' Texas Whataburger! It was actually Ron's first time being left alone, period, and I think he proved his mettle. He prepared mac-n-cheese for Pumpkin for lunch, watched Barney with him, and even tried to put him down for a nap (though Pumpkin apparently refused to stay in bed). We were so impressed that Chela even agreed to let him stay home alone again that evening while we went to our cousin's daughter's birthday party.

As you can see, it was a swimming pool party, and the kids had a blast. We hung out for a couple of hours then we gave the Mans a ride back to their house and went back to ours (aka Grandma & Grandpoo's) to shower and change. After we were dressed, I took Pumpkin back to the Mans' for a little impromptu slumber party with Ron and Lis. Pumpkin didn't seem at all bothered that I was leaving and actually sent me off happily with a "Bye, Mommy!" I came back home and settled in on the sofa to watch HSM 2 again (b/c there was nothing else on). I've been half-expecting to get a phone call asking me to pick him up, but it seems he's fine b/c it's already 2am and no phone call. Whew! I'm so glad....and now, it's nite-nite time for me too. Gotta pick up my rugrat bright and early tomorrow. NOT!

Damn that HSM2...I can't get it out of my head! You are the music in me....Grrr.

Day 1-August 2007

Captain's Log:
We walked into "Grandma's house" just before midnight last night. Pumpkin's 1st words upon waking up and realizing that we'd arrived were "I'm going to see my beautiful Grandma. Grandma's going to make me rice and beans." Then, he corrected himself and said that, no, actually, Juanita was going to make him some rice and beans, hehe (this may have been true if we'd arrived a few hours earlier, but alas, Juanita was long gone by the time we walked in the door).

Today, I spent the morning unpacking and rearranging our room. In the afternoon, we attended Cas's High School Musical 7th Birthday Party at the Children's Museum. Woo-hoo! Pumpkin was having so much fun at the party that he almost turned down a slice of cake. Fortunately for him, he came to his senses before someone else ate his slice. ;)

In other noteworthy news: Pumpkin somehow convinced Grandma to buy him a Brio train set from the Children's Museum, and then later that evening, he finagled a "teta" from his poor Grandma, who wasn't aware that we'd stopped giving him bottles a couple of weeks ago. Silly Grandma!

My Ongoing Tax Saga

As we approach the August extension deadline for those of us who didn't file our taxes back in April, I finally made myself sit down to finish working on our taxes for the past 3 years. We started these in April a week before they were due, and we've had several months to finish them, mind you, so it's only natural that we're finally getting back to it on the eve of the next filing deadline, haha. Really, what I should be doing is packing and getting ready for my upcoming trip to Texas to attend a couple of classes at UH.

So, anyway, I'm finally done with our taxes including the extremely late ones. I commented to QT earlier that it seems that the more time I spend working on them, the more things I find that I could've done differently. Could've or should've? Oh well. I'm really just too tired to care anymore. My only hope now is that the IRS will consider us just too meaningless and unimportant to bother auditing. Ahh, to be inconspicuous. Never thought I'd find myself wishing for such a thing.

It's 2am, and I'm off to bed. Just wanted to take a moment to commemorate the occasion. Wish us luck! Visit us in prison!

Lair o' the Bear

Gotta love that name, dontcha?

A few weeks ago, we took Pumpkin to Lair o' the Bear Park for his first-ever "hike." Actually, I think it was a first for all three of us. Being so, we thought it best to go with a group, and we found one geared especially towards families with children so it worked out beautifully. We went about a mile total with plenty of stops, and clocking in at just over 2 hours, I have to say that it was the best-ever introduction to hiking for a first-timer such as myself. :)











I'm very proud to report that Pumpkin made it through the entire hike on his own steam pausing only to post for an occasional picture with his Daddy-o. Naturally, he fell asleep in the truck the minute we left the park grounds, haha, but we enjoyed ourselves immensely. In fact, we loved it so much that we promised my niece and nephew that we'd take them hiking when they came to visit us two weeks later.

Alas, our plans petered out due to rainy weather, but now that we know how much fun hiking is (at least our baby version of it, hehe), we'll definitely do it again soon.

Next up for the C's, camping!