Alter-egos

Well, as I write, Leo should be waiting at the gate in Seoul, Korea for his return flight home. He leaves midnight Utah time and doesn't get in to Salt Lake until 4pm tomorrow afternoon...he's going to be tiiiirrrrred! After all the Japanese and Korean food he has had this week, he says that he is craving Mexican food.

What not to name your child
So get this. I'm watching the news this morning and one of the news reporter's name was Nineveh. Yup. Nineveh as in the city that Jonas in the Bible was commanded to go to and preach repentance, and he didn't want to go because he thought they were past repentance. What kind of person names their daughter after a sinful city? Maybe I should just name my next two kids Sodom and Gomorrah. To Nineveh's credit, they did repent and the Lord saved the city. But still!

My latest goal for this year
Start swimming again, (on a semi-competitive level?) - I really miss my swim team and water polo workouts from high school. Strange how I would miss the workouts that would be so tough that I would sometimes start dry heaving at the side of the pool. Is it possible to be addicted to chlorine? :) Maybe that's why I like to clean, the smell of chlorine in some of the cleaning products, hahaha. I need a coach, though to set up workouts and push me through them, I'm not likely to push myself hard enough to start dry heaving after my workouts! I heard that there is a Masters team (www.usms.org) in South Jordan, but I still need to verify the info first before I join.

Is there a need to protect our identities?
What do you think? As much as I like to share, I do realize that too much information could be dangerous. I mean, I just shared the fact with y'all that Leo is gone, where he is, when he's coming back, I've got pictures of my house posted on this blog and of Tiago. Hmm, perhaps this is the Spirit telling me to be careful and take precautions for the safety of myself and my family!

SO! I need to come up with alter-egos for Dear Hubby and Angel Child. My name will be Carmelita, as that was my Spanish name in college. Any ideas? I would use Guapo for Dear Hubby's alter-ego name...but my friend "Gabriela" already uses that for her husband. Perhaps I could have Dear Hubby be named from now EL Guapo, like in Three Amigos...what about Angel Child?

As for now I think the changing names and identifying information should be sufficient for now. To make the blog private and invitation only is too much of a hassel for others in my mind and also limits the possibility that old friends can stumbly upon my blog accidentally.

Good night for now! Still recovering from the cold...and if I go to sleep sooner, then it will SEEM like Dear Hubby is coming home quicker!

Well, this sucks.

Hi! I'm finally back after an unexplicable absence from blogging, lots has been going on....

Why I haven't been on to blog

1. We had the deadline to close on our house pushed back several times at Fannie Mae's whim, thus driving us to insanity. We did some time in a nice, padded room...just kidding, but buying a house is not for the faint of heart!

2. We were staying with some friends for a couple of weeks that did have internet, but my laptop wouldn't work with their wireless...so I found better things to do, like shopping! There's nothing like retail therapy that makes things seem so much better, especially when you're at Target! I missed being able to browse stores and go shopping while I was in Mexico. It's just not the same.

3. We moved into our house and had the usual things to do when moving in like changing light bulbs for energy efficient ones, ridding the carpet of the previous owners' dog hair, installing the garage door opener (more on that later!), and now the guest bathroom toilet is broken...but hey! At least we have a house and $30,000 of automatic equity (it was a foreclosure so we bought it for less than market value).

4. My parents came into town to help us unpack. There is where the garage door opener comes in. Leo, with my dad's help...installed the whole thing! 10 hours after starting, the unit was up and running, and it will not budge, it is so securely fastened to the ceiling...the house could fall down in an earthquake, and the opener will still be standing. Now, I am perfectly aware of the unlogical premise of the last sentence...that if the house falls, that the opener will be still standing. Garage doors openers don't stand, silly! :)
This is absolutely amazing if you know Leo...he's good at the handy stuff once he's figured it out, he's just never learned how to do it all since labor in Mexico is so cheap, it's just cheaper to hire somebody than go through all the trouble of buying your own tools and figuring it out.

4. Leo turned 30 and I planned a party for him. I also bought tickets to the American Idols concert and went to the grocery store and bought every single variety of root beer that I could find in the store. Surprisingly, there are a lot! There's even a ginger root beer with antioxidants. Leo loves root beer, by the way. Most Mexicans don't like it, since to them it tastes like cough medicine (oh! Where can I get THAT kind of cough medicine? Sounds yummy!)

And reason #5 why I haven't blogged for a while

Quite frankly, when I've got a lake a 1/2 mile from my house and 35 miles of trails just out my front door...being on the internet to blog seems less appealing than a nice walk. Unless it's more than 90 degrees out, which it is b/c it's summer. So I stay inside and vacuum the dog hairs out of the carpet! Leo is allergic to dogs, dog hairs, and thus our house, so this is priority.

Leo update

Right now at the time of this writing, Leo is in Seoul, Korea sightseeing in the city. He's been gone since last Sunday, he had to go to Japan and Korea to lead some academies and trainings. So the Korea office today planned for a guide to take him around and show him some of the sights of Seoul. He'll be back on Saturday, which due to the time difference, he will arrive here at the same time on Saturday that he left Korea. He leaves Korea at 3pm Saturday, and arrives here in Salt Lake at 3:45pm the same day. Bizzarro!

He's got my camera b/c he couldn't find the battery to his. Let's hope he takes lots of good pictures! Leo having my camera also explains why I am not posting any new pics on here!

He's got jet lag like you wouldn't believe. When he calls me at 3:30pm here, he's just getting out of bed the next DAY there.

Next month he is supposed to go to Thailand, Taiwan, Malaysia, and the Phillippines. Then he's supposed to visit India, Ecuador, Peru, and various cities in the US, plus some other countries before the end of the year. HellllllOOOOO SkyMiles! SkyMiles will be the proud sponsor of my trip to Cancun in October this year. Yes, Leo has to go to Cancun for work in October, for WORK, dag-nabbit! Where can I find a job like this? Oh yeah, I have it already...it's called being the wife of the guy who travels and getting to use his SkyMiles to tag along on some of his trips and play while he's working. I much prefer that.

Tiago update

Still the most adorable, cute baby EVER! He's 10 months now, has one tooth, can officially crawl (instead of doing belly flops a la 1980s breakdancing), and even pulls himself up to standing from sitting!

He claps hands whenever I say "Yay!" or whenever he hears clapping on TV. Or even if I'm trying to show him a new trick (let's wave bye bye, Tiago!), he claps and smiles as if to say "Good job Mommy, you can wave your hands!"

He also likes to point his finger and touch it to my finger, just like in ET...."ET phone home"

He's also proficient in pulling all the DVDs off the shelf (if I don't see him in time to say NO!), and screaming high-pitched gibberish when I'm out shopping with him. People seem to find that cute, but they don't think it's cute when I do it. Not that I've done it. I just don't imagine that a 26 year old woman screaming high-pitched gibberish is very cute...it's rather disturbing, like the Joker in The Dark Knight.

He's figured out how to blow raspberries on my arm while I'm holding him. Unfortunately he's not always successful and sometimes just ends up spitting on it.

When he is in his stroller and he's tired, he'll prop both of his feet up on top of the stroller tray...just like I did when I was his age...my mom has pictures of me with my feet in the air, flashing my tights-clad diaper...scandalous!

Anyhow, it's time for me to end this blog. I am tired. I am sick of having "me" time, I want Leo back so we can have some "family" time. I am tired of retail therapy that will supposedly make the time go by faster. It doesn't. It just gives me a million things to see that I would like to buy but shouldn't, or I'm constantly running to the back of each store to use the bathrooms. I am also sick with the cold, so is Tiago. It's also 12:39 AM on Friday morning so it's safe to say that my thinking is no longer clear. It's also messed up with cold medicine and having talked to a baby all week who just blows raspberries and gibberish in response along with his angelic smile.

G'night y'all!

I'm baaaaack!

Yes, it's been a long time since I blogged, but I'm back now!



Lots has happened since I last posted. Leo and I FINALLY closed on the house! There were a couple of bumps in the road (mostly Fannie Mae jerking us around, we had everything they had asked for, and then some...but then they would come back with more conditions and asking for more money).



While we were waiting to close on the house, we stayed with some friends of ours, the Woodburys. While they did have the internet, my computer wouldn't connect to their wireless. Then came moving into the house and settling in!



Then Leo turned 30! So I planned a surprise party and took him to the American Idols concert for his birthday.


(NOTE: THIS WAS A DRAFT THAT WAS SAVED AND THEN PUBLISHED ON 12/09/08)