What to call this post?

I'm not even going to apologize for slacking off! I do that in every single post I make, and I think it's getting pretty old.

So you'll probably notice a button on my sidebar that's yellow and says "This is getting good!" That's just the semi-official logo for the community that I live in, Daybreak, and I think clicking on the button will take you to the website. I love it here! But that's not why I put it up. I'm normally against advertising for other companies for free (which is why I like to wear clothes from certain stores, but NOT if they have the name of the store written all over it). But for posting that button, I was given a $20 gift card to REI in the unlikely event that Leo and I ever decide to become outdoorsy people, we have $20 to help us out!

Tiago is 23 months old today, we're working on plans for his birthday party next month. So far, we only know it's going to be a Cars theme. But all the stuff for parties focuses on Lightning McQueen, and it seems that Mater is his favorite character.

Leo is busy at work as usual. He's headed off to Costa Rica next week, then to Colombia, Peru and Chile next month (or so the plan is so far), then to Spain in October. Oh well...the best benefit of all this travel is the SkyMiles he gets in his account. We almost have enough miles to pay for two tickets to Mexico for Christmas, so we'll just have to buy one! (for a savings of at least $1400....whew!)

I'm working on the stuff I need to start teaching piano lessons in September. I never realized there was so much more to it than just showing up and charging money for my time! At least not if I want to do it right and do right by my students. :) It'll be nice to have some extra money coming in to help pay bills and for the fun stuff. We don't need it, this is going to be more of a hobby than a necessity, but you can't argue with extra money!

I also have a new responsibility. I am now a contributing author on the Belcher Family blog. My mom was a Belcher, so her cousin set up a blog for all Belcher descendents, and I am in charge of posting events about my mom and dad, Lisi and Jake, and Leo and I. I'm just glad I didn't ever have to grow up as a Belcher. :)

Oh! So I remember what initially prompted me to post this posting to the blog.

Have any of you ever fantasized about being on bed rest during pregnancy just so you have an excuse and a large block of time to sit down and work solely on scrapbooking? I do...I have lots of photos to scan and catalog, and approximately 27 years of my life to scrapbook. Then Leo is never going to scrapbook his own stuff, so I'll have to at least catalog his photos in chronological order. Then I want to keep Tiago up on his scrapbook, I think that's just a small favor I can do for him. Bed rest would give me an excuse just to lay there (literally!) and work on that for a couple of months at least.

On another pregnancy note, (no, I am NOT pregnant!) if any of you reading this are planning on having any more kids, take note of the Hospital Indemnity and Sickness plans. Leo and I got ours from AFLAC, and basically after 10 months, it'll pay you for your time in the hospital, doctors fees and surgical benefits (they consider delivery a surgery). Regular delivery scores big $$, but C-sections score even bigger $$. So for just over $100 per month, I will get $3200 once I deliver a baby. So it's a fantastic deal if you time things carefully, to only pay premiums for 10-12 months and deliver after you've had the policy for at least 10 months. It's completely legit and legal. But I'm not an insurance salesperson, so you'll have to find out your own information. Our salesperson told us that AFLAC is considering changing the terms of the policies to exclude maternity and delivery because they lose a lot of money on that, but as long as you purchase a policy before they change it, then you're good to go!

The $$ can be used however you want. Leo and I have excellent insurance plus great benefits provided by 4Life to cover the cost of our deductible, so this isn't a necessity, but like I said up above, you can't argue with extra $$!

Well, I'm off for now! We're in the process of painting our bedroom, so I need to tape off the accent wall and maybe get ready to put on a coat of primer during Tiago's nap. We decided to paint the rooms in our house in the theme of the 4 Elements, Earth, Water, Fire and Air. So our Master bedroom area is water, our hallway, stairs and part of our living room is going to be Fire, then we haven't worked out the rest of the details. :)

Au Revoir!

California, Cruise, Birthday...Christmas

Much has happened in the past month after getting out of credit card debt. We went on a 7 night Mexican Riviera Cruise, DH finally received an offer from the company that is looking to hire him away from his currently company, DH celebrated his 31st birthday and DS continues to awe and amaze his parents.

It's also time to start thinking about Christmas! Strange, isn't it? Since it is our year to go to Mexico, we've got to start planning ahead of time, especially when DS will need his very own ticket since he'll be over the age of 2 by then. Yikes! There is a car seat and a travel crib waiting for us down there, but those will have to be shared with our nephew. So we will have to bring one or the other, likely the car seat since we'll need it for the flight.

Doing some preliminary pricing on tickets, riddle me this. Why is it cheaper to fly to Guadalajara THROUGH Salt Lake City from Vegas or Orange County than it is to fly to Guadalajara DIRECTLY from SLC? It's over $300 cheaper PER ticket to fly out of Vegas with a 13 hour layover in SLC than it is to fly directly from SLC. So for savings of close to $1000, why not drive to Vegas, leave our car there, fly to SLC, spend the night at our own house and then fly on to Mexico?

I will write another post later with more details on the cruise and our trip to California, as well as Leo's birthday. I should go work on actually scrapbooking the cruise before I postpone it too long!

Free of Credit Card Debt - Free at last! :)

As of 10:25 AM on Friday, June 12 2009, Mr. Monkey and I are free of credit card debt!

I made the lum sum payments on mine and Mr Monkey's credit cards and I feel liberated!

This was made possible due to some awesome tax breaks we received last year, resulting in a HUMONGOUS tax refund. First, all taxes that we paid while living outside of the US while in the employ of a US comany, was returned to us. Then we had the $7500 tax credit, the child credit and a couple of other things that resulted in our taxable income being really small and the majority of our taxes refunded to us.

So now all that remains is to build up our savings, pay off our car loans (two of them), and pay back my mom and dad for some money they loaned to us. So we're not in the clear just yet, just MUCH closer to our goal. :)

Wow, I've been blagging

I learned a new term a while ago, when a friend asked me why I've been blagging. I naturally said "huh?"...so it's a combination of blog and lagging...so lagging on my blog. That was my something new for that day, not as profound as finally completely grasping the theory of relativity or completely grasping all the Gospel has to offer, by the way. But it's a start. :)

It's now pouring down rain outside (oh! And lightening and thunder!), I don't recall Junes in Utah usually being like this. We get this a lot in California, the June Gloom, but maybe my memory is just really bad! It's nice, although I should turn my sprinkler system off for a week or so! Yay for saving money on the water bill! I can't complain, it's not as expensive for water here as it is in Washington, where Leo's older sister lives.

I am mostly writing this entry to keep my memory fresh...allowing me to unload some memories here so I can open up space in my brain for the more important stuff like, remembering the stuff I need to buy at the grocery store.

I am on Day 10 of the Master Cleanse, it has not been difficult, and I actually had given up yesterday and had a bowl of soup with some crackers, and some tomatoes with oil and vinegar, salt and pepper. But I'm back on track today. My focus throughout this cleanse has been amazing, my energy has almost never been higher, and I feel lighter and cleaner. My taste preferences are moving away from junk food and towards more gourmet ingredients, which is totally fine by me.

I wasn't originally planning on doing this cleanse, but DH has a coworker at the office who had just completed the 10 day cleanse and raved about the effects, so he decided to try it. This is the second time I have completed the 10 days, and Leo knew I'd done it before so we decided to do it together (makes it MUCH easier when you don't have to prepare dinner for somebody else while you are not eating!)

However, I do miss eating, and I used this cleanse to clean out the toxins in my body and to jump start my healthier lifestyle which I have been following for a short while, but I wanted to give it a kick in the pants, so to say. Next time, perhaps I'll try a cleanse such as the ones from the Isagenix line. I've been drooling over my back issues of Martha Stewart Living magazines for the last several days now, and I'm excited to try a bunch of the recipes in the upcoming weeks. Healthier, of course...with finer ingredients! Although, I'm craving some really fine cheese right now....Harmon's grocery store imports a lot of really yummy cheeses from all over, I love poring over the cheese counter and reading all the labels!

Although the main purpose of the cleanse is to clean, NOT to lose weight...losing weight is still a natural side effect of this. So far I've lost about 6 pounds, but I expect to gain half of it back because it is mostly water weight that comes off, at least in the beginning. But now I am finally solidly below the weight I was at when I got pregnant with Tiago (even if it's by 1 pound, but still!) But THAT weight was still 15 pounds off the weight I was at when Leo and I got married, so I've still got a ways to go, although I've gotta admit, I'm looking smoking hot! :)

DH has finally finished his major project at work, and the company launched it at the 4Life Convention in May. He just moved back to the marketing department with the same title, so now he's implementing the system he created for the company worldwide, along with taking on additional marketing responsibilities. I'm happy for him that he's back in Marketing, that's where his true passion lies and that's where he's happiest.

He'll be leaving this weekend for Chicago. There is an event on Sunday, but he's flying in on Saturday morning so that he can spend a day with my sister and her husband who are an hour and a half away from Chicago, in Indiana. She's pregnant with her first baby, a boy who will be nicknamed JD! She's due in September, and I'm excited for her...although it stinks for me since my birthday is at the END of September, so JD's birthday will be first in the month for the family, then DS (my son), in the middle, then mine 9 days after that. Oh well...I don't need presents, so if everybody runs out of money to buy gifts, so be it!

Other news in my universe, I got called to 4 callings in the Spanish branch. Oh yeah, DH and I are attending the Spanish branch now, by assignment. We had previously been invited by the branch president, but he came back to our house and said that he was authorized by the stake president to assign us to that branch, so we didn't have much of a choice...hehe. But we love it, I've always liked attending the Spanish branches more than the English ward, for the friendships, camaraderie, and the activities and food. Plus, it's more "real" than the Utah English wards, if anybody can understand what I mean by that.

I am now the Primary Pianist, Choir Pianist, Sacrament Organist, and Ward Music Coordinator. So I get to organize all the music training that goes on in the ward, so I am excited to promote musical literacy. My biggest challenge at this point is the organ. Now, those who play the piano will understand that being a pianist does not naturally translate into being an organist. Techniques are different, plus there are all those stops and pedals! How to register the organ for each song so that it sounds good??? Plus you have those volume pedals...then the split keyboards!! It's overwhelming at first, but I've figured out how to get by.

But I want to be an organist, so I ordered some organn books in the mail and signed up for Music 71 through BYU Independent Study, which is beginning organ (especially for pianists). The best part about the course is that it is free, except for the materials! I'd like to play the Tabernacle Choir organ someday for a Spanish choir...so I'd better get cracking and learn!

DS is now 20 months old, almost 21 months. He's still the apple of my eye, of course. The terrible twos are coming early, he likes to say NO whenever I ask him a yes or no question, regardless of what he actually wants to do. It's fine, I read that they are just asserting their own identity and independence. He was hitting for a while, but we worked that out of him for the most part. A new obsession with Cars and Toy Stories I and II have taken hold, he could watch those movies all day, every day. I limit it to one movie per day, and I'm quite tired of watching those three (although it's like going to Disneyland repeatedly...you start to notice new things that were there all along that you hadn't noticed before), so I am trying to introduce Tiago to the other Pixar movies we have...he seemed to really enjoy the Incredibles.

We just had Leo's older sister Lili and her son Christian here last month for two weeks. My brother-in-law was in Germany for a month, completing a foot and ankle surgery fellowship. So instead of being by herself for a month, she came out here for two weeks. Christian and DS had tons of fun together, they are only 5 months apart so they naturally are in about the same stages of development, although it's interesting to note how much difference 5 months can make!

DH and I also purchased a pass a week ago to Thanksgiving Point and to all the amenities it offers. So we went to the gardens last Saturday and spent about 2 hours walking around the gardens, enjoying the sunshine and the beauty. Then we drove up American Fork canyon to Timpanogos Cave to get some more information, and then took the back way home through Traverse Canyon through Draper and back home. BEAUTIFUL and absolutely the perfect Saturday!

I am excited for next month, because we decided to take a cruise to Mexico for our summer vacation. They are super cheap because of the H1N1 scare...we found a 7 day cruise leaving LA, visiting Cabo San Lucas, Puerto Vallarta and Mazatlan for only $450 per person. We had received a small inheritance from my grandma that we were instructed to use on something memorable, so we applied our normal budget for vacation with that and are good to go!

Lili, Mike and Christian are also planning on going with us, so that should be lots of fun. But we refuse to bring DS with us! Since my mom has the entire month of July off, she volunteered to watch DS for a week while we go and party as if we were young and childless again! :)

So I'm enjoying things right now. Life is good.

Awesome video, hopefully one day Jordy will be on there

Go into Google and type "One day (your name) will" (not forgetting to place the quotation marks). Report your first 10 finding, regardless of relevance.
**Note, I tried to do Jordanna, but nothing came up. Then I tried an alternate spelling, but nothing came up...so I had to go with Jordy***

1. Awesome video, hopefully one day Jordy will be on there

2. Maybe one day Jordy will be able to swim But not today. Will someone teach Jordy to swim please? Lets hire a penguin that swims ...

3. Maybe One day Jordy will be as fast as me.. she does know her trance though... " I've got stars to sow, fat to chew and many different men to see about many ...

*******The above three are all that came up with the quotation marks...I had to repeat without the word "will" to get the rest************

4. One day Jordy asked his mommy what a war was. She said when the governments of countries were mad at each other they sent armies to fight ...

5. One day Jordy is out walking when suddenly a white man in a truck throws a beer bottle in his head. The good mood that Jordy was in ...

6. One day, jordy and I will GET MY LOVE BACK OF YOU! <3 Loads of love RUBY .... One day, jordy and I will fly to the moon n bk and havvvve spaaaaace babies ... (Okaaaay)

7. One day, Jordy goes to school... He forgot to bring his Mths textbook... He went back home and return to school... So, the next day, Jordy goes to school by ...

8. There always matchin my shirts && one day Jordy && Drew will write a song about it. =] Im the Most Clumsy person ever! I cant walk Straight, && I trip easy ...

9. Want them to be a apart of my program one day’. Jordy Smith. ‘Pushing the boundaries of Free Expression… Kickin new levels and movin on up… ...

10. “One day, Jordy and I were walking to the New Pier,” recalls Damien, “and in broad daylight we saw a guy stab another guy over a poker game and just get up ...

Okaaaaay, I am thinking about changing my nickname. First of all, it's a BOY'S nickname...boo hiss!

Dear Hubby comes home tomorrow from Costa Rica, can't wait!

Husband Quiz

I wanted to challenge myself, and visitors to my blog do this voluntarily so I'm not practically forcing you to read my lame-o answers if it shows up on your Facebook page. So read ahead if you want, skip if you don't! :)

Here's a chance to see how well you know your hubby. Copy and paste, fill in YOUR answers, then forward . . . shoot, you know what to do. The real challenge is to send it to your husband to see how right you really are.

1. He's sitting in front of the TV, what is on the screen? Something funny. He could watch Madagascar over and over (first, not the second!), we like to watch Everybody Loves Raymond, Seinfeld, Friends, and Scrubs.

2. You're out to eat; what kind of dressing does he get on his salad? Poppy Seed


3. What's one food he doesn't like? Seafood with the exception of shrimp and calamari

4. What is his favorite movie? Madagascar

5. Where did he go to high school? Cervantes Spanish High School in Sao Paolo, Brazil.

6. What size shoe does he wear? 6

7. If he was to collect anything, what would it be? Money... :)

8. What is his favorite type of sandwich? Ham with melted cheese.

9. What would this he eat every day if he could? He wouldn't. Too picky for that. :) But he could eat at Cafe Rio pretty often.

10. What is his favorite cereal? Fruit Loops

11. What is something he would never wear? Speedo

12. What is his favorite sports team? Chivas soccer team from Guadalajara

13. Who did he vote for? Can't vote yet! Is a permanent resident, we're just passing time until he can become a citizen.

14. Who is his best friend? ME! Of course, and next to me, Luis Eduardo and Edgar from Guadalajara

15. What is something you do that he wishes you wouldn't do? Fart :)

16. What is his favorite sport? He is not really into sports (hallelujah!) I guess it would be soccer if it's Chivas or Mexico playing.

17. You bake him a cake for his birthday; what kind would it be? CHOCOLATE

18. What is his favorite vacation? Cancun, or any exotic beach locale (California beaches don't quite cut it). Anywhere where he can lay on the beach and bake in the sun like a lizard (while I sit under an umbrella and use sunscreen, I'm sure I will be the one to get skin cancer). At the time of my writing this, he's on the beach in Costa Rica (for work!)

19. What could he spend hours doing? Looking into my eyes. :)

20. What is one unique talent he has? He makes me feel like a million dollars!

Spring is almost here!

It's hard to see in the picture below, but just last week we found our first bug in the house, a cricket! Not that it's something to be proud of, but at least it means that Spring is almost here!

Tiago had fun chasing the cricket around, although it seemed for a while like he was Robot Number 5 in the movie Short Circuit, so zealous in his pursuit of the cricket that he almost stepped on it.

Now with the advent of Spring, I get to resume my role as the main spider killer in the house! Spiders, beware!