Feeling sick

I hate being sick. And I hate when Billy and Bella get sick. It's just miserable and not fun at all.. I've been up since 3:30 coughing and feeling yiaky.. well, I've been coughing and feeling yiaky for a week now. That's partly why I decided to go to the ER at 5 am! My throat felt like it was burning when I woke up and I didnt know if perhaps it was strep or something worst.. BUT, apparently all I have is allergies and got 3 prescriptions for some antibiotics, steroids and allergy meds. I hope to start feeling better soon. I'm so sick and tired of coughing and feeling like crap :( Plus I've been drinking TONS of water and I go to the bathroom every 10 minutes..

I'm just glad Bella stayed with my parents last night so Billy and I could rest - even if I woke up at 3 in the morning!

Like Father, Like Daughter...

They love being silly. They love making funny faces. They love each other to pieces!! They just stood there in front of the mirror in Bella's bathroom and started imitating each other. It's just too cute and funny to see them play and enjoy each other.

Halloween Pictures

Bella was a Panda Bear in the morning and a Butterfly at night :) The Panda outfit is actually her church clothes but I figured since it was Halloween I'd dress her up in the Panda line from Gymboree. And then at night, our church had a fall festival program for the kids. And she actually wore the same costume she wore for her birthday in June.

ABC Animal Book

Since I got pregnant with Bella I've been working on lists of ABC albums for her. Animals, Food, Things/Toys, Family, etc, etc..

Well, since I won to host the Shutterfly House Party next weekend and I got a free 7x9 album, I figured I'd do an ABC album for Bella (finally!) :)

Click here to view this photo book larger

Day trip to Kemah

We had a great day today. It was Billy's off weekend so we drove to Kemah and spent the day there. Bella had a blast at the boardwalk and all the kiddie rides. We got her an all-day pass and she used every penny of it! :) Carousel, airplanes, train ride, and a mini merry-go-round. She loved it all!! We had great food at Landry's too. We sat outside overlooking the bay and seeing all the boats coming in and out of the pier. The weather was just perfect! Sunny with a cool breeze and in the 70s. What a beautiful day to spend as a family!

Here are some pictures:

First Major Injury

Bella had a brutal accident today. While we were watching a show at the Renaissance Festival this morning, we were sitting on some cement benches and she was walking/jumping/playing on them. Well, somehow she fell and cracked her head. It was about 1/2 centimeter wide but just the blood freaked me out! Can't believe I actually did a year of medicine :O I think it was just seeing my OWN child's blood.. anyways, she's ok now. Bled quite a bit and cried a lot. She also said her head hurt :( Poor baby.. We cleaned the cut, gave her some Tylenol for the pain and put some neosporin in the wound. After a good nap, she went back to her old self - singing, dancing, hoping and being wild crazy!

Family in town

My uncle (and godfather) Enrique flew to Houston with his wife last night to visit my parents and us. We havent seen them since Billy and I went to Colombia on December 2005. This morning while I was at a doctor's appointment they came by the apartment to see Bella. She sang for them and counted to 10 in Spanish AND English. Smarty pants girl! :) They were quite impressed! I've been trying to teach Bella more Spanish, at least talk to her a few things each day in Spanish. I know it's important for her to learn while she's still young. It's just hard.. Especially since Billy doesn't speak much of it either.

But my mom has been singing to her "Jesuscito de mi vida" (Jesus of my life) every time she can and Bella *loves* singing it and doing the hand motions :) Here are the lyrics. Just imagine a 2 year-old trying to say this and do hand gestures. It's too cute!! I'll have to film it soon and post it.

Jesuscito de mi vida
Fuiste nino como yo
Y por eso te quiero tanto
Que te doy mi corazon
Tomalo, tomalo
Tuyo es, mio no
Tomalo, tomalo
Tuyo es, mio no

Layouts shower...

Well, since it's been raining on and off for days here in Houston, it seems appropriate to title this post "Layouts shower" :) Most of them are just day to day pictures. Bella playing, drawing, or being goofy..

Scrapping at Archiver's

I took today's afternoon as a "me" day and went scrapping at Archiver's. One of the things I love about living in Houston is all the scrapping stores there are - Hobby Lobby, Archiver's, Lone Star Scrapbooking, Michaels, Jo-Ann, among others that I haven't even been to!

So, here are some more layouts :)

These are some pictures of when my Pea friend Sharon came to visit Bella and I with her son and niece.
Pictures of my little girlBella and Mocha - our 2 little princesses :)A little photo shoot of Bella one Sabbath afternoon in the backyard of one of our church members. Her hair was just starting to grow and you could see little wings (not quite curls). Plus her big plumpy cheeks... Just too cute! :)
Enjoy! I'll post 5 more tomorrow :)

More layouts to share

Here are some more layouts I've done lately even though the pictures are from a YEAR ago!... yiaks.. but at least I'm scrapping them, right? Enjoy! :)

More scrapping

Here are some layouts with pictures from last summer.

Here's Bella with her uncle David. He gave her an Exxon share for her 1st birthday :)

Bella and Daddy playing in the water and eating bunuelos (a typical food from Colombia).

We went to Lake Conroe with the whole family and had a blast!

The whole family. We went to the Woodlands Mall and Bella rode on the carousel.

Bella playing with a monkey and posing for my parents.

Catching up on my scrapbooks..

I've been trying to scrap more since I have a room-full of stuff and I might as well use it, right?! :) Plus I have hundreds of pictures sitting on my desk waiting patiently to be scrapped.. I'm working in chronological order on Bella's pictures and I'm just finished July 2008 pictures :O

So, here are some of the layouts I've done lately. This is a album kit from BoBunny. I finished it at the last Sunday Crop I went at Archiver's and just this week added some pictures from Bella's first time at the beach in Santa Cruz, CA. If you click on the pictures you can see them bigger. Enjoy! :)

It has 5 more pages that need pictures so I'll add those later.

Welcome back!

3 and a half months later I've resurrected to the blog life. Again! Before that I was "dead" for 2 months... gosh it's hard to keep up this thing!

In any case, since my last few posts, we moved to Houston after Billy got a job as the associate pastor of the West Houston SDA Church. And we LOVE it! The big city, the shopping, the places to go and see and visit, the beaches close by, and of course having my parents and my brother just 15 minutes down the road :) Billy's loving his new church and being the associate pastor of ONE church. It's funny how people asks us, almost regretfully, how we like it. People from Merced would make comments about how hot it would be in Houston while we were having temperatures of over 100'F there! Can you say *reality check*!!

But see.. Billy grew up in Biloxi, MS which is hot AND humid. Just like here. I grew up in Barrancabermeja (Colombia) which is hot AND humid. Just like here. Yeah I had AC 99% of the time. But so do we here. AC at home. AC in the car. AC in the stores. You have AC everywhere! Sure you sweat a little more while you walk from the house to the car or from the car to the store, but so what?! It's not like I'm gonna melt... most of the time anyways... LOL

IMHO, California (most of it at least) is over-rated. Too expensive. Economically depressed. Cold water at the beach. No offense to all my dear friends who still live there. But after living in 4 states in 8 years, I've come to the conclusion that the 'greatness' of a place is defined mostly by the people you have around you and how much it suits your priorities.

For example, Berrien Springs. By far, the smallest and coldest place I've ever lived: 3 gas stations, 2 red lights, 1 taco bell and a winter that lasted almost 6 months of the year! The closest city was about 30 minutes drive and not the greatest shopping. 45-minute drive to find a decent restaurant and good shopping. But we had a small group every week in our house or someone else's house and parties almost every weekend. Our church was awesome. School was great. And we made life-long friends (for the most part). Regardless of how much snow was on the ground or how busy we were with school, we could call a few people, order some pizza and play some board games (canasta being our favorite ;). My point is, the people that you have around you are more important than the great weather or location or other things that may seem like great stuff to others.

And so, we are loving living in Houston!! Billy loves his church and job. Bella loves seeing her grandparents every week and I love the city and all there's to do and see - zoo, aquarium, museums, YMCA, beach, malls, scrapbook stores... the list is endless! :)

PD. To all my readers (B, mom, and the occasional random stranger) I promise I'll do better with my posting. Maybe once a week is a good goal. We shall see... :)

Happy Father's Day!

Wishing my wonderful husband, my dad, grandfathers and fathers in law a happy day! :)

Bad, bad blogger!

WOW! It's been over a month since I last posted here. And so many things have happened since!

Bella turned 2! Yes, yes. My little baby girl is growing up and we love her more and more every day (despite the whining from time to time and the "no-no-no" little tantrums...). She's talking up a storm and learns new words every day. She still loves Little Einsteins and her favorite character is Annie. A few days ago we watched "The Jungle Book 2" and she loved it! I think it's all the animals and the songs and dancing.

We took a family vacation to go visit my parents, my brother and Billy's parents. We actually only saw my dad because my mom had to stay in Colombia to have foot surgery. My brother had to leave on a business trip 3 days after we got to Houston. But we had fun! We went to the zoo and the aquarium. And I dont think I have to explain how much Bella LOVED them!!! And I took about 500 pictures! :O We also went to the YMCA several times and Bella enjoyed the pool *very* much! :)

We then drove to Louisiana and stayed at Billy's mom. We drove at night to allow Bella to sleep but it didn't quite work as planned. Nonetheless we had fun and Bella loved seeing all the cows and horses and chickens and other animals at the farm. She even fed a baby calf some milk with a bottle - "I wanna give the nu-nu to the moo-moo." Her words, not mine! Billy officiated his cousin's wedding on Saturday and Bella got to dance with KJ (Billy's sister) at the reception. She also went to bed *really* late! We had Bella's birthday party on Sunday after church and she had lots of fun at the pool. Billy was sick half of the trip with random stuff. Bella got sick a couple of days but nothing serious.

Scrapbooking related... I met 2 friends from 2Peas. I had already met Debbie, but this time I got to meet I got my shopping fix at Hobby Lobby and Archivers :) Those 2 places ROCK! I've been working hard on Bella's album. Trying not to get behind even though I'm still working on her 1st birthday pictures! LOL LOL LOL