Sophia's Haircut

Before the haircut

After donating 10" to Locks for Love

Sophia's Birthday in Pictures

Sophia's Birthday Breakfast Set-Up

Isnt' it fancy??? Thanks to Nana

Friends Party

Sophia and her pink polka dot cake

The girls making their "Friends are the Flowers in the Garden of Life" shirts

All the girls....Leah, Kaylee, Allie, Olivia, Sophia, Analisa, Lexi, & Kalena

Family Dinner Birthday Party (@ The Pie)

Me and my darling daughter opening presents

Grandma Sheila and Nana watching Sophia open her presents...

Sophia blowing out candles...again

I hope she had a wonderful 6th birthday. My baby is growing up too fast!

Veterans Day

"This Veterans Day, I believe we should do more than sing the praises of the bravery and patriotism that our veterans have embodied in the past. We should take this opportunity to re-evaluate how we are treating our veterans in the present."

~Nick Lampson

My grandparents live in a small town outside of Tucson, every year a local 4th grade teacher has his students write letters/poems to the local veterans expressing their gratitude and has them read them aloud. A few years ago we were visiting during Veterans Day and had the pleasure of accompanying them to this event. It was such an honor to be there and to watch as these children got up and expressed what we all feel, and to see the pride in my Grandfather was indescribable. I am so thankful to all the veterans, those who are living and those who gave the ultimate sacrifice, their lives, for all they have done, and all they continue to do. And if I could, I'd thank that teacher for making this day so special for those Vets and so important to his students, for reminding them how important our Vets are and how we should treat them with all with respect, dignity, and appreciation.

Here is a picture of my Grandfather receiving a letter from a student at the event last year...

I am so proud of him!

Sophia's birthday

It sure doesn't feel like it's been six years since our precious spitfire of a daughter came into this world, but it's been that long. Last week she turned six and I've never seen her so excited for anything. For days all she could talk about was her birthday, and turning six, her party, and having her friends come over.

I'll never forget the day she was born. She was so beautiful with that curly red hair and that big round face.
Although the curly hair went straight as it grew, its still a beautiful red color.

And although she's as beautiful as ever, and her hair is still the most awesome color of auburn, I'm more proud of the little lady she's becoming then anything else. She's so independent and sure of herself, she doesn't question her opinions or look to others for the path to take. She is a leader and a social butterfly. She loves to learn, and has actually been teaching a hispanic girl in her kindergarten class English. She hates the days she's out of school and can't wait to get back to the classroom. She's fearless, not afraid of anything, the only girl in a kung fu class and the the little girl who doesn't want to get off the 50 she inherited from her big brother. She has her own sense of fashion and loves the sparkly stuff, but also loves wearing her dirtbike riding pants and playing in the mud, she's a tomboy in a dress one day and wearing pearls with jeans the next.

I don't put anything past her, no one can tell her she can't when she knows she can. She told me this morning she wants to visit Mars, and knowing our daughter, she just might.

She is a Daddy's Girl and will always be my baby.

Happy 6th Birthday to our Sophia Maria Tortilla, FeeFee, Sofers, Sofeefee, aka Miss Sassy Pants!

***I forgot a couple nicknames.... Lil Red and the one I only call her; Sweet Pea.***

"Halloween is the one night a year when girls can dress like a total slut and no other girls can say anything about it."

~Lindsay Lohan, Mean Girls

That's how it seems these days, doesn't it!

Recap

Wow…what a summer this has been. I don’t know how it went by so fast, but it’s already over. So before I move on to the next season I must take a few minutes to reflect on the last.
For our family we started our summer a little earlier then usual, with a trip to California at the end of April. No, we didn’t make it to Disneyland, but we did lots of other fun stuff. We took the kids to Legoland, Seaworld, and spent a few days at the beach. With Ronnie working in California it was the perfect time to take the kids there, and they thought Dad having his own apartment was the coolest thing ever (I’m not so sure about that). I enjoyed my time with Ronnie and the kids’ and hope they will remember this vacation fondly.
It seemed to rain all of June, so planting of gardens and flowerbeds didn’t happen until way to late in the season, but I still enjoyed the digging and pruning while I could. If anyone has suggestions on raspberry bushes, let me know. I planted ours a few years ago, and still nothing.
Again, with Ronnie out of town, Ethan racing was a bit difficult. It was hard for Ronnie to not be there with him, hard for him to not have his Dad there, and hard for me to know what the heck I was suppose to be doing. I think I finally got into the groove, even pulled the bike on the trailer out to the last couple races. Ethan said “You’re the greatest mom ever! Not many moms would leave work early and pull a trailer with a bike on it just so their son could race.” It makes me so happy to know he gets it and really appreciates me. He’s becoming such a great little man.
And of course there was the great vacation my husband took me on in August…still can’t get over how much I loved it there in Maui, but who wouldn’t right.
We didn’t do as much boating this year as last, mostly because of Ronnie being out of town so much, but when he was in town; we tried to get to the lake as often as we could. The kids started jumping in the water on their own instead of being pushed in or coerced, they are truly becoming fish. We did manage to get a good boating trip in during Labor Day weekend. We went south and visited two lakes we hadn’t been to yet, Sand Hollow, which was beautiful, but far too small and too packed to really enjoy “boating”, it was more like “floating” and Quail Creek, wow, what a hidden gem. Quail Creek seemed about the same size as Sand Hollow, but was far less packed, I kid you not, probably at the most 10 boats on the lake at the same time the whole day. It was so warm and peaceful and we even managed to get my much beloved Uncle Pete to go with us. It was a great time.
And now summer is ending, we’ve already winterized the boat, I’ve pulled the flowers out of the gardens and tilled the dirt, I’ve hung autumn decorations in the house and have begun planning for what’s to come.

What a difference a Year makes!

I don't even know where to start...that's how I felt a year ago and it took me weeks to actually sit down and type out the story and my feelings. I won't do that today, I'll take the time to write, I'll make the words come.

Last year, at this time, I was sitting in the hospital with so many family members, waiting, for some spark of hope, for one of the nurses to actually smile or wink or give us some sign that everything would be ok. But it wasn't happening. Last year at this time no one gave any of us much hope that my cousin Curtis would still be with us today. Everything changed that day, life changed, the world changed, our family changed, and nothing is the same. The hospital staff just knew from that first day, there was no controlling this family, the ICU rules just could not apply to us. Two visitors at a time, no...we piled em in 4 deep 6 wide, visiting hours...what hours, no touching the patient..ARE YOU KIDDING! That was the most ridiculous, I understand the overstimulating the patient, but when you have someone in a coma, who is so used to a loving touchy feely family...like ours, he needs to feel us, to know we're all there, he needs to hear us, he needs to know how much we need him and want him back. That night, they gave up.

You see, for those of you that don't know..Curtis was in a horrible accident. They had given up on him before he was even in the hospital. They didn't call in a plastic surgeon to even look at him for two hours, they were just waiting for him to pretty much...die. When my brother called me, he told me I should come see him before they took him to surgery "just in case".

Over the next few weeks we all got to know that ICU better then anyone should. I would work all day, sometimes visit at lunch, and then either go straight there and then get home right before the kids went to sleep, or hurry home from work, spend a few hours with the kids, and then go to the hospital and drag myself out of there sometime before midnight.

Every movement, every twitch, every sound gave us some hope, and finally he slowly started to wake up!

He's still with us, life if different for him. He doesn't see himself when he looks in the mirror, it's a different face, and most of the time he's very positive about it, of course there are those moments when I'm sure it sucks pretty bad for him.

But for us, we're thrilled he's with us. We still want to beat him for putting us through that, but it actually has brought us all much closer, even after a year, we still make sure to say "I love you" before we end a call, we try to get together even for the little things, and yes, I do try to take more time off work for no reason at all.

I've always been waiting, working towards something, but now I realize...my life is happening NOW, it's not what happens some day in the future, its all these small moments woven together.

Appreciate every minute you have with each other, don't worry about the dishes in the sink (yes, I'm still working on that one) or the weeds growing in the garden, read a book to your kids, snuggle with your significant other, take time to appreciate what you accomplished today don't worry about what you didn't..it'll still be there tomorrow. But you never know WHO won't, love them while you can.

Better Together

Every couple has that one song that they choose when they get married, I've always thought of it as a "theme song" to your life together. Our song was and is Amazed by Lonestar, it's a wonderful song about being so in love and wanting it to last forever. I can't remember exactly how it became our song, but I'm thinking it had something to do with Ronnie singing it to me.

"Every time our eyes meet
This feeling inside me
Is almost more than I can take
Baby when you touch me
I can feel how much you love me
And it just blows me away...
...Baby I'm amazed by you"

While we were on in Maui, on our dinner cruise, there was a singer who was taking requests and such. Well, Ronnie snuck away on the pretense of finding the restroom. A few minutes after he returned, there was a birthday wish from Ronnie to Brandy (not really my birthday, we have no idea where that came from), he proceeded to say how Ronnie wanted to let his beautiful wife know how much he loved her and was enjoying this time with her. He proceeded to dedicate the song "Better Together" by Jack Johnson to us. Apparently Ronnie had asked for another song, but he didn't know it, but this song was perfect, and has now become our song also.

"...Love is the answer at least for most of the questions in my heart
'Why are we here?' and, 'Where do we go?' and, 'How come we're so hard?'
It's not always easy and sometimes life can be deceiving
I'll tell you one thing it's always better when we're together...
...But I will still tell you one thing, we're better together"

Hawaii 2009

Here it goes…the story of my wonderful trip with my amazing husband. All of you jealous people should stop reading now, because I will be gloating and rubbing it in as much as I possibly can in this post.

If you’re still reading prepare yourself, I’m about to take you on a journey I never expected to have, too rich for my blood, too perfect to be real…ok so there was the minor detail of a hurricane, but really the trip was so amazing Hurricane Felicia was long forgotten before the trip was even over. Last month, after having my husband working out of town for what seemed like eternity, he whisked me away on the most beautiful memorable vacation. He went all out on this one, taking me to the Ritz-Carlton in beautiful Kapalua, Hawaii.

I’ll admit it almost didn’t happen. Earlier in the year we talked about taking a vacation and he really wanted to go somewhere in the Caribbean, but I was adamant, I was not traveling to a hurricane zone in the middle of hurricane season, did he think I was crazy!?!? We finally agreed Maui was going to be the perfect vacation for us to reconnect. I had finally come to terms with leaving the kids, leaving work, and spending way too much money to relax, and I was just getting anxious to get on that plane and head to paradise, what happens…. Yes, a hurricane heads straight for Maui. Are you kidding me!!! When was the last time you heard of a hurricane hitting Maui, really? Ok, so I did a little research, a Category 4 hurricane (Iniki) hit Kaua’i in 1992, but from what I could find that was the most recent, and before that it was in the 1800’s. Anyway, I was instantly deflated, telling coworkers I could possibly be into work the next week, instead of on vacation.

Needless to say, thanks to nonrefundable tickets, we took our chances and boarded that plane. And what does the pilot proceed to say “We have a date with Felicia today”, nice! Although we flew through what was left of Hurricane Felicia, at the time downgraded to a Tropical Storm, the flight was uneventful, which was perfect for me.

As soon as we deboarded the plane, you could feel the storm, the wind was howling and the air was humid (although it’s always like that in Hawaii). We made our way to the rental car and took the hour drive to the hotel. As soon as we pulled into the hotel I knew it was going to take some acting on our part to fit in with this class of people.

The hotel was gorgeous and everywhere you looked was something amazing to look at. Because of the storm we stayed close to the hotel the first two days we were on the island.

We really wanted to relax, so we didn’t plan too much to do. We did go snorkeling to Molokini and Turtle Town. I was nervous because I’ve never snorkeled before, the water was cold, but we went right in. At Molokini the fish were beautiful and I was doing ok until I saw a snake looking creature…I made my way directly to the boat. On the way to Turtle Town we passed a couple turtles that were actually swimming around, with their heads out of the water. I was too excited not to be one of the first right in the water. Ronnie and I headed out, even though the water was much colder there, to find some turtles. It took a while, but we finally found one on the bottom, just sitting there. We decided to find some others, so we went out towards where we had seen the ones swimming and sure enough, about 10 ft away from us, there was one swimming. It was amazing! That is until we looked up and realized we were swimming in a current and we were the only two still in the water. I really thought we wouldn’t make it back to the boat, luckily they knew we were still out there and a couple of the crew was happily cheering us on to beat that current. Oh, and if any of you have seen School of Rock, you’ll know “Ned Schneebly”, Jack Black’s roommate in the movie…he was on the snorkel cruise with us.

We also went to a luau. We met a nice family who we sat with and enjoyed the night of wonderful food, good company, and beautiful entertainment. We also did a dinner cruise one night. I’ve never seen such beautiful sunsets! The only thing I wished was different about that night was the couple we got seated with. Not that I don’t like to meet new people, but we put at a table with an older couple, both professors at a university. Not really much for the four of us to talk about. We tried, but it just didn’t flow well. There was an incident, and an ambulance had to meet us at the dock to remove a passenger that had fallen, but that was about the only excitement.

We went to the beach a couple of days, of course we went to the pool, some days we did both. We even took a nap in a hammock.

The flight back was amazing. If you’ve never upgraded to first class before, you should try it. It’s not expensive. We actually bought the cheapest tickets we could find instead of spending a fortune. When you get to your gate, go to the desk and ask the agent if there is a possibility of upgrading. On the way there the fee was too much, we decided against it, but on the way home it was cheap, so we upgraded to first class and enjoyed the ride.

I know I’ve blabbed for way too long, but let me say this…I have NEVER been on such a relaxing vacation in my life! Even before I had kids and could do whatever I wanted, I was never so relaxed. If you can afford to stay at a Ritz-Carlton hotel, do it! They treat you like royalty, we didn’t even have to keep the acting up, we fit in, and they were great. I thought I would regret not doing all the tourist things while I was there, but if you’re vacations are to get away and relax, you just can’t possibly do both. I’m ok that we missed the Road to Hana and a few other things, mostly I wish we would have been able to make it to Pearl Harbor, but that is a different island, so really I only have one regret about this trip…that it wasn’t long enough!

I PROMISE!

I'm awful. I promise I meant to update our blog with our trip...I'm just waiting for some pictures to be emailed to me.... I will get it updated with or without those pictures this weekend I promise....

For now I'll leave you with this quote that I found while I was trying to find something to tell some of the complainers I work with...

"Instead of complaining that the rosebush is full of thorns,

be happy that the thorn bush has roses."

~German Proverb