long time...

It's been a long time since I've posted an update on my blog... A lot has happened since December...

My brothers spent the spring playing soccer. I spent the spring going to their soccer games. Miguel played Challenge and went to a tournament in Williamsburg. Ivan played Varsity and his team made it to the semi-finals before losing to Western. Both of them tried out for travel soccer for the fall and both made it to the highest level teams. Ivan will be playing for SOCA Lightning and Miguel for SOCA Express. This is me at Miguel's game taking a video of him scoring a goal.

I went on a treasure hunt with Chaos the dog and Brian. We looked for treasure in three places but we only found one treasure. We found a cool lake too that we got in to cool off.
My little sister graduated 5th grade. She's excited for middle school year next year and she's going to do so well! She has all A's and B's and was taking math at the highest level that she could!
We've spent a lot of time already at the pool. It's our favorite place to go. The kids are all swimming really well. I've been really sick so it's been nice to take them to the Charlottesville water park and let them just play and play while I rest on the chairs. I get in the water a little bit when I get really bored and hot, but right now while I'm sick, I usually just sit out and watch.
The doctors don't really know what's wrong. I've been sick for a month with a recurring fever, cough, lots of body pain, tingling and pain in my left leg, etc. I've had 4 MRI's, 2 chest x-rays, over 20 tubes of blood taken, and about 2-3 doctor visits per week to my regular doctor, a neurologist, and an infectious disease specialist. I missed the last 3 weeks of school. The only thing definite that I had was pneumonia way back at the beginning a month ago. That put me in the hospital for a night. It was scary for a while because my white blood cells dropped very low, way below normal, along with my red blood cells, platelets, calcium, etc. Also I had elevated levels of anti-nuclear antibodies which are antibodies against my own body, an indication of an auto-immune disease. But since then, my antibodies have gone back to normal and so have all the blood levels as well. Tomorrow I have another doctor appointment with my regular doctor to see if I'm finally getting better or not.

December Snow Pictures

Here are a ton of pictures from the past snow days! Enjoy!!!

Here's Edith as the snow was falling!

Tons of snow!
Completely covering the car - we had over 2 feet!
Miguel, Edith, y Mama making their way through the snow!
Miguel thinking he's going to play soccer right now.
Me snowboarding down the street! There's still snow covering our street - 5 days later!
snowboarding down the street:
Ivan snowboarding down the hill by our house
Me going down the hill
Miguel snowboarding down
The 3 of us snowboarding down the street
Me with my brothers snowboarding
Ivan jumping off the roof
Me jumping off the roof
Me with my brother's snowman.
Lucero fixing her snowman's flower
Edith and me making Edith's snowman
Edith loving the snow
The 3 of us with the 2 snowmen. Look at the eyes on Edith's snowman! They're really cool!

Only 2 days until Christmas!

We've been rolling in the snow! Building, playing, having fun...snowboarding down the street...shoveling...cleaning roofs...pushing stuck cars up hills...etc. It's amazing how 2 feet of snow changes the daily pattern of your life. Our lives have just revolved around snow - driving in it, cleaning it, moving it, playing in it, slipping in it...

I haven't seen this much snow since Colorado and it's awesome! It's still everywhere...no grass in sight and it's not going anywhere any time soon because the temperature doesn't get out of the 30's.

Work is still great and I've paid off one credit card completely and one student loan in the past month!

AND IT'S ONLY 2 DAYS UNTIL CHRISTMAS!!!!!

Great snow day!

We have more than 2 feet of snow!!! We've been saying for a long time that we wished we had more snow around here...well we really got it now! The forecast says it even might snow on Christmas!!! We had a great day playing today! My brother and I walked a couple miles to get our snowboards and then we snowboarded down 5th street to get back home. Whoever thought we'd be able to snowboard down 5th street! We snowboarded for about an hour more when we got home and finally went home at 9:00. Tomorrow we're going back out for more!

new job

So I have a new job now. I work at Best Buy! I'm really excited about it! Everybody there thinks I'm weird because I like EVERYTHING in the store. Apparently employees usually prefer EITHER working with customers or doing the sorting, unpacking, shipping, organizing part of retail. None of the managers understand how I can like doing both. They say they've never met anyone who equally liked doing both things. There's also competition among other employees and other departments for points and prizes. But everyone's really nice about it and totally willing to work together at the same time. Today I got 39 points (which is A LOT) and 4 prizes! I have a pretty full work schedule - almost every evening and weekends - but it's okay for now. I really like it! Come get a reward zone card from me, people! That's how I get points!

Collin's dance routine at the Cale talent show

Halloween 2009

Wow we had a great Halloween! My sisters were asking me all day if I was taking them trick-or-treating. At 11:00, they got dressed in their costumes and were begging me to take them early. Finally at 6:00 they couldn't wait a moment later, so we went out. We went trick-or-treating for FOUR HOURS! Okay so we saw a ton of friends and spent a lot of time stopping to talk and visit, but still... four hours. That's a lot of candy. Zorro came too and was dressed in his own costume. Here's a picture of me and Zorro with Zorro's bag of candy:

Me and my bro organizing his candy:
Lucero selling me her chocolate bars. She's always interested in making a deal.
Me and my sister Lucero with her candy
Lucero totally happy with her mountain of candy
Edith and Zorro with Edith's pile of candy!
Zorro in his costume with his own pile of candy
trick-or-treating
me and zorro with his costume
Lucero
Lucero getting prepared for trick-or-treating
Edith with Zorro, ready for trick-or-treating
Edith in her costume
My little sister putting make-up on
Edith the little witch
miguel in his creepy costume
HAPPY HALLOWEEN!

update...the good and the bad

Wow it's been...a bad, bad month. There are some good things that have happened too, but it's definitely not been a great time. Between the crash, my grandpa dying, my car breaking down in VA Beach, and financial issues, it's been a long month. School has been great. My kids are doing really well, learning what they need to learn, making me laugh, and passing their goals. We've been doing a lot of goal-setting, practicing, and assessing to show their progress towards meeting their goals and they've become obsessed with "results". They constantly ask me to test them again to see if they've improved. It's actually pretty cool because they don't see the tests as something to stress about. They see them as evidence of how much they've grown and achieved (WHICH IS WHAT TESTS REALLY ARE!).

My car was basically unfixable in VA Beach - needed $3,000 worth of repairs and I only had $200. So I had to trade it for a different car. I got a really good deal on the "new" car and I'm happy with the car. But it has made the situation harder because now I have a car payment. The purchase of it was cool though because I totally played the car salesman before he realized what had happened. He spent so much time trying to manipulate the numbers with me that he didn't realize I was manipulating the numbers right back at him. He picked the wrong person to play a numbers game. I quickly signed before he realized what happened and when he realized how much he had lost on the deal (after it was too late), he was so angry. He even threw papers at Ivan and I and kicked the trashcan. For real. It was hilarious.

We had the memorial service for my grandparents last weekend. That was hard because my sister and I are kind of mad at each other right now. My aunt spoke at the service and she said something really cool that stood out to me. She was referring to us (the grandkids) and she said, "Our children grew up thinking that everybody's grandparents had trains that run around the pool and a red teddy that greets them on the front porch with a message..." She mentioned other things too, and I thought about how right she was. When I was little, I really did think that everybody's grandparents must be just that awesome. Now, I know differently. I know everyone has grandparents that are special and awesome to them, but I truly was blessed to have the absolute best kid grandparents in the world.

I have a new kid from Mexico in my class. She has cerebral palsy and has never been to school before. She speaks no English and has many limitations and needs. She is sooooooo sweet. She just smiles and laughs all day long, so happy to be here around all the kids. She loves Zorro and carries him in her lap in her wheelchair. Yesterday she was using the computer in the computer lab with us and I put Zorro on the keyboard of the computer next to her as if he was typing on it. She saw him and laughed and laughed and said, "Zorro no puede escribir en la computadora! Es un zorro!" (Zorro can't write on the computer! He's a fox!) She thought it was the funniest thing ever. My kids love her! They spend a lot of time trying to talk to her in Spanish and making her laugh with smiles and pictures. She's pretty cool.

Today I got a new job! I had my second interview at Best Buy and I'm going to start working there. I'm really excited because I really want to work there! And I threw out an idea to the manager during the interview for a new technology item that could be useful with kids. I was simply asking him if he'd ever heard of anything like it and where I could get one if he had. He said, "Wow, I've never heard of anything like that before, but it's brilliant! You need to not spread that around and instead try to develop it and patent it. It would be brilliant!" So...now I have a new challenge ahead of me. Like I need another one.

:)