I Have A Confession...

I am a mommy!

I have one child, a daughter.

If you have read my blog before, you would already know that.

But here's my confession...

It pains me to see her grow up!

Yesterday was her first day in 5th grade. 5TH GRADE!!! *sigh*

On the way to walking up to her school, she tells me "You're gonna cry, huh?!". I replied with a "No! I'm fine. I've never cried before." She replied with a simple "Oh."

Well, later as I was carpooling with my husband, driving him to work, I broke down. My husband being a man just simply said "It's OK Hun, it's part of life." No kidding.

In the next few minutes, I mustard up the courage and dried up my tears and carried on the rest of the day.

My mistake?

Later as I was tucking my daughter into bed, I told her I broke down earlier. Almost like I was confirming to her that she was right. Instead, I think I just stirred up mixed emotions in her. AHHHHH!!! (I need to learn to keep my mouth shut sometimes).

She then says to me, "I knew it!" so I confirmed with her that I was really fine when she said it and that it was when I was driving "daddy" to work. She then gets quiet a little and says "I wanted to cry too" and then she puts her face in her pillow and breaks down. *sigh* She then goes on to say in the midst of crying, "I don't want to grow up. I love you so much. I don't want you to leave." Oh boy! What did I just start??

I never knew how hard it was gonna be to be a "mommy". One thing I can assure you is this, it is a daily learning lesson. Now, to avoid causing my baby girl anymore stress that "mommy is so sad that I'm growing up", I need to encourage her to be excited! Yikes! Again....not an easy thing to do but I am the mommy and I need to do this for my baby girl.

In the meantime, any wisdom someone may lend me would surely be appreciated!!

A New Journey!

Could it be so?

I didn't even post once in June?

WOW...to be honest, I think the change Blogger has made has something...okay, it has EVERYTHING (some what) to do with it. I don't like the changes and it's just left me wondering "WHY? Why change a good thing?"

Change is good....sometimes.

Which is what leads me to today's post.

A month ago my husband lost his job. Not because of anything he did but because the restaurant owner lost his business. My husband worked for this company for 21 years. In fact, we're friends with the owner. My husband gave our friend advise but never took it. It's very unfortunate too. So this loss has been a very bittersweet event in my husband's life.

During the closure of the business, my husband went to our friend/owner and asked him for his permission to make an attempt himself to reopen the location so that he (my husband) could make ends meet so that he could provide for his own family (us). Our friend approved and so it the journey began....

Honestly, I feel this opportunity was placed in our laps. I feel it was all in God's works also!

 

It's amazing how God works things out for the good!

We just opened as a "soft opening" on July 19th to work out some kinks and changing products to what "works". We'll have our Grand Opening next month with the Chamber of Commerce, ribbon cutting and the local newspaper. We're pretty excited!!

We've been without my husband's paycheck for over a month now which is a little scary and nerve wracking but I have complete faith in God that he will take care of us!



The Good....

It's been 3 weeks since my last post.

It's been a whirlwind too.

A mixture of good and the most recent....no so good.

Let's start at the beginning, shall we?....

Well, as I mentioned in my last post, we we're going to Vegas to attend the Billboard Music Awards. That was last week. Wow...last week? Already? How does that even happen? I mean, I was JUST there. Time...if only I could freeze it.

Anyway, on the way to the airport to start our mini vacation, we stopped off to visit my grandpa who had passed away 19 yrs ago. The last time I went to visit him was 2008. A visit was so overdue.

Then we took my daughter to Hayward to show her the house I grew up in the first 4 yrs of my life.

It's a bit run down from the last time I remembered :o(

Then off to the airport we went.

And waited.

That first night in Vegas we saw TruTV's Vegas Strip crew. How cool!

We had just mentioned literally minutes before "Let's look for the Vegas Strip people" and BAM!...There they were! Very cool!

Then....

The real fun started the next day.

It was so much fun! We saw so many artists that night and it was pretty cool to be apart of it!

The next day we went to the Hoover Dam.

We've been to the Hoover Dam before but our daughter was 4 the last time we took her so she couldn't remember.

On the new bridge dedicated to Pat Tillman.

Our daughter on the Nevada - Arizona line.

and Ethel M's Chocolates

Then later that evening we went to Fremont Street.

We even saw the controversial Heart Attack Burger joint!

Um...no heart attack burgers for us ;o) 

Needless to say, we had lots of fun!

However, the last day I did suffer from a bad headache all day which was a bit horrible considering we had to "kill time" by walking around the heat until 7pm when we needed to be at the airport.

~~~

The last bit of good news is today, my daughter and I went back to a church we had once visited. I had been visiting one church close to home (5 min away) but I felt God calling me to this other church (15 min away) and my daughter and I have been on the hunt for a new home church since mid December and can finally say, we found it!!

Now...not to drag this post out any longer, I'm going to have to close for now. Plus, as we speak, we are trying to figure out a way (around the madhouse) to head to San Francisco to be apart of the 75th anniversary of the Golden Gate!! FUN!

But do come back to see the second part of this post to see what has occured in our lives just recently.

Excitement!

Over the weekend, my daughter was doing was she loves, checking the Justin Bieber website out.

She saw that he is gonna be in Las Vegas on 5-20-12 for the Billboard Music Awards. So, you know what question she asked....

"Can we go???" in that all excited tone.

Knowing we go to Vegas so much, knowing my husband and I were already planning a trip there next month for our anniversary and KNOWING my husband kepted asking me, infront of her, "should we take her this time?"

While I love my child so much, I was also excited for that "couples massage" we were planning on getting together.

But then THIS??. This is BIG! This is a "once in a lifetime" thing!!

So we asked her "how much is it?" and she replied like most 9 yr olds would, "I don't know?"

"Well, you better check it out and let us know if you want to go."

"OKAY!!!!" she replied.

My husband followed her into the computer room to check out the details and to our surprise, there were tickets still available!

They even checked out who will be performing, with such artist as....

Justin Bieber, Carrie Underwood, Cee Lo Green, LMFAO, The Wanted, Usher, Kelly Clarkson, Linkin Park and Nelly Furtado.

We better find a nice outfit cause we're heading to Las Vegas in 2 weeks to attend the 2012 Billboard Music Awards!!

To say we're excited is an understatement!!

Six Word Saturday!!

My Baby's First Karate Tournament Today!

She was considered a "first timer" so she only did one round but.....SHE WON THAT ROUND!!!

WOO HOO!!

Change

I don't know about all of you but I personally do not like the changes that Blogger has made to the whole layout of things. It's less appealing to my eyes. The only thing I will say I do like is when I upload a photo, it will upload exactly where I want it to be. Besides that, it makes me "blogging" a little less willing. *hmph* Oh yes, and I love that I can easily add these lovely flower dividers!! :)

What else I don't like is, when I had decided to change my layout, the website I get them from ALSO decided to change the way things were. It's not so simple to add them anymore. So, if you were wondering why my layout looks kind of funky, that's why :o/

Okay....enough of my rant!

A few weeks ago we bought a Blu-Ray player for our family room, cause having one in the bedroom and not in the family room seemed a little silly. We liked it! We got Pandora setup on it. We watched some movies on it. The remote seemed a little cheap but whatever. Well, last night, just when I was feeling in one of my "movie time" moods, I stuck in a scary movie. I waited....and waited...I could hear it but I couldn't see it. My husband said "Maybe it's supposed to start off like that, being a scary movie." I thought "possible" but I let it play and still no picture.

I had just watched a movie on the thing the day before and it worked. Okay, so I switched the movie out for another. See if it was just the movie or the player. Sure enough, the next movie did the same thing. UGH!

My husband was getting irritated at this point. He looked on the Best Buy website (where we bought it) to check the reviews. The fact that we didn't check before in the first place is so out of the norm for us. I guess you can say it was an impulse buy?! :) Anywho, my husband found ours and it got horrible reviews. The people had the same problem as us! So, needless to say, we're going back down today (hopefully!) to change it for a completely different model. (hint: don't buy the Toshiba BDX2250)

Speaking of purchasing, we recently bought a new camera for our upcoming vacation in the Fall. We had previously had (still have, just haven't gotten rid of) a Sony Cyber-Shot. LOVED the thing! Had a nice slide down to turn it on. Similar to this one, just a few years older...



Great camera! Loved it! I loved how I didn't have to worry about knocking the lens off or breaking it off (yes, even me who has a Canon SLR was known to be rough with my cameras that I broke the lens off of one of them. I know....shocking!!) So I thought this was the best option for me at the time. Well, now that we had to move on to something new, that actually works, we had to "settle" for one with a lens that extends out.

Yes, mine is red too! Now....I only have to behave myself in the mad rush of things while on vacation. I hope I can control myself! Wish me luck! Or shall I say...wish "IT" luck!

Lastly, for this post....this Saturday is an exciting day for my baby girl.

She wanted to participate so we entered her into a karate tournament. This will be her first time! It should be an exciting experience for her also! I can't wait!!

She said to me the other day "I wonder what it's going to look like inside where the tournament is. I envision it to look like on karate kid!" I replied "Yeah, me too." I find it so cute how kids use their imagination.

This proud mama will be taking photos so stay tuned!



It's A New Month

Hey everyone! It feels like forever since I've been on here. To be honest, so much as gone on since I last blogged. Here's the low down...

It's been tax season, so I've been working more.

We entered into the world of the "in-crowd", technically speaking. What do I mean by that?

Yep, this is our very first Apple product and we're loving it!

As of today, I have decided to take down my photography website, temporarily.

Reason being is, I haven't been really active with my photos lately. Life has been crazy busy and I'm kind of on a "break" per se, with taking photos. I need to get back in the groove of things but it's just not something I can just snap my fingers, grab my camera and be at it again. I don't know what it is but I just need to find myself in it again. In the meantime, I'm taking the website down cause I'm wasting $20/month. Instead, which I'm excited to say, I am putting that money to much better use...

This is the radio station I listen to and love! I was introduced to it a few years ago and honestly, my life has changed ever since. I have started to get back on track in terms of my relationship with God, which to me, is one of the most important things. Plus, my husband and daughter enjoy it also.

Since I started listening to this station, my husband and daughter have both been Saved! I had already been saved, back when I was a little girl. One of the special things is, my daughter was Saved on Easter morning, 2 yrs ago. What an awesome day that was!

So, needless to say, this station is important to me and my family! So I have decided to donate on a monthly basis! Awesome!

~~~

Hmm...what else?

Well, we're in the process once again on planning our annual vacation. Only problem is, there is just one little snag....

My Job!

You see, when we are planning (the Fall), that particular week is the weekend our lease is up at my job. My boss has been trying to work a deal out to extend our lease but the building just isn't budging. There are a couple other things we need to check but if  it doesn't work out, we're going to have to move which means, our vacation will have to wait until the following weekend. Plus, we'll end up missing out on one other location we were hoping on adding to the beginning of our trip. Let's just hope all works out cause I want to go to the bonus stop!

Oh yeah....we're you wondering where we're planning on going?

2012 Vacation is going to be here.

We're hoping for the bonus trip here.

~~~

Oh yeah,

2 MORE DAYS LEFT OF TAX SEASON!!!

WOO HOO!!!

Needless to say, this tax season has been H.O.R.R.I.B.L.E!!

Now that it's just about over, I'm hoping to be back, updating my blog more. :o)

Maybe by then, I can update ya'll with more stuff that I just may be forgetting at the moment.

~~~

Hope everyone has been good!

Missed you all!