Spring is here!

I haven't had time to share all of my sewing projects that I've completed, but here is the latest, just on time for Easter. Bow ties for a little boy!

I have a super handsome model to demonstrate just how cute these bow ties are for a little boy.



More favorite pictures from this week...

Bath time, Acalias insists that the washrag is a toy and has quiet the strong arm.

My cell phone is also on top of his list of favorite things to snag away when mom is not looking.

Crawling on a wooden floor is still too much work. He'd much rather roll around and laugh at his friend Skoey.

I often find this little boy clutching onto the strings of his bumper, I think it soothes him.

Hospice Chocolate Chase 10K Race

I peeked out the window early Saturday morning and sighed in relief that it wasn't raining like it had been the previous day. In West Virginia, when it rains it pours similar to the tropical rain storms I experienced while living in Costa Rica. Acalias had woken me up twice to eat during the night and I was nervous that that my sleepless night would affect my energy level during the race.

The morning was humid,foggy and dreary. I met up with my friend Dawn a fellow weight watcher member and friends from our ward at the starting line. I decided to begin at the back of the race and pass people rather than the opposite, which always makes me feel discouraged because so many runners would pass me.

The race course was beautiful, we began at the Lewisburg airport and ran through the back roads that wind and curve up and down the rolling hills. The pastures are beginning to green and the cherry blossoms are flourishing, picture perfect images when I think of West Virgina.

I had uploaded 15 songs onto my i-pod with the goal of completing the race when the last song played. It didn't work out that way because for some odd reason I thought that reggae would help me refrain from running too fast at the beginning of the race. The songs were far too slow so I had to skip the first five songs on the play list. I needed upbeat songs to help me up the huge hills.

My neighbor Dave came running up behind me and I quickly told him that he was my competition. That was a mistake. Throughout the remainder of the race we trailed each other, he would run past me and I would run past him. I started having self-destructive thoughts like, "I'm slow because of my sleepless night with Acalias"..."Wait, Dave can't beat me he had just told me a couple of weeks ago that he was recovering from an ankle injury"..."Girls don't run as fast as guys"..."I should stop, I'm feeling a migraine coming on". I looked at my heart rate monitor and my heart rate was 182, I typically run at 175 so it was no wonder that I felt a migraine pounding in at the temporal regions of my head. I kept chugging along eventually passing up Dave again, we ran the entire race near one another, him trailing me. Once I spotted the the mile marker 6, I tried to push harder. I see woman who I hadn't seen the entire race fly by me. Dave must have been holding back because suddenly he passed me up as well.


Me eyeballing Dave as he completes the race before me, dang it!
Soon enough I had finished the race and I was happy to be greeted by my smiling husband and baby. Although Dave pulled up ahead, I still shaved off 7 minutes of my 60 minute goal to complete the race so I'm happy. I finished the race in 53:20. I'm motivated to train harder for the Cinderella Half-Marathon in Oakland, California next month!

It was nap time by the time I finished the race. Acalias loves his dad.
Mi guapito bebito

White Sulpher Ward members and students at the Osteopathic school.
Dawn and I. She did awsome, this was her first race and she had never run more than a couple miles before last month.
Fit mommies:) Shay just started a walking group every morning. She is expecting her second child.
After the race, we went to the Chocolate Festival (after showering of course). The festival is a big deal in our small town, all the shops offer unique chocolate treats.
We were early but typically this street is jammed packed with people attending the festival.
We didn't have tickets but several strangers came up to us and gave us their surplus tickets. We recieved 11! It must be because our baby is so darn cute and they were compelled to give us their extra tickets. We gave away half because I knew that I would need to fuel up on something more nutritious than chocolate. These treats were among our favorites...

This chocolate drizzled cake had thin layers of toffee and other goodies that made it top my list of one of the best cakes I've ever tried.

Derek loves rasberries and chocolate so this was the perfect mix for him. It's whipped chocolate pudding, yum!

After overindulging on chocolate we finally went out to eat something somewhat nutritious. It was a fun family day, it's always so nice to hangout together!

Discovering the world...

The other day I noticed Skofeild trotting back and forth from the laundry room to our bedroom. This is typical occurrence during meal time, for some odd reason he prefers to fill is mouth with kibble, trot to our room and pour it on the carpet. It hasn't really bothered me until now, now that Acalias is scooting himself around the house and discovering things with his mouth. His tiny thumb and index finger can grasp onto even the smallest things around the house. I left his side to change out the laundry and returned to find him with a piece of kibble in his little fingers aiming for for his mouth. Great! I have some fun times ahead of me trying to shield this little boy from all the foreign objects that he could possibly put in his mouth.

I pulled out his play pen, he tends to last about an hour in here before he gets antsy and wants out.





I can't believe he's now 9 months old! I need to take outdoor pictures but the weather has been horribly cold and snowy out here.

As I've mentioned he has been putting everything into his mouth, including the ruler I used to measure his growth. It was too much of a distraction to have in the picture so I guess I wont be using it anymore.

He has been making this irresistible face every time he's excited, I love it he is too cute for his own good.



He has no problem voicing his concerns, complaints or demands.

He still isn't crawling. I blame it on our slippery wooden floors and he is a heavy boy.




He can wave but not when asked to. He really likes attention and people watching. On our flight home from Florida he insisted on standing on my lap. He'd catch some one's eye and throw a flirtatious toothy smile and I could hear the rows behind respond "awhhh, what a cute baby". He's so funny, I wonder what his personality will eventually be.

We finally got him on a routine. Finally. I was tired of feeling like he ruled our household.
6:30-7:00am Breast feed Acalias, I get my workout out of the way after feeding.

11:00 Nap #1. During this time I plug in my PlayAway (audio book) and get some housework done. Acalias typically sleeps for 45min to 2 hours.

1:00-7:00pm Feed him solids for lunch & dinner. I typically feed some vegetable & fruits. He'll entertain himself with toys, Skoey, random objects around the house, we run errands and so forth. We try to attend play group and story time each week so that he can interact with people other than myself and Derek. Occasionally he will take Nap #2 before dinner.

8:30pm Warm bath, a bi-lingual bed time story, breast feed and in bed by 9pm. The first night we did this he wailed for an hour. We were heart broken and I wanted to give in but I'm tired of him running the show. Tonight he only cried for 5 minutes. It's so nice to get a couple hours to myself before bed.

House Hunting

Derek had Spring Break this past week and we had planned to visit Pittsburgh, PA and hunt for housing in Clarksburg. Derek studied for COMLEX on Monday and Tuesday while I recovered from my Florida trip. We then traveled toward Clarksburg on Wednesday, it was a long drive and when the rain started coming down hard we decided to rent a hotel and spend the night.
Although Clarksburg is a bigger city, they don't have many rental options for inquiring renters. We picked up the local paper and called on the listings but most apartments had a 35lb limit for pets. I felt a knot form in my stomach thinking about the lack of options due to our dog (aka our first child). As we continued down the small list several managers allowed pets but only with a $325-$700 non-refundable pet deposit. We were hopeful and checked out a few places and this is what we found...


Please excuse Derek's unsteady hand, the elements made it tougher than usual.

If you think that's bad it only got worse from there. Not only would I have to worry about Acalias, Skofeild or myself potentially getting hit by a speeding semi truck but some of the rentals should have been condemned. I rented far better when I visited Costa Rica for 5 months and Tonga for 3 weeks, countries that are considered 3rd world!

Towards the end of the night we felt hopeless. We picked up a magazine for homes for sale and thought maybe that option would be better for us. The average rentals that we looked at were $600-$800.00. I felt like the rental rate was increased for the non-locals, not only was the housing terrible but the economy isn't that great in such a rural area. We searched for homes in the $35,000-$50,000 price range, if we found a home our mortgage would have been anywhere from $211-350. We wrote a list of all the homes we'd like to visit, said our prayers and went to bed.

The following morning we called more listings in the papers and a few Realtors. We visited a few homes and they were all in bad shape but a whole lot better than the rentals we had found. The homes were 10 minutes away from the hospital but I still didn't feel right about it. I had been a housing counselor for a year and I can recall many clients who purchased houses in the price range we were looking into. Most of them returned, overwhelmed with the amount of work they had to put into their new homes on top of paying higher utilities, taxes and so forth. I didn't want to get ourselves into a similar situation. That evening we didn't feel like we had covered much so we decided to stay another night. We discussed the pros and cons of purchasing a home, said our prayers and went to bed.

Acalias thinking 'Wasn't I wearing shorts a few days ago Mom? Why is it so cold? More time in my darn car seat again mommy?'


The next morning,we called a few more listings but the people didn't want to show their apartments until Saturday. We received a phone call from Derek's friends' Aunt(a local realtor)she had contacted a manager of a four-plex and scheduled a meeting to see the house at noon. We were elated to finally have the opportunity to walk through an apartment after several days of peeping in windows. As soon as we drove up to the complex we were both happy as can be. The neighborhood was clean, the streets were paved and the lawns were maintained (very uncommon out here in WV). We were shown the home and we LOVED it! It's two levels, two spacious bedrooms, a large kitchen, washer and dryer hook ups and 1.5 bathrooms. The manager will even accept Skofeild with no deposit. We were offered the apartment, it won't be ready until mid-May which works out perfect.

This is it! I'm excited for all the natural light, we've lived in basement apartments and our current apartment doesn't have very many windows. Notice the concrete driveway!!

Feeling so happy, even Acalias can sense it!

I am relieved. I have a wide road to run on or a paved trail 4 minutes away. I have neighbors near by. I have a ton of options for socializing just a few minutes away. I didn't see any big rusty loud trucks with confederate flags hung on their back windows. I felt safe. I feel blessed. I know the Lord knows our needs and he hears our prayers and for that I am very thankful.

Bienvenidos a Miami Zoo-Day 7

The majority of the crowd spoke Spanish, I love practicing my Spanish with native speakers.


Miami Zoo had a variety of sections like most zoos, I truely felt like I was in the Amazon.


His little feet look so cute in these flip flops.


Acalias enjoyed the monkeys, they were so loud and their screaming caught his attention.

I really wished I didn't exceed the weight limit for these water balls. I would have loved to walk on the water it looked like so much fun!


The entire zoo was an estimated 6 hour walk. We walked around for 4 hours...I guess I forgot that my grandmother just turned 80. We were all so tired afterward but we enjoyed ourselves, we enjoyed watching Acalias' reaction to all the animals.

Fort Lauderdale Beach-Day 6

The Fort Lauderdale beach is were all the locals go to relax. It was tucked in the neighborhoods and the parking was a lot cheaper than Las Olas Beach. Kura had to return to Georgia early for a mid-term exam so we visited the beach shortly before she had to travel to the airport.


I love the sound of the waves crashing onto the shoreline. Acalias and I walked up and down the shore line. This time around he thought the sand between his toes felt funny so he giggled.



I love how Acalias is looking at Uncle Greg, his body launguage says, "Hi...I think I like you!"

Acalias and Grandpa.



Acalias misses you Aunt Kura, we can't wait to see you in July!

Family Pictures-Day 5

We don't get together often so I had to make sure to snap a few pictures before everyone traveled back home.









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