The Rosas-Standring Family

Well, I finally got most of my tattoo. I have been planning this tattoo for several years and I have really been excited about getting it. After getting my first tattoo in Spokane when I was 18- Remember that Brian?!?! It was so funny - now looking back anyway. I was barely 18 and I wanted a tattoo. I picked the Eye of Horus from the Egyptian mythological story about family devotion and sacrifice. It is a beautiful story of Isis and her husband Osiris. Osiris is killed by his brother Set, cut into 14 pieces and thrown into the Nile. Isis, the every devoted wife, collects all the pieces and because it is mythology- Osiris body awakened and they conceived a son, Horus. Horus avenged his fathers death and killed Set. But not before Set ripped out his eye. Horus went to the body of his father, put his eye into his body and Osiris was able to asend to the heavens to the gods. On a totally separate note it is also the mathematical symbol for fractions being made up of perfectly fractionated pieces (1/2-1/4-1/8-1/16-1/32-1/64)


But anyway... I digress. That was my first tattoo and I squealed like a stock pick at slaughter. It was not a pretty sight. The artist had to stop and tell me that there were other people waiting for their tattoo and that I really needed to calm down. jajaja oh well.


Well after having the memory of this pain more then washed away I was ready for my next tattoo. I was going to originally get peacock feathers in a sunburst shape that had hidden letters within them. Over the years it has developed and changed and has ended with this...

4 roses at the 4 corners of the universe (N-S-E-W): 4 people in my family- our last name Rosas- means roses in Spanish and on the Northern hemisphere is a K and an E for Kennedy Elena and on the southern side is A and E for Akilean Emilio. So in essence it is my kids names. I love it.

I still have the white to add to bring it alive and I might add some more color. I think that it is so beautiful. My good friend Olmo did a great job. I cannot wait for my next one. I did much better on the pain this time. I mean do not get me wrong. It hurt like crazy. But after 2 very painful c-section and even worse recoveries from them- and then there were the 4 surgeries that fooled the 18 months after that- so I was really hoping that 6 surgeries in 2 years was going to lessen my pain threshold. I do not know if it did - but I handled it fine. it was not until the 4th hour that I was done.

The other day we did a little test drive and one of my all time best friends in the world- Andi came down. I have a lot of updating to do for that trip - but I will tell you that we got matching little tattoos. For anyone from Oregon- you have probably already seen this symbol. It is the outline of Oregon with a little green heart in the middle. The sticker says on it... "something about you says Oregon." I think it is funny that so does my hip. On Halloween I met a girl from Oregon and we got to talking and it turned out that a friend of hers was the original designer for the sticker. Small world.


Long story short... I LOVE IT. I cannot wait to get my next one. My next one is a little outline of an owl. This is the symbol for my grandmother Pusey that just died recently. I will report more when I get it. And I will post pics one I have the white.

I am so sorry that I have disappeared for the bast 2 months. There have been a lot of things that have been going on and I am not the sort of person who can keep my blog up and not go into all of the details of everything. So you know that saying... "if you have nothing good to say shut the hell up"- Well - I am back.


I am not going to go into everything because we are still knee deep into it but My daughter did turn 6 years old. This to me is just amazing. I remember the day I found out I was pregnant. It is so very clear in my mind. I was at work at a little diner in San Francisco. I worked the morning shift 6-2. I had made a comment to my friend when I got to work that a piece of cake looked really good. That was not that weird but about an hour later she told me that the pickles that we served with the sandwiches were dill. I always assumed they were the sweet pickles because they were really small. I told her -"Yummy- I love dill pickles but do you think it is too early?" Her response was - "chocolate cake and pickles- you are soooooo pregnant." She said it more as a joke but then I started to think back over the past few months. Now that I was thinking about it... I had not gotten my monthly friend. The idea would not go aways so I walked up the street to the Walgreens and bought the test. I was so nervous. When the little line came up I called Ruben and asked him to come by on his way to work. He did and while we were stading in the back I simply pulled it out of my pocket and after the initial "what the heck is that in her hand?" moment- a HUGE smile crossed his face.


Only a few short months later- we were getting ready for our last 5-6 weeks of pregnancy but Lena had not gotten into position. We were scheduled for an Aversion where they were going to attempt to move her into position. It was sitting at this appointment that the Dr. told us that there was a problem that Lena needed to come out right away. A few hours later I came to to find my little girl and my mom at the hospital. Debuting 5 weeks earlier then expected little Kennedy Elena Rosas Standring was born at 6 lbs 4 oz. And began her reign as Princess of our lives.

Over the past 6 years she has just gotten bigger and better and cuter. I cannot believe how much she has changed and grown. She speaks amazing Spanish, is so beautiful and is an amazing little girl.


For her birthday we had a great time. Last year we had just gotten to Mexico and did not have any money or any friends. This year we did the traditional Mexican birthday party. Lena went around the 2 days before to all the little friends in the neighborhood and told them to come over on Wednesday afternoon. Things have been so incredibly hard lately and money is really really tight so the party that I wanted to do in my head did NOT happen. But it was great. I bought a bag of pink balloons and a bag of white. We had NO tape, rope, or anything to hang them so we just broke the bottom of them like condoms and stuck them over everything. It turned out just fine.


I made a huge tuna casserole - so easy- make the day ahead- really cheap and full of veggies- served with cut fruit. Could that be more perfect a kids birthday party. It was great. For the adults- which actually the kids ate up too- I did a really simple 7 layer dip- even though it did not have all 7. All of the recipes will be on www.cooking1handed.blogspot.com very soon.

The cakes turned out great too. I tried to make a sample strawberry cake from scratch the other day. It did not turn out too well so I decided that I was not going to make my life any harder so I headed off to Playa del Carmen and bought 1 box of chocolate, strawberry and vanilla cake. I was going to do a 6 layer alternating cakes but when I made them the cake would have been like a foot tall so I made 2 - 3 layer cakes. I did make my own frosting. just a simple cream cheese frosting and then divided it in 3 to make strawberry-chocolate and vanilla. It was so cute.

we also made our own pinata but when we put them out to dry - it rained over night and they busted. Oh well, we headed out to the shop to buy the pinata. Lena was so cute. I told her she could have 2 little pinatas or 1 big pinata. She chose 2 little ones - princess and pucca.

My mom and Ruben's mom sent us a little bit of money for Lena's party dress for a gift and to help out with the party. I took Lena with 3 of her friends into town to pick out her dress. She totally fell in love with this one and she looks so cute in it. For her gifts- we really scored. Ruben's family had bought some cloths for her when we first moved to Mexico but they were all too big so I tucked them away. So I went and bought makeup and nail polish and little jewelry and hair clip and put together little outfits. It was really cute. It worked out really well.

We played some fun games and the kids ran around like crazy people. We had a great dance off- freeze game to Lena's favorite music- Mamma Mia. Some of the pictures that were taken at the end of the night totally freak me out. She looks so grown up and she is dark. She has grown up so fast. My little girl. I love having a little girl. She is my queen in training.