The Rosas-Standring Family

I am sooo happy. My baby has come home. For anyone who knows me, they know how much this cat means to me. I have had her since she was 5 weeks old. And she will be 11 this April. She is a HUGE cat. Garfieldesque if you will. After combing the streets for hours shaking a bag of cat food and calling her name I was really upset that she did not come running to me. But then I read online that sometimes it helps to leave a shirt or something that smells like you outside. I could not leave food out because we would be covered in cats but I did leave a shirt on my fence post and left our light on outside. About 2 hours after I had gone to sleep I heard this frantic scratching at the door. I ran out to see it was her and it was. I was so happy. She came in ate 2 helping of food and the immediately came and snuggled with me on the bed. She was totally fine - but I was shaken.

I am just so happy to have her home again.

Well, first let me just say that I have been so happy to have Mom and Neal here for the week. It was great to just sit back with them and relax and really not do much at all. We hung out, ate, cooked, played with the kids. We had a great Christmas with them staying at their resort which was very cool. The kids woke up- well, more accurately they were woken up by a giddy and supper excited Grandpa. Once we let them into the room we set their presents in, they played in the outdoor jacuzzi while we ordered food and just hung out. Ruben had to work a lot but hey... what are you going to do. Here are a bunch of really cute pics.






Now for the bad news. When I got home Ruben told me that he had not seen Calvin (my 11 year old Tabby cat) anywhere in the house. Now, it has been 2 almost 3 days and there is no sign of her. Some of my neighbors are like..."yeah, don't worry- cat's like to rome, she probably chased a bird up a tree or something." Not this cat- This cat is well over 20 lbs and 11 years old. She has a hard time getting into the bed let alone up a tree. I am trying not to get ahead of myself but it is getting really hard. I went through some serious work to get this cat down here from the states and she really means a lot to me. I am sure she is fine but I just want her home.

I am soooooo happy today. For 1) it was just amazing to have my Mom and Neal here at my house and best of all.... doing nothing. Just sitting at the house watching the kids run all over, cooking, the inevitable picking up broken glass. I swear, I think my kids get some secret kick back from the people who make glassware! Actually that is not tooo fair. They are pretty good. The problem is that when we were back home, if something fell on the ground, it was usually fine. Well, here... not so much. If something falls of that table... there is NO hope at all. It is a goner. Oh well, they are just glasses. Yesterday I made my spaghetti with veggies and chorizo. The recipe is on my cooking blog. It is really really good. They really liked it which always makes me happy. It is nice when anyone likes your food but when it was these guys... that meant the world to me. I have realized how my emotion I have started to put into my cooking. It hurts so much to do anything that I have to fight through it. And I have realized while some things get lost in that... cooking gets pushed through and I really invest a lot of my energy in it. I think that is coming through in my cooking.

the 2nd reason I am so happy to have a phone. My mom and Neal brought us a phone from the states and we have our vonage box... so now... I can use my phone as if I were back home. This is a very cool thing for me.

The last reason I am really happy is that one of the gifts that my mom brought for me is all our home videos. A few years back mom had gone through all of our home movies and edited them and made a little collection. I had left mine up in States with all of my other things. Well, this year, she had them all transferred to DVD. A good thing since we do not have a vcr. I was watching some of them last night and it was sooooo cute. I have recently gotten in touch with some old family friends that used to watch me when I was 3-5 years old. (Gotta love facebook) :) And here they were on these videos. It was very cool.

Today we are off to Playa del Carmen for the day.