The Rosas-Standring Family

Today has been a good day. I spent a lot of time yesterday picking up the house and rearranging some stuff and washing all the sheets, pillow covers and sofa covers so I spent last night watching the 4th season of the West Wing on DVD with candles lit. I absolutely love this show and I am so glad that I have them to watch on DVD.

Since we are on a tight budget I planned a nice simple morning meal. Unfortunately I ran out of the coffee that Mom and Neal brought me at Christmas and when I bought some yesterday I did not realize that it was not ground. Grinding coffee is not something that my mini chopper is very good at but oh well. It did it well enough. We just had to run the coffee through a 2nd time and it was fine.


With the coffee I we had an assortment of fresh fruit and chocolate fondue. The fondue recipe is on my other blog. As is the Gorgonzola pasta recipe that we are for lunch. We set up everything on the little table and all gathered around. It was really fun. Kennedy drew a whole bunch of pictures for us.

After that Ruben had to leave for work and I rearranged the back yard. I think it is looking really good. I put the thinner table along the wall for the plants so it would seem bigger. And I think that my little dish area has turned out really cute. Ruben built me a screen that catches all the food under my wash basin so I can get rid of all of the food and keep the ants away.
Once we get the dry lines back on the roof the back yard will be perfect. We had the dry lines up there but we are putting the hooks to high and the weight of the cloths and the force of the breeze is causing one to fall over. So we are going to put them up again but with the hooks much shorter. I think that will make it work.


Now that we had our gas can delivered we can have a hot shower and watch all the fun cheese valentine's Day movies. I think it will be a good night for Ruben. I mean he works at the French restaurant at the hotel and it is very nice and romantic. And it is Adults Only. If you ever come to visit Tulum, the best resort in my opinion is Dreams Tulum. http://www.dreamsresorts.com/dretu/ At least of the ones that I have seen. And it is great for kids. They have a kids club that my kids kept dying to go to. It is an all-inclusive resort that is just beautiful. There are a lot of pics from when we stayed there


The best price for Dreams Tulum that I have seen is at www.bookit.com. We had a great experience working with them.

Anyway, so right now Ruben is at work, the kids are in watching a video and I am going to take a warm shower and watch the next disk in the West Wing series. The kids and I finished off our cheap V-day by making some cupcakes for Ruben and topping them with toasted coconut. :) Yummy!!! I think there should still be some when he gets home. I will try. :)

Okay it has been an interesting few days. Hobbs got hit by a taxi and pretty much cannot move. We have set up a little spot in the front of the house where Hobbs just lays all day. We have put his water and food there and a little box. He can move around if he needs to but does not. The poor little thing.


And there is the kids. Last week I started taking them to a class at the cultural center and within just a few days I noticed that they have gotten lice. The poor little things. In talking to some friends here it seems like it is pretty common here especially because it is so humid here. I am just so glad that my kids hair is so light. I was able to see a problem right away. I hope it is not too hard to get rid of. One of the hard things is that all of the remedies that are recommended we cannot do. For example, washing everything in hot water and putting in the dryer- we cannot do that. Our hot water does not go into our washing machine. Then it says that we should vacuum the mattresses- well, we cannot do that because we do no have a vacuum. Everything here is tile.

My Grandma on my fathers side is not feeling well. I hate not being there for her. I loved living in San Francisco and getting to visit her as much as I did. It is always fun to be at her house. She has so many cool things that she has found and collected and re invented over the many years. And there are so many with incredible stories. Not to mention that she is a kick in the pants. She has a great sense of humor. There were so many things that we disagreed on but always had fun talking about them. She loves to discuss religion, politics, gossip and history- both family and world. I miss her a lot. I will have fun so much fun when I get to see her again in April.

For now, I am sitting in a totally clean house - ready for valentines day. I am going to remake my Gorgonzola pasta dish but this time with regular bow tie pasta. Tortellini is crazy expensive and the sauce is going to be so good anyway so... And then we are going to have chocolate fondue with pineapple, mango, apple, mandarin, short bread and sliced coconut. That is if I can find chocolate chips. That is one thing that I have not been able to find here. The things that I took advantage of all of the things that were just sooooooo easy to grab in the USA. Very crazy.

Okay, I have cleaned this whole house, done 3 loads of laundry, cooked on a hot plate, spent hours getting lice off of kids and combing through hair and catered to tiny kitten

Today has been a real roller coaster. The morning started off great. We all woke up early, beautiful day... and then... Akilean, outside riding his bike, starts screaming/crying. I can tell that it is not his "I'm hurt" scream but that something was really wrong. I ran outside to Akilean recounting the story of a taxi driving by and Hobbs running out in the middle of the street. I was not really sure what Akilean was talking about until I saw Hobbs and another guy came over to tell us what he had seen. The taxi was going a little fast but not insane and Hobbs charged out to cross the street and saw the car and froze and the taxi hit him.

He is okay and will be okay. His legs on the right side of his body had a lot of fur and skin ripped off and there is 1 part of his back leg that is pretty chopped up by a rock or something. He has been sitting in 1 spot all afternoon. The kids are doing good job at leaving him alone as every time they touch him he squeals.

He had just started to get better from when Akilean hurt is leg about 6 weeks ago. The poor little thing. I was really upset for Akilean too. He was really upset about the whole thing. Poor Hobbs. He is really living up to his name of Hobbs, Even though he was not named for hobbling around. He was actually named for the old comic strip "Calvin and Hobbs"- well really Calvin was named for that and Hobbs was just the perfect companion name. Sort of funny. I hope he is okay.