Friday, May 30, 2014

Aww nature... AHHH nature!!!!!!!!

I've always sort of had an uneasy friendship with Mother Nature.  In someways I love nature, after all it's gorgeous but I will never enjoy being barefoot or loving the idea of sitting on grass.  Since moving out to Mesilla it has been an idealic existence.  It's just beautiful and peaceful, but it isn't all cherry pie and ice cream.  My allergies are horrible, yard work on a country home sucks, bugs EVERYWHERE, and so forth.  Still I'm glad we are are here.



The kids on the other hand complain constantly about their horrid fate.  They miss suburbia and being close to everything.  They hate the extra work and they complain the country is boring because all they can do is chase ducks and play basketball.  So this morning I decided to let them take a country stroll in the pecan orchard near our house.  They came back screaming in horror!  The culprits were:

82 degree heat


3 Bees in a tree



And a Morbidly Obese Chihuahua barking at them!

Obviously we all need more experience with this nature thing :p

Sunday, May 25, 2014

The Perfect Trap...

Last week's post really got me thinking about Rachel and the example that both me and my husband give our kids.  I give myself a pass on a lot of things, chief among them grammar and spelling.  Those are often times the things I can justify not being perfect and just try my best.  The problem is that list is very small.  I never thought it was a bad thing but now my heart breaks when I see my children seem to naturally take after my husband and I.  


Rachel and Harm are driven more than most children I've known.  Harm didn't just want to learn and read picture books but he was determined to read Jr Novels; Rachel was told this month she needed to learn the splits so all month and even though it hurt she pushed herself (I told her not to worry) and can do the splits well.  It amazes me because as a child I didn't remember being that way.  It worries me though because if they are both determined to always be the best what will they do when perfection isn't obtained.  Will Rachel still love the joy of the dance even if she wobbles on a jump?  For it is that joy of just doing that makes life happy and worth living.

This is where I my spouse and I come in.  I see it easier with Chris (because it is always easier to see it in others than yourself), but when he started the company he told me once things settled it would get easier.  Than as success came the stress and preoccupation of needing to grow the business and continue to succeed grew.  Now with twenty employes and two cities the pressure to be perfect is constantly stalking day and night my husband's heart.

I'm not any better.  It isn't just the big things like my writing that consumes me but I will fret over my fresh blow out and consider skipping the pool when the kids want me to swim with them because I don't want to look funny later on in the day.  

I don't blame myself that my kids are mini-perfectionist because the fact is that if it was the case we wouldn't have cool as a cucumber Cally.  It is a drive deep in our hearts.  But I do believe by being easier on myself I will teach my kids that they need to be easier on themselves.  By trying even when I might fail and not missing out because I'm worried what others will think I will teach them not to worry in the same way.  

In life it doesn't matter if you are in the chorus or the prima ballerina, what matters is the joy of dancing,

Sunday, May 18, 2014

Let's not compare!


As I mentioned in the post about soccer there are real drawbacks to having kids who are the same age and some huge joys!  The worse thing that I'm starting to encounter is the constant competition.  Harm is better at biking, Cally is better at soccer, Rachel kills it in her handstands and each of them knows how when they do something better how to rub it into the other's face.  I'm turning into my my hippy mother all over again trying to explain we are on Team Cakes and there are no winners or losers but honestly, I get it.  


You see I came from an blended home of 3 half and 3 full siblings and I'm the baby of all of us.  If you haven't noticed on this blog my sister is a total rockstar supermodel.  Growing my brother Louie was this cool football jock and my brother Paul was a local sportscaster and later hosted a show on HGTV.  My brother William was this amazing spray artist and my siblings John and Kim were the cool ones.  It sucked growing up and people telling me: well you know you are the smart one and Eliza is just so pretty.  It's bad enough when as kids we competed but it was always so much worse when other people would tell us, "why can't you be more like..."


That comes back to the babies.  Rachel has been standing out at gym and so has Harmon.  Callum, is awesome pawsome because he is to busy just being his wonderful self to care.  The problem arose because we attended a rival gym's "Parent's Night Out".  There Rachel really did some neat work on the bars and Harm just played (which is what this event was all about).  Well two coaches began to fixate on Rachel and her talent and it crushed Harmon.  When I came to pick them up the kids the two coaches swarmed me to show me all the things she could do, offer me books, etc.  Harm began to cry because he felt left out and not special.
In so many ways these two are like Peanut Butter and Jelly.  Harm started protecting his baby sister when she was just a baby.  I don't want either of them feeling bad or not as special and I don't want this turning into a huge nasty rivalry between them.  For that same reason it is needless to say I feel that way about Cally Jolly.  I can't put my babies in a bubble but the most I can do is try hard to let each of them know that each is very special in their own way!

Purim, Passover, and Easter

We had quite a few holidays come all at once.  This year we have been better at celebrating both the Jewish and Christian Holidays and with it some sweet memories have come from it that I would like to share.  The interesting thing was that each Holiday celebrates miracles.  It was a month and a half period to really reflect on my own faith and the miracles that happen daily in my own life.

PURIM



The kids celebrated the miracle of Purim by dressing up and we all went to the Chabad Center on a Passport to Purim party.  Rachel was Queen Esther Lalaloopsy, and the boys well they just had fun :)


PASSOVER





We don't have pictures of the Sader but we have pre-pictures.  This was our first Sader as a family and the first time Chris has attended one.  I will never forget when poor Rachey took the biggest possible bite of horse radish.  They did great but at the Chabad it lasted about 2.5 to 3 hours and thats hard on wee ones.  For me it was a very special night.  I hadn't done a Sader in years.  I forgot the joy of being together, sharing prayers, singing songs, etc. 

EASTER







Easter was a perfect way to end the end of the Holidays!  That day was Stake Confernece which is when several LDS Congregations meet together.  Afterward we had a great dinner where my family attended, and Chris' family made it for dessert.  

Not exactly twins on the Soccer Field....

These season Rachel joined Callum on the soccer field playing for the Dragons and it wasn't exactly a duplicate experience.

I love the twins soccer team, except for the one tough fact that they practice clear across town but since my hubby takes them, I just really love our soccer team.  Coach Brock is the most patient man with this hybrid team of silly boys and princess girls.  It's a great experience and I'm glad they shared it together as twins.

 Callum loved it.  He did really great this season and was a consistently strong player and made a few goals (which for our team each goal counts).  He felt really great at the end of the season and he can't wait for the next season.

Rachel on the other hand really struggled.  This is a girl who loves just thriving and being the best at everything.  Each game she didn't score a goal, which was every game this season, she kicked herself about it a lot.  It broke my heart.  I told her it was all about trying and having a good time but she still felt bad.  As a mom I wish I could help her understand being new to a sport there is going to be a learning curve and sometimes our bodies don't naturally go to one particular thing or another (I never learned one of her amazing cartwheels).


The thing about my twins is that they are incredibly different.  The special bond they have isn't what they have in common but the special bond each of them shares.  They will go hand in hand in life and those shared experiences both good and bad and each moment will be better because of it.

Who is cooler? Daddy Chris or Criss Angel?

Ah, the eternal question, similar to the question of what is cuter dog or baby girl?


It all started in April when my Rachel and I were once more excluded from yet another sexist family camp out.  So what are two girls to gonna do?  We went ran away and went home to Las Vegas.  It was a wonderful trip (of course I feel that way each time I go home and be with those I love).  It was cute because this was the first time little Rachel was old enough to pick out some of the activities (which included a lovely afternoon where she got to have her first ever Soda, a Sprite at Coca-Cola World while we munched on the M&M's from M&M World.


The biggest fun for her though was on our last night we saw our dear friend Jason Byrne as a featured performer at Chris Angel's Magic Jam.  Jason stole the show in my opinion but there were many other amazing performers including Criss Angel's amazing apprentice, Kristen.  I loved Rachel seeing how a girl didn't have to be an assistant but could be the Magician.  Of course it was Criss Angel's show and Rachey was mesmerized by him.  


The next day when we flew home and Rachey couldn't stop talking about the show and it began to be Criss this and Criss that.  Poor my Chris felt so bad.  He kept asking her who was cooler and she always would say Criss.  Since than Chris I think has let the jealousy subside.  She will always love her Dad, and that bond is unbreakable and very different than her fascination with magic or performance.

Chris struggles a whole lot with the fact that I'm not exactly the traditional mom.  When he met me he knew the entertainers I had worked with and that wasn't a big deal because it wasn't an obsession on my part, just something that was part of me.  As I raise my kids it is just a part of art that is natural to teach them about.  To me teaching the about The Nutcracker is just as good as teaching Cirque du Soliel.  

It is a constant reality that marriage is a about compromise.  Chris is never going to give up his sexist camp outs because that is a special part of himself and I'm not going to ever give teaching the kids the life I had in Vegas and the beauty that is found in Vegas' unique art.  The important part is that we try to make peace and find common ground remembering always that Criss Angel is cool but he will never be Daddy Chris!





Celebrating 6 wonderful Harmon years!



As anyone who knows me or reads the blog knows I suck at being timely.  The twins had a birthday party in November for their August birthdays and this year Harm celebrated his January birthday on March 18th.  Of course I forgot to post the pics :p  I'm seriously always behind.  But that doesn't mean it wasn't a beautiful party and I'm grateful for my baby boy's beautiful life and the wonderful six years he gave me.









 Coaches L to R: Cally's Kendra, Harm's David the Pirate and David the destroyer, and Rachel's Jackie


My Memory Walls...


I do not know for a fact if a lot of Puerto Ricans do this but all of my mom's family are obsessed with pictures.  Growing up my Abuelita had walls that I scarcely could see the paint on.  She had hundreds of photos on the wall.  Maybe a thousand.  They were beautiful!  Black and white images of Puerto Rico, my Abuelito serving in Castillo de San Morro playing in the US Army band, my mom and her brothers as young children.  As a child I would look at these pictures for hours and I'm so sad that many of them were lost after her death.


My mother is the same way.  Sometimes I honestly wish we could maybe a few of the old photos were lost (I was a painfully awkward tween, I mean fugly might be more descriptive) but all over the house my moms home is littered with the good, the bad, and the "oh gosh this needs to be burned".


I never thought I would become this way but I have.  When I unpacked last weekend I found boxes of beautiful professional photos so I purchased about 90 photo frames from the dollar store and am currently putting them on the walls.  I already had about 40 nice frames.  I've finished three walls and I still have two more to go.  I'm also ordering a large wedding photo which I never got around to doing.  I want to get better frames for the new home.


Each memory is special.  My twins two year photo shoot is so precious and special!  Than there is the beautiful first family photo ever of a 5 day old Harmon and his two exhausted parents.  That was the beginning.  It's cheesy and I suck at mounting photos but honestly I don't care.  Memories are best remembered on walls than forgotten in boxes.

Friday, May 30, 2014

Aww nature... AHHH nature!!!!!!!!

I've always sort of had an uneasy friendship with Mother Nature.  In someways I love nature, after all it's gorgeous but I will never enjoy being barefoot or loving the idea of sitting on grass.  Since moving out to Mesilla it has been an idealic existence.  It's just beautiful and peaceful, but it isn't all cherry pie and ice cream.  My allergies are horrible, yard work on a country home sucks, bugs EVERYWHERE, and so forth.  Still I'm glad we are are here.



The kids on the other hand complain constantly about their horrid fate.  They miss suburbia and being close to everything.  They hate the extra work and they complain the country is boring because all they can do is chase ducks and play basketball.  So this morning I decided to let them take a country stroll in the pecan orchard near our house.  They came back screaming in horror!  The culprits were:

82 degree heat


3 Bees in a tree



And a Morbidly Obese Chihuahua barking at them!

Obviously we all need more experience with this nature thing :p

Sunday, May 25, 2014

The Perfect Trap...

Last week's post really got me thinking about Rachel and the example that both me and my husband give our kids.  I give myself a pass on a lot of things, chief among them grammar and spelling.  Those are often times the things I can justify not being perfect and just try my best.  The problem is that list is very small.  I never thought it was a bad thing but now my heart breaks when I see my children seem to naturally take after my husband and I.  


Rachel and Harm are driven more than most children I've known.  Harm didn't just want to learn and read picture books but he was determined to read Jr Novels; Rachel was told this month she needed to learn the splits so all month and even though it hurt she pushed herself (I told her not to worry) and can do the splits well.  It amazes me because as a child I didn't remember being that way.  It worries me though because if they are both determined to always be the best what will they do when perfection isn't obtained.  Will Rachel still love the joy of the dance even if she wobbles on a jump?  For it is that joy of just doing that makes life happy and worth living.

This is where I my spouse and I come in.  I see it easier with Chris (because it is always easier to see it in others than yourself), but when he started the company he told me once things settled it would get easier.  Than as success came the stress and preoccupation of needing to grow the business and continue to succeed grew.  Now with twenty employes and two cities the pressure to be perfect is constantly stalking day and night my husband's heart.

I'm not any better.  It isn't just the big things like my writing that consumes me but I will fret over my fresh blow out and consider skipping the pool when the kids want me to swim with them because I don't want to look funny later on in the day.  

I don't blame myself that my kids are mini-perfectionist because the fact is that if it was the case we wouldn't have cool as a cucumber Cally.  It is a drive deep in our hearts.  But I do believe by being easier on myself I will teach my kids that they need to be easier on themselves.  By trying even when I might fail and not missing out because I'm worried what others will think I will teach them not to worry in the same way.  

In life it doesn't matter if you are in the chorus or the prima ballerina, what matters is the joy of dancing,

Sunday, May 18, 2014

Let's not compare!


As I mentioned in the post about soccer there are real drawbacks to having kids who are the same age and some huge joys!  The worse thing that I'm starting to encounter is the constant competition.  Harm is better at biking, Cally is better at soccer, Rachel kills it in her handstands and each of them knows how when they do something better how to rub it into the other's face.  I'm turning into my my hippy mother all over again trying to explain we are on Team Cakes and there are no winners or losers but honestly, I get it.  


You see I came from an blended home of 3 half and 3 full siblings and I'm the baby of all of us.  If you haven't noticed on this blog my sister is a total rockstar supermodel.  Growing my brother Louie was this cool football jock and my brother Paul was a local sportscaster and later hosted a show on HGTV.  My brother William was this amazing spray artist and my siblings John and Kim were the cool ones.  It sucked growing up and people telling me: well you know you are the smart one and Eliza is just so pretty.  It's bad enough when as kids we competed but it was always so much worse when other people would tell us, "why can't you be more like..."


That comes back to the babies.  Rachel has been standing out at gym and so has Harmon.  Callum, is awesome pawsome because he is to busy just being his wonderful self to care.  The problem arose because we attended a rival gym's "Parent's Night Out".  There Rachel really did some neat work on the bars and Harm just played (which is what this event was all about).  Well two coaches began to fixate on Rachel and her talent and it crushed Harmon.  When I came to pick them up the kids the two coaches swarmed me to show me all the things she could do, offer me books, etc.  Harm began to cry because he felt left out and not special.
In so many ways these two are like Peanut Butter and Jelly.  Harm started protecting his baby sister when she was just a baby.  I don't want either of them feeling bad or not as special and I don't want this turning into a huge nasty rivalry between them.  For that same reason it is needless to say I feel that way about Cally Jolly.  I can't put my babies in a bubble but the most I can do is try hard to let each of them know that each is very special in their own way!

Purim, Passover, and Easter

We had quite a few holidays come all at once.  This year we have been better at celebrating both the Jewish and Christian Holidays and with it some sweet memories have come from it that I would like to share.  The interesting thing was that each Holiday celebrates miracles.  It was a month and a half period to really reflect on my own faith and the miracles that happen daily in my own life.

PURIM



The kids celebrated the miracle of Purim by dressing up and we all went to the Chabad Center on a Passport to Purim party.  Rachel was Queen Esther Lalaloopsy, and the boys well they just had fun :)


PASSOVER





We don't have pictures of the Sader but we have pre-pictures.  This was our first Sader as a family and the first time Chris has attended one.  I will never forget when poor Rachey took the biggest possible bite of horse radish.  They did great but at the Chabad it lasted about 2.5 to 3 hours and thats hard on wee ones.  For me it was a very special night.  I hadn't done a Sader in years.  I forgot the joy of being together, sharing prayers, singing songs, etc. 

EASTER







Easter was a perfect way to end the end of the Holidays!  That day was Stake Confernece which is when several LDS Congregations meet together.  Afterward we had a great dinner where my family attended, and Chris' family made it for dessert.  

Not exactly twins on the Soccer Field....

These season Rachel joined Callum on the soccer field playing for the Dragons and it wasn't exactly a duplicate experience.

I love the twins soccer team, except for the one tough fact that they practice clear across town but since my hubby takes them, I just really love our soccer team.  Coach Brock is the most patient man with this hybrid team of silly boys and princess girls.  It's a great experience and I'm glad they shared it together as twins.

 Callum loved it.  He did really great this season and was a consistently strong player and made a few goals (which for our team each goal counts).  He felt really great at the end of the season and he can't wait for the next season.

Rachel on the other hand really struggled.  This is a girl who loves just thriving and being the best at everything.  Each game she didn't score a goal, which was every game this season, she kicked herself about it a lot.  It broke my heart.  I told her it was all about trying and having a good time but she still felt bad.  As a mom I wish I could help her understand being new to a sport there is going to be a learning curve and sometimes our bodies don't naturally go to one particular thing or another (I never learned one of her amazing cartwheels).


The thing about my twins is that they are incredibly different.  The special bond they have isn't what they have in common but the special bond each of them shares.  They will go hand in hand in life and those shared experiences both good and bad and each moment will be better because of it.

Who is cooler? Daddy Chris or Criss Angel?

Ah, the eternal question, similar to the question of what is cuter dog or baby girl?


It all started in April when my Rachel and I were once more excluded from yet another sexist family camp out.  So what are two girls to gonna do?  We went ran away and went home to Las Vegas.  It was a wonderful trip (of course I feel that way each time I go home and be with those I love).  It was cute because this was the first time little Rachel was old enough to pick out some of the activities (which included a lovely afternoon where she got to have her first ever Soda, a Sprite at Coca-Cola World while we munched on the M&M's from M&M World.


The biggest fun for her though was on our last night we saw our dear friend Jason Byrne as a featured performer at Chris Angel's Magic Jam.  Jason stole the show in my opinion but there were many other amazing performers including Criss Angel's amazing apprentice, Kristen.  I loved Rachel seeing how a girl didn't have to be an assistant but could be the Magician.  Of course it was Criss Angel's show and Rachey was mesmerized by him.  


The next day when we flew home and Rachey couldn't stop talking about the show and it began to be Criss this and Criss that.  Poor my Chris felt so bad.  He kept asking her who was cooler and she always would say Criss.  Since than Chris I think has let the jealousy subside.  She will always love her Dad, and that bond is unbreakable and very different than her fascination with magic or performance.

Chris struggles a whole lot with the fact that I'm not exactly the traditional mom.  When he met me he knew the entertainers I had worked with and that wasn't a big deal because it wasn't an obsession on my part, just something that was part of me.  As I raise my kids it is just a part of art that is natural to teach them about.  To me teaching the about The Nutcracker is just as good as teaching Cirque du Soliel.  

It is a constant reality that marriage is a about compromise.  Chris is never going to give up his sexist camp outs because that is a special part of himself and I'm not going to ever give teaching the kids the life I had in Vegas and the beauty that is found in Vegas' unique art.  The important part is that we try to make peace and find common ground remembering always that Criss Angel is cool but he will never be Daddy Chris!





Celebrating 6 wonderful Harmon years!



As anyone who knows me or reads the blog knows I suck at being timely.  The twins had a birthday party in November for their August birthdays and this year Harm celebrated his January birthday on March 18th.  Of course I forgot to post the pics :p  I'm seriously always behind.  But that doesn't mean it wasn't a beautiful party and I'm grateful for my baby boy's beautiful life and the wonderful six years he gave me.









 Coaches L to R: Cally's Kendra, Harm's David the Pirate and David the destroyer, and Rachel's Jackie


My Memory Walls...


I do not know for a fact if a lot of Puerto Ricans do this but all of my mom's family are obsessed with pictures.  Growing up my Abuelita had walls that I scarcely could see the paint on.  She had hundreds of photos on the wall.  Maybe a thousand.  They were beautiful!  Black and white images of Puerto Rico, my Abuelito serving in Castillo de San Morro playing in the US Army band, my mom and her brothers as young children.  As a child I would look at these pictures for hours and I'm so sad that many of them were lost after her death.


My mother is the same way.  Sometimes I honestly wish we could maybe a few of the old photos were lost (I was a painfully awkward tween, I mean fugly might be more descriptive) but all over the house my moms home is littered with the good, the bad, and the "oh gosh this needs to be burned".


I never thought I would become this way but I have.  When I unpacked last weekend I found boxes of beautiful professional photos so I purchased about 90 photo frames from the dollar store and am currently putting them on the walls.  I already had about 40 nice frames.  I've finished three walls and I still have two more to go.  I'm also ordering a large wedding photo which I never got around to doing.  I want to get better frames for the new home.


Each memory is special.  My twins two year photo shoot is so precious and special!  Than there is the beautiful first family photo ever of a 5 day old Harmon and his two exhausted parents.  That was the beginning.  It's cheesy and I suck at mounting photos but honestly I don't care.  Memories are best remembered on walls than forgotten in boxes.