por fin!!

Now that I'm pretty sure no one even checks this to see if I'm still alive, Gabriel got the laptop back so I can write a wee bit more. Just to give a run-down, so much has happened...wow, where to start...let's see, it's been 12 days so...that's about 144 diapers, 84 bottles of milk, 50 screaming fits, 25 time outs, 30 penicillin pills, 5 showers (yep, just five), 3 doctors appointments, one occupational therapy appointment and a partridge in a pear tree...
same old thing...I guess if a person doesn't write in their blog for two weeks and a tree falls in the forest....it still makes a noise.
I just got finished cleaning the house because my aunt and uncle are in town from North Carolina and they said they were coming over to visit...I haven't heard back from them still but it feels good to have clean mirrors and vacuumed floors and pictures hung on the wall...I also tried to take care of the extra chocolate covered krispy kremes because they were cluttering the counter...you know, you do whatchu gotta do!
Ruby rolls over in her crib and likes to stand up and hang on to the ottoman she drank out of a straw the other day. Dellah walked up the stairs and slid down the slide by herself at the park and swang in the big girl swing while I pusehd her...if only she would stop being addicted to a pacifier, we could probably understand a lot more of her constant babble.
Ruby will be a year old on the 25th of April...I can't even hardly believe that but mostly I can't believe it's been a year since I gave birth and my pants still don't fit!!!!
yesterday I was walking in the building and there was this stick figure girl with this little piece of fabric attached to her lower body that she obviously thought was a skirt and she was paying the pizza guy and hauling a big old pizza box up to her apartment...I have to believe that she was just the middle man and was then going to deliver it to someone else. She obviously only eats cucumbers.
I have recently become addicted to going to DI and finding small clothes for my children for a dollar. The other day we were there and we saw this really old homeless looking guy with gray hair and facial hair and he was asleep on one of the couches that was for sale, holding one of those nylon pinwheels that goes in the garden where each of the petals was adifferent rainbow color...I thought to myself...thank goodness my children got to see that...truly America at its finest...you just never know what you can find at DI...my favorite is how they sell stuff you can get for free in real life for like $3.
anyway...now I've updated myself in cyberspace.

strep

I feel like poop. I woke up after sleeping for 14 hours and I need to go back to sleep. My throat is covered in white nastiness and I am taking antibiotics. I was looking forward to a very different weekend like visiting Marsha on this, her birthday, or returning some bad purchases or swallowing without agony and tears....I just sneezed and was brought to my knees in pain...I notice there has been a famine of comments to most everyone's blog...I wonder if that is some lunar phenomenon or if everyone is bored or busy...I'm not busy so I better stop being boring then. time to go.

luck o' the Irish

So my parents named me Erin in 1976 in rural North Carolina where I would be the only Erin for miles around. Every substitute teacher with blue hair and bi-focals would call for 'Erwin', 'Ervin', 'Errrin Tootle', 'is HE here' and all that I endured with irate grace that the word Erin eluded so many southerners...occasionally, I still encounter occasional correspondence spelling my name AAron which is obviously the masculine way and I just suck it up but today....TODAY.....TO DAY, was my day, America....yes....today was free taco day at Taco maker...if...yes, and only if your name is Erin...yes!
Now taco maker is, almost, the most disgusting mexican food that I have encountered in my natural life but when they call my name, I come a runnin'....and it's for two weeks! Free tacos to everyone named Erin for two weeks! The rather portly woman at the register who was missing most of her teeth informed me that I was actually the first Erin to have been by since the promotion a week ago...(i know there are more Erins than just me, I'm pretty sure it's the taste (or lack thereof) of the food and the toothless service precluding most discerning Erins from frequenting the Taco maker). But I needed validation. Today was my day. Erin Day. Green eyed, dark haired glow in the dark white with freckles, Irish Erin day.
Erin go Bragh!
While we sat in the food court with my little family, my frugal husband beaming with pride that his wife got a free taco and he used his Blimpie punch card to get a free ultimate club so our whole lunch was $1.71 for a drink (and a little more for an oreo McFlurry because, you know...), Ruby began pulling her blanket in front of her face and pulling in down again while we said peek-a-boo...over and over again, my little Ruby played a game, cognitively, alertly, intentionally!....this may be normal for the other kids but Ruby has been a perpetual conundrum to me as a mother and now this!...my little baby is a real baby!! So I cried in the food court eating my free taco and watching my happy baby...
a good day.
except I think I'm getting sick...it's the throat...it gets me every time.
I got my little treats that I bought off of Marsha's etsy site and I am so happy with them...so cute...a little pair of so cute paper girls...
happy Erin day, everyone...may the force be with you as it has so obviously been with me today...
xoxo

Tuesdee

We had one of those awkwardly long terms with the 'work computer' and Gabriel took it back on monday so I'm down here in the computer room at the Brigham (apartments) typing on this huge keyboard that feels like its fake it's so big. Our car is in the shop until tomorrow night so I have been maroon fived at my house doing nothing...I suppose I could go and take a walk but that would be overrated and much too exerting.
I took a shower today...that was enough exertion. I have to give props to shave gel...it's just miraculous, actually...isn't it? How that bright blue little dot becomes a whole leg full of lavish foam? I for one don't know how I shaved without it before it was on sale at Big Lots.
These are some things I wish Utah had:
Dunkn' Donuts
Big Al's (seafood place in North Carolina)
H&M
Top Shop
Krogers supermarket
Urban Outfitters
humidity

That about sums up my wish list.
also I wish I lived by all my friends so I could have people to talk to that weren't internet people but internet people are better than no people.
goooooo....oreo McFlurries...especially when you get a little dollop of the creme from the inside of the oreo that's all cold and mixed with ice cream.....so gooooood.

sundee

Today I taught a lesson on the Holy Ghost and personal revelation in Relief Society. I feel like this about it....'ummm...i think it could have been better...it's all a big blur....I feel a little sick to my stomach'....
I suppose there's always next second sunday of the month.
Then I came home 20 minutes before the end of the three hours, stepping on two old people in my row because there were people trying to say their feelings and no one could hear them for my unabashed banshee sisters. It was dumping snow today so that was really good. I love when you're inside and it's dumping snow..
So I got home and took a nap while my babies took and nap and then Ruby woke up after 1 1/2 hours so I got up to feed her. Aren't you glad you're reading this? I sure am glad to be writing it....blllaaaaahhhhhh, blah blah
anyway, I made this new recipe today for penne rustica with whole wheat penne and 1/4 cup of olive oil and onion and garlic and zuchinni (it was supposed to be broccoli, but come on, i hate broccoli) and a cup of chicken broth and 1/3 cup of parmesan cheese and salt and pepper and bacon.....YUMMM...of course we added the traditional Sanchez avocado but that was some good pasta...
I'm going through all my real simple magazines from the last 3 years and tearing out the pages I think I will want to refer to later....I'm realizing there is a tweezerman ad in every single real simple...strange. I have some tweezerman tweezers that I found in the hallway here at the Brigham apartments...of course I picked them up because they're expensive...they're lavender....i boiled them to get any foreign funk off them and they're great!
i digress.
I think being the last person to watch Walk the Line was a draw back because I had heard nothing but fantastic reviews and I somehow expected it to be a transcendant experience and leave me glowing with my car lubed and my teeth flossed but it was good. Just a movie...I kept focusing on Joaquin Phoenix's scar and getting mad for some reason. I really liked it but not as much as Nanny McPhee. Reese Witherspoon was so skinny though...her legs were like little girl legs.
My new food thing is making perfect white/gold pancakes and making more than I need and eating them later cold....i love me some flap jacks!! Also I bought some creme horns last night at Wal-Marticus and I feel a relapse coming on...I've been clean for 18 months but the gall bladder's out now so lardy creme can't touch me now....bring on the creme horns!

friday night fever

Tonight the Sanchezes went to the Bombay house for the first time since Emily Asplund's birthday like two years ago when Dellah was 4 months old and I announced I was pregnant with Ruby...after having various people be amazed by that announcement and some laugh at the combined good and horribleness of it, I went home and threw up the Bombay house and hadn't been back....until today when the vegetable coconut kurma was in rare form and the mango lassi was as the dews from heaven...MAN I'M GLAD WE WENT TO THE BOMBAY HOUSE!! Dellah loved the kurma too and the naan and I thought, "train up a child"...only the lights are so low and yellow there that I didn't realize her whole face was that same yellow/orange color from all the lovin' of all that kurma until we got outside and needed a serious wet nap....and then we went to Cold Stone and had a sugar fix and now we're home watching 'walk the line'...it has been a really good day. I'm so happy it's friday. Nothing really changes but for some reason the weekend just always feels better doesn't it? Last night Ruby did the sign for 'eat'. I teach those babies signs from the time they're tiny and it's so nice when they do them back at the right time...ah, little Rubiferous, she's really in there..

la nada que para mi es algo

Yesterday I met Andi at the Gateway mall and we walked around in the sun and snow with 4 children. Consumerism with children is not for the faint of heart...especially in Anthropologie and j. jill where you get looked at like a special kind of leper if you bring strollers and children who scream and run...it was good to be with Andi and sit in the food court and talk about stuff. I realized that if I did things like that more often, I mean things with adults from yesteryear, then I would feel a lot more like life is the party I'm pretty sure it is on some level.
Then I went to enrichment last night where, for some reason, I felt compelled to wear this ultra clingy dress with slits up the sides and a scoop neck that I had no business wearing and then I put a little sweater thing over it and my leggings with no feet and my cute flats with the bow...who even knows what I must have looked like (probably the girl that didn't get the memo that you shouldn't have back fat or belly fat to wear that dress) but I actually felt good about myself like, 'yeah...that's right...I own this dress and I wear it and I look cute, ok?' I think that's something good about me. I have always worn things that I wanted to wear even when they didn't make obvious sense but I feel good and then I look good.
They were celebrating the 164th birthday of the RS and we actually sang happy birthday to it which, for me, was where I had to draw the line but we listened to some sisters honor the elderly ladies in our ward (I know, the median age in our ward is actually 64 years old but these were the REALLY old ones) and I was just amazed at the 15 years spent in missions from one lady and the 13 children of another and the PhD in education from this woman who is just frail and tiny and sister Daines who was wearing THE actual dress that she wore after her wedding 76 years ago and the necklace that her husband gave her BEFORE they got married (this amazing art deco crystal bauble)....basically I left after having cake and thought, if I can even make it to 94 years old (which I sincerely hope I don't before Jesus comes back) and be even nearly as cool as these ladies, I will have done something really good. They honored 10 women and all of them said (which I thought was interesting) that forgiveness means forgetting and we cannot be happy without the forgetting... I started thinking how many times in almost 100 years you would have to forgive and forget in order to even stay sane...I'm glad I went.
I was supposed to teach the home school little girls in my building ballet this morning like I do every other thursday only this morning I was so tired it was just not going to happen so I thought I would just avoid the subject and disappoint everyone and not care and then I woke up 10 minutes before I was supposed to go and felt that guilt when you know you're a jerk and there was a message from one of the moms saying they were going to cancel the class because Sariah was sick....yessssss....don't you just love when you are a slacker but you don't look like THE slacker because someone else did something slackerish first? I love that. So, I'm still in my night gown and have decided that my preferred outfit is somewhere between heels and a clingy dress and a nightgown...or maybe both. what should I make for dinner? I haven't made dinner in so long it's like a crime...one of the ladies last night was like, "I have learned that every meal I made for my family my whole life was part of me and an expression of love that we could all share in"...I felt like poop...
it's just so hard to think of something to make every day and then timing it just right and man...sheesh.
Oh, the funniest thing I heard on the view this morning was that someone said how much the public likes looking at fashion on the red carpet because it's on real women with real bodies instead of on the runway on human hangars....oh...and all this time I was thinking the movie stars were unhealthy and too skiny and now they're NORMAL? what? I am more and more convinced that famous people actually just fly in from another planet to say stupid things like that because the rest of us would never even think of saying something that dumb.
dellah is expressing angst from her crib by banging on the wall with her foot...i guess she's awake. duty calls.

making up for lost photos

these are Ruby's new summer shoes...I have to say that I just put them on her to see how cute baby feet look in sandals...obviously she only wears them inside since it's freezing outside but summer's commin' and she's ready... This is me and Ruby because we hang out a lot. She's cute...I've been cuter but it's all I can do these days...at least I'm happy...most of the time :)
This is Ruby and me in the living room of our old apartment that we don't live in anymore...that is how we live...Ruby attached to me in the Baby Bjorn because she can't be put down but hopefully she can get over that before kindergarten because this thing only goes up to 23 pounds.
This is Dellah who isn't going potty but she likes to sit like a funny person while she watches baby einstein...yes, she is wearing leg warmers with her skirt because the apple doesn't fall far from the mama tree and I think it looks even cuter on babies than on humans. Dellah is very cute and likes to say so many things and surprise us with things she knows that we didn't know she knew...like today she said giraffe...well, actually just 'raff' but she was looking at a picture of a giraffe so she toatally said giraffe..
so there, some pictures from the last little while...I tell you, it was traumatic to put these on here and I don't know how many times I can do it but maybe once a month or so or maybe more if I can figure it out and feel happy about it. I am sad that superman's wife died...it just seems too sad for words for their little mini superman kid...at least they're together now and maybe somebody will get them married in the big house so they can fly to the ice castle together forever.
We went to Ruby's therapy today and got told that maybe she needs to be put in a full body stocking thing to simulate closeness and comfort. She also is pretty sure that Ruby's having a meltdown lately because we moved and she is really sensitive to changes in her environment....I know, I know...it really does sound like bunk to me too but when you're around Ruby for longer than 2 hours you realize that she really has some issues that make her 'not like the others' so to speak....so now I'm looking for a neoprene unitard for an infant...good luck, Erin.
Today I have eaten 3 avocados in various forms, mostly in quesadillas...I also got the 'gotta have it' size of cake batter ice cream and ate it with much joy and rejoicing this afternoon and evening, thinking, this is the best ice cream on the face of the earth...
I would like to add Salma Hayak to my list of oscar favorities and Jamie Foxx to my list of disasters...i hate turquoise shirts with tuxedos...come on now...
Gabriel told me today that he has been reading my blog...I found that entirely appropriate since he is my spouse. I love Gabriel. He seriously works harder than anybody I know. I wake up and he's gone in the morning because he is that responsible...I am so happy I married someone who understands that you have to be like that to be successfu (because I know it but it's just so hard for me to do it)...I am also glad that he bathes every day (because I can't always say the same for myself) and that he wears pink ties and lavender ties and looks really nice all the time like a real life lawyer (because I like to look nice all the time but most of the time I look like someone wearing the same jeans and t-shirt every day)...basically, Gabriel is most everything I wish I was but am not yet...except a man, which I am glad I am not! he is wonderful. I love Gabriel.
By the way, that one Burger King commercial for the chicken sandwich where it's like a bucking bronco chicken and the guy is riding it is THE FUNNIEST thing I have seen in a long time...
go avocadoes, go coconut popsicles, go cold stone, go ling ling pot stickers, go Marsha for going to Europe, go me for uploading pictures, Go Rams '95!!! go winter for never ever leaving Utah and staying all year so we freeze to death.

time spent

we're living here among the wreckage of what used to be organized stuff but now, in this space, it's all come apart...we got to bed super late last night and today was stake conference so we dredge out of bed and go, and what?, The satellite feed from the stake center to our building was totally busted and we sat there for 45 minutes looking at each other other thinking, ok, we got out of bed to be uplifted and here we sit....then we got visual feed with no audio, followed by garbled audio with no visual and then barely intelligible audio with fuzzy visual for the last 40 minutes or so....with squirmy babies and no real cohesive spirit to keep you rivited, i can just go ahead and say my Sealy and my 400 thread counts were straight up screaming my name...we're watching the oscars right now and Ruby is sitting way up by my shoulder sucking her hand watching a stirring rendition of "it'shard out here for a pimp" like it's the philharmonic or something...I don't think baby einstein has come out with a "baby street smarts" video yet, so she'll have to take it easy on the gangsta rap...Ok, "it's hard out here for a pimp just WON the oscar and I have to say I'm a little sad because Dolly Parton was totally working it out with that travelin' through song and I have to say, I cried out of sheer Dolly is so good-ness...this is another reason why I really wish I had Tivo because this show really is just about 6 awards or so and it goes ahead on and lasts FOR ever...everyone's faces are getting more shiny and they all look a little bedraggled...
these are the people I think look amazing though:
Meryl Streep
Michelle Williams (man she looks am-azing)
Reese Witherspoon
Judi Dench (please Lord, let me look like her when I'm her age, she's my favorite lady)
Naomi Watts
Sandra Bullock (although I totally had a shelley segal ball skirt with pockets in the front like 8 years ago and everyone's like, wow, pockets, wow, whatever)
Felicity Huffman

these are the people I think looked rediculous:
Charlize Theron
the girl with Phillip Seymore Hoffman
I want to say Keira Knightly but I can't decide if my feelings are tainted by bad orthodontia
Charlize Theron

my new food obsession is avocado with salt...i'l l go eat a third one now...

saturday is a special day....

This particular saturday is especially special in a special way because, here we sit in the sanchez' newest living room that we rent, literally swimming in belongings that I am ready to forsake at this moment and live the life of a pauper...WHERE DID ALL THIS POOP COME FROM? AND WHY DO I HAVE WITHOUT A JOKE, 16 PAIRS OF DIFFERENTLY PATTERNED BLACK TIGHTS?...and that's just the black ones!!! We somehow have managed to stuff ourselves into this place that's even smaller than our OTHER one that we thought was too small...unfortunately, the balcony is not as deadly here on the third floor as it was on the 8th (I just tried to spell 8th and for some reason I couldn't figure it out...eighth, eigth...I'm tired)..
so,When you ask the elder's quorum to help you move, you basically sign up for, 'please go ahead and break everything I hold dear or is of any value in my life' help and to me that's not actually helping although I suppose you pay for what you get but I went and bought those hooligans krispy kremes and pineapple orange juice this morning I expect a darn sight more than negligence at the cellular level which obviously some of them struggle with on a daily basis....one guy actually shows up to help SOAKED in sweat like he's been on the treadmill since tuesday wondering what we want him to carry and I'm like, oh, I don't know....something WATERPROOF!!!...lame. So they dropped our flat screen tv on the floor, broke the wheel of the leg of the crib and thereby, broke the leg of the crib, broke the laundry closet door and that's only what we know so far! Then the brigham apartments gets it's parking garages broken in to this past week, and I have no idea until last night when I went to pick up Gabriel from being gone all week, that the passenger side door won't open because someone tried to pry it away from the car with a crobar and since they couldn't get it, now we can't either...double lame....or maybe that's triple lame...i suppose since my one solace was that my car was at least nice and clean and new looking, I am now being humbled...got it...thanks...
It's a lot like camping here...Dellah's eating some grease with food that Ronal McDonald made her in the middle of the living room surrounded by boxes and watching cruz azul play soccer...whenever she sees soccer she says, 'GOOOOOLLLL' whether they've scored or not which I think is really funny. She talks so much it's just a shame most of it is incrypted...
I am sitting on the floor with this (borrowed) laptop on a box filled with DVD's (woohoo by the way, we totally get stolen internet down here too!!!) and my crown burger coca cola balancing precariously beside it...I better go so I can contribute to the order, not the entropy...escribire mas, mas tarde...

that half a size really matters

so the saddest thing is when you are always on the search for the wear everyday shoes in black and brown and you actually find them in TJ Maxx where shopping is affordable and they have both black and brown in a 9 1/2 and neither one in a ten...it turns out that after reproducing twice, my once 9 1/2 foot is now and ten and I am no longer in the running to becoming America's Next Top model....today on the Tyra show there was this chubby girl who was like, watching America's next top model motivates me to exercise and I lost 60 pounds....
what?
I have to say that watching America' s next top model almost motivates me to do everything but exercise and lost 60 pounds...like advocate smart people instead of dumb skinny ones that want to make money off of their skinniness because they know they're dumb and never never living with people that steal your energy drinks or even more, never living with people that DRINK energy drinks...
I gave two haircuts today: one Jessica Rabbit and one Erin Tuttle(pixie action) to the moms in my ward. I sure do like cutting hairs...I can't wait until I can go to school and have a hair salon/boutique/bakery shop where I can sell all the stuff that Marsha and Cindy make and my dad's cookies and cut folk's hair...it's going to be called 'South'...if anyone makes a hair salon/boutique/whatever named South now, I will totally pimp slap you to oblivion...do you hear me? anyway...good times. I have to go upstairs and move out of my apartment now by myself because my husband is gone so I hope I don't stub my toe for the 100th time today because I'm already walking like my name is Mos Def and my jeans are down around knee caps...walk, drag..walk, drag...what up, what up...I got soul but I'm not a soldier...

shameless consumerism

Today I went to costco and became an executive member because I spend so darn much money there I need 2% back at the end of the year and I was informed that there are special mornings when you can go before everyone else can go and they give you pastries and juice and stuff...I'm all the way sure that I will never be up and shopping at 8am in the near future so it doesn't really matter but I guess that's as close to a red carpet/gift bag/celebrity treatment thing I'm gonna get...maybe I'll do it once just to feel cool....cool and bed-headed with pajamas on.
Then I went to wal-mart where I bought more coconut popsicles because the two boxes (12 total) that I bought on saturday were gone and also some fruit and milk and the lady and the tramp dvd and some new sharpies because I love buying sharpies and having them in every color and tip size and blah blah but I never use them and then somehow, when I need a sharpie, I don't have even one! so more sharpies. then I got some generic razors because I tried to ride the 'VENUS' razor is the best thing ever wave but it's just not and I just need something to get the hairs without all the hype...the venus actually really sucks. Then I went to the drive-thru at Subway to get the sub of the day which is turkey breast only the guy was like, could you wait just a minute, I'll be right there and then it was like more than a minute or even 10 of them so I hit reverse and got outa there since it was 8 till 4 and meg ryan was going to be on Oprah...I always wondered whatever happened to her...and I vowed never to inject collagen anywhere on my face and turned the tv off and read some more book and ate some more popsicle and here I am...
today I wore a dress because it is glorious outside and it made me feel good. We drove with the sunroof opened and Dellah was all quiet so I turned around and realized that she was all paralized by the sun in her light light blue eyes and I know how bad that hurts so I closed it...moon roof instead...Ruby started out with two turquoise socks and came home with one which always amazes me because she just sits in a seat that I heave around everywhere and never moves or walks...where IS that sock? I wanted to get Pride and Prejudice on video for 17$ at wal-mart but they were all out....I really hate that.