Merry Christmas from Toby Claus

Toby wanted me to wish each and every one of you a very Merry Christmas. He wants you to have a great Christmas so much so that he dressed up for each of you. Friends, meet Toby Claus:

Baby It's Cold Outside

Brrrrrrr! This morning was a cold one. Too bad it can't stick around for a few days and leave us with a seasonably chilly Christmas morn'. Oh well. I love the cold weather (in short stints) and this morning was definitely a bit on the chilly side. I love being able to drink hot chocolate and not feel silly. I love walking into our house after being outside and feeling the heater blowing out warm air. I love sweaters, and scarves and mittens. But mostly these days, I love being able to see THIS as I leave for work in the morning:

Charlie Clements Aguilar: 1995 - December 6, 2008

Yesterday was quite possibly the hardest day of mine and Sean's entire life. Yesterday morning, at 8:30 a.m., we sent our beloved dog, Charlie, off to doggie heaven. Charlie lived a long, long life. When he became mine back in 1995, the vet estimated he was 2 years old. 15 years is a long time for a doggie to live. Charlie led such a good life, and he was the very best dog you could ever ask for. He was patient and calm and well behaved. He loved to give kisses and chase Beagles at the dog park. He was with me every step of the way -- multiple apartments and boyfriends, job changes, college, the working world... He was even there the night I got engaged to Sean. Charlie was sitting right beside Sean when Sean got down on his knee and asked me to be his wife! He was there for all the high points and all the low points.

I'm so glad he made it long enough to see the birth of Bella. It's unfortunate that she won't get to know Charlie, but we'll be sure to tell her all about his wonderfulness.

Over the last few months, it had become increasingly obvious that we would have to make a decision about Charlie's life. He'd pretty much stopped eating. He was down to skin and bones. He was completely blind (this was confirmed to us by the vet yesterday) and he was spending most of his days curled up on the floor. When he'd get up, he'd have a major case of "sea legs" and would have much difficulty walking around. We knew that this was not the kind of life Charlie would want to live. So...we made the decision to send him to doggie heaven.

Sean took Charlie to the vet. I couldn't do it...he'd been my doggie for 13 years and I needed the last time I saw him for him to be alive. God bless Sean...what he had to do was unimaginably hard! He was with Charlie as he took his last breath. By the time he came home, I knew Charlie was up in doggie heaven, running through the grass, eating treats, and chasing Beagles!

Rest in peace our precious "Boogs" (as we called him). We already miss you like crazy. The tears haven't subsided, and probably won't for a while. We are sorry you are gone but know that you are in a much better place.

We love you!

Daddy, Mommy, Bella and lil' brother Toby

Christmas Songs

I LOVE this time of year. Hot chocolate, sweaters, pine everywhere, and CHRISTMAS SONGS!! Ask my husband...I am a Christmas song fanatic. I've been listening to Christmas songs since before Thanksgiving thanks to my XM radio!! I've even still got Christmas CDs in my car that have been there for 2+ years. Before I got my satellite radio in the car, I would sometimes listens to my Trans-Siberian Orchestra CDs in, oh, June. I can't get enough Christmas music. So, in that spirit...I am listing my top 10 favorite Christmas songs:

10. Little Drummer Boy (Bob Seger)
9. 12 Pains of Christmas (Bob Rivers Comedy Group)
8. Christmas Canon (Trans-Siberian Orchestra)
7. Christmas Eve (Trans-Siberian Orchestra)
6. Hark the Herald Angels Sing (Manheim Steamroller)
5. Mary Did You Know (Clay Aiken)
4. The Christmas Song (Nat King Cole)
3. Christmas Time Again (Extreme)
2. All I Want for Christmas is You (Olivia Olson - the version on the "Love Actually" soundtrack)
1. Do They Know it's Christmas (Band Aid)

Honorable Mentions: Last Christmas (Wham!), Feliz Navidad (Jose Feliciano), Winter Wonderland (Eurythmics)

Now it's your turn. What are YOUR favorite Christmas songs?

Bella's First Turkey Day

Thursday was Bella's very first Thanksgiving. My what a difference a year makes...it was Thanksgiving day last year when we told my family that we were expecting. Fast forward one year and our precious little angel is 4 months old! Where did the time go?!

Of course, Bella couldn't eat turkey and all the trimmings (so daddy and I ate it for her!), but she did get to spend the day with family. Grammie and Aunt J enjoyed snuggling with her and she got to smell her first turkey baking in the oven. All in all, it was a fantastic day.

Zachary's First Birthday

My best friend Janet's son, Zachary, turned 1 on November 15th. His birthday party was on November 22nd in Round Rock. Bella, Sean and I made the drive up to Round Rock for the party and it sure was worth the drive -- lots of babies, presents, cake and fun made for a great day!

Zachary went to town on his birthday cake, which is what it's all about, right? I think the boy likes icing! HA! We stayed for a few hours but I think the excitement got the best of Bella. Here's what she looked like by the end of the party:

And here are some fun pics from the party:

Government Spending at its Finest

So I come home last night to find two HUGE piles of tree limbs in our front yard. What the heck?! Apparently, FEMA hired Asplundh to come through our neighborhood and cut any and all branches that were over 2" in diameter. Not branches that were interfering with power lines, but any and all branches that were over 2" in diameter. So...they went to town on our trees.

I am LIVID! What a gross misappropriation of taxpayer dollars. And how can this even be legal? How can the government order a company to go onto private property and cut trees?! Last I checked, the trees on OUR property belonged to us?! Cutting large limbs from old trees like they did to ours can send a tree into shock, and end up killing it. One of the greatest things about our house and our neighborhood are the huge, old oak trees in our front and back yard. We have spent a good deal of money shaping those trees only to come home to find that they were arbitrarily whacked at. Unbelievable!

I've sent a letter to my city councilmember and to all 4 local news stations. Hopefully this will draw some attention to this matter. Ugh! Another fine example of our government at work!

And the little one said, "Roll over..."

When I drop Bella off at school in the morning, I usually hang out for about 15 - 20 minutes, playing with her and the other rugrats.

Well, this morning, Bella was laying on her blankie and kept rolling over to her side, like she's been doing for weeks now. Only this time, she was *this close* to rolling over all the way! Ms. Cindy (her teacher) and I would get so excited because she was so close to flipping all the way over, but she'd catch herself and roll back onto her back. We joked that as soon as I left, she'd probably roll over on her own.

It was time to go, so I walked over to her cubbie to fill out her sheet for the day and I hear Ms. Cindy going, "Oh, oh, oh...". I look over and there goes our little princess, rolling all the way over on her own. YAY!!! So exciting!!! Of course, she probably won't do it again for a while since she seemed a bit startled by it all. But I was so happy to be able to see her do it in person. I'm just sad that Sean wasn't there to witness it.

Fun Weekend

What a great weekend we had. Fall Festival on Friday night (at Bella's school), nice dinner date with my handsome hubby on Saturday night (grammie kept Bella) and Texans football on Sunday. All in all it was a fantastic weekend.

Friday night was Bella's school's Fall Festival. Grammie met us at the school and we spent a few hours on Friday night "playing". We had a yummy barbeque dinner, then bid on a few of the silent auction items. My mom made a jewelry set for the silent auction and we were anxious to see how much it would go for. When we left at around 7:30, the bid was up to $70. Seeing as how it cost $100 to make, we hope it ended up going for more than that!! Sean and I had to work one of the booths for 30 minutes so grammie entertained Bella in the gym (too many mosquitos and wild kids outside!). Our 30 minute shift ended up turning into an hour since our relief never showed up but oh well. We had fun! We worked the "Giant Bowling" booth and had a blast watching the little ones try to knock down the big pins. Sean ended up teaching the kids to throw the ball instead of rolling it, so bowling turned into a cross between football and basketball. HA! Not sure that's what the organizers planned, but oh well.

After we finished our shift, it was back inside for the cake walk. I did two rounds of the cake walk while Sean fed Bella. Unfortunately, I didn't win a dessert, but it was sure fun trying. By 7:30, Bella was ready to go home, as were mommy, daddy and grammie. So, we made our last few bids on the silent auction items we wanted and headed home for nighty-night.

Saturday night Sean and I celebrated our 2nd wedding anniverary. We had plans to dine at Ouisie's, but neither one of us wanted to dress up for dinner so we changed our plans last minute and ended up going to our favorite restaurant, La Griglia, for dinner. YUM! We stuffed ourselves with pizza bread and I had a few glasses of tasty red wine. Sean had medallions of beef and I had the tasties lamb chops ever!!! We ordered dessert to go (cheesecake for Sean and Heath Bar cake for me) and headed out to put our PJs on. You'd expect us to have a romantic evening since we were childless for the night, right? WRONG! We were asleep by 10PM. HA!

Sunday we went to the Texans game with our dear friends, Frank and Kara Kotlarz and their two boys, Parker and Carson. It was a last minute decision to go to the game (thanks for letting us tag along, Frank and Kara!) and we had a blast. Granted, the Texans played sloppy and we ended up losing, but we still had fun! Yummy food, great company and getting to spend a few hours with two of the cutest boys on the planet = the perfect ending to a wonderful fall weekend.

These pics were snapped on the ride home. Poor Parker and Carson were wiped out from the game. I think these pictures are adorable!!

This Little Girl Needs a Miracle

My mom works with a really nice guy named Ross. Ross and his wife, Gretchen, have a little girl, Maclaren. Now, from what I've heard, Ross and Gretchen tried for years to have a child. They wanted to be parents like you wouldn't believe. After all, everyone deserves to experience the wonderfulness that comes with being a mommy or a daddy.

Well, a few years ago, Ross and Gretchen were finally blessed with a child! But the sheer joy and happiness that comes with having a child was soon overshadowed by something else: fear and sadness as Ross and Gretchen discovered that something wasn't quite right with Maclaren.

I will leave the rest of the story for you to read below. Once you've read it, if you feel so moved, PLEASE make a donation to the TIRR Foundation in Maclaren's honor! As a parent, I can't imagine what it must be like to wonder if your child will ever have a "normal" life. Little Maclaren is soooo cute, and she deserves to be given every chance to live life as any young girl would. We are blessed to live in a city that has a cutting edge medical community and maybe, just maybe, Maclaren's miracle will come sooner rather than later. But in order for that to happen, funds needs to be raised to move this study along. Won't you help out? Sean and I did...now it's YOUR turn.

Donations can be made here: http://www.tirrfoundation.org/?id=231.

Maclaren's story (click on the image and it will open up as the full-size image):

A House Divided

Today is election day (and our 2 year wedding anniversary, to boot!). In the Aguilar house, we are a house divided. Though I started the election on the Obama side, I ended up on the McCain side. Sean, on the other hand, still firmly remains on the Obama side. So...essentially our votes cancel each other out. But that's okay...I'm just excited to get to vote in this historic election. No matter the outcome, the 2008 presidential election will be one for the history books: by the end of the day today, we will either have the first African American President or the first female Vice President. No matter which way you look at it, the end result will be a historic one!

I think it's fantastic that our country has progressed in such a way that both of the above can happen. To think that African Americans used to be treated as second class citizens and that slavery was okay. Now its looking like we will elect an African American man as President. And women used to not even be allowed to vote, and now we may have a woman one heartbeat away from being President. These are exciting times, my friends!

I'm nervous about the election. I don't think either candidate is the "perfect" candidate, but I worry about what will happen if the wrong candidate is elected. I'm not sure which one is the "wrong" candidate, but I worry about the next year. I worry that, if Obama is elected, some crazy white supremicist will take him out. That could start a race war unlike any we've seen. I worry that if McCain is elected, we will be subjected to another "Bush presidency". I worry about taxes, and my 401(k) plan, and both candidates health plans, and national security. I worry about the world that our little Isabella will inherit down the road. But for today...I am going to try to enjoy the excitement surrounding this election. After all...today IS our 2 year wedding anniversary. That's a good thing, right?

Bella's First Halloween

Friday was Bella's first Halloween. What a fun day it was!! She went trick-or-treating at daycare, and come home with a baby pumpkin and a pumpkin sippy cup. Grammie came over to see her all dressed up in her very first costume (a sunflower). We weren't sure how Bella was going to take to being dressed up, but she seemed to love it, at least for a little while. I think she was tolerating the costume for the sake of mommy, daddy and grammie who thought she was adorable!!

We didn't do any trick-or-treating in our neighborhood. Still too young for that. But, we did answer the door once or twice, but alas...little princess was fast asleep before the bulk of the trick-or-treaters started coming by.

Tiny Little Thing...

My good friend, Sarah, and her husband, Gilbert, had their baby girl (their first!) on Wednesday. Khloe Camille Coronado was 7 pounds, 7 ounces and 20" long. As you can see, she is adorable! She is so tiny. She was only 6 ounces more than Bella and only 5" longer, but she looks so TINY! It's only been 3 months since I had Bella and I already don't remember her being that small. Khloe has the tiniest, most petite features. Tiny nose, tiny eyes, tiny lips...she is just pure perfection!

Sarah had a fantastic delivery (in my opinion) and she looked amazing when I visited with her today! I am so excited for her and Gilbert. Being parents is the most wonderful "job" in the whole world and I get excited just thinking about all the things she has in store!!

Khloe is on the waiting list for Bella's daycare. If an opening doesn't open up before then, she'll start at Memorial Lutheran School in April. I hope she is put in Bella's class. I think it would be so neat for Khloe and Bella to be friends and play together.

It's funny...I have been telling myself that "maybe one baby is enough for us". But, seeing little Khloe today made me realize that yeah...maybe I could give this one more go (in at LEAST 2 years...!).

If it's not one thing, it's another

This morning, as I backed out of my driveway, the temperature light on my dash started flashing and beeping at me (very annoying!). I didn't think anything of it since the temperature guage on my dash was still at the lowest reading. I just figured it was an electrical issue and that it would go away on its own. Well, it did...only to reappear about 2 minutes later. This time, though, it stayed on. And as it beeped and flashed at me, the temperature guage crept ever closer to the maximum reading. ARGH! Here I was, driving down Westheimer at 7AM, with my baby girl in the back, panicking and hoping that I could just make it to Bella's daycare.

Of course, as luck would have it, I managed to catch just about every light on Westheimer. I also managed to get stuck behind a school bus that was picking up kiddos, so every time it stopped, I had to stop, too! Oh yeah...and a light was out at Old Farm and Westheimer. You have got to be kidding me, right?

Steam is steadily rolling out of my car by the time I pulled up at Bella's daycare. I park my car, turn it off, and I swear it looked like I was in a Cheech and Chong movie: there was thick, heavy steam just pouring out of my car! Ugh!

I manage to make it to the repair shop which, thankfully, is right next door to Bella's daycare. What started off as a cracked casing (fluid reservoir) turned into a broken fan and then a broken thermostat. YUCK! I knew when the repairman called me to tell me it was *only* going to be $130 to fix my car that it had to be too easy. VW's are notorious for expensive repairs and I've never had a repair job that cost less than $500! Well...this repair job was no different.

Our little pumpkin...

Today was Bella's first visit to the Pumpkin Patch! She seemed to enjoy it, silly outfit and all. We wanted to take her to the Pumpkin Patch we visit every year -- the pumpkin patch at St. Luke's UMC. But, when we drove over there, we found that they only had a handful of pumpkins. I'm not sure what happened, but it was definitely NOT the pumpkin patch we have visited in the past. So...we drove back to our side of town and stopped by the Memorial Drive UMC pumpkin patch. They had plenty o' pumpkins and several photo-taking spots, too! We had such a great time snapping pictures of our little pumpkin in the pumpkin patch.

Best Concert EVER!!!

Thursday night my sister and I got buck-wild (just kidding!) at the New Kids on the Block concert. Talk about FUN!!! We screamed like schoolgirls, sang along with all the songs, and giggled at the hilarity of it all! What a great night. The guys sounded just as good, if not better, than they did some 17 years ago. They sang all of the "classics" - "Please Don't Go Girl", "I'll Be Loving You (Forever)", "Step by Step", "Tonight", and of course "Hangin' Tough".

It was a trip to hear thousands upon thousands of grown women screaming at a bunch of grown (and some even married!) men. Age has been good to the New Kids -- they all looked so much better than they did as boys. In fact, I never thought Jordan was hot, but Jordan circa 2008 is F-I-N-E!!!

The concert was a night I'll never forget. It was awesome to see my favorite boy band twice in my life -- once as a 13 year old little girl, and again as a 31 year old wife and mom! I don't think my sis and I wanted the night to end. We could have stayed right there in the Toyota Center, singing along with Donnie, Danny, Joey Mac, Jon and Jordan and been happy for life. But alas...we had jobs to go back to and homes to go back to (and in my case a hubby and adorable daughter to go home to). So instead, we will just hold onto our memories and reminisce about the night we got to go take a trip back to our teen years and act like pre-pubescent teen girls again!

Being a grown up means...

This whole "being a grown-up" thing is for the birds! Argh! Sean and I have been debating about taking a quick weekend trip in February (sans kiddo) to celebrate Valentine's Day. Valentine's Day happens to fall two days before President's Day, and President's Day is a holiday at my job. So...we figured it made sense to try to plan a quick yet romantic trip somewhere. Easy enough, right?

WRONG! To start with, airfare prices are R-I-D-I-C-U-L-O-U-S! Add to that the fact that we want to travel the weekend of Valentine's Day which means that hotel prices are inflated. Then, top that off with the fact that we really only have a day and a half to "play". All of this makes for a very tough job of figuring out where to go and what to do.

Last night, I thought we had decided we would do Santa Monica, CA. This wasn't our first choice, but plane tickets to LA were affordable (read: under $300 a piece!) and we could stay close to the beach. We found a really great little hotel (part of the Four Sisters Inn family -- check them out!) -- it had everything I wanted: a fireplace, king bed, and jacuzzi tub! This morning, I booked our hotel and was *this close* to booking our flights...and then had second thoughts.

Was it a good idea to spend so much money on a one-and-a-half day trip? Did it make sense to spend so much money on a hotel room? ARGH! Wouldn't it make better sense to put this money towards a bigger, better trip later next year? I couldn't turn my brain off. I kept coming up with reasons NOT to book the trip.

What did I end up doing? I ended up cancelling our reservation at the super cute hotel in Santa Monica and rebooked at a trendy hotel in San Antonio. That's right...our California weekend is now a San Antonio weekend. Oh well. Sean and I have never been to San Antonio together and it's been years since we were both there. We'll be staying 2 nights at the Hotel Valencia on the Riverwalk. No fireplace and no jacuzzi tub but we'll have each other, right? Best of all, it's a lot less expensive than our original plan, and we are much closer to home should we chicken out and decide to come home early to be with our little princess.

Maybe summer/fall 2009 will take us back to Cali. Until then, we'll look forward to our Texas vacation. Being a grown up means a lot of things, one of which is feeling guilty over spending money on a vacation that cost you half as much a year ago.

Ode to my husband

When asked what he thought about my new blog, my wonderful husband replied, "Umm...you don't have anything on there about me!" I honestly didn't think he would take an interest in my blog, but as he pointed out, the link to my blog is "We-Are-The-Aguilars.blah.blah.blah" so I guess I should have a little bit of something on here about him. So here goes...

This is us:

(This was our first family photo, taken the day after Bella was born.)

And here is a picture of Sean warning Bella about those Kotlarz boys. :O)

And here is one of my favorite pictures of my handsome hubby. This was taken back in '04 -- maybe even before we started dating.

I love my handsome hubby. He's smart, loyal, FUNNY, silly, laid back, PATIENT, hardworking, dedicated, and talented (the man has 1,000 talents - painting, running, biking, sketching, photography...the list goes on). He loves his daughter fiercely and is a good husband to me. He is my best friend and I am so thankful to be partnered with him for life. I know I'm not an easy person to live with or to love, but thankfully he realizes that marriage is a life-long "adventure" and he loves me to the core.

So there you go...now my husband is included on my blog. What can I say? I didn't think he'd care!

Best toy EVER!

Today is the release date for the new Elmo Live toy. For those who haven't yet witnessed the craziness of the latest and greatest Elmo toy, you are missing out.

(go here: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=w0rgfeKjULc)

As soon as I got to work this morning, I logged onto the Toys-R-Us website so I could make sure I was one of the first ones to get one of these fantastically scary Elmo dolls. As luck would have it, I managed to snag one. I think I'll wait until Bella is a bit older, though, before I give it to her. I'm afraid it would scare her at this young age (and I can't wait to see what the dogs think of it!).

Sean wasn't too thrilled with the pricetag, but I figured at the very least, we could try to make a quick buck on it come Christmastime if they become one of those must-have-but-hard-to-find toys.

The Right Stuff

BIG news! HUGE! Thursday night is going to be a night to remember for my sister, Janet, and I. Why, you ask? Because...we have a date to see Joey Joe, Donnie, Danny, Jordan and Jon (my favorite!). That's right...we are going to see the New Kids on the Block when they come to H-town on Thursday night.

I am so glad my sis is back in town. If she hadn't agreed to go with me, I would have either had to go solo (where's the fun in that?) or missed the concert event of the century!

To say I'm excited about this concert would be an understatement. You see...the NKOTB have occupied a tiny sliver of my heart ever since, oh, the 6th grade. More specifically, Jonathan Knight occuped a tiny sliver of my heart (leaving Donnie and Joey Joe for my sister). I have fond memories of my mom taking my sister and I to see the NKOTB when I was in junior high. Back then, 93Q FM was THE station, and they were holding a "competition" of sorts. They concocted this story that if you played one of the New Kids' songs backwards, it said "Wear underwear on your head" (?!), so 93Q came up with a promotion encouraging NKOTB fans to show up to the concert with underwear on their head to show their devotion to the group. They would randomly select fans with the craziest undies to go backstage to meet the guys! Of course my sister and I HAD to participate in this contest!!

My mom, bless her heart, went out and bought us some men's undies. She sewed the leg openings shut, and stuffed the undies with pillow stuffing. Then, she glued the elastic waist of the new undie "pillow" to a baseball cap. My sis and I then decorated the undies with all sorts of NKOTB propaganda. We were totally sportin' these "hats" when we go to the Summit, just confident that 93Q would see us in our creative hats and choose us to go backstage and meet the boys. Sadly...Summit management had other plans.

As we were going through security to get inside, we were stopped and told that we could not take our undie hats inside with us. Why, you ask? Because wearing them would block other people's view! WHAT?! Just like that our dreams of rubbing elbows with our dream guys were shattered. Our hours of handiwork was now being tossed into a metal trash bin. With no undies to wear on our head, we would not be able to show our true devotion to the NKOTB. What's a girl to do?

Well, we sucked it up and had a good time anyway. I dinstinctly remember walking out of the Summit at the end of the concert, feeling "drunk" with happiness (well, feeling as drunk as one who has never been drunk before can feel!). It was a good 2-3 days before I could listen to the NKOTB again -- I was afraid I'd start crying if I listened to them before that. I was just so darn happy to have seen my #1 favorite band that it would have been to much to dive right back into the same ol', same ol'. No...I had to give it a few days.

To this day I remember that night and how much fun it was. And now my sis and I get to do it all over again on Thursday. I.Can't.WAIT!!! Thursday can't get here fast enough! I only wish I still had my t-shirts and buttons (remember those buttons that were as big as a coffee can?!). I'm sure there will be plenty of girls there sportin' all of their vintage NKOTB souvenirs. Sadly, I'll just be sportin' work clothes and hair that's seen better days. But you better believe I'll be screamin' like a school girl when Joey Joe, Donnie, Danny, Jordan and Jon step out onstage. It will most definitely be a concert to remember.

(Special shout-out to my hubs, Sean, for taking on baby duty Thursday night so mommy can act like a kid again!)