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!)