Just another week at the Silva's..

Last week was a busy week in the Silva household.  I had tons of homework and a final on Microbiology to study for, Gabriella had a big project due for school and just that, added to your normal everyday, never-ending stuff that needs to be done, consumed all of our time!
Gabriella decided to do her project on the digestive system.  We bought her the posterboard, 1 large plastic Easter egg and some mini pom-poms and really didn't know HOW to help her make it, but we did the best we could.  We originally planned on helping her make it 'work,' but just simply ran out of time.  She was happy with it though and she really drew a crowd the whole time of the fair.  Here are some pics of her and her project.  I was so proud of her...

She must have explained her project at least 35 times in all and even sounded a little hoarse when we left!  She did an amazing job and we are so proud of her!!

Then the other day, Gabriella and Lynette decided that they were Zebra-girl and....well, I'm not sure what to call it........, maybe............ Purple-girl??!!  They dressed 'up' (?) and this was the result:

Crazy girls!!

And finally,  for the last couple weeks, everytime I would use the dishwasher, my kitchen (not to mention my dishes!) would smell burnt.  And bad!  The smell was really horrible and I would have to re-wash them by hand and it was getting to be very frustrating and time-consuming, but I was determined that the dishwasher was going to stop doing whatever it was that it was doing!...until Saturday as Gabriella and I noticed something long and black on the bottom of the dishwasher.  I pulled the tray all the way out and this is what I found...I couldn't believe it!!

This is what is left of one of my cooking spoons!  It literally melted THROUGH the thickest part of the spoon in half!!  I couldn't believe it was even possible.............It is!

And about my education....For those of you that didn't know, I am working on my Medical Specialties degree.  I started 2 new classes today.  A pharmacy class and a CPR class.  I'm excited about both of them, yet a little nervous about the pharmacy class--just because I have never taken any class like this before, and really don't know what to expect, other than tons of math! :(    And guess what??  I need to buy a stethoscope!   Can you believe that??!! If someone had told me even a year ago that I would be buying scrubs and a stethoscope, I would have thought they were crazy...  But I am!  I'm taking it one day at a time and next year at this time, God willing, I will be getting ready for graduation.  Wow...where has the time gone??!!  It amazes me that I have been in school for 6 months already!  The way I look at it is...next year will come anyway and I will be one year older.  I can be one year older WITH my degree or I could continue being another year older without my degree........I'll take the degree :)

My beautiful Gabriella...

We gave the 3 kids money at the beginning of the week.  It wasn't a whole lot, but nonetheless, it was spending money for them.  They could spend it any way they chose.  Marko used his money to buy some nachos and a drink for he and Gabriella (Lynette wasn't home that night), and he still has $15.00 left.  He said he was going to save it.  Hopefully he does..  Lynette used all of her money to buy a shirt.  Gabriella used half of it to surprise me with this:

 She bought me a beautiful bouquet of flowers!!  I love the colors....green, orange and yellow.

 I keep them on my kitchen table, but the lighting in the dining room is bad, so I moved them to this bench to be able to take pics.

Mija,  I can't tell you how much I appreciate that beautiful gesture, and how unselfish it was for you to use your money for this.  Thank you my baby girl!!  The flowers are gorgeous (like you) and they really brighten up my kitchen...just like you brighten my life!  Love you lots!  Mom.

Rollerland!!

This last weekend was very long and fun...  Since we weren't able to celebrate Valentine's day the weekend before because I had food poisoning and Armando's 46th birthday was THIS weekend, Armando and I went on a date to Blackhawk Saturday night and had a really good time.  Afterward we stayed at the Marriott in Denver.   My mom stayed with the kids..Thank you Mom!  We picked the kids up on Sunday afternoon and took them to Rollerland in Fort Collins.  Here are just a few of the many pictures we took that day...

Here is Marko & Lynette..

 Marko, Lynette, Me, Gabriella and Laura..

 Me and my baby taking a BREAK!!

Laura was able to find some tiny skates for Julian and he put Grandpa to shame! :)

 Armando skating.....(on the carpet!)

 And here we all are....

Look Armando....maybe Julian can give you some skating lessons! :)

After skating, Laura treated us all to Golden Corral.  Thank you so very much Laura!!  Right after dinner, employees from the restaurant sang Happy Birthday to Armando and gave him a birthday cupcake!

  Happy Birthday babe, we love you!  May God bless you with many, many more birthdays!

God is so good!

As a child, the only memories I have of EVER going to church was when I would walk to Catechism with my cousin and some friends after school when we were all students at Roosevelt Elementary.  The Our Lady of Guadalupe church was, in reality, only about 4 blocks from the school, but it took us about an hour to get there!  We would stop at the playground for a little while and then we'd play in the sandbox or play tag on the school grounds.  When one of us would remember we needed to hurry up, we'd start walking..laughing and talking the whole time.  Across the street and about half a block down, was the potato chip factory that always smells sooo good and call it luck, coincidence, or whatever, but they ALWAYS had fresh-made potato chips on the days we had Catechism! :)  They sold the huge paper grocery-store bags of hot, yummy chips for .25 and we LOVED them!  We would always save some for Father Valdez.  Looking back, I'm sure it wasn't very many that we would save for him, but to us back then, it was alot.  I remember the day of my First Communion.  I remember getting in trouble because I was getting ready at my aunt's house and I was eating marshmallow cream and got some on my dress.  I had never eaten that before and I couldn't get enough of it!  I have no memory of going to church after that until I was about 13.  My best friend, Eleanor, invited me to go with her and her family to her church and I liked it.  I remember one day she invited me again because they were having Up With People perform that night and I was really glad I went.  I had such a good time!  After that, I would get dressed up and go to church with her family once in a while and I always enjoyed it.
I didn't go to church again until I did my Confirmation because I had to to be able to have my wedding but never really continued going to church after that.
After Marko was born and I moved to Amarillo, I started going to church every Sunday.  I think I did that because, since neither of my parents ever took me to church, it was so important to me to have Marko learn of God's love for him and for Marko to learn to love God with all his heart.  It was also something I desperately needed for myself too.   When Gabriella was born, I wanted the same for her, of course, and I cannot describe how amazing my babies made me feel when they learned their prayers and I would hear them pray before going to bed.  Nobody had ever taught me to pray as a child.  When they went to preschool, they went to St. Peter's and I thank God that they had that opportunity to have gone to such a wonderful preschool.  Miss Mary and Miss Terri, their preschool teachers, along with Father Rocco,  are amazing and good.
When the kids were going to Cathechism to prepare for their First Communion and Confirmation, I would go with them every Tuesday night and we LOVED going.  Lynette even started going with us for her Confirmation.  I would go to the adult classes and the kids would go with the appropriate age group.  After Lynette started going, she and I would go together to the adult class.  We really missed cathechism after the kids completed their classes.
Anyway, I had to take the looong route to get to my topic :)  .......Even though I didn't get any religious education during most of my growing up years, my faith is very strong now as an adult, and looking back, God was always with me..I just didn't know it.  Well anyway...I normally take Lynette and Marko to school before going to school myself, and I usually leave west Greeley by 7:30 at the latest and get to school by 8:10-8:15.  Well, on Wednesday, I left late.  I left my HOUSE at 8:07.
1.  First of all, my school is in Ft. Collins on the OTHER side of town (of course!)
2.  School starts at 8:30
3.  I had a midterm exam that day.
I prayed to God my normal, everyday prayers and I also asked begged Him to please make every stoplight that I got to be GREEEEEN and to please not let me run into any police on the way.  Guess what?!  I got to school at 8:28 and ran like crazy from the parking lot to class.  I really did get every single light green!  I felt like Bruce Almighty!!  God is so good.

Guys+Shopping=UGH!!!!!

We took the 3 kids shopping on Sunday, and they each chose things on their own.  While waiting in line to pay, Lynette, Marko and Tita all were looking at Tshirts that were on huge display by the register.  There were real cute ones for the girls and very nice ones for Marko.  They had either characters on them, or phrases.  Armando wanted to help them out and tossed a shirt to Lynette without reading what it said first.  He told her "Look Lynette, the color on this one is nice!"........................  I about fell over laughing when Lynette unfolds it and holds it up to herself and yells "I'M NOT BUYING THIS ONE DAD!!!!!!!!!!" hahahahaah.....

It's a bad pic, but it says "YOUR SISTER IS HOT...I'm just saying."

Lasagna, mustaches & hearts...

We've been busy this week with Valentine's day and everything that goes along with it (kids, homework, school parties, etc.)
Laura (our oldest daughter) and her sweet baby boy, Julian came over last Thursday and  Laura very graciously, made lasagna for us all for dinner.  It was awesome..Thank you mija!  After dinner, Laura, Marko and Lynette got crazy with Fruit Roll-Ups and made themselves mustaches. (Marko used the frosting off of his cookie for his mustache.)

Then Julian joined in....

BTW...did you know that when you can wax your upper lip with Fruit Roll-ups??!!  Lynette discovered that you can!!!

Then Friday was Gabriella's Valentine's day party at school.  My mom and I went and everyone had a good time.

 Take a look at ALL the sugar for the kids!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!  One of the parents made pizza bread, but of course, the kids didn't really care for that...

 The kids had to guess how many Kisses were in a jar, and the one that guessed the closest without going over, won the jar.  Can you guess who won??  :)

There were 111 in it and Gabriella guessed 105!

And tonight, Julian came over to deliver his Valentine cards.  He is so precious and funny!  His mama would give him one card (with a candy attached to it) at a time and he would go to everyone to give it to them, but first, he'd tear the candy off of it and hand them only their card...

 Here he is delivering Grandpa's card...

 This is Laura with her little Valentine...

 And here he's giving Tita a kiss.  How sweet...

We had a great week and we are truly blessed...

Snow...UGH!!

We have have some unbelievably cold weather for two weeks now, and our wonderful school district declared 2 snow days last week.  They didn't this week, even though the weather was still soo cold.  Even though I have lived in Colorado for so many years, I still cannot get used to the cold....Probably never will.
Here are some pics of the snow we got and Armando shoveling it.  He probably shoveled about 1,000 lbs. of snow that day!  I probably should have been helping him instead of taking pics!

 Also, when we got our puppy on Thanksgiving, he was 6 wks old, so when we got snow and he experienced it for the first time, he LOVED it.  He would run in it and roll around in it and kept waiting at the door for someone to let him out.  He couldn't get enough of it!  Well, by the time we got snow again a few weeks later, we had trouble getting him to go outside to go potty.  We would make him go outside and he would go potty RIGHT outside the door and immediately beg to come inside again.  He is literally outside for about 15 seconds to do his business and he is shivering so bad when he's done...poor Peditos.  I took some pics yesterday of him right after he'd gone potty.  Can you see how much he loves the snow now?

The snow doesn't seem to be as much fun to him anymore...

Valentine's Day Box

So....we found out yesterday that Gabriella needed her Valentine's day box for school TOMORROW and not Monday, as I thought.  She wanted a Hello Kitty box.  Lynette and I went to the store and bought 1 posterboard and some construction paper.  The only box I could find in the house was part of a 12-pack of Diet Coke box.  2 1/2 hours later with Gabriella, Lynette and myself working on it, we finished and are so pleased with the result:

I hope my baby girl has a wonderful time at her school party tomorrow.  I love you mija!  And thank you very much Lynette, you're AWESOME!!!!!!!!!!!!!