Family Tree

I've always been intrigued by genealogy and all the awesome sauce associated with it.  I find it so fascinating to discover anything about my ancestors because well, nobody in my family seems to care or find the time to do it.  I'm hoping it's the latter.  It's funny because anytime my mom or aunts and uncles are around, I'll pick their brains for any bit of information they can offer to help me piece together the great big puzzle that is our family history.  It is, after all, our history and it's important that it gets documented somewhere and not forgotten.  I figure that as difficult as it has been for me to find this information out, future generations would have an even harder time doing it.  I also love any old pictures I can get my hands on.  They are my absolute favorite.  I love looking at old pictures of the older generations in my family when they were children.  This is probably the reason I love photography so much.  Creating memories.

And now, the ever-addicting Pinterest has put beautiful inspirations for DIY family trees like this one available for me to drool over:

 Via

I love the simplicity of this one.  Or this one:

Via 

 Via

I also love this one because of the straight lines and the handwriting.

Via

And I LOVE the one above because it is an incredible list of somebody's family members.  Isn't it simply beautiful??!! I think Yes!

On Pinterest you can even find some websites you can go to and have a family tree made for you.  I would have loved to have just send a list of all of my family members off to have my family tree custom-made, but they are expensive!

I refrained from doing this for two reasons:
 a)I love any DIY project, and b) I'm cheap.  (:

So I did it myself.  It really wasn't too difficult and although I'm only about 98% finished with it, I decided to go ahead and do a post about it.
Here is my version of my family tree on my mom's side of my family:

I am amazed at how large my mom's family really is!  I remember a family reunion we had some years back and we actually had it for an entire week (!) and were able to do so many activities with everyone.  And because there were so many of us there, it was so much fun...visiting with so many cousins, aunts and uncles and nobody wanted to go home.  I will definitely be planning another reunion soon.

It's hard to see on the picture, but the "ground" is actually a poem I found online that I thought was pretty fitting.
I love it, and I plan to have it framed and matted for my mom.
I also plan to update it every year.

Have any of you made a family tree lately?  You should. (:

Final final

Today I will take my final final and I can't tell you how happy happy that makes me!
I think all of this studying for finals has really fried my brain.  I actually had to backspace in the last sentence because I wrote brian the first time.  Then I looked at it for a second because it had the red squiggly line underneath it and I actually went back to capitalize it! ha!
I wish I were kidding.

Oh, Happy day!!
I hope your day is just as great (:

Simply beautiful (:

I ran across this beautiful video and I just had to share.

I hope it warms your heart as it has mine:

I sure needed this during this crazy Finals week!
God bless.

ER scare

With all the stress in my life the last couple months, I have made some decisions that may not work for everyone, and they may not agree with those decisions, but I think they will work for me and it is just something I have to do.
It started noticing changes in the way I was feeling about 8 months ago.  Then, a couple months ago I was almost to the point that I couldn't function as I should have.  During this time, I seriously considered quitting school and just curling up into a ball on the couch and feel sorry for myself.  But I didn't.
I struggled terribly with school, housework, my children started complaining about me never having the time or energy to do anything with them, the hubs started complaining too and I just felt like I was losing control of everything.  I didn't go to the doctor to find out what was wrong because I didn't even have time for that!
Until last Tuesday.

I ended up at the emergency room of our local hospital and after too many tests to count including ultrasounds, gallons of blood drawn to test for everything under the sun, and other tests that made me lose every ounce of dignity, I finally was beginning to get some answers.  They weren't the answers I was hoping for, and I was actually very scared because I was told I had a tumor.  My mind immediately thought of the C word.  I would cry myself to sleep thinking of awful things.  It was bad.

Since the ER visit, I have had two additional appointments with my family doctor and it was determined that all of my misery the last few months are because of my overactive thyroid.  And stress was causing my thyroid to act even crazier.  Oh, and I was also anemic.
I kind of thought I might be anemic because I was craving ice like crazy.  I couldn't get enough of the taste and smell of ice.  Yeah, crazy!
It turned out that the tumor is so small and it wasn't anything to worry about and it doesn't even need to be removed (!)  My doctor said that he will just keep checking me periodically to make sure it doesn't grow.  The doctor's orders also included no stress!

So now I am on iron pills and something else that was prescribed, plus I have to go back next week to finally get on meds for my thyroid.
It boggles my mind to discover just how much my thyroid controls my body.  It is amazing.
I'm finally starting to feel better and it feels awesome.  God is good.

After much thought, I have decided that I will only go to school part time next semester and just take it easy.  If I'm even healthier at the end of the summer, I might be able to go back to school full-time.  And if I'm not, that's ok.  I'll just wait and see.

This semester is just about over, I have two finals next week and then I have an entire month off.  I'm excited!  Next semester, I'm only scheduled for two classes.  This means less stress and more time for my family.  I'm really looking forward to that!

Life is good (:

Have a great weekend!!

Disgusting!!!

I must say that this post makes me nauseous.  Even more so?  That it is a true story.

To say Tuesday was an eventful day is an understatement.  The day started normal with the kids getting off to school.  That's probably the only "normal" part of our day.
It happened to be the hubs' day off, I had a busy day ahead of me with school, so I was getting ready.  I had a presentation that afternoon for my advertising class and I planned on wearing a skirt and heels, so you can guess what that meant...digging a razor out of the drawer and (gasp!) shave my legs.  It wasn't that bad, I mean, they weren't long enough to braid or anything. (:
Anyway, I jumped in the shower, shaved and was doing my hair and makeup when the hubs knocked on the door and told me that the school nurse had called to say that Marko had "hurt his eye" and was in her office.

What??!!

He told me that the nurse had assured him that Marko was fine and she was sending him back to class.  I imagined normal recess stuff and thought maybe someone had elbowed him while playing football or something.

I finished getting ready but didn't change into the skirt yet because I had a couple hours before I had to leave.  Again...for me to be ready a few hours ahead of time is definitely NOT normal.
About an hour and a half later, I got another call from the nurse.  She proceeded to tell me that "Marko's cut on his eye is really bothering him."
Me:  "What cut??!!"
She then tells me that he has a cut on his eyelid starting in the inside corner and that it's about an inch and a half long.  I asked her to please have him waiting in the office to be signed out because I had 30 minutes to get to class.
The hubs and I jumped into the car and took off to pick up our son.
When we got to the school, I waited in the car and the hubs went to sign Marko out of school.
Marko comes to the car and I saw his cut and asked him how it happened.  He told me that kids in his math class were throwing stuff at each other and he was hit with what he thought was a golf ball!!!
Oh. My. Gosh.  I was LIVID!!

We took him to Urgent Care because I thought he needed stitches and was even more pissed off because the nurse didn't tell us about the cut the first time she called.
Needless to say, I didn't go to my first class.

I called one of my partners from my presentation and asked her to please let our professor know where I was, and to ask if we could present either first or last.  Our presentation was a HUGE project and we would present for 30 minutes (!)
I figured if we presented first, I would leave Marko with his dad at Urgent Care, I would drive to school for the presentation and then I would drive back to pick them up.
So I raced to the university, did our presentation and raced back.
After we'd been home about an hour, I left Marko home with his dad and my mom took ME  and Gabriella to the Emergency Room because I was so sick.
What a day!!
We got home about 11 p.m. and went to bed.

Well, yesterday, I marched into the office with my children and demanded that Marko be moved from his math class.  I don't like confrontations, but when it comes to my children, you just don't mess with them because then I have to  get my confrontation panties on and get things done.

This is the second time I have had Marko moved from his math class.  Same teacher, just different period.  The first time I had him moved was because the kids in that class were so out of control that Marko would come home and complain every single day of how they would:
1. Swear at the teacher.
2. THROW stuff around the room (like pencils, glue sticks, crayons, FOOD,etc.)
3. Be as out of control as those crazy movies you see where the kids are jumping on the desks, etc.  

YEAH!!

Marko also told me that the teacher, while writing on the chalkboard has glue sticks thrown at her with the lids off (!!!) and that they sometimes stick to the chalkboard.  And what would she do??  She'd continue to write AROUND the glue stick.
What the HELL??!!

The teacher confirmed that yes, Marko was telling me the truth.  (Can you BELIEVE this??!!)
My husband sat in on class a couple times and he was disgusted with the teacher and the class.  The teacher told me that Marko was one out of about 5 kids that were very well-behaved and respectful, but that the other monsters were completely out of control.
Marko and Gabriella both have told me how this behavior does NOT happen in any other class, only that math class.  How is this possible?  How is it possible for the entire rest of the teachers to have complete control over their classrooms except this one?

So Marko was moved and things seemed to be better.  Until Tuesday.
I told the counselor very sternly that the class behavior was completely unacceptable and that something needed to be done NOW.
The counselor was disgusted with what was going on and promised to get to the bottom of it.
I told the counselor (the principal was not in) that I was not leaving until my son was moved from that class.  So he was.
I expressed how shocked I am that this behavior happened at all and I am even more shocked that those monsters are even allowed to even attend school.  They obviously are not there to learn, and it isn't fair to the kids that actually want to learn to be subjected to such an environment.
I also told the counselor how, as a parent, my job is to protect my children and that when they are in school, that responsibility falls on his teachers' shoulders.  And that I was angry that his math teacher failed to protect him and the other normal kids.
My poor son now will have a scar on his eyelid for being in class.

Needless to say, I will be at the next school board meeting.

I don't like to swear on my blog, but seriously, What the hell is wrong with people?  What kind of world do we live in?  And more importantly, Who are the parents of these inbred, monsters that terrorize a classroom??

Oh, and have I mentioned the fact that this is a middle school??

Countdown starts NOW!

This week is my last week of classes, and next week is finals week.  Not that I'm, you know...counting down the days or anything. ha!
I found this on Pinterest the other day and if you were to ask my family, they will probably tell you they've never, ever, EVER seen me like this: 

(:

I will admit that I've enjoyed most of this semester, but there are things I really wish were different.  Something in particular is one of my classes.  This class has been very challenging because this particular professor is always MIA.  Said professor (I'll call this professor SP) has other commitments elsewhere (allthefreakintime), so that means that we are given crazy assignments that nobody honestly knows how to do.  Plus it's very hard to reach SP during their absence to...you know, ask a question about the crazy assignment or something.
This is also the class with my partner from H.E. double hockey sticks that makes my life just miserable.  And then these crazy assignments are due upon SP's return.  What bothers me is that my tuition dollars are used for SP's salary, and well, as Austin Powers would say..."SP wasn't there."
  
The other day I looked through my planner for this semester and counted 10 days that S.P. cancelled class because they were going to be gone. TEN days!  Diez dias!
If I were to be gone for ten days from a semester my professor would probably, I don't know...fail me!  You think?
There's actually a class offered next semester that I wanted to take until I saw the professor for the class. ha!  Fat chance.  The sad part is that SP is a wonderful, brilliant professor, when they're actually in class.

Ok.  I got that off of my chest.  This was probably the thing that annoyed me the most this semester.

But since I'm a "glass half-full" kinda gal, this semester is just about finished and I am so looking forward to the winter break.
I plan to recharge my batteries to start all over again in January, do some DIY projects (sew, paint, knit, make a bed for Tita), relax, bake, make tamales, sleep in...you know, the awesome stuff!

I can't wait.  And the countdown starts NOW.
(:   Ok, ok...I  AM counting!