A whole busy month rolled into one post!

After begging and imploring Elijah to upload the pictures onto here, I ended up being the one to do it. Sorry it took me so long, but exams have become a priority :P
So here are some pictures from Easter. Jacen has two outfits because he dumped green coloring all over himself when we were coloring eggs.

This is from Jacen's birthday dinner, the night before his birthday (April 10th). I can't believe he's two!!! We went to Red Robin. That kid cried the whole time.

                                                                                

 We took him to The Living Aquarium the morning of his birthday. He loved to look at all the fish!

        

                                 

      Birthday Party time!!! He had a bunch of his little friends come over for hot dogs and cake and it was a blast! The theme this year was Winnie the Pooh (or as he calls it "Poopie").

Thanks for all the gifts, everyone! He loves them!

 Later that evening, we went out with Mary Beach (Elijah's cousin) and had our first photoshoot as a family (last time we've had professional pictures done was when Elijah and I got married 5 years ago). She was great and I highly recomment her to anyone. Jacen looks grumpy because he had no nap and then he fell on his face and got a bloody lip during the photoshoot. Mary did an awesome job at taking pictures of the total of 0.2 seconds that Jacen smiled. These are just a handful of the many she took; I uploaded all of them on Facebook (it's faster there than here). Enjoy!

UPDATE: I totally forgot to mention Jacen got a cat for his birthday. His name is Hercules, and he's about 1 year old. We've already had to spend $250 on vet bills. The cat decided it was a good idea to take a stroll on top of the hot burner on the stove the day after he got neutered so we had to get it bandaged; then it got a cold and needed meds to get better.

He's back to his hyper self and Jacen loves it to death. Jacen will even sit next to it and read books to him, or he'll bring his big Lego blocks and dump them next to the kitty and pretend the kitty can build blocks with him. So cute. Jacen's behavior has really improved since then and he's more willing to play on his own now, which is always a huge plus. All in all, though, getting a cat is so much cheaper than having another child :P

Five years already... wow!

I purposely did not update this blog with a post about our wedding anniversary that came and went on the 5th of this month because we weren't going to celebrate it until this past thursday and I wanted to be able to write about something, and not just "Well, our anniversary is was on the 5th and we're not doing anything for two weeks because I can't get out of school until Spring Break." haha
For a while now Elijah has been wanting to go out of town for our anniversary and every year I've always managed to get out of it somehow. I just figured why do we need to go out when we can have a nice celebration in town?! So this year Elijah wasn't gonna put up with any more of that, therefore he made reservations at the Peppermill in Wendover for this past thursday (we were supposed to head to Vegas but I didn't want to go that far).
Ok, so Wendover was NOT somewhere I envisioned spending a 5-year anniversary celebration. I've always heard how crappy Wendover is, and honestly, whenever I've driven past Wendover, I had to make sure I didn't blink while we passed it, otherwise I would miss it. Then I shadowed Dr. Labrum this past week and he made sure I knew to be careful and to always keep the door to our hotel room locked because he had a patient and her husband who had been badly assaulted there. Needless to say, I was a bit scared and didn't know what to expect.
We arranged for overnight babysitting (thanks Susan and mom!) and headed to Wendover for the night. Once we got there, I was a bit weirded out by the casinos. I've never been inside one before. It was just plain strange. People really get into gambling, don't they?! I could really see why Vegas is called "Sin City". Since the casino at Wendover is a small representation of what Vegas is really like, I felt sorry for all those people. I can't imagine wasting hundreds and hundreds of dollars on chance games you will never win. We ate at the Grand Buffett and Elijah landed an awesome deal on a suite room. The room was really nice and had a jacuzzi and the shower was a steam shower.
Elijah played some Blackjack, and he won some money! We put in $20 and he won $40, so not too bad! He plays smart and that's the key to winning at casinos. He stayed up until 2am (I went to bed at midnight) to get me some money. What a sweetie.
All in all, it was a great anniversary getaway. For our 10 year anniversary (in 2015) we'll have to do something really small since (hopefully!) I'll be in med school and we'll be very, very poor, but we'll definitely make up for it at our 15 yr anniversary!
Sorry no pictures, because once again, I'm terrible at taking them.

Going private, y'all!

I've been getting weird and somewhat annoying comments on this blog from anonymous people so I'm deciding to make this blog a private one. If you'd like to keep reading it, please add your email to the comment section or send me a message on Facebook.
We'll go private on March 20th.
Good day!

10 years!

Gosh, time has slipped by and I didn't even make a note of this big event in my life that happened a month ago. I think I mostly ignored it because I had to work that day and I forgot about it until today. HA!

So as of the 31st of January, I've been living in the United States for 10 YEARS! It's insane how my life changed. I came from this

to this

(sorry so blurry)

and it's been quite the change, to be honest. Mountains aren't my thing, you know? They're pretty to look at, but the beach is so much more fun. The waves are constantly changing and the dynamics are awesome. There's a reason my background to the blog is a beach! I love it. And I miss it.

I haven't seen my family in over 10 years now and it makes me sad. I wish it wasn't so darn expensive to go (it's at least $2000 for both of us; $6000 if we go over Christmas time). But one day when I can afford it, I'll definitely go back. My dad's coming with his wife in June though, I'm thrilled. It's been two years since I've seen him and when I did see him, I had just had Jacen and I was sick, and so was he. Daily trips to the hospital for 9 days were not how envisioned spending quality time with my dad!

I still remember being on the plane coming here and just being sick as a dog... couldn't figure out why. When we got off the plane in Newark, NJ, we had the opportunity to experience american food for the first time: McDonald's. And believe it or not, it tastes different than it does in Brazil (in fact, I like the way it tastes in Brazil better than here). But I had something I had never had at a McDonald's in Brazil which was hot chocolate. I was amazed they even served that! I burned my tongue big time because I couldn't read "Caution, the contents may be hot". So lesson learned. Turned out 2 days later I was even sicker and fainted in the bathroom while my mom was brushing my hair. Went to the doctor and found out I had bronchitis and the flu at the same time.

Also that week I experienced snow for the first time. I was disappointed. It's the same stuff that's in old freezers. Nothing new there!

Then on the 29th of February (yeah, leap year!) my little brother was born. He'll be 10 years old this week. I can't believe how time flies. Couldn't speak a lick of English to my neighbor to let him know our car had broken down half a block down from our house and needed him to take my mom into the hospital in his police car. All that came out was "Mom!", "Baby!", "Water!" "Car!", "Broken!". Good times.

I had a rough adjustment, with a bout of severe depression that was undiagnosed for years until I had a major breakdown and landed in the hospital about a year and a half after getting here, but it turned out okay. I met Elijah six months later and things began to take shape.

Graduated from Cottonwood High School with Honors - imagine that! The girl with the thick accent spoke at high school graduation. Who would've thunk?!- and got a scholarship to go to the U. Then I got married. Then 3 years later I had a kid. I graduated from the Community College with Honors, and English isn't even my primary language!!!

Lots have happened in the last ten years. I'm grateful to be here. I love it here. I'm glad my parents gave me and my brother a chance to come here and choose how our lives were going to take place.

One thing I haven't done while living here is skiing and snowboarding. I wish I could do it because I like the cold so much, but just can't afford an expensive habit.

On another note... an update on the crisis of last week: the whole terrible two's issue escalated until saturday night, when Jacen didn't fall asleep until 5am. But since then he's been quieter, sleeping well, and eating better. Maybe it was just one of those weeks that you want to throw the memories of in the garbage of the brain. Strange. Kids are strange sometimes, but we love them anyways! Thanks for the support. Sometimes I don't know what in the world I'm doing.. well, I should say all the time :)

This motherhood thing...

Some people have asked me if Elijah and I are going to have a another baby soon because Jacen's nearing the two year mark and you know, kids are usually spaced out two years apart. Well, to people's horror and disbelief, I tell them no. And in fact, we're done having kids. This has actually been a decision that both of us (Elijah isn't 100% going for it still but he understands the situation) made a few weeks ago, way before Jacen got into the Terrible Two's mode.

We tried for a few months last year to have another one. Elijah wanted another one, and Jacen could benefit from having a sibling, so we tried. I tried for the sake of the boys, because I don't want another one. Obviously, we tried without success and then we had to make a decision: do we try again this year or do we wait 10 years? There's just no way I'm gonna have another baby around the time I'm taking the MCAT and applying for med schools and flying around to interview. But also, it'd be tough to have another one in 10 years because we'd be pretty much starting all over again, not to mention the age difference would be of about 12 years and they wouldn't know each other very well. So our decision was to stop and get a cat instead (that'll be Jacen's birthday gift this year).

I know Elijah would love more kids. He wants three of them. I, on the other hand, never wanted any. But we failed to discuss this issue before we got married, and then the unthinkable happened: I got pregnant. I cried hysterically the day I found out. But it was something I needed to be grateful for considering I was told we could never have kids unless I had medical intervention. So we got Jacen.

I feel terrible that now that Jacen's growing up and has gotten into the Terrible Two's stage, I feel very inadequate to be a mom. I mean, I can handle pre-med school stuff all day and deal with all these things that I have to do, but when it comes down to handling a nearly 2 year old boy throwing himself on the ground and crying and screaming at the top of his lungs because he can't play with the power outlet, I get frazzled. And I REALLY don't know what to do. I wasn't made for this.

You know how people sometimes make the mistake of sending a text message to the wrong person? Well, more and more often now I feel like Jacen was sent to me by mistake. I've cried more in the last couple of months because of this than I have in years put together. I'm not a crier at all, and for me to be crying over motherhood issues is so tough for me. This is something I'm not handling well and I am terrified.

The only thing I could think of doing is to pray every morning for patience to last me through the day. I tried it this morning (along with a fountain of waterworks) and let's see if it does the trick. If it doesn't, then I don't know what else to do.

If I can't handle one child, how am I supposed to handle two, or let alone three?!