Memories

I have been thinking a lot about the past and focusing on all the good times I had when I was growing up. A lot of those memories involved my grandfather, Andy. My pop pop died in 2003 at the age of 56, way too soon. He was such a great person. He loved his family so much, he would do anything for them. After all this time I still feel sad about his death. I have grieved and time has helped so much but I don't think I can ever be over it. I can still remember his smile and remember his laugh but I can not remember the way his voice sounded. I can not find any videos with him whatsoever and it is driving me insane.
I was pop pop's little girl growing up. I could of killed someone and he would of come up with some excuse for it and I would of gotten off, lol. I remember one time when I was maybe 6-7 and I had taken $20 from my mom's purse before going to his house. Later at his house my mom had found out and my grandfather told my mom that I didn't steal it, I was just holding it for her :)
I am really glad he got to meet Destiny(pic above). He died when she was 9 months old. I wish he could of the met the rest of his great grandkids. So far he has 5 with the newest addition being Ryleigh Ann, my cousins baby girl. She was born 2 days ago :) We named our son, Andrew, after him and plan on calling him Andy for short. He would of loved to see them and they would of equally loved him.
I wholeheartedly believe that everything happens for a reason, even if it is bad and ugly. However, I am still trying to find the reason as to why he died so young. It shouldn't of happened.
He had this poodle named Boomer. Boomer could be so mean...lol. If the kids fought in front of him he would flip out and if pop pop said the word "bath" around him he would get so mad...lol After pop pop died we thought that Boomer we go shortly after because they were so close. My Aunt Dawn ended up taking in Boomer who was like a million years old in dog years. We were so surprised that he lived for so long. He passed away last year and is now in doggy heaven :)
One of the many reasons why I want to move back to Maryland is because I want our kids to have the same relationship with their grandparents that I had with my grandfather. I miss my family and time is precious and we don't know how much time we truly have here on Earth. On the other hand it is so selfish of me. What about my husbands family? They live in Colorado and in California and he should be able to spend as much time with them as possible. Why does it have to be so complicated? I wish everyone could just move to Texas lol So if we never move to one of those states our kids will not have a close relationship with our family and that makes me feel so bad because they are truly missing something. So I guess the ultimate question is what do we do?

(Sorry this is so disorganized, I have so many thoughts and just need to get them out)

We won a vacation!

Over the weekend we visited a resort, Silverleaf at Canyon Lake. We were to attend a 90 minute tour of their resort and afterwards we were to win a prize. Silverleaf is a timeshare company. The resort was really nice but it took 4 hours for the presentation. Timeshares are not so bad. This company offers extras in addition to a week in a condo. We would of bought one but we don't have the money right now so once we get the money we will be definitely going back to buy one. So after the presentation and them trying to pressure us into buying a timeshare we were sent to another room to get our gifts. We ended up with a 3 day trip to Las Vegas and a 5 day trip to Hawaii. We want to go to Hawaii in September to celebrate our wedding anniversary and are super excited. The tour alone was worth the vacations and you can visit their site to request a tour to get the prizes.

Mother's Day

The puppy in the picture is our new puppy Allen. He is 6 months old and a sheppard mix like Dixie. I woke up to these beautiful flowers on Mother's Day. Mike and the kids also got me a jewerly box and made me breakfast in AND cleaned the house :D It was the best Mother's Day ever. The day before we had gone to Six Flags Fiesta Texas and I had gotten some sun.
The kids last day of school is in a few weeks. They are happy about getting out of school and Destiny is super excited about going into the 1st grade. She is doing really well. She can read, write, and spell now. I am so proud of her! Andrew is standing on his own, but to scared to walk.

A week of firsts....

This past week has been very interesting. All of the kids experienced a new "first"
On Saturday morning, Madison woke us up to tell us that her "heart was broken" She even had both of her hands on her heart. It was too cute. It wasn't really broken, she had fell.
As you can see MJ loves matchbox cars. It is odd not too see him carrying one around. On Sunday, MJ thought he would be superman and jump off of the couch. When he jumped off the couch he landed on his hands and the matchbox car hit him in the nose. There was a lot of blood coming out and I thought I was going to be sick. Good thing Mike was here to clean it up. I felt so bad for him. He had his first bloody nose.
The day after MJ and Andrew collided into each other and the stupid car ended up hitting Andrew in the nose. Andrew then had his first bloody nose, don't worry it wasn't bad at all.
Finally, yesterday Destiny finally read us a whole book for the first time. We were and still are so proud of her. The extra tutoring is really helping her and it goes to show that all kids do not need to be medicated when they have ADHD.

Happy Birthday Destiny!

Destiny turned 7 years old last week. We had her party the week before because her birthday was Easter weekend. On her actual birthday we went and saw Monsters vs Aliens 3-D then went to Outback for dinner. Instead of the traditional cake, we ordered some cupcakes from Cupcake Junction and Destiny had a strawberry cheesecake cupcake with sprinkles and a High School Musical ring on top, yummy! We got her a guinea pig, Oreo. I will post pictures soon of her.

Cute kids contest!

I entered all of the Sanchez kids on a cute kids contest. They are on page 2 so go and vote for them please! Click on her banner to get to the page for voting.

Here are the details:

Please follow the contest rules for the votes to count...

You must vote for one BOY and one GIRL or your votes will be deleted!
(if you have already voted and havent done this, please do so today or i will delete your vote tonight)

You can only vote once per myspace account, for the entire contest!

Votes will only count through picture comments.


NO MAMMA DRAMA, this is a fun contest ;)

you may repost my message and tell your friends to add and vote for your lil one!



any questions? send me a message please.

Overwhelmed

I have been feeling overwhelmed lately. I started my classes last week. I am so lost in my chemistry class. All those equations and stuff like that. Plus finding the time to do my homework, studying and projects every week for both of my classes.
Andrew has been clinging to me like velcro lately and Madison and MJ have been sooooo cranky. Sometimes I want to run away or hide in a room and lock the door.
On top of finding time to study, take care of kids, the house and my business I now need to find time to exercise. Next week I am having a test done to see if I have diabetes. I am showing more than one sign of having it so I really need to get that done and in order to get rid of it I need to start exercising more and eating healthier. I need a micro manager. Yup, someone to plan my every step then I can check off the list of things I need to do. I would do it myself but just making the list is overwhelming. Great Andrew is awake from his 10 minute nap. Did I mention he hasn't taken a decent nap in over a week?

Food for Thought

So our new pastor, from Gateway Fellowship Church, wrote me an email and gave me this awesome link and in the link it was a passage from the bible:

Matthew 25:31-46 (New Living Translation)

The Final Judgment

³¹ “But when the Son of Man^a]">[a] comes in his glory, and all the angels with him, then he will sit upon his glorious throne. ³² All the nations^b]">[b] will be gathered in his presence, and he will separate the people as a shepherd separates the sheep from the goats. ³³ He will place the sheep at his right hand and the goats at his left.

³⁴ “Then the King will say to those on his right, ‘Come, you who are blessed by my Father, inherit the Kingdom prepared for you from the creation of the world. ³⁵ For I was hungry, and you fed me. I was thirsty, and you gave me a drink. I was a stranger, and you invited me into your home. ³⁶ I was naked, and you gave me clothing. I was sick, and you cared for me. I was in prison, and you visited me.’

³⁷ “Then these righteous ones will reply, ‘Lord, when did we ever see you hungry and feed you? Or thirsty and give you something to drink? ³⁸ Or a stranger and show you hospitality? Or naked and give you clothing? ³⁹ When did we ever see you sick or in prison and visit you?’

⁴⁰ “And the King will say, ‘I tell you the truth, when you did it to one of the least of these my brothers and sisters,^c]">[c] you were doing it to me!’

⁴¹ “Then the King will turn to those on the left and say, ‘Away with you, you cursed ones, into the eternal fire prepared for the devil and his demons.^d]">[d] ⁴² For I was hungry, and you didn’t feed me. I was thirsty, and you didn’t give me a drink. ⁴³ I was a stranger, and you didn’t invite me into your home. I was naked, and you didn’t give me clothing. I was sick and in prison, and you didn’t visit me.’

⁴⁴ “Then they will reply, ‘Lord, when did we ever see you hungry or thirsty or a stranger or naked or sick or in prison, and not help you?’

⁴⁵ “And he will answer, ‘I tell you the truth, when you refused to help the least of these my brothers and sisters, you were refusing to help me.’

⁴⁶ “And they will go away into eternal punishment, but the righteous will go into eternal life.”

I hope this encourages people to help others, and maybe we don't know their situation but we can still give them something to eat or a bottle of water. Every human deserves to eat, to be warm, and to feel safe.

Seriously?

So I have been thinking a lot and praying a lot and it just came to me. I want to help out other people. Yesterday, Mike and I met for breakfast and he ordered an extra burrito and we couldn't just throw it away. So I decided to take it downtown to see if anyone wanted it. I had ran into some people who hadn't eaten in awhile, anyway I gave them the burrito and they were so thankful and the feeling I got was just amazing. I talked to Mike about it and everything and how amazing would it be if we could help out more people. Unfortunately with 4 kids, a mortgage, car payment, a dog, etc. our funds are limited. So anyway I posted an ad on craigslist telling people our story and how we wanted to help out the community and to see if anyone wanted to join in. The result so far? I get flamed.
Here is my original post:
"My husband and I and our kids recently decided to start helping out homeless individuals in San Antonio. This weekend and hopefully every weekend after we will be going downtown to hand out gift bags of food, toiletries, and hygiene products to those who need it. We truly believe that we were meant to help out the less fortunate and believe that this is the way God wants us to serve our community. We have been truly blessed with our kids, our friends, and our family. When we were having a tough time, we had people there for us and now we want to help out others. We are asking for donations of any kind. Here is a list of some of the things we are looking for
Bottled/can drinks or water
Hygiene products (trial/travel size please)
Tooth brush, hair brush
Toiletries
Food such as individual snack packs, fruit cups, cereal bars, apples, pears, oranges, etc. Please nothing that will spoil immediately or that needs to be refrigerated.
Anything else you can think of.

If you don’t want to make a donation, then please get out there yourself and help them. I know some people think they are bums and why don’t they just work. We don’t know everyone’s situation. They could of lost their jobs and with the way the economy is going maybe they can’t find one. I don’t really know, all I know is that my family and I want to help.
Thank you,
Renee

Here is the comment I got

"If you need free stuff there is a category for that. Now all these people are looking for a handout for their abused family memebers or the homeless? I work and so does my hubby, we don't make a lot and support our children and pets, and pay all our own bills without any assistance. If you have a computer to write this bs, sell it. Or if you had the time to go to the library and write it, go to fast food joints and apply. I am only stating what everyone else here is thinking. You need someone to tell you to get off your behinds and get a job. Noone give these scammers free stuff. Go to their home and see who they are first. I would bet they have more than some of us who work hard for what we own. good luck to all of you who hope people on here will help you remain lazy"

What are these people on? Am I only one who is confused from their response? I don't remember saying that I had abused family members or that I was homeless? If you want to comment on this please do!

Our Week in review

Last Sunday we went to Six Flags Fiesta Texas and went into their Wiggle World. Destiny got to meet Captain Feathersword and Henry the Octopus. It was a lot of fun and we will be going again this Sunday after church. Destiny also had field day at her school and won 2nd place in basketball throw and the 60 yard dash.




On Tuesday, Madison had her first day at preschool. She goes 3 days a week. Its a Mothers Day Out program through a church but it is preschool based. She loves her teacher and her new friends. Once she starts pre-k, MJ will be going to the MDO program as well to get a head start on school and so I can get a little more of a break! :P
Also, my classes start next week, I am taking an medical intro course and a chemistry class,which I am very nervous about.


On Wednesday, Andrew finally sat up by himself. He is also starting to get crawling down. He tried prunes this week for the first time and hated them, can't blame him. He is teething still and is starting to bite more and more, breastfeeding isn't going to last much longer. I can't believe how fast he is growing, pretty soon him and Mj will be the same size!








MJ is starting this new spiderman phase. He thinks he is spiderman. He will "shoot" webs out of his wrist and make a funny sound at the same time. It's really cute. He is getting big as well. He even said Andrew the other day and when you ask him a question he will nod his head.

Awful, not so awful weekend.

So what started out to be an awful weekend turned out to be a lot of fun. After a day of shopping and making homemade chicken noodle soup on Saturday, I sat at my laptop to check our bank account. I saw something strange, our account was dramatically low. I clicked on the list of purchases to see some details and I saw all of these strange purchases from Pizza Hut in the UK and other crazy places. A ton of money was stolen from our bank account. Come to find out someone stole a bunch of credit card numbers from USAA and was making random purchases on them. We had to cancel our cards and are waiting on new cards. We won't get our money back for a week or so, which is okay because our mortgage isn't due til the 1st so have some time.
Sunday was much better. We went to a different church and it was awesome. We are def. going back next week. They meet in a different movie theater and the pastor is really nice. The music was good and the message was great. After church we went to Cici's pizza, which is really good. They have a salad, soup,pasta,pizza, and dessert buffet for like $6.00. So after filling our tummies we took the 3 oldest kids for hair cuts, MJ no longer looks like a girl woohoo! Soon after we went to Costco to fill up on fruit and yogurt because we ran out and we can't survive without fruit and yogurt! On the way home Mike was like hey lets go to Sea World, they closed at 6pm and it was approaching 330. We then decided on going to Six Flags Fiesta Texas and bought a season pass. We rode the train and stopped by the new Wiggles World where the kids rode in the Big Red Car and rode some other rides.
What started out to be an awful weekend, turned into a not so awful weekend :)

College Bound

Mike and I have been talking a lot lately about our future career wise. I recently requested some info for online colleges and now my phone keeps ringing and its sooo annoying. So finally yesterday, I answered the phone and it was Kaplan University. After on the phone with them an hour I am in the process of getting enrolled into their Health Sciences program where I will be completing my Bachelors degree in about 3 1/2 years. I am so excited. At first I was thinking about nursing but sticking needles in other people just horrifies me so I asked the guy on the phone what other programs in the health field are offered. After reviewing all of them I decided that health sciences would be the best choice for me because I can do a lot of things with that kind of degree. Everything is strictly online so I don't have to leave the house and find a babysitter for the kids. I will be taking 2 classes at a time so I should be able to manage it along with my business and my family. If my mom can do it, anyone can. She used to attend college and work full time, take care of all of us plus still have time for a social life. She is one unique lady. Mike is thinking about completing his degree before getting out of the Army. I am really excited and hope everything goes right. If I am not accepted for financial aide, I may not get to attend so please pray for me and hope that I am eligible!

Lots of New

We found a new church and went on Sunday. They meet in a movie theater, like our old church. It was really nice, the music was kind of loud, but the message was great. We are looking forward to going there again. I finally had my site redone, so stop by and take a look :) Destiny starts soccer tomorrow and she is really excited. Andrew is crawling backwards and is very active.

Busy unpacking

As you can see we finally bought a house and it closed last week. We are unpacking and are almost settled in. We also adopted a Sheppard mix named Dixie, from a no kill shelter. She is 2 years old and is very playful and loves children. I am also redoing my website, I got a new logo and I will also giving it a well needed face lift. San Antonio is really nice and there are plenty of things to do. I am starting to feel a little home sick. We found this new church that meets in a movie theater and we will be attending there for the first time on Sunday.

Valentines Day Giveaway!!!

Here is your chance to win $30 worth of Valentines Day presents for that special child in your life! From now until February 1st everytime you purchase an item your name will be thrown into a hat. For example if you purchase 6 items then your name will be counted 6 times. I will draw a name on February 2nd and I will be sending the lucky winner $30 worth of Valentines Day goodies. I will contact the winner immediately and ask them there preference for a boy or girl. Good luck everyone!

http://nu2you.mybisi.com

It wasn't meant to be.

The other day we found the perfect house for us. It had no flaws and had everything we wanted plus more. So we told the realtor immediately that we wanted to make an offer. She went back to her office filled out the paper work and was about to send it over when she decided to call the agent on the house to see how they preferred the paper work. He told her that he literally had an offer on the house 5 minutes before she called and they already accepted it.............grrrrrrrrrrrr I am so sad and mad. This was the perfect house. So now we are off looking at more houses.

Of Course...

<--------- Picture of my brother TJ, my mom, and my brother Dylan

So we found 2 houses that we loved and tried to make offers on them but later found out that the taxes were $4500. ouch. So we declined and we had 2 candidates left. Mike went in this morning to check in with his unit and found out we arent going to be stationed at Fort Sam. Instead we will be at Lackland AFB, which isn't so bad, only 30 minutes from here BUT that means we need to find houses in a different area of San Antonio. Ugh, I can't wait until we are in a house we love and can afford. It is really stressful.

Moving Chaos!

It has been awhile since I have written anything. Its been so crazy. On December 12th Mike returned from Afghanistan. We have moved since then, road tripped and have visited family in Colorado and in Dallas and have finally arrived in San Antonio. We looked at 6 houses today to purchase and so far like 2 of them. We will be looking at more before we make an offer on one. Everyone is doing well, ever since moving here Andrew's breathing issues have cleared up completely. MJ is still teethin and Desi can't wait to get back into school. Madison wants to go school too so we will be looking for something for her once we get settled in a house. I miss all of my family but I am happy we are moving away, its like a fresh start and I get to experience another part of our country. Today it was 75 degrees and the kids were able to go swimming outside. I'm still working on my business in the middle of everything too. Mike is doing well and is still adjusting to our chaotic family. He should be going back to work in about 2 weeks. My brother Dylan came with us as well to get a fresh start. He will be joining the military later this year. San Antonio is nice, I guess. The parts I have seen so far are kind of ghetto and certain areas are not great because of gangs and stuff. We are looking at houses in good neighborhoods with good schools so we should be fine. I will update again later, hopefully tomorrow. Night!