I’ve wanted braces since I was 12. I used to bend the little skinny metal bracelets in half and put them in my mouth and stare at myself in the mirror because I wanted to see what I’d look like with braces on. Crazy, I know. My parents couldn’t afford braces back then and to be honest my bro Abraham probably needed them more than I did. But he couldn’t get them either.

So, when Clark and I got married (which I thought would never happen cause my teeth were messed up) we were pretty broke and so being the great budgeting Hubby that he is, he said that after we got some bills paid and stuff we could start saving for braces. Man, I was sooooo excited! Of course until the day finally came when I got them on cause they really hurt. But I’ve never regretted it.

Picture Note: I’ve always said to Clark and almost anyone, that when we finally got my braces on that’s when we’d get pregnant. Well…totally called that one years in advance. Man, we shouldn’t have waited so long to get me some braces. I said that because, I knew that I’d end up looking like I was in High School and prego. LOL! So yesterday we took the last pictures of the braces on and dressed up like I was going to High School all over again. There are some inaccuracies because I didn’t have everything on hand but my hair is pretty close to exact (except that I’d put a whole ton of hair spray and that I’d have a huge puffy scrunchy on top). Jynco Jeans (kept from High School), Nike Shoes with Velcro (kept from High School), huge hoop earrings (um… I still love these), and big sweater (Clark’s sweater) were all part of some of my High School outfits. Funny, how it’s all so huge and it makes me look even bigger with my prego belly. No wonder I don’t wear that stuff anymore. Anyways, I didn’t know what poses to do for Clark, so I was just being ridiculous. Hope it makes you laugh. I have no idea why I felt like embarrassing myself on the internet but I guess it’s all just for fun anyways. My fave is the booty picture, cause I like to be funny when I dance - it’s for my “southern” girls.

Here’s a picture with my 2 brothers, Jonathan & I are posing with our braces and Abraham with a retainer. We all finally got our teeth straightened. Or at least in the process.

It’s been a long 1 and a half years. To be exact, it’s been 2 years and 2 months, LOL they always say it’s gonna be less time than it will actually take. But I finally get my top braces off today. (Bottom has been off for a month now.) As of 3pm today I will no longer have braces. See you all later, without braces this time! (They of course won’t be super model straight or anything like that but I love them just the way they have been fixed now.)

Budgeting Tip: It’s much, much less if you or your child get braces on before you or they turn 18-19 and move out because otherwise you end up paying FULL price. Just check with your dental insurance, or get dental insurance if you don’t have any just before you get them so you can take advantage of the discount.

Oh man, so today I had the worst scare. I was just trying to update some stuff on our blog and for some reason pages weren’t loading right and things just weren’t acting normal. Database was timing out and other stuff I don’t understand. Anyways, I had a bit of a melt down because I thought I lost everything. All 146 blog posts. If you’re like me and you try to blog everything, which means you don’t have an actual journal, then this would be your worst nightmare. This is our diary/journal. I can’t lose this, it’s all I have. So I had to calm myself and remember that even if it’s all deleted, my brain can still remember basic details of events and if I had too, I’d start all over. Thankfully, (said a mini prayer) and it’s all here. Phew!! But it got me thinking a few things.

How do you preserve your Blog? I did some research and found the following sites to help you print your blog into a book and then you’ll always have it like a little journal or diary.

1. Print your posts: do it everytime you post a new blog entry and put into a binder. Cost of ink/toner and paper.
2. Save your posts: copy and paste the info into a word document or other file type. But I suggest printing because then you can just put it into a binder for safe keeping. Afterall it is your journal. Free!
3. BlogPrinting.com: If you have a Movabletype, Typepad or Wordpress blog you can use this service. It automatically pulls in all of your blog posts and prints it for you in a book format. Starts at about $7.50. Click here. Nothing super fancy, just the basic info and doesn’t include comments. Sad.
4. Blurb.com: If you have Live Journal or TypePad, it’ll be able to pull in all of your posts and set them up very nicely for you. Click here.
5. Blog to Print by Sharedbook.com: This one is for my Blogger friends (pretty much all of you). This will pull in all of your posts and comments from Blogger. Starts at $14.95 printed book or $2.99 for an eBook. Click here. (This one looks amazing and it’s too bad I don’t have a Blogger blog cause I love the look of this one the best.) Just test it out online it’s free to see what your book will look like.

How do you preserve your Pictures? In this digital age you need to have several different ways to preserve your pictures.

1. Print them out! Just your favorite ones so you always have them. Before importing your pics onto your computer just go down to Walmart or your favorite photo printing place and print a couple good ones out. Then you can know that you have some saved for future.
2. Copy your Pics to a different location:  Use an external drive or burn them on a CD or DVD to hold all of your pics. Organize them by year. I would suggest doing both.
3. Make Photo Books Online: You can create photo books almost anywhere online now. They include your pictures and even text if you want to write a little something under each picture.
4. Photo Album: Just insert pics into the albums which have slots for pictures. No need to get fancy right now, just keep them safe. If your computer ever crashes (like mine did in 2002, stupid PC!) then you’ll still have the actual pictures safe and can scan them in later if you need to.
5. Scrapbook your Pics: You can use the pictures which you’ve already printed and scrapbook them. This is definately the crafters way to preserve your memories. I only suggest this if you print your pics on a regular basis. I would not go into full-on scrapbooking your pics if you don’t have them organized in a photo album yet. Otherwise, you may overwhelm yourself and never scrapbook them.
6. Digital Scrapbooking: Also very cute and creative but again, you’ll want to make sure you print it out so you always have it.

So anyways, just remember to always have a backup copy of your blog/journal and especially your pictures. You don’t want to lose them. I have over 30,000 pics, I have them coppied to an external drive too but still need to print some. Good luck to you all, I hope you never lose your precious memories.

Whether you’ll be e-mailing your family’s Holiday Cards or mailing them you’ll probably want some professional or semi professional pics to send. I have already received a few which are very cute! I still love seeing my friends in pics with their cute families. F.Y.I. - I’ll be sending pics of us and our new little present after he’s born, so don’t expect any cards until the new year.

Some of you have asked if we know anyone who can take family pics. Well, the answer is yep! We have a few good friends who can do this for you and so I dedicate this blog post to helping those friends by posting their info here online, and so I can always have it here where I can find it. I’m sure you all know I hate spam, so that’s why I am posting on our blog instead of sending a mass email.

1. Katie - She was our neighbor across the street for a long time, she lives in CA but comes down to do photo shoots for clients. She’s taken some pics for me and my sister-in-law too and they are amazing!
She’s gonna be in town Dec 8th -20th, 2008 and has an amazing Holiday special. View her sample work here. See ad below:

2. Emmie - Lives in the same neighborhood as we do and currently working on growing her portfolio of clients. Call her to get her rates at: 801-592-4233.

3. Merrilynne - She also lives in the same neighborhood and currently manages InStudio Photographics. Their high end studio is packed with props, lighting and other great things to help get the perfect pic for you. The well known photographer is the one who takes your pics. View samples here.

BTW to Print your pics or cards which have been designed already, you can go to: Walmart, Snapfish, Target, and others. They all have different pricing and different shipping or pick-up times, so just use the one that you like the best. Best thing about 4×6 cards is you don’t need an envelope and you can use Postcard Stamps!!! Very economical. I’ve also received emailed Holiday Family Picture cards and they too are very cute and helps to save on postage and printing. You decide.

Hope you all find the right peep for your pics. I will for sure be needing professional pics of our little babe when he’s born in Jan so we can always remember how small he will be.

Oh man…last night was AMAZINGLY fun!!! We reserved the whole Theater for the midnight showing of the movie Twilight and sold the seats to our family, friends & neighbors. It was a full house! All tickets were sold out.

We arrived at 10:30pm to set up and we had a couple posters people could take pics with. Luckily Clark has a cool lighting kit and we were able to “look” like pros. My camera isn’t an SLR (I wouldn’t know how to use one anyway) or I am sure the pics would have been perfect. So, I am really sorry if some of you have blurry pics. You have to stand really still for my camera to take good pics. Don’t worry though, my camera doesn’t segregate, the only pic of Clark & I is blurry too. oh well. We still had fun and I am still putting that one in the scrapbook. Anyway, glad peeps brought their own cameras too, just in case.

We had a fun contest which we had; Celeni - with Alice’s hair do, Clark - As Edward in the Sun (very sexy and sparkly), Melissa - as Bella in her Pjs and Cory - as Alice in her Yellow Porsche 911 Turbo. Cory won to $50 gift card to Amazon, even though she’s a New Moon Alice. Clark happened to point that out and everyone was very impressed that he even knew that. LOL of course he’s read all 4 books! Which he thinks could have been combined all into 1 book - if you take out the staring contests, the lovie make-outs and the continuous praises of being so attractive. LOL

Thanks to all who came, participated, helped out with the layouts and contests and made it a night to remember. I hope you all had fun too. We took lots of pics, so here’s just 3 pics. To see all the pics we took & order 4×6 prints for your layouts, go to our Flickr account here. Or click on the pictures below.

Review: I loved the movie!!! Can’t wait till the next one. I didn’t go into it with high expectations, so I did love it. I had a few fave parts. 1. When the Cullens make their entrance, so cool. 2. When Edward first sits next to Bella. & 3. Baseball. I also loved the intense staring and Edward watching Bella sleep but I loved those parts in the book too.

Hope you laides liked the Twilight Scrapbook Layouts. Several people worked hard on them. Thanks!

Finally finished painting Bumpy’s room. It can be considered either a Comic Book Room or Cartoon Room. It’s like you’re actually in a cartoon or comic.
BEFORE:

DURING:

AFTER:

Basically we picked this theme because we thought it would be different and fun. There are so many cute ideas out there! We didn’t know how it would turn out, but we love it. I want to go in there all of the time, it’s such a happy room and the only room in the house which is painted a different color other than white. To create this look we picked bright comic book colors and then lined every corner and angle with a thin, hand-drawn, black line – whether on the ceiling, on the crib (thanks to our neighbors for the cute awesome crib!), or around a plug.

We thought of the idea and then did a search online for it and loved how this Hotel in Berlin did it. It’s nothing fancy. I think for the most part we’re done with the room except for the blinds and of course adding a few organizational bins with labels.

In order to save space and money, we had Steve from Revolution Builders build us a built-in toy box / window seat and bookshelves around the window. Then we painted it yellow. Don’t worry, we will be adding protection to prevent falling out of the window. We also had him redo the closet shelving to add a changing table and additional hanger space, so we didn’t have to purchase drawers, toy box or a separate changing table. The changing table can be used as a desk when he gets older. Steve was super fast too, did all of it in 2 days. If you want to get a great deal on built-in shelving call Steve at 801-450-9387.

So, today is Hoby’s real birthday. Happy Birthday Hoby! Feliz Cumpleanoz Hoby!

10 Things I love about Hoby (My Grandpa)

1. He’s loving and caring (always wants to know how we’re doing and loves us unconditionally)
2. He’s smart (he gives me some tips on how to run certain things about my biz and it works.)
3. He’s crafty (when we were kids he used to make toys out of tin cans, not they didn’t have sharp edges.)
4. He’s funny (randomly dresses up as different characters and does their voices too. So funny!)
5. He’s generous (what grandpa isn’t?)
6. He’s encouraging and supportive (always loves and helps with any business I want to run.)
7. He’s over 70 and doesn’t have any gray hair! (um…I hope I never go gray.)
8. He’s hard working (He’s worked all his life, he still has a job to this day, no dead-beat Grandpas over here.)
9. He’s our refuge away from home. (In FL his condo had a pool so when we were kids, we’d go there all the time. We had a lot of fun memories there.)
10. He’s a cute videographer (Loves to film everyone and anything having to do with family and then gives us a copy of it. If it weren’t for him we probably wouldn’t have funny home videos. LOL)
11. Oh and he loves Chinese food and so do I.

My siblings and I were fortunate enough to at least have 1 Grandpa growing up (we don’t know where our other grandpa is and have never met him either), but 1 Grandpa was enough for us because he was so good to us. Hoby you’re the best Grandpa any kid could have! We love you Hoby! You’re going to be the best Great Grandpa to our Son.

Here’s a picture of him yesterday, see I told you he’s funny.

So, after only seeing our little baby boy in an ultrasound at 20 weeks, we couldn’t wait an entire 20 more weeks or D-Day (Delivery Day) to see him again. So…we scheduled a 3D Ultrasound roughly around the middle, at 28 weeks, and we’re glad we did. We got to see him again! He’s so cute and tiny and I think he looks like Clark. Here’s some of the pictures we got from the 3D Ultrasound which was done at the 28 week mark on Tues. Oct 28, 2008.

They are a little weird at first but you get the idea. You can get 3D ultrasounds at Fetal Fotos or ask your Dr. We just got ours done at our Dr.’s office.

We also got a 12 min video (split up into 2 parts), it doesn’t have music but it’s pretty cool to see how the 3D stuff works.

Can’t wait to see him in person! (but we don’t want him to be early, just on-time.)

On friday my boss, Chris, offered to lend me another book. I already have two of his so I told him I’m reading too many books right now, and that I’d have to finish a few before I took on another. He asked me what I was reading and when I couldn’t even remember all of them, I realized that I might have a problem with starting new books before finishing what I’m reading. Over the weekend I decided to tally up everything I’m “reading” right now. Here’s the list (in no specific order):

1. Patriots*
2. Guards, Guards*
3. Prophesy - Key to the future*
4. Uncommon Genius
5. If You Want To Write
6. Elements of Style**
7. Pirate Hunter
8. Bonds that Make Us Free**
9. Book of Mormon Student Manual (Religion 121–122)**
10. The Brothers: A Novel*
11. Guerilla Marketing**
12. Don’t Make Me Think**
13. Be Prepared: A Practical Handbook for New Dads
14. Why Work Sucks and How to Fix It

We all got together to celebrate my younger brother’s 15th birthday. Wow! I can’t believe it. I used to baby sit him when he was a baby and now I’m having a baby and he’ll get to babysit for us. Sweet deal!

Quick fact: Jonathan gave our Grandpa the nickname of “Hoby.” In spanish Abuelito = Grandpa and of course Jonathan couldn’t say that when he was a baby so he called him “HOBY.” Our Grandpa does not go by any other name, so feel free to call my Grandpa “Hoby.” In fact I don’t know who you’re talking about unless you call him Hoby. LOL our family is silly.

My mom made green spaghetti and of course she made her famous Dominican cake (even though she’s not Dominican) and decorated it all professionally too. It was soooo yummy! Both the spaghetti and the cake.

Here’s some pics which were taken to document his birthday. Usually for peeps birthdays, on my side of the family, we’ll take group pics with everyone’s cameras. It’s pretty funny actually. We end up with a ton of pics.

To my family, click here to order 4×6 or 5×7 prints of these pictures or get the high resolution pics too.

Wow, today was a busy day. These are some things to do on Halloween.

1. Do work for the Dead, that’s right, the best one of all and appropriate too. You guessed it, attend the Temple!
2. Get Candy! Get Candy! Get Candy! Purchase loads of Candy for the kids.
3. Put on a costume or disguise.
4. Dress up your dog.
5. Make treats
6. Go to a Potluck Neighborhood Party
7. Trick-or-Treat with your kids (nope we didn’t do this one this year but we saw some cute costumes)
8. Give Candy out to some kids
9. Eat Candy
10. and take lots of pics.

Here’s the pics which document today’s happenings.

BTW, Will Farrell didn’t trick-or-treat at our house, that’s Tad! Awesome costume.

Click here to order 4×6 prints or to download a high resolution picture for the pictures shown above.