Category Archives: ella

I really am alive…. I promise

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Hi blog, if you forgot who I am since I neglect you I’m still Amanda. I still have cute kids, hard kids, funny kids, family drama and I’m still selling food.

Life for us has been wonderful. We’ve had an extra toddler with us for now 3 weeks. I can pretty much say that I hope God never blesses us with twins…. EVER. In fact, my husband has informed me that we’re no longer having any more children.

My niece Alana from Sacramento came to stay with us a few weeks ago, because she comes from a horrible home. A party home, she’s been neglected and the whole sad sob story that you can come up in your head probably happened to her.

She’s going back to her glorious life she came from tomorrow. Sad… I know. But there’s not much I can do about it… besides informed CPS, which will be done.

Here’s where the bad part comes in. I’m relieved that she’s going to be gone and I hate to say that, but I have been going INSANE. I haven’t been able to get my work done, she’s very clingy, and I’m EXHAUSTED. I wasn’t going to let my brother know that I have her.. he lives here, but I needed a break. I needed my family back even if just for a day. I’ve realized this week as much as I want to save her, I can’t. It is a fight I don’t have in me. I wouldn’t just be fighting her mom, but I’d be fighting her mom’s horrible mom… which would get her over me. I just hope that either her mom cleans up her act or my brother does…. somebody needs to for this poor baby girl’s sake. Ella and Alana are only 6 weeks apart.

So this has all been going on with us…. which is why my blog has been neglected. Here’s a couple pics I took at Easter……….

THIS IS ALANA






Our Easter was wonderful!!! We went to my inlaws and got to see my husband’s grandparents. Definitely enjoyed myself….. as did the kids.

My Jayden

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Two nights ago Jayden lost yet another tooth. He was so excited and couldn’t wait for the tooth fairy to come and visit him. I snuck in durin the night and exchanged his tooth for a $5.00 bill (yeah, I know… lucky boy) and I walked into my bathroom where I have this little jewlry box that I keep his teeth in and I almost started crying.

These years are going by so fast and I don’t like it. I don’t want him to become a teenager and not want to be around me. I can’t believe that my baby boy 8 years old this year. How does that happen?

I need to do an update of pictures with the kids and am waiting for a good weather day so I can go get some really good ones of them together. My babies aren’t babies anymore…. and I’m feeling kinda sad about it.

On Ella…. and our new addition

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Ella turned 19 months yesterday. It’s shocking to me, and I really can’t fathom the idea that my baby now speaks to me in sentences. She’s so smart and everyday she shocks me with something new. Her new phrases that come to mind right now are:

Help me
Let me see
To go to go… meaning let’s go
Where’s JJ – her brother
Pretty… she likes to tell me that she’s pretty
What’s that?
Where’d it go?
Cartoons?
My shoes
MOM! NEED HELP!

There’s more, but I can’t think of them. I need to upload an updated pic of both of these kids of mine, which I will soon.

Ella’s just becoming more and more independent. She doesn’t like to be fed, but has to do it on her own. If Jayden has cereal, she has to have cereal. This morning she was at the table with her cereal and was yelling for Jayden to come eat his nummies…. she said, “JAY!!! NUMMIES!!!”

She’s such a joy to be around. I love her personality, even though at times it drives me CRAZY!!

On a different note…..we’ll be having an addition to our family, which I will give details on next week 🙂 Got ya thinking didn’t I?

Cardiology Appointment….

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Our vacation was nice! I didn’t take a lot of pictures, but I did get a few. I did a couple maternity shots of my sister and there’s some of me with the girls in my family. I’ll post them up this weekend.

The trip was fast. Wednesday we left home for Reno and the next day I was in a seminar for the majority of it. Friday we were on our way to Sacramento so that I could give my sister a baby shower on Saturday then we headed home Sunday. We stopped at Gino’s parents on the way home, but it was really a rush rush rush vacation.

It’s good to be home.

Today was Ella’s pediatrics and cardiology appointments. The cardiology appointment was not a good one. They did the EKG and found that her WPW is STILL there, which I was totally expecting, but what I wasn’t expecting was for her cardiologist to tell me that he wants her to go off of her medication.

I don’t see the point in this. I don’t see why in the world they would want to take her off of something that has done wonders with her. Something that has kept her out of the hospitals and healthy as any other child out there.

I am not too sure on what to do. He told me that if she has any episodes she can go right back on it, but what’s the point of taking her off then?

I’m Okay!!

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I have a couple of voice mail’s and emails checking on me…. I didn’t realize it had been so long LOL. Time flies when you’re having fun!

I’m okay. I’ve been on vacation and started it in Reno and arrived in Sacramento today to do my sister’s baby shower tomorrow.

Sunday we’ll be on our way home and will be stopping by Gino’s parents to visit them. Then, I’ll be back to blogging. I had to share this precious picture though, Gino snapped it this morning….

Tiona’s 10th Birthday

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My littlest sister, Tiona turned 10 on Friday. Friday night we went out to dinner with her and had a pretty fun time, but yesterday we went to her birthday party and had A BLAST! I honestly can’t believe how much fun I had. It was at the skating ring and when I showed up I had no intentions on skating. I finally caved, put the skates on and took Jayden out. He actually was doing really well for it being his first time.

It really had me thinking while out there skating with my little man that it saddens me that we don’t do a lot of things with just the two of us. I think it’s important for him and me that we do something with just the two of us at least once every two weeks. He needs that. I need that.

Ella was great, which was shocking. My sister Britney took care of her while I spent my quality time with Jayden. She was cute and everyone oooooed and ahhhhed over her, and she loved the attention she got.

Picture time…… oh… my sister’s date on the pics hasn’t been set – so don’t mind the date 🙂 It’s pretty wrong.

My cute little man sporting his new haircut


Ella looks intoxicated, maybe too much ice cream???

Jayden was really enjoying the bubbles…. you’d think the kid never seen them before


Ella holding her brother’s new recorder – she was all smiles

She caught me… a picture of me I didn’t know was taken.


This is Ella with my dad ~ this morning while snagging these pics off my sister’s myspace Ella saw this pic and said, “Papa.” I was kinda shocked that she remembered since we’re not around him too much, but I thought it was kinda neat – so I thought I’d document it. So, Ella with her Papa.


I’m not Mama anymore

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Ella has learned something new. Something that stabs my heart. It’s cute, and I giggle when she says it, but it just shows that she’s growing up. I’m not Mama. I’m Mommy. And she emphasizes the eeeeeee. Her little voice sounds so cute when she says it, but I still wish I was still Mama. It took Jayden a few years to stop saying Mama. I like Mama.

I’m also too loud for Ella. My friend, Celeste, was over yesterday and we were laughing and Ella gave us a dirty look and plugged her ears. I can’t believe she even knew that’s what she’s supposed to do. Then we laughed about that and she plugged her ears again.

I haven’t been sewing. I haven’t even been stalking people’s blogs looking for ideas and tutorials on things I can sew. I’ve been SWAMPED with work. I have so much I need to get done and I anticipate this going on all throughout next week. Then, I’m taking 2 whole days to myself to focus completely on sewing. I have to finish my niece’s quilt and Jayden’s Simpson’s quilt that I started. I want to work more on purses and I even want to take a class.

Our trip in pictures and some words

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Our trip to California was quick. We had such a fun time though. Friday after Jayden got out of school we took off and got into town around 8:30pm. At 10:30 pm we went to the movies with my sister while my mom watched the kids. We saw that 3D My Bloody Valentine movie – I actually really liked it!

Saturday I picked up my niece Alana so that she could go to the birthday party. She is such a beautiful little girl. I hadn’t seen her since she was 6 weeks old, so it was an amazing reunion. And so fun to watch her and Ella with each other.

We went to Chuck E Cheese for Vani’s 2nd Birthday. Ella was in HEAVEN there! She’d never been to anything like it before, so her eyes lit up and she was having the time of her life. The little smarty pants even figured out that you needed tokens and would take the token and try to put it in the machine.

We finally got a picture of all of the cousins together. This is the first time that they’ve all been together at the same time. Sad it took so long, but we FINALLY got it!!

Then on Sunday morning we woke up early and went to Stockton to see Gino’s mom and little brother, Gabriel. We took them to Arroyo’s, which is probably the best Mexican food I’ve ever had in my life. It was a nice visit. I really do enjoy visiting with his mom.


After lunch on Sunday we headed on our way home, but we had one more stop to make. We were going to do a surprise visit to Gino’s dad and step-mom’s house. We pulled up and they were so happy to see us. We only stayed for a couple hours, then we ventured on our way home and arrived at 9:30pm. And we went straight to bed.



So, it was a quick, but very enjoyable trip.

My Superstar Kids

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For the past few weeks Ella’s been saying please. She says it anytime that she wants something. The cutest is when she gets a book and comes running over saying boo boo boo and then peeeaaase peeeaaase peeeassse and screams it if you don’t do what it is that she’s saying please for. It’s really cute.

Something else that I thought was adorable is she’s been noticing if something bad is going to happen when she watches cartoons she’s says, “Uh oh! DON’T” This is like if they’re going to run into something, or like in Enchanted when Jizelle is hanging off the big board (UGH I can’t think of what these things are called) you know, in the beginning of the movie when she’s knocking on the castle door when she’s in New York and slips and is hanging on. Ella was yelling NO! DON’T!! UH OH!!! It was so neat to see how smart she is and how she knew that she in was trouble. Watching this little girl’s brain work is really amazing.

She is such a joy to have in my life.

I wanted to say something really quick about my little man. At the last parent teacher conference his teacher told me how he doesn’t like to take his spelling test – freaks out with any kind of testing. I would work on his spelling words with him, but I guess it wasn’t enough. I felt so bad, but I found the solution. For Christmas he got a Didj and last week we put his spelling words inside of it and on Friday he took his spelling test. His teacher was so proud of him that she brought it out to the car for me to see how well he did! He got 9 out of 10 right – on the word form he mixed up o and r, but it was their first week have to write a sentence after the spelling test and he did it!!!! I’m so proud of him.