Sandoogans' Log

Shit! It's been a hot minute since the last time I blogged about anything. Much has happened since I blogged, but I don't feel like getting into it, at least not today. Main reason being is I'm lazy, but happy I was finally able to get my blog back. I had been locked out for over a year. Well, not locked out, but I think my main domain got hacked. If you try to access sandoogans.com it'll take you to some asian website. It is partially my fault because apparently I failed to update my card to have my domain automatically renew. When I tried to get back in, I was able to view my blogs on my end, but it was no longer accesible for me to share. Glad to back, see ya again in a year. Just kidding, just kidding, maybe.

  Two years ago I took this picture outside of the Marie Calendar's on Washington Blvd. I remember feeling excited and in disbelief that it was finally happening. We were finally on our way to becoming home owners. I must have looked like a weirdo taking a picture of this sign. I didn't care. I was so happy, nervous and scared. It felt like a dream. It didn't feel real at all.  I wasn't too familiar with Whittier, truth be told I'm still not. I pretty much only knew Rio Hondo, uptown and the Greenway Trail. That's pretty much it. The little I knew I remember loving. I always thought Whittier was a cute, quaint city. I never imagined myself living here. I'm not knocking it by any means whatsoever. Maybe at the time I felt it was far, or something.  I guess, somehow, it was meant to be for us to end up here. I freaking love it so much, so far. There's so much to do here. Whittier is HUGE. Sometimes I get overwhelmed with how much I want to try, and see, an...

  My birthday shoutout to Bolonee. Today is Bolonee’s birthday. I’ve know this guys since we were in 4th grade. That was my last year Stanford Elementary before we moved and I had to go to a completely brand new school: San Miguel. When I say new, I mean built from the ground up. I remember being so impressed by how beautiful it was when I first set foot on it. I didn’t see Bolonee again until we were in jr high. We became best buds. I’m happy that we’re still in touch, and close friends, till this day. We’re both family folk now. Sometimes I still trip out on how we’re adults now, and have kids who are our age when we started kicking it. I remember in high school after being inspired by the movie My Best Friend’s Wedding, we said if we weren’t married by the time we were 28 we’d get married. Thank god for both of us it didn’t come to those extremes. That would have been the ultimate sacrifice haha! 

  Sir Pugsley came into our lives last month. It was quite serendipitous the way everything came about. We had been looking and going through several rescue shelters trying to adopt, but weren't having any luck. It had gotten stressful, and heartbreaking after awhile. I had given up hope, and stopped looking.  It was actually my sister that told me about Pugsley. It seriously happened from one day to another. It was all very fast, and felt very meant. I didn't tell the girls about Pugsley because I wanted to surprise them. It was so sweet seeing their reactions when they first saw their new pup, especially Adele's. She didn't know what to make of this walking stuffed animal.  Sami has done a great job of watching after Pugsley, so far. Sometimes she'll get distracted and forget to feed him at his scheduled time. We try to feed him around the same time each day. Emma is Pugsley's protector. She'll get extremely upset if anyone raises their voice at him. She d...

Sami placing her horchata order. Horchata craving satisfied. Super cute coffee truck. Last Friday I was scrolling through instagram, and one of the many food accounts that I follow (I should seriously start unfollowing some), Don Abel's Churros, popped up on my feed. I had been wanting to try them out for quite sometime, but with the pandemic, and the kids, and laziness, I never really got around to it. I finally decided that now is the time to give this spot a try. I asked Sami if she was down to go with me on a churro run, she was. She's usually always down to go on last minute errands with me, even if it's just a curbside pick up, which it usually is. She asked if there was gonna be other food trucks because she was in the mood for some horchata, I said yes, and off we went.  The original spot was off of Pioneer and Washington, but it was relocated to Pioneer High school. I thought there was going to be a lot more food trucks, but then again, I really didn't walk aro...

We managed to take family pictures last year. I am a couple months shy of having blogged one year ago. I wasn't really feeling it to be quite honest, with the pandemic and all. Even if I was feeling it, there wasn't much to say. I didn't exactly venture out a lot last year. I was home the majority of the time with my family. I wasn't working much in the beginning, and when I finally started working again, it was very sporadic.  That being said, I must confess I didn't completely hate 2020. I'm not denying it was a tough year with many obstacles because it was. But it was also a great year in some other aspects. I got to be home with the girls, I got to be with Adele her full first year (and then some), I got to spend time with Mr. A, and we finally got our house! These are things that I'm extremely grateful for. Everything pretty much happened right when we moved in, no joke. We moved in, two weeks later, everything shuts down. I was just happy being in our ...

Adele . So, it turns out I'm a tad late with this blog. I had totally forgotten about it until I logged into post the Christmas card one; and there it was in my drafts. I didn't even end up posting that one either. I know I've gotten bad with my blogging, but I feel I've gotten way worse now. Things have also been crazy since April of last year. I was pregnant and ended up being placed on bed rest because my pregnancy became high risk. Although I felt physically fine, I wasn't. My doctor advised me to keep my activity to a minimal, no lifting anything heavier than 5 pounds, no walking (other than around the house), no stress, no nothing! I think it brought me down because I was stuck at home. My only outings were going to my million doctor appts. It got to the point where I looked forward to those because it meant leaving the house.  Those infinite appointments ended up working out because they were able to see that my amniotic fluid was low. They weren...

This was gonna be the year that we were gonna take family pictures and send out Christmas cards. We use to send out regular Christmas cards every year, not sure why we stopped. I think most people throw them out, us included. We do keep the pictures ones though. I love seeing how much the kids change throughout the years. Maybe next year I'll finally start the tradition of family picture Christmas cards, but for now here's an impromptu picture of the girls meeting Santa. As you can see, Emma looks starstruck, Sami like an experienced big sister and Adele like she's over it. Wishing you all a merry Christmas!

The day we found out we were expecting. Baby announcement  It feels so good to finally say I'm in my last trimester. I've had a few complications along the way which has me on restrictions, so being here is a blessing. I remember when I first found out I was pregnant I was in denial for a good month. I took four pregnancy tests and was still in shock. I couldn't believe it. We had been trying for a bit and nothing was happening. I found out I was pregnant in a Starbucks restroom; true story. I had mentioned to my friend that I was late but didn't think anything of it. I just figured my cycle was changing or something. She said I had to take a test because she was sure I was and I was sure I wasn't. Needless to say, she was right and I was wrong. I'm glad she was with me when I found out. So far this pregnancy I've managed to keep my maternity clothes shopping to a minimum. I've bought two pants, one pair of shorts and a top. All on sale. I d...

Today Sami was blown away by what a CD was. I had to explain to her it played music. I ordered Brandi Carlile's CD through amazon and popped into the dusty CD player in my car. The first song played and Sami was impressed. When song number two started she was totally surprised. "It has more than one song?!" I realized then that she truly had no idea what a CD was. I was a little bummed by this. I can't believe my child was part of the next generation that wasn't going to know the joy of unwrapping a brand new CD. I took out the booklet and showed her the artwork. I told her it even had the lyrics so she can sing along. Then she totally blew me away when she asked: "Mami, can we add this album to my playlist...oh, wait never mind we can't." Sami thought that because it was a CD the music could not be added to her iPad. I had to explain that I got most of my music through my CD collection. I explained we put the disc in the computer and it'll ...

Shameless old picture of myself. Just cause it's a birthday post.  I love my birthday. I think I've said it in past posts before, but me being the lazy arse that I am, didn't bother to look. Let's just pretend that I did. Ha! I tend to get the birthday blues a lot. I'm not sure why. Well, maybe it's because I build it up so much in my head as this big event. Technically for me it is, but yea. This year was no different than the past years. I got down about it. The only difference was I couldn't seem to shake the blues away, AND I really didn't feel like doing anything at all. Everything felt kind of forced on my part. I felt I was doing thing just for the sake of doing things on my birthday. I'm not sure if it's because of my hormones or because I've finally reached that alleged age where people don't care about their birthdays. I remember when I was a kid, even as an adult, I'd get so excited about my birthday. Older people ...

New Year, new me. Ehhhhh j/k First off, happy New Year! I hope everyone had a great time ringing it in. It was a very low key one for us this time around. We spent it at the parental units house, with my brother, uncle and cousin. It was nice and chill. We played some board game and ended the night with an intense couple of games of UNO. This year I decided not to do any resolutions. I usually don't anyway but had started up with them a couple of years ago. I don't buy the hype of "new year, new you" bullshit. I feel you don't have to wait for a New Year to make changes in your life that you feel need improvement. If you're about that life, props to you, I'm just not one of them. I had already started making minor changes prior to the New Year anyway. I've been staying off of facebook a lot lately. I'm not anti-facebook, or anything, it's just it was consuming a lot of my time. I was going to bed feeling guilty, about not spending more ...

One of my favorite things about hanging out with my friends is seeing our kids interact. It still amazes me each time I'm around them how our kids are now establishing friendships with each other. Sami is at the age I was when I met one of my oldest friends within the group. I'm not sure if they'll make lifelong friendships with each other, which I would totally love, but for now I'm enjoying seeing them grow together. I hope they grow up to have the same love for each other that we do. We might get into it at times, but at the end of day of the day the love remains the same.

I realized not too long ago that Sami is now the age I was when I met some of my closest friends. I have a few friends that I met when I was way younger, but I'm not sure I'd call them friends. We don't text or call, we keep in touch thanks to social media. Not complaining, I'm grateful to still be able to see what they're up to through these forums, but I don't think we'd be considered friends. If that makes sense. I have vivid memories of the few friends that I met at her age. One of them I met at my abuelita's house. I remember going outside to play with him and the rest of the guys. As it has been most of my life, I was the only girl. I didn't mind. I always felt a little too rough around the edges to play with girls my age. It most definitely paid off in adulthood because somehow I always felt ahead of the game when it came to guy bullshit. I remember my abuelita wouldn't let me go outside to play because she said I'd fall and scrap...

Group shot! Blurry but cute.   El Billy y Jeff. SP   Super sweaty but happy to finally see The Pumpkins. It's been twenty years since the last time I saw the Pumpkins. Twenty. Fucken. Years. Ok, maybe not twenty, I did win tickets to a secret show thanks to KROQ (back when it was cool) and got to see them in 2000. That's besides the point and does not make for a good blog! Besides it wasn't a true concert, it was a secret show. Ha! Smashing Pumpkins has always been ONE of my all time favorite bands. I remember being a kid, walking into Music+ (that was a magical place where they sold nothing but music; true story) and picking up my first CD: Siamese Dreams. That was the first CD I was able to buy with my own money. I remember I couldn't wait to get home and play it. Even the unwrapping of the CD was a spiritual experience for me. I made sure to be careful as to not to damage the booklet when I took it out of the CD case. I carefully placed...

Sami's cowgirl attire was on point. Lots of denim and boots. Sami and the birthday girl! Today was the first official day that we let Sami venture off on her own. She was inviting to go horseback riding with one of her friends. For some reason we thought they were going to Griffith Park. Wrong. They were going horseback riding in the city of Norco. At first Mr. A and I were not going to let her go. We felt it was too far and didn't feel comfortable sending her off. Then we agreed she could go if one us of went along with her. Sami ultimately said she didn't want us to go (are we there now?) and just wanted to go with her friend and her family. After speaking with her friend's mom a few times (we had met in person before) I was convinced. The hard part was going to be convincing Mr. A. I knew I'd be getting my ear chewed off but figured I'd take one for the team. Sure enough, I got my ear chewed off but managed to convince Mr. A to let Sami go. Needle...

All after the movie.  Finally took the big step of taking Emma to the movies. I was a little nervous for the most part, I wasn't sure how'd she'd behave but she did well. We watched Hotel Transylvania 3 and all loved it. We're big fans of those movies. Emma sat through most of it. One of her favorite snacks is popcorn so I knew we had to have to that in order her to distract her. Towards the end of movie is when she felt the need to get out of her seat. I think this had to do with Sami moving around in hers a lot. Luckily there was plenty of room for her to move around, and to be quite honest, I think the teenager I was sitting next to was way more annoying than both of my niñas combined.

Blessed. Emma. Preem Supremes. Dad Duty.  Ready for Disney! 1 Party People! Birthday Kids. I can't believe I haven't blogged about anything since February! I think it's combo of laziness, not having much to talk about and having my best ideas at night when I'm about to go to bed lol. Some cool stuff has happened for me and my family. We had some birthdays (Mr. A, Emma and my pops) and Sami went off to rock camp. The birthdays this year were pretty rad. We went out to eat for Mr. A's birthday as is tradition now. That's probably one of my new favorite things that we do now as a family. We get together (parental and siblings included) and go out to eat somewhere. We do the usual embarrassing thing by the telling our server we have a birthday so they can embarrass the birthday kid. Except me, I'm always down for birthday shit. This year Sami finally got to go to rock camp. We had been waiting for this moment for quite some...

I am loved. I am funny. I am friendly. I am fun.  I am awesome. I am appreciative. I am loving. I am beautiful. I am pretty cool. I am sympathetic. I am a walking juke box. I am a rockera at heart. I am a mother. I am a wife. I am a daughter. I am a sister. I am a good friend. I am a proud Mexican. I am me. I told myself when I reached my 200th blog I would write one listing my good attributes since the previous one was listing my  least  favorable ones. I don't blog nearly as much as I use to, but it's nice to see I've managed to at least mumble about 200 things. 

El Gran Hotel Templo Mayor Xochimilco Palacio Nacional La Basílica de Guadalupe La Catedral Templo Mayor La Catedral El 420 La Casa Azul  Templo Mayor   Teotihuacan, at the top of the sun temple. El Angel de la Independencia  Meeting point in case of an earthquake. These were located all over the city. Cafe de Tacuba: one of the oldest restaurants in the city.  Frida Kahlo's dresses. Palacio Nacional, Diego Rivera murals.  Never in a million years would I have imagined that I would fall I love in with Mexico City the way I did. I remember being a kid and hearing all these crazy tales about the city. I'm sure there's some truth to them, but the point is I never wanted to go to D.F. I think cause of all the stories I had been told; by multiple sources. I even had a chance to go in my teens but declined the invite. My parents had a manda to pay La Virgen and asked me if I wanted to join t...