Sandoogans' Log

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.