Happy 40th birthday Toni!!!!!!!!

Happy 40th birthday Toni!

This was a big week for the Vargas family. This weekend Toni hit a major milestone in her life by celebrating her 40th birthday! To celebrate we took Friday off work and started the day with Toni throwing out her back moving a box of clothes while looking for a jacket for Emma. :-( That night we went out to a club/bar called Cabo's for some drinks and dancing (for Toni at least). Toni's back was still hurting her but the margarita's seemed to help take the edge off. :-) We had a good time and it was a nice celebration. Then to continue the celebration, we had dinner with family last night at Toni's favorite place - Shogun. Me and the girls got her a new sewing machine and a bunch of supplies for it. She's really enjoying sewing and hopefully it'll provide her with many years of enjoyment.

Yesterday we started the day early with Toni going to the doctor for her back and it looks like she pulled it pretty bad. The Doctor did some stretching and put her back into alignment and that seemed to help her with the pain. In the afternoon we went to the kid's school for the Halloween Fall Festival. The girls had a lot of fun dressing up in their Halloween outfits. Caitlin was Rapunzel and Emma was Tinkerbell. Caitlin had a lot of fun doing crafts, she made a Jack-O-Lantern from paper cut outs and enjoyed playing with the playdough making a castle. Emma had fun in the room that they could decorate cupcakes and then spent a lot of time walking around pushing a chair for balance! She's doing great with her walking and I think it won't be long before she lets go completely and starts walking on her own. She's also doing great holding her bottle and drinking by herself! The only other news to report is that she's starting to try table foods. She enjoyed some of the rice at Shogun last night and really enjoys Honey Nut Cheerios. She's got another 3 teeth about to come out to add to the 5 that are currently out. The girls school pictures came out this week and they came out great! The pictures I've posted are pictures that I took with my phone so they're not really indicative of the quality.

Looking back, it's hard to believe sometimes how fast time has gone by. When Toni and I met, she had just turned 29! I look at the life we've created and am thankful for everything we have. Happy birthday Honey, I hope we have at least another 40 together! :-)

So much to report!

This was a busy and extremely eventful week! The week started out on a bad note. I started the week sick and didn't really get to feeling back to myself until the last couple of days. I ended up coming home early on Monday and staying home sick on Tuesday. On Wednesday night around 12:30am, Caitlin came running into our room and started throwing up. :-( After she was done, she seemed in good spirits and wanted to drink a little water and went back to bed. Within half an hour, she was back in our room throwing up again. We decided to keep her in our room and about every 20-30 minutes she would wake up and start throwing up small amounts. We were up the rest of the night with her and by the time I went to work, she still wasn't doing better. Toni was taking Emma to the Doctor to get her flu shot and took Caitlin in as well. Luckily the Doctor was able to fit her in and the diagnosis was a stomach virus. Caitlin was finally able to keep some liquid down and pee so we let her try to get some rest the rest of the day. The next day (Friday) I stayed home with her. She still didn't have an appetite and didn't want to drink too much but by the end of the day was back to her old self. She was so cute telling me about her Doctor appointment. She kept telling me that the Doctor pushed on her stomach and patted the bottoms of her feet. Watching her act out the visit was cute. Thankfully she seems to be back to 100% now.

Emma kept us pretty busy throughout the week as well. This week saw a lot of "firsts" for her. She has started waving which is cute because she does it whenever she sees anyone now. As we were walking toward the pumpkin patch she was waving hello to everyone. :-) She also started nodding her head to say yes now which is cool. I asked her if she wanted a bottle and she kept nodding her head yes! The biggest thing she started doing though is holding her bottle by herself! We got some handles for her bottle and she'll now hold it all by herself while she's eating. She's growing up so fast!

This weekend we didn't do too much. We did take the girls to the Pumpkin patch which was fun. Caitlin didn't seem too interested in it because she had gone with her school on Tuesday for a field trip. Toni had taken the day off to go with her and said that she had fun. We also went to church on Saturday night and Caitlin had fun coloring pictures and was very proud of her binoculars that she made out of toilet paper rolls. :-)

This week we also saw my Playstation 3 die. I'm pretty bummed out because I use it all the time as our blu-ray player and to watch Netflix on so hopefully there will be some good sales during the holidays and I'll be able to replace it. This week I also bought Toni's birthday present for her which she has already opened and started using! I got her a really nice sewing machine that also does embroidery. She's been enjoying sewing with my mom's old machine and I think she'll get a lot of use out of it. She spent the afternoon with my mom sewing a dress for Caitlin. I'll post pics of it once she's done.

This is going to be a big week for us. On Saturday, Toni will celebrate her 40th birthday! We're taking Friday off and Toni wants to go to a club to celebrate! Hope everyone has a great week!

10 months!

This was a BUSY week for us. Monday marked Emma's 10 month birthday and to mark the occasion, I had to leave work early because Emma's fever that she had been fighting since the weekend re-appeared. I took her home and then took her to the Doctor. The Doctor couldn't find anything wrong and gave us the option to give Emma a catheter to do a urine collection so she could check for a urinary tract infection. I quickly turned down this option because her fever wasn't constant and she was in good spirits. The Doctor agreed and said to continue monitoring her and if the fever was still around on Thursday or if her fever hit 104, we'd have to look at doing it. I didn't want her to go through a catheter and figured that if it came down to it, I'd figure another way to get a urine sample for the Doctor if she needed it. I stayed home with her again on Tuesday because her fever was hovering around 101-102. By Wednesday everything seemed to have cleared up until the end of the day and hasn't been back since. I think she just had a virus or was teething.

Caitlin this week has insisted that we call her "She-Hulk". Besides the Hulk cartoon, she also enjoys an old cartoon from the 1990's called "Reboot", which she pronounces "Ree-dee-boot" :-) It's amazing how fast she learns, she can now even say the days of the week in Spanish! It's cute to listen to her run around the house saying them.

Friday I had my followup appointment with the Urologist and everything looks good! There was no more microscopic blood in my urine and they're writing off the incident as a small kidney stone! :-) It's such a relief to be able to put this whole thing behind me! I've been on call all week which hasn't been any fun at all. Of the 6 nights I've been on call so far, I've been woken up after midnight on 5 of them... Thankfully tomorrow I'll be turning over on call duty. :-)

This week should be nice. Toni has a couple of days off and is going on a class field trip to the pumpkin patch with Caitlin on Tuesday. Then we're going again next weekend to get our pumpkin. Thursday she's taking another vacation day to take Emma to another Doctor appointment. Hopefully she'll be able to relax a little and enjoy her time off. Hope everyone has a great week!

Trying to walk!

This week went by pretty fast. The biggest news was that Emma started trying to walk with support of a walker this week. She didn't do it for very long but she made it a few feet by herself. I don't think it'll be much longer before she's walking. She's growing so fast and now has 2 top teeth out and 3 coming out on the bottom! She's been fighting a fever this weekend which seems like it's cleared up now. We've been keeping cool wash cloths on her head and giving her Tylenol. If she's has a fever in the morning, we'll call and schedule an appointment with the Doctor.

Caitlin is doing good too. She's found a new favorite food - bowtie pasta which she calls "Butterflies". The girls had pictures taken at school this week and we should get to see how they came out very soon.

This week should be busy. Friday I'm off work. I have my followup with the Urologist which I'm a little nervous about but I'm hoping it goes well and I can put this whole incident behind me. I'll also be running errands and we're having DirecTV installed Friday afternoon. Hopefully if the weather and my on-call cooperates, we'll take the girls to the pumpkin patch next weekend. Hope everyone has a great week!

Happy birthday Star!

This was a pretty busy week for us. We'd like to wish Caitlin and Emma's Cousin Star a Happy 15th birthday! This weekend we went to Corpus Christi for Star's quinceanera. We all had a good time and the girls seemed to enjoy the party. Caitlin had a lot of fun dancing and by the end of the night, both girls were fast asleep! Caitlin was extremely sociable this week as you can see by the pictures. She sat and read a book with another kid and his mom at Barnes and Noble and then started talking to another man about his dog. She definitely seems like she's coming out of her shell! Emma had another good week. She's such a happy baby! She now definitely knows her name and whenever we say it, she'll look at us. She's also doing good walking with help and I think it won't be long before she tries to take a couple of steps on her own. I'm going to keep this post short today. Hope everyone has a great week!