The Vallecillo’s

First I would like to point out that my actions were not spurred by love, but rather by duty. The beast, I mean Belle, is a dog put on this earth with the sole purpose of driving me absolutely crazy.

Now that we have cleared that up…today Belle’s toe-nail got tangled on her pillow as she descended from her 2nd floor suite (OK, a crate on top of a crate) successfully yanking the whole thing right out of its socket. As expected, bleeding ensued and I was obligated to come to the rescue in order to stop the bleeding. No, really…who wants blood all over their house. It had to be done, I had no choice, I was not happy, I was not pleased…really!

Hooray! Mommy gets 5-hours to herself…I mean, Larsen gets an education twice a week!

Today Larsen started his, ummmmm…third year of school? Pre-pre-pre-kinder? Post-post-daycare? Oh heck, whatever 3 and 4-year olds go to these days. Although it is a huge relief that he is now used to the idea of school, and actually enjoys going, we are a bit disturbed that he is not making a huge fuss over us leaving anymore. I mean, we are very cool, hip and fun…shed a tear or two every once-in-a-while, won’t you?

This weekend we were in Atlanta for a “surprise” birthday party for my brother Papo. Mandi, Larsen, my mom and I all flew to Atlanta on Friday and settled into our cozy Holiday Inn rooms for the weekend. Although this whole thing was supposed to be a complete surprise, but after 65-years of dealing with sneaky-people like us you are not that easily fooled. Nonetheless, everything came together very nicely and we all had a great time together.

My over-achiever sister Cuca decided she wanted to create this DVD depicting Papo’s life using hundreds of pictures (which she scanned one-by-one by hand! ) to music. I had the job of putting this masterpiece together, and by 1 a.m. Saturday morning I was almost done (anal-retentive-perfectionist at your service). The next day we tweaked the heck out of that video well into the afternoon, and just like the party it all came together in the end.

We had a great visit, but like every great trip it all came to an end too quickly. Hopefully we’ll make it back to Atlanta and visit again sooner than later.

Tonight Larsen had his first sleep-over (it is a sleep-over even when others are the ones coming to your house, right?) with is cousin Landon. They had quite a bit of fun together before the nightly toothbrushing, Mickey-Mouse-Theater, prayer and finally lights-out ritual.

Even though what you see here is two very cute boys sleeping together, this did not last as Larsen is a horrible bed-mate so we ended moving Landon over to the guest bedroom so that he could get his share of shut-eye for the night.