Photo Update - Hold onto Your Britches

On May 15 we went to an Austin Smiles picnic for cleft families.  It was SO nice to be around other cute cleft kids and have it not be a big deal at all.  So many sweet little faces!  We had some juice and cookies and got to take a free train ride around the park.  Good times!

Mama and Mia - man, I could just gobble her up!

Papa and daddy's girl.

Family ride on the train.

Look how perfect her little lip looks, and it's only been 6 months since surgery.  Her scaring is so minimal and such a blessing that she got my great surgery recovery genes instead of her papa's.  :)

Papa helping Mia wave at everybody from the train.  The beautiful little girl behind us was born with the same kind of clefting as Mia.

Mama and Mia - and the back of my new haircut.  :)

They had these cute "Austin Smiles" shirts that had two band-aids crossing each other with a smiley face in the middle where they overlapped.  They were so cute!  Unfortunately they just had one or two of them that they taped to the picnic pavilion to mark the spot.  I totally would have loved one!  So, for the past few nights, my creative juices have been running rampant.  My new little "hobby" is going to be possibly making some shirts with cute little cleft message on them.  :)  Can't wait to rock them on Mia and I and possibly sell them online with a portion of the proceeds going to Smile Train - an organization that helps repair cleft lips and palates all over the world.  You can check them out and/or make a donation at their site: http://www.smiletrain.org/  I'm so excited to start to research this more and get started on this new venture!  :)

On a different note, the 20th of May was the anniversary of Zeus's mom's birthday.  (Her birthday is the day after my own mom's birthday, so it will be easy for Mia to remember when her grandma's birthdays are.)  It's been almost a year and a half since she passed away and all of the family decided to get together in El Paso to celebrate her life and to attend a memorial mass.  You know what that means... a 9 hour drive each way to and from El Paso.  We haven't made the drive with Mia since December and were worried how she'd do, but she was a trooper.  Our good friend Carlos came with us and all of Zeus's siblings were able to make it.  It was so nice to be able to see family and hang out together.

Stopping on the way to El Paso to feed Mia and stretch our legs.  Mia walking between Tio Carlos and papa.

Then back to the car for more driving.  She's so tiny, that precious baby girl of mine!

Her Tio Tuco thought he could help fatten her up by giving her one of his ice cream sandwiches.  It was a huge hit and needless to say, she LOVED it!  I think if we weren't trying to get some weight on her for surgery I never would have allowed my baby girl to have a bite of an ice cream sandwich, let alone let her eat almost the whole thing!

We ate SO good while we were there in El Paso.  Man, can the Moreno clan cook!  The first night we had two different kinds of chicken mole - green and red.  The red is my FAVORITE!!!  It's got chocolate in it and is BOMBAY.  Tons of friends of the family came over and we sat around and ate and chatted and ate and laughed and ate and chatted some more.  :)  The next night we grilled and everyone came back over to hang out and eat and chat some more!  It was so nice and laid back and so fun to see so many family and friends!

Tio Carlos and Tia Bertha taking a break from working hard in the kitchen.

Cousin Jessica - such a cutie pie!

Zeus in his element.  :)

DJ checking out what's cooking and loving his water gun that I got him.

Tia Lupe and Tio Tuco

David, Tio Danny (Zeus's younger brother) and Zeus (yeah, he IS that much taller).

Violeta (David's wife and family friends) and I

Me and my man - taking a small break from the grill.

David (aka Cookie) and Violeta - lovely newlyweds  :)

Cousins DJ, Chayo (Rosario) and Carlos

All the kiddos gathered around the cakes for grandma Lina.

Their cute idea was to have Mia blow out the candles for grandma Lina since she was the youngest.  She can't blow yet though since her palate hasn't been repaired yet, so they all blew together.  :)

Tio Danny, friends Luis, David and Violeta along with Zeus, chilling in the backyard.

The yummy tres leches cake (top) and ice cream cake (bottom).

Most of the crew - Bertha, Carmen, Luis, Carlos, Darcie (me), Zeus, Rodrigo, Rebeca, Ramon, Cookie, Violeta, Lupe, Tuco, Danny and Hilda

Tio Tuco, Tia Lupe, and cousins Jessica (Tuco's oldest), DJ (Danny's second son) and Chayo (Lupita's daughter)

Mia conned Tia Lupe and Tio Tuco into feeding her some of the ice cream cake.  She's let out a squeak every time she was ready for more and squealed when Lupe walked off for a second to grab a napkin.

But of course, who could refuse this sweet little face?  :)

Ohhh... cold yummy ice cream cake!

Mia with Tio Danny - look at how cute and long her hair is getting!  :)

jammies in the bag and I looked up just as she went off the end of the bed.  My heart stopped and I saw her descent from the bed in horrible slow motion.  I felt like the worst mom in the world as I ran and snatched her up and snuggled her.  Zeus was upset, I was upset, Mia was upset and mama felt lower than low.  I snuggled and snuggled and snuggled her, all the while profusely telling her how sorry mommy was and worrying that I'd just killed my child.  It was horrible.  HORRIBLE.  We watched her like a hawk for signs of a concussion.  Besides the goose-egg on her head an next to her eye, she thankfully survived.  I have been SO careful not to leave her anywhere that she could possibly fall.  I didn't think it would ever happen under my watch.  :(  Luckily we made it through the trip alive and mostly well and she even did pretty good on the trip back to home.

On the way back from El Paso we stopped at a McDonald's so we could all grab a dollar hamburger and let Mia have some much needed time out of her car seat.  She was a big hit with all the kids there. 

It was funny, they all gathered in a circle around her and were patting her and saying how cute she was.  Music to a mama and papa's ears.  :)

When we finally pulled into our driveway, it was about 10:30 pm.  We got Mia out and started unloading the car and I was surprised to have Zeus stop right at our porch.  He said, "Oh look, we have a little friend."  There, cowering by the wall by our front door was a baby black bird.  It must have survived falling from the nest (it wasn't TEENY), but there was a little bit of blood on the sidewalk there.  Zeus went in and got a towel to catch it in and we brought it in the house to take care of to make sure it would survive the night.  Zeus put some bread crumbs in with the bird and turned the laundry basket upside down over it in the laundry room.  I put in a little shallow dish of water but had my doubts as to whether or not it was old enough to feed itself.  I woke up in the morning to the squawking of the baby bird, which was kind of fun and made me think for a minute about getting a pet bird.  Just for a second though.  The poor thing hadn't eaten anything so I got a left over syringe we had from one of Mia's old meds.  I rinsed it out and sucked up some bread crumbs and water and fed the poor little thing.  More on it's cool release tomorrow after I download the pictures.  :)

Little bird under the laundry basket - and yes, for those of you who notice everything like I do, yes it did poop there on the carpet.  :)

Feeding the big baby bird.

And last but definitely not least, my big handsome man celebrated a birthday on the 27th.  He turned.... drum roll... thirty-NINE.  Next year is the big four-oh as I quickly informed him!  :)  Muahahahaha!  Evil wife, I know.  But I made up for it by making him a BOMBAY birthday cake.  I'd never made it before, but it turned out even better than I could have hoped!  Okay, so it wasn't beautiful, but it was YUMMY!  Zeus's friend Jim and his girlfriend Andrea came into town that day and got to help us celebrate.

Three tens and nine ones = 39!  :)  

Before they hit the town I made sure Z got to blow out the candles and we all had a slice of cake. (Zeus was rinsing of some residual toothpaste from his shirt RIGHT before the photo - classic!)

YUM! Double layered triple chocolate fudge cake with a middle layer of homemade cream cheese frosting topped by dark cherry pie filling and frosted with homemade chocolate cream cheese frosting.  YUM!  Oh, and did I mention YUM!?!?!?  :)

Andrea and Jim out on the town with Zeus.

Jim and Zues - guess Andrea was feeling a bit tipsy by the time this one was taken!  lol