Happy New Year

I hope all of you enjoy this special time with your family and loved ones. May God bless each of you in this New Year and all your goals and resolutions may become a reality in 2007. It is our prayer from our family to yours....

The Sanchez-Zuritas

Simple Eating

Nap time! I will squeeze this post while they rest!
We've decided that we are going to make a revolutionary change in our diet, meaning the food we eat. I attribute this change to several things. For one, our health. Since my diagnosis of another ovarian cyst I did some research and studies conclude that they are genetic in origin but dairy products help the development of them! So a doctor told me to cut on dairy products. That is hard. We have wanted to do this for a long time (eat a vegan diet) but we have been procrastinating and using the excuse of "we'll do it gradually", yeah, that helped! *sarcastic smile* the only thing we did was linger with the cheese in our mouths! That does not work for us. Now that I "have to" cut on dairy to avoid or even reduce the size of my cyst is a huge motivator for all of us. Rick is actually stronger in that sense, he is very supportive and encouraging in the decision. Thanks honey!
Second, Mia. As a female she has all the odds against her to get ovarian cysts. I have them, my mom had them, my grandmother in my dad side had them, and my mother in law suffered from a fibroid too, WOW! So for her sake I want to teach them early on in life to take care of what they eat and train their taste buds to a healthier, simpler way of eating. It is a big change but together and with God's help, we will conquer this "monster". I am getting used to the idea of eating almost everything raw without going to the extreme, even though the doctor said that for me it will be better to have a 95% raw intake. No fats, no processed or refined food, no dairy, little sugar, etc. *sigh* The key, I think, is to organize a balanced menu plan per week and make sure to cover all the required vitamins, minerals, proteins, etc, etc. Especially for the kids in their growing years. I pray God gives me the wisdom I need to accomplish this, because I am just starting to learn all these things. I was telling Rick, if we would've known this many years ago....I guess it is never too late, right? Another thing that had pushed me to change is a book my mom in law let me borrow, it has so many eye openers and confirms what the health reform is all about.


Our food will be simple, tasty, and healthy! that is my goal and now that we are starting with a new year we will start our new food style! There are many sacrifices we will have to make, like less eating out (we love that, unfortunately), more cooking from scratch (which I love too, but need to enforce the planning area a little bit more), pay a little extra for certain things like soy cheese, boca burgers (which we'll use sparingly since it is all processed and refined!), mostly we will eat fruits, vegetables, nuts, seeds, legumes (beans), tofu, whole grains (bread), whole grain pasta, etc. I need some ideas, so if you have any feel free to share with us!


Well, today I went grocery shopping and the bill was extremely low, I guess fruits and vegetables are cheaper that all that processed food. I wanted to buy strawberries and I got the biggest one ever! just look at the picture, although Mia ate it all, she managed to take it from the counter when I was washing the dishes and ate it. She loves to take strawberries. (just ask Abuelito Pedro in Colombia!) :)


I hope she enjoyed it!

Have a nice weekend,

~Lore~

Thursday Family Night

Today we did games, games, and more games! We started a little late since Rick got home with a headache, so we waited a little until he felt better. We started playing Perfection, a game that Pabli us for Christmas, thanks Pali!!! Then we played with some animal toys that we got from Gil and Jodie, thanks guys!!! We made every single combination possible to group the animals, for example, the meat eaters and the plant eaters, the horned animals, and the non-horned animals, the ones from the feline family, the stripped ones and the ones with spots, etc, etc, etc. We took a break and had some homemade bread and hummus, yummm!

Then we played with biligual memory cards that we got from Wesely!, thanks tia Vero. To finish we played with a Noah's Ark game we have to match words and pictures. It was fun. The kids love playing games. I cannot stress enough how they get amused by the simplest things!!!

Warmly,

~Lore~

Oh! I almost forgot, last Thursday I did not post for Family night, here are some pics of that day, we played hide and seek. Rick got the best hidding spots. Dami and Mia spent several minutes looking for him!

Rick hiding in the linen closet

Rick hiding in the kitchen cabinet! How he manages to fit? I don't know!!

Our adopted family

Here are a few pictures of the family we adopted this year. This is the day we took their gifts. The kids were very happy and us too. I am very excited because I think we will be able to get the money together to help them get an apartment. With the help of many big hearted people we are getting there...Thanks to everybody that is willing to chip in for this family in necessity.

God Bless you,

~Lore~

Family

She's so cute

with his fire truck

the kids

Our weekend

We have had a very busy weekend with family. My tia Cris and prima Stefi from Ecuador were here and my cousin Rodri and family are here from Texas too, so we had many family gatherings to enjoy their company and to remember old times. On Sabbath we had lunch at my uncle's house and spent the afternoon there. The food was awesome, my tia Ciqui cooks delicious food and she made the best vegetarian milanesas (which is like breaded meat), we sang some songs, the kids (Gabie, Nena, Dami, Mia, and Eli) sang some beautiful songs too, and after sunset we had a nice time with the kids playing along kids songs that my aunt had. On Sunday the kids went out with Rick and I stayed home finishing what I had to do, wrapping gifts, getting the herbs ready, labels, etc. (That was for the home gifts we made from our vegetable garden for our family members). At night time we went to my uncle's again and had such a great time. The kids opened their gifts and we went home, very late at night! The next morning we went to my brother in law's home and the whole family was there. We ate a delicious breakfast and then opened the gifts for the kids. Then the adults found out who our secret pal was. I had Mariela as my secret pal and discovered that Todd had me as his secret pal!! Thanks Todd for all the gifts you left at my front door, especially the set of knives which came very handy! Thanks for taking out of your time to brighten my day. After that we went to my dad's house to eat some left overs from the night before and the whole family was there again. I love tis time of year since there is the opportunity to get together as a family. We were supposed to go to our adopted family to take the gifts to the kids but they called us and were not able to meet with us that day so we met them the next day and gave them their gifts. The kids were very excited to see the gifts and Michelle was too. For pics see the next post. We are so blessed to have family close by and have the privilege to spend time with each one of them. I had two sad things tough, my mom was not with us, since she is still in Ecuador with my grandmother, we missed her very much! Mami, te extranamos mucho, no es lo mismo sin ti. And my sister and family left to live in Tennessee on Tuesday. I hope to see her soon. I hope God puts us together again.
Here are some pictures of all those events, hope you enjoy them, we did! Thanks to every one of you for making this time so special.

Update

I have been really busy these days. Family is here and get togethers are often! I love this time of year because of that. I have not have any time to post since we've been out of the house most of the time and when we get home we are exhausted! Tonight I will catch up on our past few days, our family gatherings, our adopted family, etc, etc. Today seems to be a calmer day! The only thing I don't like about being out is that I got so used to be on a schedule that I feel a little lost when it comes to keeping the house, chores for the kids, bath times, and especially bed times!! Don't get me wrong, I love to spend time with family members but I am going to have to learn how to keep the house organized and the kids too when we are not even home!!!!!
Hope all of you are having a whale of a day! (too much Sea World, thank you Dami!)
~Lore~

Christmas cards

Christmas Cards are ready!

Here are some pictures of this year's Christmas cards. I bought a book on how to make greeting cards and the one for Christmas I liked was the only one that was missing the template of the tree!!!! so I had to do it from scratch, you can see the flaws! As you can tell I love making cards, it is so relaxing to me to make them!!! It is my scapegoat! In the fronto of the card is a tree with snow. The background is made out of graph paper and the letters on top read "Merry Christmas" and the bottom read "Sanchez-Zurita's" with silver pen. Inside reads "Christmas brings to mind all that matters most in life...And we realize that the things which matter most aren't really "things" at all. Blessings to you and all who have a special place in our hearts.
Then I put 4 different verses that we like, for example..."The virgin will be with child and will give birth to a son, and they will call him Immanuel—which means, "God with us." Matthew 1:23 or "For unto us a child is born, unto us a son is given: and the government shall be upon his shoulder: and his name shall be called Wonderful, Counselor, The mighty God, The everlasting Father, The Prince of Peace. Isaiah 9:6 " and then our signature.

I am giving out with the card a CD which we bought online of the Christmas Story in words and music. You can hear a sample here.

front

inside message

other view

ready with envelopes

card with CD attached

CD

I hope all of you are having a nice time,

~Lore~

Nativity Activity!

I got this beautiful, easy, and fun nativity kit at JoAnn's (this store has become my favorite!) out of foam figures. The kids loved it, even though most of it I put together with a warm glue gun, but they put most of the sheep together. oh and Dami did Mary and Joseph's eyes and mouth. After we were done they took turns to play with Joseph, Mary and Mia's favorite, baby Jesus.

Park of the week

While I was at the doctor's office my dad (thank God I have such a wonderful father!!!!) took the kids to a park close by. This was our park of the week. They waited for me there for more that an hour so I know they had fun!!! This park is big, and the playground is very nice, There were lot of kids today, are they on winter brake already? Dami and Mia are taking their nap, they were tired after so much running and fun with Tata.

Here are the pics.

They loved this one where they hold on to the little handle and Tata pushed them!

Slides and "jet skis" according to Dami

I love the tree that is in the background! the branches are so long they touch the ground.

See you next Wednesday for the next featured park!!

~Lore~

Ovarian Cyst Again!

Well, today I had my annual gynecological check up. As many of you know I had my left ovary and 20% of my right ovary removed because of two dermoid ovarian cysts but God is good, after my two surgeries I had my two blessings, my kids! Now after 5 years of my last surgery the doctor found another cyst in my right ovary. We don't know what type of cyst it is yet since I need to get an ultrasound done to confirm that. It could be a dermoid, which if that is the case surgery is the "solution", unless is another type of cyst and then maybe something else can be done. I really do not want to have another surgery, first because I don't have health insurance, these surgeries, ultrasounds, tests, anaesthesia, radiology, etc, etc, etc, are expensive and I would have to be in the hospital for at least 2 days! and that leads to my second reason, I don't want to leave my kids in any other hands than mine. Not that I don't trust Rick or my immediate family, but I cannot fathom the idea of being away from my kids. That is the reason why I decided to give up my psychology career, my job, the extra income, because I know that raising my kids is the most important job I have in life and the responsibility is huge, every day counts, every moment is crucial in their early lives. I know I won't be physically away for many days but the recovery is awful, I won't be "there" per se for a few weeks, this is major surgery what I am talking about. And my third reason is that I do not want to lose my ovary, the doctor suggested a hysterectomy if the cyst is a dermoid and it is too big. That will bring many other problems, an early menopause for one!!!! I trust God that He will take care of me as He has done always, I will put my life in His hands and He will do whatever He sees best. So, no worries...
I want to get other alternatives from surgery and typical medicine, I am going to contact a family homeopathic doctor in Colombia, getting information with natural medicine, sanatoriums, etc, etc. Thank you to my mom in law Mariela for your encouraging words and all the information! and to my sister for having all the names and websites of the sanitariums memorized, I am impressed! I made a few phone calls and wrote e-mails already so I am getting ready for whatever comes my way.
I know God has a solution and a plan, so I just have to wait for His answer.
I have my ultrasound (expensive ultrasound by the way!) due on January 4th, so after that I will have a clearer view of the situation.

If any has information or has gone through a similar situation I would love to hear from you.

God Bless,

~Lore~

My secret Pal

Thanks to my secret pal who keeps on leaving treats for me. I hope you have a nice day today, whoever you are. You surely put a smile in my face! Thanks, that is exacty what I needed.

Tackle it tuesday

Yesterday we went shopping with Rick and the kids for our adopted family. I needed to get that done before the craziness of last minute shopping begun. That was my tackle!!
We got a few toys for the two little ones but mostly we got clothes for them. Some gift certificates for the adults and teenager daughter. No before and after pics, sorry! ;)

Michelle, the mom, called me in the morning to tell me that they are not being able to find a way to move to an apartment (they live in a room in a horrible hotel) and that they need almost $1000 to move in. They cannot afford that, they are having a hard time getting enough to eat so money is the issue here. I do not how to help them. We are trying to supply for as much as we can but the need is greater. Her husband works but gets paid too little and she cannot work because she does not have money for the kid's care meanwhile, so their situation is difficult. I will update on them later in the week. How sad to see families in this type of situation, but at least I know we are doing our best to put a smile in their faces, a little at a time.

The sun is up so I have to start my day, the kids and Rick are about to wake up so I have to go. I will post again tonight after they are asleep. I am working on my Christmas cards so I will post some pics of them tonight.

Have a blessed and productive day!

~Lore~

Life continues...

As life continues, one has to lift up one's eyes to heaven and see how God is in control. I have been absent for many things are going on in my head and in my life, but life continues. My mom is doing better, I spoke to her last night and her blood pressure is stable, controlled by pills :(, but stable in any case; when she gets here she will have to start a natural treatment to clean her body off from those drugs, but she has a wonderful disposition for her life. My grandma sounded great too, thank God. She is a very very strong woman, I have never heard her cry in my life so it broke my heart to hear her like that, but she sounded so much better last night. Please keep them in your prayers.
Thanks you to the people who called us, wrote to us, and left comments on the blog. It really helps to hear you being there for us.
Warmly,
~Lore~

Feliz Cumpleanos Vero

Este mes ha sido lleno de cumpleanos y no queremos dejar de mandarle un saludo a mi querida prima Vero aunque sea tarde!!! Diciembre 12, no me olvido :) A pesar de que no nos vemos desde hace tiempo quiero que sepas que siempre te recordamos, que te queremos mucho y te agradecemos toda la ayuda que siempre nos has brindado! Que Dios te bendiga siempre a ti y la Dani. Un beso,
tu prima,
~Lore~
P.D. Dami y Mia quisieron hacer un video diferente del que siempre hacen en cumpleanos, espero te guste. Mia esta bien, se cayo al final del video pero no le paso nada!!!! :)

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Feliz Cumpleanos tia Aracelly

Quiero mandarle un abrazo fuerte a mi tia Aracelly en su cumpleanos. Tia, que Dios te de muchas bendiciones en este nuevo ano, que la paz que solo el brinda este en tu corazon es estas circunstancias de la vida. Siempre te tenemos en nuestras oraciones, en especial en este dia. Te queremos mucho, te mandamos un beso desde aca y pronto, si Dios quiere estaremos ahi dandote un abrazo en persona. Mia siempre se acuerda de ti, de su "Abi del Ecuador" Espero que te guste el canto del Dami y la Mia. Que Dios te bendiga.
~Rick, Lore, Dami y Mia~


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Sad News

Today our hearts remember the life if my grandfather, Galo Gonzalez Hidalgo, Papitolalo for us grandchildren. He past away last Saturday. He was battling with a tumor in his lung and deteriorated quiclky after the diagnosis of it being malignant. He was a great man, strong, smart, dedicated his life to build his own business, successfully, to provide for his family. Unfortunately we could not be there when he past, he lived in Ecuador, where most of my extended family lives. My mom flew down to be with him in his last days. She traveled to Ecuador on August of this year and had the opportunity to spend 2 months with him, she took care of him, pampered him, bonded with him. She treasures those times as gold now. On that trip, my mom got ill too, her blood pressure rose really high (hypertension) and had to get immediate treatment because of that. Then after an extra month of her being in Ecuador she was able to come back home. As soon as she got here she changed her diet, started exercising, and got better, her blood pressure dropped. Thank God for that miracle! She wanted to go back to Ecuador a few weeks ago because my grandpa was getting worse, but her blood pressure went up again so she had to postpone it until after New Years since prices and availability now was out of the question. Last Friday she got a phone call from my grandmother asking her to come as soon as possible for my grandfather was not doing well, she made reservations to leave on Sunday, but since things were serious my aunt in Ecuador was able to find her a ticket for Saturday. The blessing was that on saturday all the flights were full and the next flight was the one for sunday and it was extremely expensive I was looking and calling all the airlines to get a ticket, in vain), but God is good, my aunt found a ticket on saturday, leaving from our city, and almost at half the price!!!! She flew down to Quito with my uncle who was in Spain and was going down also. They met at the airplane in Miami. Unfortunately when they got to Quito my grandpa had past away earlier in the afternoon. I just spoke with my mom and she is feeling ok, sad of course, but content that she spent some good quality time with her dad a few months ago .We are now praying for my grandma, she is alone now, she has all her children with her but she, understandably, feels alone and sad. They were married for more than 50 years!!! I wish I could be there to hug her and comfort her but I know my mom will. We are also praying for my mom because she traveled down with her blood pressure still a little high and Quito is the 2nd highest city in America, so that does not help her, and the fact that she is in a stressful situation is also dangerous. But I know God was in control because everything went so smoothly. I know He let her travel and He will take care of her. I trust Him. Please keep them in your prayers, they need right now comfort and health that only comes from God.
We are going to miss him and will be looking forward to see him again one day when Jesus comes and the death in him will rise again! We will hold on to His promise!
~Lore~

Thursday Family Night

Today for Thursday Family night we were planning to go bike riding. Rick got home early so we could take advantage of the day light, well, it was very cloudy and it looked like it was going to rain. Effectively, it rained, so our plans of bike riding were cancelled. What to do then???? It was pouring, the kids were getting ready to go out and ride bikes, they had been talking about that throughout the whole day. So I came up with an idea! Lets play outside, in the rain!!! We, as parents always tell them "don't get wet", "don't step on the puddles", etc, etc. so I thought, "why not do all the things they always wanted to do, and do it as a family!!!" And that is what we did....We got the big umbrellas (for the beach) and the kids got their SeaWorld ponchos and we went outside to play in the puddles, race boats in the street (the boats were plastic containers with our names in them, Rick convinced me to let him write our names on my kitchen containers with permanent marker!!! and we put cars in them as captains of the boats), get wet, and have fun! We did. All of us. The good thing it was that it was not cold as it has been lately, so we had the opportunity to play throwing water at each other. Some of our neighbours were getting home and saw us. They probably thought we were crazy, some of them were smiling. After that we went inside, I bathed the kids in really warm water while Rick made some hot blackberry tea for us. I put towels and their pj's in the dryer so when they came out of the shower they had warm towels and clothes, they loved that! We sat down at the table, drank the tea (Rick and I), the kids ate some leftover pizza that we had for lunch (I made pizza earlier, you can read about it in this other post) and played some games. I made some cinnamon raisin bread (I love my bread machine as you can tell) and now the kids are asleep. It was a nice night, we had fun. Here are the pictures of it...

Bread, bread, bread

I love the bread machine my mom gave me. I have been practicing and I think I almost have it. So far I have made basic bread, Whole wheat bread, honey oat bran, potatoe bread, cinnamon raisin, and pizza dough. The first one was not very good, but the second and up were getting better and better, I still have a long way to go but the way is going up! The second bread I made I used the timer setting, I put all the ingredients in the machine at night before going to bed and it started making the bread at around 4 AM, the smell was so good by 6 AM that we could not sleep! We woke up to fresh warm potatoe bread for breakfast. I to thank Ann from Harvest Home for some of the recipes, Thank you Ann!
The pizza today was good too, the crust was crunchy but soft. This is the first time I eat the crust, I usually leave the crust for Rick to eat. I love the pizza because I can put so many things in it for the kids to eat. I made two today, one had tomato sauce as a base, with half tomatoes,broccoli, basil and oregano; the other half had tomato and corn. The other one had an Alfredo base with spinach, onions, red peppers, and oregano. If you have any favorite recipes would be happy to try them!
~Lore~

Park of the week

We are going to explore a new park/playground every Wednesday with the kids. There are so many of them around that I thought "why not visit a different one each week". This one was really close to our home ad it was really little too, but the good thing is that the kids do not care how big the place is or how many amenities it has, if it has a swing or a slide, or just a place to run and be outside with mami they are happy, how much we should learn from them!!!! Here are some pictures of this one...

This tree had a bunch of little seeds in its brancheshere are the seeds

Mia went for a run...

View of the grass full of little flowers

It was a rainy days, you can tell by the tiny drops of rain in the grass

Next week we'll show more pictures of our next park.

~Lore~

Things to ponder....

Found this at a e-magazine I get, and wanted to share with all of you! Sadly, this is a reality in our society today :(
You may click on it to see it larger and better...


~Lore~

Snails

In the past few days we have been eating from our vegetable garden. The spinach, mustard greens, basil, oregano, toronjil (lemonbalm), parsley and cilantro are ready to be eaten, so we have had fresh salads and tea from the garden!!! On Monday I found that some of the mustard green leaves were partially eaten, hmmm, then I found some snails around the greens and spinach, hmmm. Well, needles to say the next day I saw the same thing, eaten leaves, and close to 10 snails roaming around (I hand- picked them out). It comes to be that snails are terrible pests for greens (I didn't even know what snail eat!) So I researched a little and found out that snails do not like vaseline. This website recommended to put some vaseline around the edges and since I have a wooden box where the vegetables are I have a nice rim around the plants. So, I will try this recommendation. I ventured to put a lot of Vicks Vaporub (which they said does a much better work than only vaseline) around the edges of the box. Hopefully that will get the snails to enter our garden!!! If you know of any other idea to get snails out, please let me know. I am open to any suggestion...Vicks Vaporub....who knew!

The following pictures are from the flowers that just came out from the red tomatoes (yellow flowers)
green pepper (white flower)

and my lemon balm (toronjil) I love this plant!!!

We will soon have some nice crops! I cannot wait!

Take care,

~Lore~