After leaving the scene of the car accident we made our way back to my sister-in-law's house. She was throwing a big party for my niece Bianca and thanks to the hectic trip to the city we were already running late. It's a huge pet-peeve of mine when people show up late to things so when I'm forced to show up late it REALLY bugs the heck out of me. Thankfully we didn't miss much. Of course this is where I wish I had gotten my pictures upload because I want to show you HOW FRIGGEN ADORABLE my niece looked.

Both of my nieces are beautiful, but Bianca was really enjoying the party and when you see the pictures of her smiling... her happiness really shows through. It's awesome!

The party was really nice, but there is one thing that happens to me every single time we visit Chicago. Rudy's family is Mexican, and lots of their friends are Mexican, so that means almost everyone but Rudy and I speak fluent Spanish. Sure, I took Spanish in high school so I understand bits and pieces... but come on... high school was *stops and thinks for a moment and counts on my fingers and toes* OMG 13+ years ago. God DAMN I'm getting old! Is that number correct? It can't be, let's see, I graduated in 1995, its now 2008.... *counts again* yup, that is correct. WOW... I didn't even realize how long its been.

Sorry that totally threw me off track for a moment there. ANYWAY, I know some Spanish, but not enough to feel real comfortable speaking it. I struggle and it's so frustrating for me because in all honesty I feel dumb. Especially when some of the people speak about as much English as I speak Spanish, or even worse, they speak no English at all. Did ya ever see that episode of Family Guy were Peter Griffin tries speaking Italian? Yeah.. that's pretty much how I feel sometimes.

The only thing worse than me feeling totally lost when everyone starts speaking Spanish, is knowing that my husband, who is Mexican, and who grew up surrounded by people speaking Spanish - is just as lost as I am. He knows a little more than me, but not much. This is a man who decided to take FRENCH in high school! FRENCH!! Can you imagine what his family must have thought when he came home and told them he signed up for FRENCH class?! According to him there was a pretty girl taking that class and that's the REAL reason he signed up, but still to this day I can't help but to laugh every time I think about it.

So the party went really well... OH!! And before I forget!! I have to give a little shout-out. I found out from my niece Krystin, that she has a teacher that is a fan of my blog! Krystin said that her teacher reads all the time and that she's caught him laughing out loud a couple of times. I thought that was pretty cool because I'm never really sure if anyone really reads this stuff or not. But it's nice to hear that someone liked what I wrote. So HI to Krystin's teacher. *waves* I apologize because I forgot to ask her for your name, but thanks for reading!!

The rest of the trip was pretty uneventful. I accidentally fell asleep Saturday night when I went to put Kayla down to bed so the night ended early for me. Sunday morning we had to get up early (as always) so we could drive back to NY and be home by 8pm to pick up my oldest daughter, Yuna, from her Daddy's house. Of course Sunday marked the 1 year anniversary of my mother-in-law's passing so it was a tough day in that respect too. I must say I'm proud of my husband because he handled it really well and he's come such a long way this past year. Acceptance of things like death is really really tough... but he's done an amazing job of working through it.

On the final leg of the trip we packed up the car and we stopped at our favorite Mexican grocery store. We loaded a large cooler with meats, salsa, tortillas, tamales, chips, guacamole, drinks, you name it. It's part of our Sunday Chicago weekend trip tradition. We always stop at this same exact, authentic Mexican store, bright and early, and we get enough food to last at least a week. (That's no exaggeration) This time we picked up double of what we normally buy because we wanted to bring some home for our neighbors Missy and Andy too.

So that my friends sums up our fun little weekend. The only part left is for me to get those darn pictures off the camera and onto the Family Photos pages. I really need to get them done this weekend so I'm gonna try my best. I don't know what it is but we've just been so busy every single night and my "to-do" list doesn't seem to be getting much smaller. Somehow it keeps getting longer. Of course posting the pictures is somewhere near the bottom of that list... so it might take a little while.