Nothing is easy when it comes to activities around Semana Santa, except stupidity to be at an all time high!

That’s exactly how our day started.

Our plan was to meet at 8 am by my house. However this was San Bartolow procession day which is literally the busiest and largest procession of the year. After tons of map searching online we realized we can make it out of my house, by a thin hair. Which we did.

However, they literally closed off the streets all around us, once we left the gates.

But the cops forgot to tell that to people so tons and tons of cars were coming by, while we’re waving them it’s closed.  They are ignoring us, as though we do this hand waving as a hobby!

Finally we are on the road when Mar calls to say that she’s at the gas station and instead of putting Super in her car they put Diesel, which is like destroying the engine.

After one hour of waiting for them to clean out her car and get the diesel out, we were on our way.

I can’t believe the amount of people arriving to the car races. It’s great to see, but totally unexpected.

We paid for the entrance that gave us entry to the Pit stops as well, so it was really fun to check out all the cars.

The craziness came when we went upstairs to find out that for the most part the booths are all private. And the ones that aren’t, are in direct sun so we were standing, uncomfortably, scorching in the sun. Not at all what I call fun.

We were looking at the bleachers and thinking, they paid half price for it, and they are sitting comfortably in the shade.

So off we went looking for the seats. K wasn’t enjoying it at all at this point. The cars were too loud and it was too damn hot.

B was having a blast – he’s at a great age

We walked around the Pit stop and saw tons of upcoming cars for the races which K finally enjoyed and we were able to enjoy the races.

None of the boys even noticed the gorgeous double DD’ed girls in Licra which was part of the racing show.

We settled, finally, at one of the bleachers, with a breeze and shade. And K was totally into!!!

After wards, the parking lot was a huge mess. You’d think this is the first time the are having car races here. We were stuck only because someone wanted to outsmart the parking system and made it a one way.

Then we headed to La Reunion. Which was nothing out of the ordinary, except that K, for the first time ever, was totally fine completely on his own at the kid’s club and let me enjoy my day!

Once again, K, kept me up for more than half the night. First it was for his patcha and then saying his feet hurt.

I was sooo angry, that I almost wanted to call ‘Pipi’ to tell him to come back just so I can get a good night sleep.

But then morning rolls around and I say “good morning, K”. It’s like 6 am, and he’s sleeping but he says back to me:
“Morning mama, tengo much sueno” but he’s up.

Then he comes to my bed and is soooo loving and sweet.

And we started playing, by screaming out “B’s” name and he was just having a blast and a half.

Then we went into B’s room and they were laughing and hugging each other and simply being the cutest brothers ever.

Then K insisted on putting on B’s jeans over his clothes. Again, how can I ever stay angry or resist these 2 little freaks, I call my sons. After a little while he decided it was uncomfortable and we took them off.

Dropping K off at day care, he pulled his extra loving routine again:
Kissing me on my eyes, lips and then doing butterfly noses with me.

So instead of getting angry, I came home and napped.

March 16 is our official Facebook Day.

B insisted on getting on facebook. His main reason was because a couple of his friends did it.

So now we did it. He also insisted on only have a white tiger as his avatar. We spent like one hour to find one, then another, then another.

Finally we’re up and he’s looking at the blank screen and says – Now what?

Me – You need to connect with your friends and start having fun.

You mean play games.

No like connect with people.

Finally we connected with my mom and Greisha. And the fun had begun.

B is crazy excited – I can’t believe I have facebook – all giddy!!!

Progression of Facebook

Learning the simpliest things can be fun when you’re with kids.

After a long, ultra intelligent conversation with B while sitting elbow to elbow with him, him typing on his facebook acct, and me on mine:

https://www.facebook.com/brandonreeve.villatorokuperman/posts/109051732620414

He asked me if he can put youtube videos. So I showed him how:

Control c to copy video link

Control v to paste it

So this became the new obsession. Quickly the chatting faded to the back, because that’s when his papa came on line and wrote him, but he was too busy finding videos to watch, copy and paste.

Now the real question, how long will this new facebook twitch last? 

So K had another one of his lovely nights. I went to bed around 10:30, since lately he’s been good with just one wake up. But I should have read the signs when he was crying and whining a bit around 10 pm.

He woke up for his patcha, I handed it to him, and then he was having nightmares, maybe, or something. But he kept calling me. Finally fell asleep.

Two hours later, I was summoned again for another patcha. Then he woke up again to give me the patcha.

If I got in even 5 broken hours of sleep that was too much. So you can understand, I’m not in the chipperest of moods.

Regardless, I woke up the kids and for serious insurance measures, K did one of his yummiest things in the morning:

He kissed my cheek, nose, and both eyes. Can it get any better??? Of course, this comes with recourse. Meaning, he’s about to pull something that I practically want to throw him out the window.

Which was just that.

In the car driving the kids to school, no idea what happened, but all of a sudden he kept on saying “Queiro kick it apple, tu.” what this means is beyond me.

But this started out and for the next 10 minutes all he kept saying was this over and over and over again, crying. For me a crying baby is soooooo annoying I didn’t know what to do with my self.

Finally, I pinched him – hard. But now at least he had a reason to cry.

Of course I felt horrible after dropping him off at daycare!!!

When I arrived to pick him up after school he was so happy to see me and I was thrilled. But within seconds, he immediately reminded me of what I did.

“I cried, you pinched me.”

I totally apologized, kissed him super super hard and he said OK.

Two minutes later he reminded me again. He did this several times. Nothing goes unnoticed with these little people. I hope he forgives me.

Once a year Antigua throws a Chef Night for 300 people to enjoy. There were 5 of us, and if you can believe it, we couldn’t make reservations. I was told that it’s complete mayhem and the only way to get reservations is to get a table of ten, which we didn’t have.

So we decided to arrive to Capuchinos Ruins, where it was held, 45 minutes before the event began.

It was great to hang out and talk outside. Lovely weather, no kids crying and bugging us. However, even though we were there one of the first, once the doors opened, it was almost a free for all attack and Heather thought we wouldn’t get seats, so until we had our butts planted, no one was totally relaxed.

So the night is basically for a charity and also a way for ten restaurants/hotels to strut their stuff and be represented.

The place was just gorgeous inside. We haven’t been in the ruins before for an event and it was done really well.

The food started to roll out. So the way it works is that we get to try a different dish from each restaurant represented. This is their moment to shine!

So why were we so not impressed? I kept being told that when there’s 300 people to be fed, that it’s hard to show the best presentation. Chances are it will not be as hot as they want it, or lose some flavoring. Not sure. But I can reiterate that the food and Restaurants in Antigua are totally uninspiring and unimpressive. I have no interest to try out new places. And even less after going here.

The best, though, was a frozen sorbet from a place in Guatemala City. Go figure!

However, the night itself was wonderful. With friends and my hubby and wine!

Our day started off with my going to the knee doctor. I had one of those stupid falls in my driver. I got off the scooter, and fell down a whole which wasn’t properly closed.

I hurt my shin, since that’s the leg that fell into the whole, but to stop my fall I fell directly on my knee. It was beaten up, but nothing major. So I continued with the exercise.

Luis (my trainer) kept asking if my knee was ok, and I kept saying no worries. So he continued pushing me like he always did. We walked up and DOWN to el cerro, which is arduous for a normal person, but someone with bad knees is the kiss of knee death. But of course, I didn’t read any of the signs.

Then at the gym, he started to pile on the weights, since I’m dying to get my legs toned.

Finally, I’m putting K to bed one night and placed my knee into a weird position and BAM it went out. No idea what the fuck happened. But the pain was horrible, and then painful to the touch.

Obviously, I had to stop doing everything. And called a ‘specialist’.

We arrived to the doctor, luckily, to be told I simply need to rest it and not do anything else to the knee. So I’m out of the gym for 3 weeks. Regardless, we finished early in the city and I wanted to take advantage of L being here so I don’t have to go to Pricesmart on my own with the kids.

We go through it bionic style, only to get to the counter and L forgot the debit card at home. Yes, anger was definitely a huge component to my morning.

So what do you do with lemons – lemonade – from a very easy bad to a very quick good. I didn’t exactly make a mil off of a huge problem.

Regardless, I decided to get the kids from school and head back to Pricesmart and go bowling since L is only with us for another 3 days, it would be a good way to spend the day with the kids.

We arrived to Pricesmart in a huge rush. Everything seems to be running around. Main reason, we didn’t want to spend too much time inside due to the traffic that we can encounter going to the bowling alley.

So we finished in super sonic speed, and speeded over to the bowling alley. Now, we have 3 hours to kill since the traffic going back home is painful.

We decided to start milking it as much as possible. The one hour bowling lane special includes pizza and is almost $40. So L and I spent a whole lot of time keeping the kids occupied with the video games and discussing how we’re going to milk it with playing bowling first. Then sit down in the cafeteria area eating the pizza.

Finally milked it for one hour, go up the person to pay and we are told that all lanes are closed for the night.

We were like ‘WHAT!!!’.

It’s the fucking bowling federation.

No signs, no one told us a thing. Did they think we go to bowling alleys to play with the video games, – without buying any tokens, so basically just looking at the screens?

Not at all pleased. The kids are desperate for bowling. Well K not so much since he has no idea what it is, but kept on saying ‘Mowling’ along with his big bro, just for kicks and giggles. My giggles mainly, to him it was very serious!

So what do you do?

We decided to hit our favorite pizza place in the Capital. Plus, last time we were there, I was pretty pissed off that I didn’t bring my camera. So it was the perfect scenerio for us to go, so I can also take a ton of pics.

Pizzy Grizzly

This is a great place, themed like a wild west town in the midst of a dessert from the 1800′s in the US. Super cool. But the food is even better! This bought us another full hour.

Now we worked our way over to the only other bowling alley in all of Guatemala – Tikal Futura.

This place is not at all as classy as Metro Bowl, which is a weird way to explain it all, since bowling (in my mind) is never ever classy. So you can imagine how not classy it is.

First of all, the music is outrageously loud! And not at all good.

We decided to buy the half our option, since how long can the kids really play for. But with that, I became all rushed again, and didn’t want to waste any time at all. Which for means causing way too much chaos, which is exactly what I did!

Our Chaos in  nutshell:

1. K threw the bowling bowl down the lane. But it was sooo slow, that I decided to run and get it.

2. I had no idea there was wax on the floor and I totally flew down the alley, and managed to rip the skin off my hand.

3. One of the attendants ran over to fix the lane stoppers, which should have been there in the first place for kids. While I’m freaking out on him that my hand is bleeding and I need something to stop it.

4. He had no intention of helping me with the hand cause he was stewing over the fact that I ran there in the first place. While I was totally freaking out on him, as though it’s his fault.

5. L decided at that moment to leave us and go look for band aids for me, like I can take care of 2 kids, bowling with a bleeding hand. I told him to stay put.

6. I ran to the counter screaming I need something for my hand. And to make our time longer since we just lost so much time with my hand. When all along it was my fault.

7. The attendant brought me over rubbing alcohol and this weird rag like material that they use to clean oil off of cars. Not sure if it was priorly used for that specific purpose.

8. Once again, I was fuming that they can bring me something that retarded in the first place.

9. Everyone around us got a free show!

Finally, we were able to enjoy the bowling. In the end, the kids had an awesome time. Me and L had zero bowling participation cause K wanted to throw each one, and it was hard enough to convince him to let B play.

At the end, we got our time. And heading home, if you can believe it, it was around 8 pm, there were still tons of cars on the road. Not really stop and go, but traffic. Man, this country is just nothing but crazy driving cars!

Xpark was simply not enough. So we decided to hit a waterpark. Guateque.

Actually, this worked out well for several reasons:

1. We got to hang out with L’s great friends and their kids. Which is really lovely. Unless I arrange this, he barely sees them and they are truly good people.

2. I hate pools and waterparks. This way L was in the water with the kids while I took hundred’s of pictures and drank Micheladas.

3. B has been asking to come to this waterpark for over 2 years. We came here with all our friends once and he remembered mainly the fried fish and this great big park.

When we arrived, he immediately started saying he wants to go the wave pool and another play area with animals (plastic). We stood looking at the delapitated park, with it’s paint chipping and realized that he remembered the fish from here but the actual park he had in his head was another water park we went to that was brand new.

But he got over it really fast. The slide was just as he remembered it and he did this often.

K found a slide and literally did it at least 100 times over and over and over again with a very serious expression as though it was the most important thing in the world to do.

My only real challenge of the day was to some how manage not to capture the fatsos that were the main population. Seriously though, your eyes hurt. What is happening with people these days. Over 80% were fat, completely unkempt, and shoving junk food and greasy food into their mouths. It was offensive and I had no way of avoiding them every time I took a picture.

However, we did manage to stay until way past closing, which is exactly what I wanted for K to fall asleep in the car ride back.

But the best part, it was just us. It was so fun and quiet.

And they have a great playground with a climbing wall that is perfect for 2 years old and up.

At the end, it was one of those truly fun days!

Who says my 9 year old doesn’t know how to celebrate a birthday. He does and that’s because we spoil the shit out of him for bdays!

This year, as last year, he had three.

The first one was a 4 way celebration with 2 of his friends and a mommy. Instead of throwing a party for each one, we simply headed to Xpark where the kids go nuts and we are totally fine with it.

As with all places in Guatemala, there are tons of rules. Such as: kids under 3 don’t do this or don’t do that, etc… And as Guatemala is most famous for, none of these rules are ever followed, especially by the staff.

For us, it’s all fun. But honestly, it can really lead to some serious injuries. But as I said, I was totally fine with my baby going on all the things that the big boys were permitted to go on.

Such as riding the bull. Clearly not an activity for a 2 year old. But with caution he had a blast.

How about the flying trampoline. Hey if the shoe, or in this case, harness fits, why not, said the I don’t care what your kids do staff member!

However, the bouncy house was definitely for my 2 year old and he found an insane way to live it up – totally living up to his character of the day – SUPERMAN.

But the best part of Xpark is that we were able to bring in our own cake, and apparently they charged us a whole 1q (12 cents) per place for it. Not a bad deal. But in reality, I don’t even think they charged us anything at all.

A perfect way to celebrate the day, get the kids crazy tired and return with happy grins!

So we have a serious problem! SPIDERS!!! Yes, and lots of them. The boys sleep in the same room, and since they both roll off their beds, no matter where they are in the world, or the type of bed they sleep in, they ALWAYS fall off. So instead of fighting the ‘they have to sleep on a conventional bed’ thing, we just succumbed and put their mattress on the floor.

Im done worrying nights about them cracking their heads on the floor.

Well, gratefully, worry and me never seem to part for long, because now, spiders decided to get cozy on their beds. And not just little guys, but the huge ass spiders that can bite you and you’ll be hospitalized for months.

So you can see why L and I have been having serious issues.

Finally, after exterminating the house, we thought we were in the clear until my son was getting ready for bed and a huge spider not only decided to get to his bed, but to be on him.

That was when we decided that we will have to move one bed to my room, so that the main bed can be in another area. Still on the floor, nothing we can do about that. But something different.

Now B has his own room, and all of a sudden after sharing the room with his little bro for almost a year, he thinks he shouldn’t even have to look at any K’s stuff altogether. Like that’s going to happen.

And K gets to sleep in my room. However, we didn’t decide to do this until the spider crawled up my oldest back, while preparing for bed, meaning that K was already fast asleep.

So the following day when he woke up in his new bed and new location it could’ve gone two ways:

1. He would be freaked out and not at all be into it

2. Absolutely love it.

We chose option #2.  Thankfully!

However, he loved it so much that all he kept on saying;

“Mama es me cama?”

“Yo quiero sleep.”

And he stayed in bed for almost one hour just simply enjoying it.

What a grand surprise!

Now just gotta cross my fingers that the spiders are gone! 

What’s a birthday unless it’s celebrated on your actual bday. And as for B he thinks when you blow out the candles on the cake, that’s when the actual birthday happens.

So I decided to minimize my headaches and had a party for him at school.

The teacher told me, when i was planning it, that we can do it at 10:30 and he has class at 11 again, but he is fine with the party going over. I was like, I don’t think so, the faster the better!

So L and I arrived in time for to create an Angry Birds themed party (on a very small scale). While waiting outside with the Angry birds merchandise, we had a tons of snot nosed, dirty young kids stop by in complete awe with jaws dropped looking at all the angry birds junk.

It’s amazing what commercializing can do to any aged child.

The party itself was really fun.

First we fed them mini hot dogs with juice.

Then came the cake.

And a big ass ‘Mordida’

Then the opening of the gifts. This was the funnest part since B’s teacher from last year was totally chilling with the kids as though he was one of the gang. Truthfully, this is what I love to see. Since I’m not a big believer in schools and rather my kids have fun with their teachers and friends.

Then came the sorpresas that I gave out to all of them. With one main one which was an angry bird pen that was also a whistle. This one didn’t go over so well with the teachers. And I was happily saying, good luck with the annoying sound, which she immediately motioned for all the kids to put in their bags.

B had a blast and a half. I love love love seeing him in school with his buddies

But the celebration doesn’t seem to ever end.

He also had his mini-chef’s class where they celebrated with a little cake and gave him a present.

Ok, so the present wasn’t the best idea. It was a really cool pizza cutter, which was instantly made into a little kid finger cutter (B managed to cut himself and bleed within five minutes of receiving it).

And if that wasn’t enough, we ended the night at McDonald’s!