Grateful

We had a really good thanksgiving this year, with the three of us. We decided to forgo traveling up north, and to spend thanksgiving with our little family. Graduate school has been so busy for me, and we have rarely been able to spend quality time as a family the last few weeks. So, when we had an entire day to spend together as a family, we enjoyed it to the max. We cooked a full out thanksgiving dinner, you know...turkey, ham, green beans, mashed potatoes, rice, and homemade apple pie. Our food was yummy, and we got full so fast. But thanksgiving is so much more than a great homemade meal and physical time with family. Thanksgiving is a time for giving thanks, as the word, backwards, implies.

While we had dinner, David and I shared some things that we are grateful for. Among having each other and Gabriel, we also had other common gratitudes. David said he was thankful for our house, his job, his christmas bonus (that will be used to pay bills). I said I was thankful for our house, being able to afford food for us, good food actually (we sacrifice spending $ in other things to instead invest in organic meats/food, and lots of veggies and fruits), two working cars, graduate school and the new friends I've made there, and being able to be happy and healthy.

To expand, we are so grateful for our house and the home we are building for Gabriel. Our first house, what is meant to be a starter house, is big enough to be an end house for lots of people. We are so fortunate that we are able to live in a big enough home that more than comfortably meets our needs. Many people in the world never get to have the luxury that I already have in my 20's. But really, that is a monetary blessing, one that i'm grateful for, but what I'm even more grateful for is the home I am able to make out of our house. Our home is a place for love, respect and peace. We hope that as Gabriel grows older, he will be able to carry those values into the lives of others. We are not perfect people, but we are striving to be providers of the best home a child could have.

I am grateful that David has a job that helps us pay for our living expenses, (as well as my grad school loans) and for the good food we are able to consume. Again, many people in the U.S. and around the World, are not that lucky. Nearly 17 million families in the United States, about 15 percent of all households, had trouble putting enough food on the table last year. The stats in other countries are more stark.

I'm grateful for having cars that work, not just one, but two. I'm grateful for all of my family and friends, for the love I know they have for us. I'm grateful that I have the opportunity to obtain a higher education. The kind of higher education, that is needed in todays society. I'm grateful that one of my talents is to have the ability to help other people in need and be a voice for them.

I am so grateful for all that I have. This life is full of trials and tribulations that make our life hard at times, but in the end, it always makes it richer. I'm so grateful for how great my life is, and the journey that the three of us are on.

"Of all the things that exist, we breathe and wake and turn it into song."

-Buddhist precept

Fall Adventures

I have really enjoyed this fall so far. We have done lots of fun and memorable things. We've been in a bit of a drought in Richmond and so it has affected the beautiful fall colors we normally have. Last fall was the most beautiful I have ever seen. This year is still nice, but not nearly as colorful and it's made me nostalgic of last year. One of our favorite things to do in the fall is drive through monument avenue countless times. The beautiful vibrant colors in combination with the historical homes is so fitting. I love being able to appreciate all the beautiful things around me. We are so blessed to be able to be a witness to how beautiful this world is, in every changing season. Living here in the fall always reaffirms why I love the east coast so much. I'm so proud to live in such a beautiful place that is rich in history. Below are pictures of what we have been up to:

We took our fall trip to the mountains and did a small hike with Gabriel and my sister.

During the hike

I love these pictures. So amazing.

During our hike

On Gabriel's first field trip at school! They went to the pumpkin patch. It was SO FUN!

Wagon rides on his field trip. We also went on hay rides and through a spooky forest.

This is at another pumpkin patch we went to, Farm 2 Family

We had a blast this halloween, it was the funnest ever. We dressed up as Rockstars. We went to the fan and trick or treated on Hanover Ave. Every house in a few block span decorates their houses really spooky. It was amazing. They put lots of $$ into their decorations and candy!

Witch, the only thing that scared Gabriel. My sister was the paprazzi to the Durrant Rockstars.

Some people had a band playing at their house!

We spray painted Gabriels hair tips red too, but it's hard to see in pictures.

We were pumped on our way to trick or treating.

Durrant Rockstars 2010. We hope you had a blast this halloween!

Gabriel 18 Months

(after getting baby powder all over his face)

Gabriel is 18 months, soon to be 19 months. He is growing up so fast. There is definitely days where I can see the difference from one day to the next. He is still my little angel, with little devil horns sometimes. He has the best temperament and personality. I am in love with him more and more everyday. Gabriel is still super smart and advanced for his age. His pediatrician is always amazed at his little self.

Most recently, our lives changed drastically with Gabriel. Now that i'm in graduate school we had to find child care for him. He's at a really great day school that follows the Reggio Emilia school of thought, founded by Loris Malaguzzi. There isn't very many private institutions that follow the Reggio approach here in the U.S., so I just consider us really lucky to have one in Richmond! I cannot begin to explain how much I love this educational approach (so just follow the above link if you want to learn more), particularly because I was already raising Gabriel in the same manner as the Reggio approach. Thus, I feel like his day school is his home away from home and it makes me feel so much more better about his transition. He has transitioned very well. The first couple of weeks were hard for us. Gabriel would whine or cry(for a minute or less) every time we dropped him off and it just broke my heart to pieces. He was always happy and fine once we left though, and that always reassured me. We did a few surprise drop by's on different days where we could observe him and he couldn't see us, and that's how we knew that he was happy there (aside from the reports from the teachers). Now, in his fourth week, he can't wait to get there in the mornings. The closer we get to school, the more excited he becomes and he excitedly repeats "School's Cool" in his super happy voice. I love it. His teachers, Erica and Dana have grown to love him so fast. They rave about how smart he is to us and everyone else. Erica calls him her sweetie pie. In fact, I always have a whole bunch of the other teachers talk to me about Gabriel. They have so many positive and sweet things to say about him. He seems to be the big man on campus, everyone knows his name and his special character. I love that he is in a very loving and caring environment. We get a daily report of everything he learned, experienced, and did while there. Even though I am not physically there with him like I used to, I feel just as connected to him, because of how great his teachers are about involving me in his development. Everything is so far so good with Gabriel (and us) transitioning into child care.

Alright, so now more about what Gabriel is like these days...Gabriel is really obsessed with Thomas the Train. If he ever watches t.v., he is only concerned with watching Thomas the Train. My sister bought him one of the basic train sets a couple of months ago, and he was been obsessed with all things Thomas ever since. He even hears the trains by our house and says train, and loves to see them going on the tracks. It get's him so excited. He loves all of his cars and trucks and scoots them around the house all the time. He is a total boy. Likes to climb on everything and jump down and create chaos. He loves to crumble his food and it creates a nice little mess for us on our wood floors. He is really active. He is also really into lining things up, usually in size order. He will take all of his books and lay them flat on our floors and create this long line of books, from smallest to biggest, when he runs out of room he just redirects the line in other directions or creates multiple lines of books. It's fascinating to observe. I'll have to post one of the videos. You can literally see his brain ticking, because he is thinking so hard about making his line of stuff work. At school, the teachers tell us almost every day how he lines up all of the toy cars there after his morning snack. He lines them up in size order too and he concentrates on his task for really long periods of time. They are always amazed at his approach to things. They keep saying, "he just thinks different, his brain works a different way". I think it's so interesting that they also notice. Another cute story was something that happened this week, Erica was telling me that he would carry around this baby all day long. He held it close to him and would take it everywhere he was playing (he also slept with it during nap) and at the end of the day he would find books to read to the baby. They took pictures of him just going about his day with his baby. How cute, huh?

Gabriel also loves blocks and legos. He loves building the legos up. He also loves the outdoors. When we take him outside he likes to get into mischief and wander around in our neighborhood and get into other people's driveways. All of the neighbors know and love him so they don't mind that he wanders into their driveways to find rocks. Rocks are another fascination of his. There was a time where rocks were his security objects. He would refuse to get into the car unless he was holding one of his rocks. He would hold the rock during the entire car drive and as soon as we had to get out, he would just let go of the rock and leave it in his car seat. So we have quite the collection of rocks in our car! Another cute thing he does is sing. He sings the ABC's (in his own way of course) and it's really neat to hear him go through the different letters. At night we usually hear him sing and talk himself to bed. He is generally a really content child. He is still very kind to us and others. He says I love you mama (sounds like "I Ove u Mama") and it just melts my heart. I love hearing him talk and love looking into his eyes. He has such a special sparkle in his eyes. I see so much life in those big brown eyes. We are loving being his parents. Below are some pictures of what he has been up to:




So happy and proud of his lego tower!


Love my handsome and preppy son.


after his first haircut

At National Night Out with his neighbor buddy


The day his love for Thomas the Train began. At Barnes & Noble.


He LOVES all kinds of slides

Gabriel and his Aunt Josselyn

Words/Phrases that Gabriel Said by 18 months:
car
truck
train
bus
who's that
what's that
where's mama/dada
there's mama/dada
i love you mama/dada
ok
oh oh
oh boy
fishy
butterfly
fly
airplane
cracker
no
more
slide
sky
boat
horsey
goat
cow
sheep
elephant
one, two, three
school's cool
ball ball
good night
good bye
beans
hi, hello, hey, bye
it's stuck, i dont know
all gone, all done

Huge Update

I have a few updates for you all! I have not written on our blog in forever and so my updates stem from way back. Some aspects of life have been so stressful and so I completely left the blogging world for a while. But i'm back! And life is great and the struggles I was going through are better!

Mother's Day and Father's Day

I got this awesome card on Mothers day that "Gabriel" wrote/drew for me. David interpreted it and it was just the best interpretation. My favorite was "...I tell my friends all the time that my mom is better than theirs, sometimes I think they get jealous and don't talk to me. That's ok I still talk to them anyway..." Gabriel is such a social child, and so, more often than not, he cheerfully approaches kids and starts talking out a storm and the kids just stare at him and walk away. It happens all the time, it makes me sad sometimes, but Gabriel totally doesn't care and keeps talking to them or finds someone new to befriend. He is just so sweet. So what "Gabriel" said to me in the mothers day card was just so appropriate for what really happens. I always wondered what the heck Gabriel says to all those kids! And, now I know why they just stare back at him and walk away! They are jealous that he has such an awesome mom, hahahaha! So funny. I love my little boy. I'm so grateful he is my son and that I have the chance to be his mother and teach him and give him all the love in the world. David and Gabriel are the most important people in my life.

For father's day I made a delicious quiche and then the rest of the day slowly but surely became a bit disastrous. I was attacked by terrible allergies and could not function at all except for sneezing. So we don't have much memories for that day except that I'm so grateful to have a husband that is such a great father to Gabriel. Gabriel is lucky to have David as his father. Instead of taking the day off of on Father's day, David had to step it up and do everything since I was immobilized by terrible allergies.

Our Birthdays

I turned 26 on May 16. I'm getting old! We ate at an awesome restaurant in Del Ray, a neighborhood of Alexandria. I told David that we are always going to go eat there when we are in D.C. The service was exceptional and so was the food, and I just love Del Ray. That whole little town is totally my cup o tea. We took Gabriel to a neighborhood park there and he just loved it too. Of course he did, he is my son, and we both love all the same things! David turned 30 something (I can't ever remember his age) on June 2. It's fun to share birthdays close together. For his birthday I took him out to Dora's Brazilian Grill in the Shockoe Bottom area of Richmond. Our food was great. He enjoyed tasting all the meats. I made him a cake that was pretty yummy too. I love birthdays, they are always so fun to celebrate. Here's to getting wiser!

Other News:
*David is done with his spring grad school class! We enjoyed the summer by doing a lot of things and he is now back in another class that I think we be really good for him. He is such a smart cookie, and that's one of the reason's I love him.

*I got accepted into graduate school!!! I just started my Masters of Social Work this Fall 2010 at VCU. I am beyond excited. The program is a great and prestigious program, it's ranked 14th in the nation, and not easy to get into. They only accepted 16% of the people that applied into the program. So I feel very proud of myself for getting in. I worked really hard to be a strong candidate for them, and i'm just so happy that I got in. All of my professors keep mentioning that those that got in are the best of the best and that we are a part of a very difficult, rigorous and prestigious program. This is a really important stepping stone in my life. With my degree, I will be able to be a private clinician/therapist. I'll be able to own my own mental health practice eventually. I'm so excited that this next stepping stone will allow me to fulfill one of my lifelong dreams. I'm also going to do a lot of child advocacy and (pro) immigration advocacy/education with this degree. It's such an important stepping stone for me. Words cannot express the exhilaration and passion I have for my future career, in a way, the nature of my career is who I am as a person. The ethics and values that encompass my professional career are totally in line with my life goals and my own personal values. So far I have thoroughly enjoyed all my classes and i'm very excited to begin my field internship as well. I will be writing a post on just grad school in the next week or so.


*We planted an organic garden with all sorts of vegetables. We are having a tough time growing some of our food because a sneaky animal of some kind is eating away at our crops! BUT, our strawberries have survived and are coming in. I had one the other day and it was the MOST DELICIOUS strawberry I have ever tasted in my life. We are getting great peppers to cook some fresh and spicy food with. Our tomatoes are also a really nice treat for me. Our squash and zucchini got taken over by some bugs and so we will have to retry next year. David is a great gardener. He did such a nice job of continually checking on the garden.

Our summer was occupied by many trips to farmhouses, the mountains, beach trips, fishing, the pool, and of course taking advantage of the weather to wash our car!! haha. Below are some summer pictures:




At a lake in Charlottesville





I was able to see most of my aunts that were visiting from El Salvador. What a nice treat.

Thanks for the free tickets to Bush Gardens Brandi!


Cleaning up his hair on the floor from his first hair cut!

Cousin Kimie came to visit!









During a hike in the mountains!

Gabriel's friends Solomon and Elle spotting the black bear at Maymont

Shirley Plantation

It was nice to see Dave's parents this summer. We went to the Outerbanks with them.

Natural Fisherman












He is not as skinny as the picture depicts!



I will be doing an entry on Gabriel soon (he is growing up like crazy, he is 18 months now) and also on Grad school.