An Awesome Weekend!

As I have stated before in my last post, it has been an exhausting few weeks and this last weekend was the kicker of all busy weekends! Nonetheless, it was such a good one!! First of all, the Ramirez clan was preparing for the funeral for my sweet Tia (I don't think I've translated the word Tia. Well, Tia is Spanish for "Aunt") who passed away last week. We had the blessing of having my Tata (That's Ramirez slang for "Grandpa") and a councilwoman from the city of Baldwin Park, California to grace us with their presence for the funeral. That councilwoman happens to be my Tia! Yeah, she's superwoman and loves her city! 

They arrived in Utah Friday morning and we spent most of the day having fun. We took them to the Pie Pizzeria close to the U. Here is a picture of my cute Tata with the pizza. Oh yeah, and that's my Dad right next to him. The Ramirez clan has such silly personalities. As you can see, my Tata still has it!! He was cracking jokes all weekend long. For an 81-year old, he's one of the funniest and I love him so much! 

This is us right outside of the Pie. On the left are my parents, in the middle are my Tata and  beautiful Tia Marlen, and us on the right.

Brandon looks like a giant compared to the rest of us! 

We took my Tia to some fun spots in SLC. First, we took her to see the beautiful cottages and homes in Sugarhouse and then took her to a boutique. She LOVED the houses, and the fact that it was actually snowing here! Every time it started to snow, she got so excited because she had never seen it snowing before. We took her and my Tata to have some delicious RubySnap cookies here in town and they loved them.

We went to the viewing and saw a lot of family members from out of state and caught up. When it was time to head home, most of the gang were in favor of staying up north instead of having to drive all the way down to Nephi and then all the way back up north for the funeral. 

So, we decided to have everyone stay at our place!!

Now for those of you who don't know, Brandon and I live in a basement apartment that is what I like to call it, "fun size". It was an exciting thing to have everyone (8 people) stay the night at our house! And of course, I took pictures to remember this fun night!

Before we got home, we went to Wal-Mart and bought two air mattresses for us to sleep on. My Tata and Dad slept on our bed. This is most of us getting ready to blow the first air mattress up. 

It looks pretty simple, huh?

Well.......

It wasn't!

Right when my sister started to blow the air mattress up, the battery-powered air pump decided to turn off and shut off for periods of time. We knew it wasn't the batteries because we had just bought them that night. So, we had other ideas in mind to get these mattresses blown up:

1. Physically blow it up!

As you can see, Angie's face is tomato red and we didn't want to pass out from blowing air into it too much, so we thought of idea #2....

2. The blow dryer!

This picture is priceless! Mind you that we hadn't got much sleep these past few weeks and are on the brink of exhaustion. She looks pooped. 

Finally, after using the blow dryer a few times and switching it off with the air pump (when it wanted to work), we finally got both mattresses pumped up!

Ahhhhh, laying down at last. Sheesh, my Tia looks good even when she's laying for bed. Good genes, good genes. =) I love her!

Overall, the funeral service was beautiful and the spirit was felt strongly there. We laughed, we cried, but we found joy knowing the plan of salvation and that we can be together forever.

Here is a picture of the family that came for the funeral. I would say that this is not even a quarter of the Ramirez clan. We have a BIG family!

My Tia and Tata left back to Cali on Sunday. They enjoyed their time here and my Tia might be coming back for my graduation! Am I excited? But of course!!

It was a great weekend! It was fun to be able to visit with family and to have my Tia and Tata come to town was a treat. 

Would I do this last weekend all over again? YES!!!!

Happy Birthday to Us!

Estas son las Mananitas,

que cantaba el Rey David,

hoy por ser dia de tu santo,

te las cantamos a ti.

Despierta mi bien despierta mira que ya amanecio,

y las pajaritos cantan,

la luna ya se metio.

We had such a good and much needed long weekend! We also celebrated the birthdays of my Twinkie sisters and I. Mine was last week while theirs is this week. It's so nice to share birthday months so that we can all get together and have one big party for the three of us. It also makes it easier for the family to get together.

Let me tell you about the food. My Mom and Grandma decided to have a little competition against each other with the different types of meat they made for the sopes. If you don't know what sopes are, here is a picture of how they can look like:

My Mom and Grandma's looked like these, but with rice into the mix!

It was all soooooo good! Although both meats were good, I think my Mom won because hers was spicy and had a kick to it. Yum!

Brandon didn't know where to start. =)

We opened gifts and just laughed and enjoyed the time we had together. My Dad even got us a gift because he's so sweet and thoughtful. Here's our gift.....

Okay, so he really doesn't give these out as gifts. He actually found these chonies at a segunda and uses them for fake gifts. It makes for a funny joke though. 

Louie got his Aggie hoodie from my Tia Esthela and of course, Brandon calls himself "The Runnin' Ute". It's a fun picture. 

I wish I could make this picture bigger, but I can't without having funky pixels come out. To walk off the food we just ate, we went to the new little boutique shop that just opened up a little over a week ago. They have so many cute things and the prices are very, VERY reasonable! The owners were so nice that they gave each of us two roses for our birthday. My sister posted this picture on the boutique's webpage. You can find the boutique's webpage here.

After we got home, we had some delicious cake that my Mom made for us. 

It was a chocolate cake with chocolate chips and banana filling in the middle. So, so good. 

All in all, it was a great weekend. I love my family and grateful to have them.