Birthday

It's my birthday today, yay!

I love birthdays and I love celebrating birthdays.

I am turning 27 years old day and to be honest this year actually has felt a little different and I feel older.

All my other birthdays have felt the same I never felt like I was aging but this birthday has been kinda emotional for me.

At least I am still in my 20's right?

I am such a nerd cause 27 really is not that old maybe I just feel more mature and that's always a good thing.

Since baking is what makes me happy I will be making my own birthday cake which is a tres leches, my all time favorite dessert to eat. If you have never heard of this you must go ahead and make it. I am including my own personal recipe so you have no reason to not make it now, ha. Enjoy!

Tres Leches

you will need:

6 eggs
1 cup of flour
1 cup of sugar
vanilla extract
1 can evaporated milk
1 can condensed milk
1 can of milk
1 container of whipped cream
1 can of fruit salad

Pre-heat the oven to 350 degrees. Grease and flour a 9x13 inch pan.

Put the egg white in the mixing bowl and mix on medium speed for about a minute or longer just make sure the egg whites are to the point you can create peaks. Slowly pour in the 1 cup of sugar and mix for about 30 seconds.

Then pour one egg yolk at a time until all 6 egg yolks are mixed in.

Then slowly pour in the 1 cup of flour and mix well and pour in the vanilla extract. I just eyeball the it and I like using a lot of vanilla extract so just put in what you like. It can even be rum extract or any other kind you might have at hand.

Pour onto you cake pan and cook for 30 minutes.

Once cake is done take it out and with a butter knife poke holes all over the cake and put aside.

In a blender mix all 3 milk and blend for about a minutes. I sometime put strawberries in to give it a fruity flavor but you don't have to and I am not today. Then pour the milky mixture over the cake. It will seem like way too much milk but trust me it will not be and the cake will soak it all in. Do this while the cake is still warm.



Let the cake completely cool down and then spread the whipped cream on top and the put any fruit you like or like I do spread some canned fruit over the top and voila!

My new shoes

So I had been hearing about these shoes called TOMS.

Have you heard about them?

Well apparently they are pretty cool right now and every has a pair.

I really like them so I went to the store to check them out and holy cow! They were expensive like $60 dollars and to me right now that is way too much money to be spending on just one pair of shoe. I know I am cheap but her when you are low on cash there are things you just cannot afford.

I was so sad so I went over to Famous Footwear to see about getting Baby some comfy summer shoe. I happened to ask the lady if they sold TOMS since they were having a buy one get one half off sale. She told me that Sketchers have the BOBS which look just like it and they are only $29. Perfect, right?

Well I went over to another shoe store at the mall since they didn't have anything for Baby and I found another paid of shoes that look similar to the TOMS but for only $22. Heck yeah! So guess what I bought myself that pair since I could afford those.

Yes I really did need to write about them because they made me very happy. Retail therapy really does work well maybe not for ever but momentarily it made me happy.

My stress reliever

I have always loved baking more than cooking but since all this family drama has started baking has become a stress reliever for me.

So I tend to do it mostly every night.

My new thing to bake is bread which I never before had the guts to do but somehow I have figured it out. Yeast is turning out to be my friend.

I no longer need to go buy bread because I just make all of our bread. I have made whole wheat sandwich bread, cheese bread and a sweet raisin bread. They all taste better than anything I could buy at the store. The best part is getting the bread out of the oven nice and warm and eating it with some butter and jam. Yummy!

I however am sure by the end of summer I will be weighting more but who cares right. It's totally worth it.

Talk with my mother

On Sunday my mother came over to see Baby. However I had different plans since that day I had found out from someone in Costa Rica that supposedly my mother had told a family member in Costa Rica that I was exaggerating this whole situation with my father. I was beyond upset. I was so hurt that my mother would say something like that.

I confronted her about it and she denies having said anything like that to anyone in Costa Rica. To tell you the truth I kinda don't believe her since during the same conversation she lied about a few things to me that I know for a fact happened.

My mother however has realized the mistake she made in not defending us as children and allowing this behavior to go on for so many years. Sunday she broke down crying because she feels so horrible about what has happened and she told me that she feels responsible for what has happened. She also apologized for allowing this to have happened in my life. For the first time since this type of thing started happening in my life I felt like my mother was truly sorry for allowing this to happen to us.

I did let her know that it's going to take some time for me to be able to forgive her for her part in all of this but that I do know that with help of my Heavenly Father I will be able to forgive her. Once that has happened I can start to work and try to rebuilt a relationship with her at that point.

I know she wants me to forgive my father because she let me know but I told her that it will probably take months to years for me to be able to forgive him and that just because I forgive him does not mean I have to have a relationship with him because as an adult now I actually get to choose who I have in my life and he has made it very clear that he is a toxic person that I should not have in my life. Of course my mother get emotional when I say this but not my problem, really.

I can tell that my mother in her own way is really trying to fix the damage that has been done. She called my sister and I and invited to take us out to lunch on Saturday. When I heard her say that I was all like "Whaaat?" This has never in my 27 years of being in this family happened. I have taken my mother out to lunch but that was all my own doing. My mother has never on her own doing asked to take us out. It really is sweet of her to do and think of.

Swimming

These are a couple of pictures from the other day when we went with my brother, Baby's favorite Tio.

I am loving the nice weather we have been getting lately.

It allows me to be able to hang by the pool on a regular basis and Baby could not be happier. He asks every single day if he can go to the pool.

Boutiful basket

Don't all these fruit and veggies look amazing?

They have something called Bountiful Baskets out here that I had heard from neighbors and people on facebook. I asked a friend to show me how to do this and she did which is so easy and honestly so worth doing.

For those 2 baskets I only paid $23. After doing the math, at least for me it turns out way cheaper than going to the grocery store and buying the same things. Plus we are kind of forced to eat all these healthy vegetables and fruit that other wise we might not eat.

I do it just about every week unless we are out of town. So go check the website and see if they do this where you live because it really is so worth it.

Problems with spanking

"The problem is when parents rely on physical punishment, they are more likely to escalate when the kids misbehave if they do not stop," he said. "They come back and they hit harder and are indeed more at risk to abuse them."

Research shows that parents who rely on spanking for discipline encourage negative behaviors, including aggression. Children can also show signs of depression and anti-social behavior as they grow older.

Those last 2 paragraphs I found on a website and now I forget which website it was but it had something to do with Parents and Teachers against violence.

I really do believe that when we were younger my father just thought he was trying to correct a behavior by spanking us. Then, though it spiraled out of control.

This is how I feel about spanking and its my own personal opinion because of what I have gone through. I feel that there are so many other ways to discipline than spanking. If you used spanking when the children are younger as they get older and do more annoying and hurtful things you get more frustrated and then I believe that's when it turns into abuse.

I know that there are people who can spank their children without the parent being angry or upset and if you are one of these people good for you. I however have never met a person who can do that because for the most part people who spank do it as a last resort thing because they have lost all patience.

The thing is that if you are calm when disciplining your child you would not spank them. Trust me this is very hard thing to do. I did not grow up with a very good example so I know how hard this is. Every single day before Baby wakes up I read my scriptures and pray for a long time and ask, well more like beg Heavenly Father to please allow me to have the patience I need to not yell or spank my child and be able to discipline him in a loving way. Every single time I have to discipline him its hard not to loss control, it takes a lot more energy to keep it together, trust me.

My amazing child

Baby has been so amazing these last few weeks. Giving me kisses non-stop all day for no reason. Eating what I serve him. Not throwing tantrums and just being a pleasure to have around. Not normal for a 2 year old, right?

He is even all on his own started to potty train. For the last 2 months after breakfast I take his clothes off and let him run naked for a few hours. We have a potty sitting in our living room for him which he had never used but 4 days ago he started peeing in it and then 2 days ago pooped in it. I wasn't even in the room when he did that. How crazy is that?

Yesterday his cousin was over and I think he just forgot about the toilet and peed and pooped in his underwear but for the rest of the day he peed in his potty. I will be stuck at home for the next 3 days so we can try and get this potty thing down.

I am thinking naps and bedtime he will have to wear a diaper until he starts waking up with a dry diaper. I refuse to buy pull ups cause they ate way more expensive than diapers.

I am hoping within the next 2 weeks he can have it down cause then we go on away for a few days and I don't want him to back track.

Memories

I have been having tons of dreams. Scary ones. Like my father is trying to kill me in them. Yeah not fun at all.

Also I am having tons of memories coming back. I remember so many things now from my childhood. Its super weird.

I know for a fact that the abuse started at least when I was 3 maybe younger. I know this because my father at times has bragged about how when I was 3 he once took me to the church bathroom and slapped me on my naked bottom because I would not sit still through sacrament at church. Then he said he told me to stop crying or else. I am so serious that he bragged about this so many times.

I now know too that around that same time my one uncle threatened my father that if he didn't stop beating us he was going to call the Costa Rican version of CPS. After that my father stopped all communication with my uncle and hated him. My aunts have also said that my father would beat us and lock us in our rooms. Mind you my father left Costa Rica by the time I was 5 so any of this for sure happened before then.

At the age of 5 right before he left for the States he was taking me to school. He was riding his bike and I was sitting in the middle bar. For some reason my foot got stuck on the spokes of the wheel so we both fell and I was pretty hurt. All he did was yell at me over and over for putting my foot there and asking if I was dumb. I wanted to go back home but he wouldn't let me cause he was running late for work, he said. I remember crying the whole way to school.

I also now remember a beating my brother got during family home evening for not answering a question right. He told my brother to sit up and then he beat him for what seemed forever and no one was doing anything so I finally jumped on top of my brother so that he wouldn't get hit anymore. Then finally my mother told him to stop. That was when he was between 12-14. At 16 my father beat my brother so bad he actually peed himself and then my mother had the nerve to come up to my brothers room afterwards and tell my brother that it was his fault and not to piss my father off. What?

When I was 20 for a 4th of July I asked if I could go watch the fireworks with my boyfriend and that I would be home by 10pm. Since we were not doing anything that evening as a family I figured there would be no problem. My father said no. I could not believe it and asked for an explanation I was just told no so I again asked for permission and by this time he flipped. He was in the basement and I had left my phone there he grabbed it and threw the phone at my face. Then he came running up the stairs and by then I was super scared. He opened the door and asked me to leave his house but my mom is telling me not to leave. I tell him if I am leaving I can let myself out so he closes the door. I go open the door and go to leave and he pushed me down the stairs, outside of our house.

That's just to name a few of the memories I am having.

I am writing all of this down because I really want people to really know the type of monster he really is. Not only that but everything I say is being denied and I want to have this hear for prove later on that these things really did happen.

My sister has moved out

As of last Sunday my sister no longer lives with my parents. She moved out with some friends.

Of course I am now getting the blame for it as I always get blamed for everything.

I never told her to move out though, her bishop was the one who told her she needed to be out of that house.

My friend who is a cop also told me that she needed to be out of that house because abuser barely ever get better, for the most part it gets worse. He also said that abusers have a cycle that they all follow, which I thought was interesting and so true. Right after they explode they go thru the honeymoon stage where they try to win you over and will get you things and be super nice to everyone. Then the next stage they call the winding stage, everything bothers then and they are just building all the rage up. Then comes the explosion. The thing about abusers is that any of these stages can last anywhere from hours to years so you never know when they will actually explode or what will make them explode. That's why NO ONE should be living with an abuser.

I have for sure seen all of these stages in my father but he is not willing to accept that he is an abuser and until he does he will not get better. I just hope once the rest of my siblings are out of the home my mother doesn't end up dead. Cause I don't care what she says I am almost positive he beats her. Normally an abuser doesn't only beat the children most of the time he beats the wife too. Not only that but why the hell is she so afraid of him.

Anyways going back to my sister moving out she decided to do while my parents were in church so that their wouldn't be any drama. Once my parents got home of course my mom called her and told her how cruel of my sister it was to do this to them. She also kept on asking where she was moving to which my sister does not want to tell them because of obvious reasons and my mother could not believe this and told my sister that she has a right to know where she is living, haha, no she does not. My sister told her she is over 18 and does not need to let them know where she is staying. Later on in the day my mother called my sister to tell her that she needed to call my father and let him know why she moved out to which my sister just ignored her. She does not need to let my father know anything. They still want to try and control her what is wrong with these people.

So now my mother who after everything happened would call me about twice a day to see how I was doing. Even though it was weird and awkward she still did it but on Sunday she ignored my phone calls and yesterday she called me and when I asked her how she was doing she said good and I told her not to lie to me and then told me she had to go. I am now guessing I won't be hearing from her too much.