Surreal

Number dialed. Wait. A "computer" voice answers: "Welcome to ****'s teleconferencing service. Please enter your access code followed by the # sign". I do it. "After the tone please say your name, followed by the # sign". I do it. Weird beeps follow and voilá, I have stepped into a world very different from my regular one. Eight more voices begin to join and in less than a minute a "classroom" of sorts is assembled. We have never seen each other's faces. We had never spoken before, yet for the past three days we have spent five hours together each day.

Minnesota, Idaho, Chicago, New York, California. Japanese, Portuguese, Polish, Spanish and English. Names without faces learning together so as to plug into this abstract representation of the corporate world. This is just the beginning, though. Soon enough each one of us will become a voice for an anonymous individual anywhere in the world. By way of telephonic waves we will become bankers, doctors, nurses, 911 dispatchers, judges, attorneys, insurance brokers, and who-knows-what-else to some non-English speaker lost in this foreign world. I find it surreal, fascinating, intriguing.

For a few minutes we will be a conduit of information that will flow between a corporation and a customer. Maybe we will be the life line that will connect a real, life threatening emergency to the responder that can make all the difference between life and death. Maybe we will simply be the clerk that ensures a payment in time, or a technician explaining a customer how to use their newest technological device. All this will happen upon answering a phone call. Crazy, just plain crazy!

Thankful

We stopped work and play, dished ourselves some food (thanks, Colleen), turned the station, sat down and watched in anticipation. The show is a bit too "wild" for my liking, but there is only one reason we are all tuned in today: a chapter in a love story, our love story. Our engagement is being aired on national TV again and so, we quiet little chattering voices around us and wait.

He appears on the screen and little girly "ooohs", "ahhhs" and giggles fill the room. It has been a rough couple days, so I sit silently watching, remembering. He proposed... I said "sí", or at least I tried and muttered some unintelligible response that translated into the desired affirmation.

Fast forward almost six years... It has been a rough couple days... I want to say yes again! Tears well up my eyes. I love this man.

Hard working, fun loving, sensitive and romantic man. He has filled my days with laughter; his own: loud, happy, full of life; mine: quiet, satisfied, and grateful; and theirs: noisy, constant, pure. My life is full... what more could I ask for.

Product of that happy day full of promise and destiny came her:

An Elena, my Elena. My happy girl who gets "so encigged" by the little things of life, who would live on sweets alone, and who lives to be a princess. **She writes four or five of the letters she knows and reads you a complete story. **She pretends to hold Jesus´hand when walking through a parking lot because it is more grown up than holding on to Mami or Daddy but it is still a hand. **She loves to help her sister on the potty and celebrates her heartily when successful. **She adores her little brother and loves to discover new ways to make him laugh. **She winks, and smiles, and dances, and twirls, and fills my world with dance. She is perfect.

then her:
An Adriana, my Adriana. My little dynamite whose determination is as intense as the big eyes that light up her face. **She is caught in between baby and toddler world, she loves so much being both. **She is determined and independent but craves snuggles more than anything else in this world. **She kisses the sweetest kisses and hugs the tightest embraces full of love. **She does everything with a passion that belongs only to her. **She will sing herself to sleep and pick up the song right where she left it the minute she opens her eyes. **She teases, and jokes, and plays, and sings, and loves and every time she hugs you, her little hand will sweetly rub your back. She fills my days with wonder and she is perfect.

...and him:
A boy! My sweet boy! My other Ben. **He is just as sweet as his daddy. **He loves to laugh. **He looks at my face adoringly when I talk. **His rich blue eyes shine as the sweetness of his smile overtakes his chubby cheeks when I come into sight. **He is as pleasant as he is cute. **He coughs to get attention. **He constantly slaps his right hand as long as he is awake and isn´t holding anything with it. **He is chubby, and chunky, and joyful, and he fills my days with sweetness. He is perfect.

Each one of them is mine. They are mine for a season, he is mine forever. My life is full. My life is perfect.

The floor is down!

1. mid progress

with the stove in place and still pending the trim

The infamous dining room green walls with the new floor.

Our handy helpers: Jeremy and Kris

I figured a couple of my readers (ahem, Dee and Becky)
would love looking at these guys at work!
They did an amazing job, thank you guys for working and ladies for releasing them to us!

A Splash (a very big one) of color...

Here's the deal: except for one person's very enthusiastic and favorable response, most of the comments our (well, my really) color choices have elicited are exclamations of how "latin", "hispanic", or "Guatemalan" it looks. The amount of colors responds to the different activities that we will carry out in this room and wanting to give each area a different feel. It may not have been the greatest of ideas, but we wanted to liven it up. Maybe we went for too many colors, I don't know but we will give it a try and live with it for a little bit (ahem, we are on a deadline here!) and decide later if we will truly keep this color collection or not. In the meantime, here goes nothing:

1. (above) the kitchen's "toasted nutmeg" meets the long wall's "blanket brown" across the dining room's "coriander seed"

2. (above) Living room/office's "fresh praline" meets dining room's "coriander seed"


3. (above) This is the part that still has us scratching our heads... the closer wall is being hit by sunlight and the "coriander seed" looks a deep green. Move to the wall further back that meets the kitchen... this wall is being hit by the light bulbs in the dining room and it looks more "mustardy"... that's the part we're not sure of.


4. Long wall's "blanket brown" meets living room's "fresh praline"
5. Kitchen's "toasted nutmeg" meets long wall's "blanket brown" (which are really my favorites in this crazy combo).
6. The kitchen hit by sunlight... my most favorite part of all. When the room is lit by the sun, the colors look so good! So there, maybe you'll come to my newest section of the house and be overwhelmed by my color pallette... sorry. I had fun trying and still don't know how to "fix it" or whether it really needs fixing...

At any rate, the guys are working on the flooring right now, so tomorrow I will post pictures of their final product (as well as pictures of them!). I just wanted to catch you all up with the color portion. Later on, we will see how our mismatched furniture fits in here!