Happy Birthday Marta

Today is a good day for birthdays!

Nicholas, our Schola director's little grand-daughter, and you, Marta!

So just for you, here is the tradtional (you like traditional stuff, right?) Mendozablog birthday cake.

Okay, I know it says 6, and you're actually 21, but that's just a minor detail. The point is, we remembered!

Have a blessed birthday!

Happy Birthday, Nicholas!

Happy birthday, Nicholas, all the way from Bilund, Danemark! Ole Kirk Christiansen here!

OK, I am not the inventor of LEGO's, but since you see everything as Legos, you might not notice the difference.

I can't make you a cake this cool, but we can get you a picture of one, so here it is.

We love you very much, and we thank God for giving us the gift of a clever, funny, sweet boy like you.

Happy 10th birthday!

Bookstore FAIL!

One of the things we like to do is go up to San Jose every once in a while. Specifically to go to Bookstores. My family puts up a lot from me.

Anyways, we recently went to Recycled Books in San Jose, and our son took a picture of the Emergency Exit, right below.

What is extra cool is that he submitted this picture to Failblog, and they actually published it today! Here is the entry:

http://failblog.org/2011/01/26/epic-fail-photos-emergency-exit-fail-6/

Congratulations!

Walk For Life West Coast 2011

Pictures form Walk For Life West Coast in San Francisco on the 22nd of January, 2011.

Last year, there were 35,000 participants, and organizers were expecting more this year.

The Walk stats, and we are off to the Marina Green.

Liked this Monk on his mobile Phone.

TransAmerica Pyramid.

About halfway there, at Fisherman's Wharf.

The SFPD were great, and truly keep order. The ones I talked too were pretty friendly as well. Thanks!

Alcatraz (Pelican) Island form the Walk.

A blessing to see many Spanish-speaking groups.

Thank you Lord, for a beautiful day to Walk, and to pray for the unborn. Convert the heart of our President and of our country, and do not hold this Sin in judgement of us.

Thank you and God bless all those who prayed for us as well on our Walk.

Our Annual Visit To The Mall

For whatever reason, we just haven't gone to our local Mall as much. Perhaps it was the young ladies dressing in a scandalous manner. Maybe it was the crazy shopper who tried to run over somebody with their car. Or perhaps it was the insane gangs members shooting inside the Mall.

Just seems like a better shopping experience could be had elsewhere. Every once in while though, you gotta go get a free sample at See's, Check out Best Buy, catch a movie, or just take a walk while the weather outside dips all the way down to the 50's and turns nasty.

We recently did just that, and on the busiest shopping day of the year. Come take a stroll with us to our local mall and have a look around.



Some exercise program being sold at one of the kiosks.

A fun shirt to have!

We thought that businesses with names like this were only on The Simpsons.

The little Old Navy dog that creeps out the children.

We looked for the other Deadly Sins, but all we found was Gluttony which was located in the food court.

Got this calendar for afriend last year, and apparently it was pretty funny and informative. Come on, it's poop!

We swear, this store was just a few doors down from...

This one! Guess not having a star in the "R" made it alright.

Now here was something nice! One of the 72 Jewelers in the mall sold some very nice Rosaries made out of precious and semi-precious stones.

"There's a camera trained on me, gotta make a scene!"

That about wraps up our annual, state and federally mandated one trip to the local shopping mall. We didn't buy anything, so it didn't do the economy any good. Since we had some free candy at See's, we may have actually taken away from the economy. So much for our civic duty.

Christmas And Epiphany, 2010-2011

35 dollars for a package of pictures with Santa?


Really? And it is not even the most expensive one!


Man, I'll take my own.


For whatever reason this past Christmas, the two smaller kids wanted to mail off letters to Santa.


They never asked to do this before!

The letter is off to the North Pole.

Christmas Eve dinner. We lit up the advent wreath for the last time.

After dinner it was off to Byzantine Divine Liturgy. It was one of their shorter liturgies. Only three hours.

Lizzie has been wanting to wear Monica's old First Communion dress somewhere. We decided Christmas Eve was special enough for a dress that fancy.

In spite of our late night, we all woke up early Christmas morning to open presents.

She actually chose a Hat over a video game.

It's not rattling...

Christmas Win!

Twelve days later, it was time to break out the Official Mendoza Family Epiphany Wrapping Paper.

After Mass, we had a Rosca de Reyes (Three Kings Bread). The lucky person to find the hidden baby Jesus figure in the bread won a glamorous aluminum foil crown and a collectible photo of the Mission. Taken by your humble blogger.

Funny, a lot more people showed up to share the Rosca than we thought.

All in all, it was a beautiful Christmas Season, which is still going on until Christmas ends on the 2nd of February, the Purification of Mary.

Thank you all for the prayers and the presents, both known and anonymous, and God bless you!

Happy Birthday, Sweetheart!

No, this is not a repeated posting!

Happy birthday, sweetheart!

Here, enjoy a delicious Princess cake.

Also, please enjoy this video of a love song by a 70'2 big haired rocker who amazingly is still alive.

Happy Birthday again, Sweetheart. I love you very much.

Happy Birthday!

Happy Birthday Laurie! We can't take you to Chuck E. Cheese, so we hope you will like this picture of a cake. I know it says you are six, and we all know you are twenty-nine, but close enough, right? And who doesn't love Disney Princesses? So we hope you are having a great day, Catholic Kansas Mom!