Spanish continued with chile rellenos

I have gotten many chances over the last couple days to see the improvement in my Spanish. Its funny this is the way it has gone over the last 9months: I see great improvement through a conversation then I plateau for awhile no matter how hard I try to excel, then out of the blue I see improvement again. Im hoping that learning in stair steps like this I am actually letting more of the language sink in. Yesterday I took my daughter to the park (thank God we needed to get out) and ended up having a 30 min conversation with a lady who was there with her grandchildren. Im happy to say she knew absolutely no English and wasn't to good at slowing down her speech for me. And I understood almost everything she said and only had to say "dilo otra ves." a few times. Then I was on messenger with one of my husbands cousins and did quiet well with that also. He does know some English but we have a deal where he types in English as much as he can and I type in Spanish and we correct each others sentences. Yes this can make a short conversation very long but it is extremely helpful with learning the written language. As you may be able to tell from reading my blogs IM not the best speller in English and Im finding that I screw it up in Spanish also. I didn't think this would be a problem because Spanish is always spelled phonetically which is what I try to do in English (Thank God for auto spell check).But this is why learning correct pronunciation is so important in Spanish, I use to always say to my husband "But you understood what I meant." when he would correct my pronunciation but now I see why its so important. Aside from being just annoying to fluent speakers when you say a word weird you also cant picture the word correctly and later put it in writing. So for any new learners don't brush off all the people who stress pronunciation and enunciation. Ok so the last thing that happened that proved to me that I am doing better was the best. My husband has a friend from work who we have been slowly getting closer to. They are a younger couple like us (Ok she younger than me by like 7 years but hey who's counting right) and have a daughter the same age. Anyway last time we were over there I borrowed her cook book because my husbands family will not give me any recipes unless IM there to watch them cook the meal. We also found out that she is a trained hair dresser, Whoot Whoot. See Im spoiled because my mom is one and I hate going to people I don't know so this was a huge deal and comfort to me. Anyway we went over there last night after the guys got off work and she cut my hair (it looks great, shes good) and we cooked dinner together. I picked a recipe I wasn't sure I understood completely and that Iv always wanted to make even before meeting my Mexican hubby. Chile Rellenos, OMG they are so yummy and I had no idea the true way they were made. So the guys hung out and we cooked and I understood her the whole time. The only time I had to go ask Issac something I actually knew the answer and was just being timed about it. I find that my best learning comes when I am with someone who is patient and doesn't seem to think Im stupid just because I speak like a 5 year old. So how exciting I found that Im doing better than I thought with my Spanish and learned how to cook a yummy dish. We plan to do this more often although Im not sure it will fit in before the baby and then will have to wait a bit but hey there's goodness in the future. :)