Look at this photograph... Everytime I do it makes me laugh

So I have this Old booth app on my Iphone that I am pretty much addicted to. I love it. I am still working on perfecting my technique, but the pictures still make me laugh every time.

Just try not to smile...

Me:




Elsie:


Em:


And The Q:












On other note:
Songs I am loving right now...

Pink-"Glitter in the air"
Usher-"Papers"
Chris Brown-"Crawl"
Timbaland feat Justin Timberlake-"Carry out"
Justin Bieber- "Baby"
Sade- "Soldier of Love" (that's for you Jared)
Jaheim- "Closer"

And now we murderers, cause we kill time...

President's day weekend, Q and I had ourselves a little excursion to Idaho to see Kimmy. Like always, it was super relaxing and just fun. We never do much, but we had a couple trips to Target, walked around the mall, had some delicious food, got a little creative in the kitchen, let the kids run around and play, and watched the olympics. A really nice weekend.

Q loves her cousins. Just loves them. And I love watching her interact with them. She's still has no concept of "sharing" or being "soft", and often makes terrible messes when she plays. But she always like to be in on the action, and just wants to do everything her cousins are doing.




Under this heap of little girls is Aaron...poor guy just got tackled.


Q loves with her head...literally. She often rubs her head into your face, neck, body to snuggle and show she loves you...sometimes this "rubbing" turns ugly and she decides that bashing her head into yours will show you even more love...again, she doesn't understand "soft" quite yet...
This time Kim was the victim of Q's "tough love".

It started out nice enough...but then Q wanted to show her some love back.

and headbutted her right in the eye. hahahha

But apparently Q isn't the only one into some "tough love"


(sidenote: Elsie wasn't really strangling her...her light hand placement and Q's crazy face are actually unrelated..but what a great picture anyway)

Elsie loves her Aunt Ang...but having a Disney App on your phone that has the "princess and the frog" movie trailer, a favorite movie of Elsie's, that you can watch over...and over...totally helps!


For Valentine's day, Kim and I decided to get a little daring and see if we could make our own fondant and make a cake. We had a good recipe for a marshmallow fondant that actually doesn't taste half bad, and I think it turned out pretty cute. It's no "Cake Boss" cake, but it actually wasn't as hard as we thought it would be...we were proud.


Just a great weekend.

I, I live among the creatures of the night..I try, and try, and try,, and try to fight

Today is my cousin Alysha's birthday, and so throughout the day I kept thinking of funny memories I have of her through our years together.

While most may consider people from outside their family their "best friends", I am one of those people that consider some of my family my best friends. The people who have known me the longest, who share with me the most memories, and the people that know that most about me and love me anyway.

Alysha is one of these "best friends".

But we weren't always so nice to each other.......well I guess I wasn't always so nice to her.

Alysha was two years younger than me, and yet such an old soul (hahah), and was never happy when I would insist that she hung out with the cousins her own age (daishan and kimmy) and leave us older girls (Cali and me) to play by ourselves.

In fact, I believe, I made my poor, sweet, tender-hearted cousin Alysha cry on almost every occasion we girl cousins got together. But she loved me anyway...and never stopped insisting that she hang out with me.

then Cali left me and went to Peru...

and me and Alysha became really close...and never looked back. When we girl cousins would play "college", It was Alysha and I that shared a "dorm room"...of course it was kind of forced onto us, since daishan insisted she and kim always be roommates with their own "keycard" for their room that you had to have in order to get in....but I digress.

Me and Alysha loved hanging out together. I love my dear cousin Alysha.

My favorite memories of Alysha:

1. Sitting in the Astro Van in her garage, making up our own secret language..and pretty much forgetting it the next day.

2. Helping Emily win a lip sync contest at a singles dance. We were her amazing back-up dancers for Britney Spears' "Lucky", and we were so in sync with our dance moves that people thought we had choreographed it.

3. Playing Barbie's with Alysha who always named her Barbie "Julie". Julie never had a boyfriend, always did her homework, and constantly make sure the other "girls" were being good. "Julie" was a barrel of laughs....hahaha

4. When Alysha finally admitted that a boy was cute....the boy in question...Donnie Wahlberg of NKOTB

5. In a roadtrip back from an Nsync concert in Vegas, Alysha started a discussion in the car with a single question "okay so if you were nsync, like what would you have changed or needed to work on in the performance last night?"....Lindsay, Kim, and I couldn't stop laughing...oh Alysha!

6. Having Alysha come over to Bellevue and attend the stake dances. She was always down for good dance party.

7. Dealing with her "interesting" food interests such as tuna straight from the can, cheese-less pizza, baby food..oh and going out to eat with Alysha who says "nah I'm not hungry", and then nibbling off of your plate...classic Lysh.

8. Her WATER BOTTLE...enough said

9. Trying to read Alysha's handwriting when she worked at the office...often times penmanship lost out to getting everything done very....very...quickly.

10. Making up dances, roadtrips, hours of late night talks, warm loving hugs, words of affirmation-encouragement-and love, and tons of laughter.

ooh ooh i can't believe it...

I think sometimes I have been blessed with a child I don't deserve.

One mention of the word "bed" or "nap" and Q drops whatever she is doing, comes into my arms, waves goodbye to whomever is in the room at the time, and comes quietly with me to her room. We put in her binky (we are now down to binky time only during sleep), put her blankets on, kiss goodnight, and she is out. usually for a couple hours if it's nap time or 12 hours if it's night time.

I just love that girl.

These are the times to remember cause they will not last forever...

A couple weeks ago my longtime friend Liz invited me to attend the Billy Joel/Elton John concert with her in Seattle....and this past weekend was the festivities. Liz and I (along with my sister Kim and Uncle Tom) had attended a Billy Joel concert back when we were in high school and I was super stoked to see him again in concert. I had never seen Sir Elton John, but any man who sings songs like "Tiny Dancer" and "Your song" I am down to see.

Now let me tell you about our adventure...

I got into town (along with my friend Beth who was also attending with another party) and went to Liz's house. We talked for a bit and then headed out to catch a yummy dinner before the concert. Liz, her husband Zaron, Beth, and I had a fabulous dinner at Macchianos (sp) in Bellevue, and were doing great on time. Then we ordered dessert.....
Seriously it took forever!!! and we didn't leave the restaurant until 7:00...with the concert starting at the Key Arena in SEattle at 7:30...yeah good luck making it on time...
well we got pretty far with traffic being okay, but then we hit the Mercer St. exit. and that's where it all went downhill fast...
The Traffic was horrible! and it took forever to even get to the arena...and then we had to find parking...yeah, not awesome.
We were able to find this one reasonably priced parking lot and made our way up the levels to find a spot...there was only 1 spot left, and both cars on either side had parked very very close to the line. Liz and Beth got out, and I manuevered my way into the spot, and slithered my way out. Then we headed down to the 1st floor to pay the fee. When we discovered that once you pay the fee you had to put the stub on the dash of your car...sooo....I had to head back up to the 7th floor, slither back into my car, and put the stub on the dash...

Did I mention that it is raining...yeah, so by now my once straight hair is now starting to curl up in the fetal position.

Then we headed out on our long stroll to the arena...in the rain..without a jacket (i had forgotten my sweater at the restaurant)...in heels. I think I burned some major calories, which was the only good thought going through my head at the time.

Once we got to the arena, my worries were gone and I was just happy to be there and ready to party...

But then our tickets were rejected...and had apparently been "refunded" according to their little machines.
WHAT?
So we had to walk all the way to the other side of the arena, to the "ticket office", and check with them...in the way...already way late for the concert.

we were a little stressed...and were just hoping there was some mistake....that Liz's husband Zaron hadn't gotten scammed from the person he bought the tickets from on the internet...cause they weren't cheap...and that would just be awful.

We got to the ticket office....and it was closed. YOU HAVE GOT TO BE KIDDING ME.

So we just headed to the front doors on that side and gave them our tickets. the lady scanned them and asked if they had been "refunded"? we said no...and she let us in.
We finally got in either because..
1) We may have found the one lady who didn't care about her job, or felt sorry for us that we were already so late
2) The event HAD been rescheduled and maybe it was a common thing popping up on tickets
or
3) we were just lucky

Anyway we went to find our seats...and somebody was in them...OH MAN
But there were two empty seats in the row in front of our assigned row so we just sat there.

And I had a fabulous time.

Watching the middle aged people danced in the aisles
Watching Elton and Billy and their magical fingers play the keys
and Hanging out with my friend Liz, that I hadn't spent much time with in years.

It was a great time.

so fresh and so clean clean

I was re-reading my dentist post, and had a sudden mom memory.

She was obsessed with these things. Always had them in her purse and in the bathroom.
And yet, it wasn't unusual to find used ones in the car on the floor, in the couches, on the carpet, well pretty much everywhere. How did the get there? nobody ever knew.
She had some weird ways...but at least her teeth were always cleaned out.

I wanna be a dennnnn-tist.

Went to the dentist today.... 0 cavities once again. woo hoo.

I love going to the dentist. As long as can remember, the trips to the dentist have been regular (every 6 months). I remember as a small child going to the U of W dental school to have our check-ups. Getting the cool red tablets that you chew to see how dirty your teeth are, getting the free toothbrush...loved it all.
Throughout childhood we had the coolest dentist. Dr. Rossi. He and his assistants were so nice, so awesome. When I went through a period where the flouride would make me gag, the Hygienist would put it on with a Q-tip and then hold my lips away while it did it's work...awesome right?
Even going through years of braces, with all that comes with that. The tightenings, the mouth being pulled in all directions, the rubber bands, the impressions...everything not awesome...I still love getting stuff done to my teeth.
I think knowing my teeth are clean, healthy, and I gotta admit...having the dentist tell you how beautiful your teeth are every visit makes me feel kind of good.

I love the dentist.

I'm a survivor..I'm gonna make it...

Is anybody else as excited as me about the new season of survivor?
I had given up on this show last season, and after 2 episodes I quit watching it...
and then I saw the announcement for the upcoming season.

Heroes vs. villains

I am so excited!

4 of my favorite players are back (Colby-yummy, James-double yummy, Boston Rob-hilarious, and Rupert-just funny to hear) and I hope they do well.
Although I do have to admit I am a little annoyed with having to put up with Randy, Coach, and Pavarti (sp?) once again..man they are annoying.
Plus, is it really fair that this show was filmed before last season aired...so while everyone knows each others game play and past acts...Evil Russell from Season 19, is an unknown, and thus able to pull all his old tricks again...Hopefully Boston Rob can sniff out this rat and get him eliminated quickly.

The game starts next week...

Can't wait to see how this whole season plays out.

let's give em' something to talk about

It's amazing to me how babies change so quickly. It's seems like it was a just a couple weeks ago that I was so worried about Q not talking...and now she is saying/or trying to say more and more words. I can tell she is trying to repeat all the words I say, and it just makes me so happy.

Words I can definitely understand:
uh-oh
wow
mom (with a slight boston accent)
lights
ball
block

Words I think she is saying:
Emily (pronounced mlee--like one syllable)
mmmm (milk or water...right now it just means something to drink)

Words she understands:
blanket
close (she is fascinated with closing doors, dishwasher, cabinets, refrigerator, etc)

kiss me thru the phone...

My favorite new toy!

I finally broke down and decided to treat myself (a belated christmas gift to me with some tax refund money) and get a 3g iphone. It's fantastic! I am now in the process of getting all my music onto it, and plan on selling my ipod and former blackberry to supplement the cost...but I am super happy about my new toy!

You better believe the "I am t-pain" app was the 1st thing downloaded. :)