favorite things as of late

Favorite car: Mustang. Every time one of these drives by I just have to stop and stare! I've never liked a car so much. They kind of turn me on.

Favorite show: In the Motherhood starring Chelsea Handler. She is completely politically incorrect but she and Leah Remini and Jenny McCarthy crack me up.

Favorite taste: Blue cheese. Blue cheese in salads, on steaks, on crackers. love it!

Favorite scent: Bath and Body Works Wild Honeysuckle body butter.

under construction

I'm in the process of moving all my posts from my old blog over to this one, updating the side bars and adding some fun features so hang tight...

song of the week

As I've said in the past I love all types of music, just depends on my mood. Lately, I'm feeling the "hard rock" influence resonate deep within and I gotta let it out! Something about Daughtry's raspy voice and the angry attitude of the song that strikes a cord with me presently. I'm just sick of certain situations in my life right now, and I won't go into detail out of respect for the occasional family members that read this blog. That said, I find this song personally cathartic.

happy first birthday

Little miss Morgan taking a bubble bath.

I blinked and suddenly Morgan turned one year old! How the time flies when we're having fun chasing kids and loving up babies! Sadly Morgan has a little fever today--don't know if it's a cold or flu or due to her teething. She already has seven teeth and loves to gnaw on lots of things, especially the edges of books--one of these days she's going to poop out a library. She also likes eating the dirt in my plants, taking books off the shelves and throwing her food onto the floor from her seat in the high chair. She's my little trouble maker. She's also my little angel. She is so happy all the time and lately she's into clapping, waving bye-bye, reaching high when we say "big girl" and shaking her head when we say "no, no." She giggles and laughs and loves her big sisters! We'll celebrate her birthday this weekend when she's feeling better (hopefully). Happy birthday Sweetheart! (blogger is taking forever to download pics so I'll do it later.)

3 pints thursday--valentine edition

Happy Valentine's Day!

Yesterday the Washington School District, which sponsors the Salt Lake valley K12 homeschool community, held their Valentine party at the Classic Fun Center. The girls had a blast! Both Sarah and Emma bounced until their hearts delight, made crafts, exchanged their Barbie valentines w/ suckers and ate lots of snacks. While we were in staying warm and dry a cold front hit the city and made driving home very slow and scary! Roads were shut down across the state and one elementary school was forced to keep students overnight! I was very grateful to make it safely home where it's warm and comfortable. Gene and I are celebrating valentines day tomorrow--date night. Here's some pics from this past week. Enjoy.

Morgan

Isn't she so pretty?! She's simply the sweetest baby ever!

Every night at dinner Morgan gets us clapping with her...

...and it cracks her up!

Sleepy baby at the party yesterday.

Emma

Emma debating climbing the bouncer called "Everest".

Emma mid bounce and having a ball!

Emma, at the craft table, very seriously drawing our family.

Sarah

Sarah climbing with Emma looking on.

The pink blur that is my daughter.

Sarah mid bounce.

Two tables full of valentine bags and boxes--it was a great turn out!

Incidentally my kids didn't want too many sugary snacks-yay them.

Sarah & Emma's valentine bags.

Sarah said "Mom, we hit the jackpot!" I'd say.

my stinker is now 4

Emma, at Jeff & Felicia's house, being her silly self.

This week Emma turned 4 years old. I can't adequately describe how she's blossomed in the last 6-12 months, in spite of the above photo. Emma has such a quick wit as she's so observational, she picks up on the mood of a situation easily. Sometimes she's my little "brown-noser" and sometimes she has a melt-down to end all melt-downs.

A classic Emma meltdown

(that's visqueen/poly sheeting on our sliding door to keep heat in during the winter months)

Sometimes it's so frustrating when she's passive, or pouty or unwilling to cooperate, as would be any toddler. But, man, she can melt my heart when she says "Mommy, you're the best mommy ever!" and lands a giant kiss on my cheek with her arms wrapped tightly around my neck!

Emma licking the beater and blowing out her candles.

For her birthday Gene took her shopping and got her a Belle princess dress-up doll, the game Hungry, hungry hippos, play-doh kitchen meal maker, a mix-n-match wooden teddy bear & bubbles. Both grandma's got her a bunch of books, her very own bag of cookies and a ball. We let Emma choose where she wanted to eat for dinner and she chose to eat at McDonald's for dinner (a testament to how seldom we eat there), and mostly to play on their playground. Then we came home and had chocolate cake with chocolate frosting and chocolate icecream (a girl after my own heart). I love you sweetie!

Happy Birthday Emma!

daddy daughter dance '08

Last Friday Gene took Sarah and, for her first time, Emma, to the annual city-wide Sweetheart Daddy-Daughter Dance. The girls each got to pick out a new dress. Emma wanted "everything navy blue". Sophisticated, silly little girl. Emma was so excited and looking forward to finally getting to join Sarah and Daddy at the dance; we spent the entire afternoon getting them ready--taking a bath, doing hair and nails and eye glitter. Gene said it was a huge turnout, as always. They had cookies, games and crafts, balloons and pictures. They danced until they dropped, literally--Emma fell asleep in her daddy's arms on the dance floor. Dang! I wish I had a picture of that! After the dance he took them to their traditional eat-spot, IHOP. I'm so glad that I have a husband who loves his kids and wouldn't miss out on doing things like this for the world.

Emma, Daddy and Sarah.

Sarah in her pretty new dress.

Emma in her pretty new dress.

happy rat year

So today we learned a little bit about the Chinese New Year and, this being the year of the Rat, some redeeming qualities of these disgusting rodents. Really, who can think that way when looking at Ratatouille or Tom and Jerry cartoons (at least it's not a picture of the rat infestation of Taco Bell in NYC).

I'm actually excited for this year. The year of the rat is supposed to be about hard work, ambitions and a sense of renewal. That suites me just fine! Rats like to be in the "drivers seat" and are frugal and devoted to their families. That's right up my alley. This past year--the year of the Pig, which is about fun and lazing around--was rough in many ways. I wonder if bad vibes from a famous "pig person" named Hillary Clinton had anything to do with it.

Anyway, for dinner we had long noodles which, if eaten on the Chinese New Year, will bless you with a long life, also mondu or dumplings, kimchi and oranges for prosperity.

Our dinner

May y'all have a long life, prosperity and a happy rat year!

play by play superbowl party

One of my favorite times of the year--Superbowl Sunday! Gene's favorite for sure. This year we had it over at Jeff and Felicia's house and even though we managed nicely, we sure did miss Don's special touch and effort that he puts into all the games, etc. I did my best to type up the questionaire, thinking that I was "very cool" and that I knew what I was talking about, sure enough Chelsea pointed out that Manning plays for the Giants and not the Patriots as I had typed. So what do I know?! I'm just there to visit, watch the commercials and play the games. Incidentally, Jeff won the questionaire contest getting 15 out of 26 or so correct. Of course, one of the questions he had control over--"How many times will Jeff yell at the TV"? Next year we should include "In what quarter will Felicia fall asleep?" haha.

Chelsea helping Emma rock on the banana chair.

How cute is Morgan attacking her toy? I love that baby!

Emma, Sarah and Alyssa inside the snow cave that Jordan & Alyssa built.

Chips & dip, sausages, buffalo wings, egg rolls, fruit platter, sloppy joes, shrimp platter, 7-layer bean dip, oysters on crackers, pies, cookies, soda and pepcid.

My nephew, Dean, with little miss Morgan. Dean goes into the Air Force this April.

The Giants win the Superbowl!

Felicia emotional over the win.

Lysette excited that she won 3 out of the 4 quarter prizes.

Jeff happy that his bookie won't have to hunt him down and break both legs.

Everybody hypnotized by the game. Good times had by all! :)

fun for me

Last week my brother hired me to do the interior decorating for his company's 4,900 sq. ft new sleep lab/office space. YAY! I jumped at the chance, despite the fact that my own home has been an on-going 5 year project, I love interior decorating. It got me thinking that it would be awfully fun for me to start a little side business, just as some extra income. This project will make a great addition to my portfolio and who knows, possibly an "in" with some general contractors.

So I've been playing around with color swatches and tiles and carpet samples and even dreaming in color. There are a couple major conditions with this project that are challenging. 1) being that I have to work around the color scheme of the existing art work ($70,000 worth) and 2) yet significantly more challenging, is the limited natural light--the bedrooms will NOT have windows. Should be fun, really I'm excited.

I took this one with my new camera--all the samples on my bedroom floor.

Little miss Morgan, Sarah & Emma playing yesterday morning.

We need to head to Tae Kwon Do, so I'll upload more pics later. :)

cleaning house

A couple of years ago, on black Friday, I bought a stupid digital camera because it was on sale. I didn't really know much about digital cameras (as I was still using an old reliable film camera), and since digital cameras seemed to change and improve rapidly, I thought it was better than nothing. It was on sale. I thought that my photo-journaling would take off. "Woohoo!" I thought, "now I can edit blurring pictures and take action shots." Much to my dismay my newly acquired stupid camera not only had a lag time of 5 seconds (may as well have been 5 minutes) but also had the controls on the internal menu. Suck! Well, the said "photo-journaling" never took off, and in fact dropped considerably since working with my stupid camera just gave me angst. I even just now, for the first time, used the memory card in the slots on our printer and uploaded them to the computer. All the photos uploaded to this sad, sad blog have been from my pda or Gene's cell phone and grainy at best. Argh!

Well, fast forward to today when my belated birthday present finally arrived via UPS--a beautiful, fast, with external controls, wonderful Nikon D40! Yay! I can hardly wait to get it charged, up and running! So I bequeath my stupid digital camera to Sarah and my film camera to Emma--have fun kids. And here are some of the photos from the memory card, some didn't turn out too bad, but it's a crap shoot.

Emma with Sarah when she got her Little Dragon Black Belt at Tae Kwon Do.

January 16, 2008

Sarah with her Tae Kwon Do class.
"Smile. Now hold still...hold it...hold it...almost there...one more second...okay."

Christmas morning 2007

Emma and Sarah opening their Furberries Christmas morning 2007.

Our house doesn't usually have this gray/blue hue to it.

Emma opening her princess mirror.

Little miss Morgan discovering Christmas morning and opening her presents.

She is so stinkin' cute and almost 10 months in this photo.

One of my favorite pics of Morgan off the card.

Happy baby last May or June '07.

Happy baby Morgan holding surprisingly still a couple days before Christmas.

Emma and Sarah playing at the Discovery Gateway children's museum

last summer.

Sarah and Emma gathering balls for the musical ball tunnels.

Such fun at the museum!

funny girls

I love the age that my girls are right now. They do and say the cutest things. I remember being that age where I was beginning to get adult humor but still misunderstood lyrics or whatever. Today Sarah was singing the song "What I like about you" by the Romantics, only Sarah sang it her way "What I like about you... your homemade pie." (instead of "you hold me tight".) She cracks me up. Then at bedtime I mentioned that in one week it'll be my birthday and asked them how old they think I'll be. Sarah said "41" while Emma said "17". It made me laugh.

summer of george

So I never got around to sending out Christmas cards this year (I might do "new year's" ones, but, then again, I might not). The holiday's were fun and Christmas day was more enjoyable than I had anticipated--mostly because I spent the entire day serving my family a wonderful breakfast (quiche, cinnamon rolls & oranges), snacks, and our traditional "roast beast" for dinner.

However, less than a week out Emma already managed to break one of her toys by submersing it in the bathtub....and I just want to go screaming from the rafters "THIS IS THE SUMMER OF GEORGE!" Or, the "year of Carla" as it were, what with new year's resolutions and all. So that's it! THAT is my New Year's resolution--to take back myself. Don't get me wrong. I absolutely LOVE being a stay-at-home parent and teaching Sarah and nurturing Emma & Morgan as well. Love it. Wouldn't change it for the world. But, as my sister pointed out recently, when I do something I am nothing if not thorough. And lately (for the longest time, really) that has left me feeling like I've lost myself, like I'm drowning in all my other duties.

It's hard for me to reconcile who I am and what I do with what I deserve and what I want. And it's nothing extraordinary, just some uninterrupted time to go running or paint or maybe get pampered every now and then. So this year is the year I'm going to allow myself to be a little selfish, just a little, and take care of what I need to feel like "me" again. In two words--health & hobbies. What do you want to do differently this year?