Living An Intentional Life
We hope everyone had a Merry Christmas. We just returned from a trip to Northern and Central California to visit relatives. It was full of adventure, including k turning our Mazda 5 into a barf-mobile. She is better now, though, and we are safe at home, so we are thankful. Details to come…
*Reference to Barry Manilow’s song, which we sang along to in the car.
What a difference a year makes:
From this…
…to this
I can’t believe that one year ago I was in the hospital about to give birth. I won’t go into anything too deep here, but D and I are so thankful to have k in our lives. We look forward to witnessing her develop in the coming year.
Here’s k’s snowman cake that I decorated:
After singing Happy Birthday, D helped k blow out the candle, which was placed in the snowman’s nasal cavity.
Snowman Massacre
k had more fun squishing the cake than eating it.
Since k’s birthday is right around Christmas, it will always be difficult to try to plan her birthday parties/activities. However, we knew we had to do something for her first birthday! We decided to go with a snowman theme. My parents were gracious enough to host the party since our place would not have comfortably accomodated the thirty or so guests.
I had D take k for a walk right before the party so she would fall alseep and be well-rested. Sure enough, it worked:
There was cookie decorating and a cookie swap. Note to self: force people to take more cookies home so we don’t end up with so many left-overs! I tried to make a “miniature foods” theme, so we had mini cakes, ice cream cones, sandwiches, veggies, chicken, etc. We even had a “mini bar” with toddler-friendly foods: cheerios, puffs, rice crackers, apple juice etc. Unfortunately, we do not have pictures to share š
I will post more later…too much to do, and flickr is being difficult tonight.
For those of you who don’t know, k has an Uncle K. A couple of weekends ago we (along with a lot of other peeps) helped him and my sister move to their new house in Irvine. As a “thank you” they had us all over last weekend. Uncle K made some delicious chili and there was “pick your carb”: rice, rolls, cornbread and spaghetti. (I had a little of all of them, thank you very much!)
It’s that banana box again!
Pushing k is good exercise
Crawling through tunnels is one of k’s favorite activities.
Recently, I haven’t had a chance to post as much as I would like.
I forgot to say that for Black Friday we went to Ikea for their free breakfast. We ended up getting two free breakfasts (on the right) and buying one 99 cent breakfast (on the left). It wasn’t too crowded, and I was able to buy my new desk for 11.23% off! I would definitely go there again next year.
Here’s a video from Thanksgiving. I’m still working on the videos of k walking, so hopefully they’ll be up soon.
This video really isn’t too exciting…it’s mainly k eating turkey. Watch for her “squinty smiles” in the very beginning, though. Very cute.
In other news, k’s bangs are definitely growing out:
Well, the holiday season is upon us, and already it feels really busy. On Saturday morning I went to a Women’s Christmas brunch at WPC and we were reminded that the focus should be on the birth of Jesus.
From Wednesday until today we were all staying at my parents’ house because our condo was being fumigated. It kind of felt like a mini vacation since our meals/dishes were taken care of and we were sleeping in a different bed. However, now our place is a mess (food in bags, laundry to be done, etc.) I guess the vacation is over!
We still have some shopping to do, but I’m hoping to get most of it done on the internet this week. I need to get the remainder of my Christmas cards out this week, too. Also, I am trying to plan k’s 1st birthday party in a couple of weeks. On top of all of this, my work hours have temporarily increased to 40 a week, so things are a bit overwhelming.
On another note, Armed Services Bowl…here we come! Haha. D has been so disgusted with how Cal has been playing, he said he would never watch another game. We’ll see about that.
Before heading over to my parents’ house this morning, we watched the Charlie Brown Thanksgiving special.
I was also excited to hear that my beloved HK had her own balloon at the Macy’s Thanksgiving Parade: 
The target time for Thanksgiving dinner was 3 p.m. After cooking up a storm, my mom managed to have the food ready not too much later than that. We had two turkeys (at my request, for leftovers), and ham, plus all of the usual sides: sweet potatoes, mashed potatoes, green beans, creamed corn, rolls, cranberry jello/sauce, stuffing, salad and rice. I volunteered to provide dessert, so I made a pumpkin pie with gingersnap crust and pumpkin ice cream. I also bought a huge apple pie from Costco. It weighed over five pounds!
k and SaSa
Hey, that’s not a banana!
Happy 11 month birthday, k! We are excited to be able to celebrate your first Thanksgiving with you tomorrow.
…for every time someone made a comment about k’s hair, we’d be rich! Sometimes they say something directly to us. Other times we just hear them say something under their breath to the people they are with. “Look at that hair!”, “You have crazy hair”, or “My kid used to have hair like that” are all things we’ve heard. Whatever people say, k’s hair makes people smile, so that’s cool.
On an unrelated note, D and I tried Pinkberry for the first time at Bella Terra. It was not as tart as Fiore. The cashier upsold us to a medium with three toppings (we were planning on medium with one topping, but it’s only 20 cents more for three). We chose mangoes, granola and blackberries. They were a bit stingy with the blackberries–maybe it’s better to get something smaller, like blueberries. Anyway, it was just under $5, so it was not cheap, but it was a nice treat for us to share.
Pinkberry: Not something I would wait in a long line for or risk getting a parking ticket for, but it is good!