My Life: Crazy and Busy!!!!!

Ok so I'm so embarrased that I haven't updated this blog for more than a week now. As you can see from my title, my life right now doesn't permit me to be consistent here. Sorry!

I don't want to bore you guys with all my stuff but I do want to post some pics from this weekend.

First of is that I GOT IT!!!!! My dslr camera that is. I wanted to hug my UPS guy when he came on friday afternoon. The day before my birthday, how awesome is that! I'm so psyched about it and everytime there's a few free moments, I try to play with it. Here's some pics that I thought was worth showing off for a beginner like me.

On Sunday's we usually have dinner at my parent's house but this last one my parent's were going to go to work early so I hosted the dinner at my house instead. We had my sister and brothers (together with their girlfriends). We had loads of fun. I made spaghetti bolognese and made some honey butter for the rolls. Everybody was flippin over the butter and I had to bake another batch of rolls just bec. they were gone in a snap!

Here's some pics from that get together. Can you believe we all have grown up. BTW for those who don't know my siblings, the youngest one of us (the girl with the longer hair) my baby sister Gem is getting married in about 2 weeks. Where did time go?

This little boy just turned 4 yesterday. He had a spiderman cake and went on a trip to chuck e cheese. More pics to come but as of now, let's remember how goofy he can be.

Have a great day everyone.

xoxo,

Grace

It's been busy around here lately. With summer "fun" activities and wedding stuff there' s just a few minutes to come up for some breath.

I do wanna share a few things that happened this week that I thought was "note-worthy":

- I took Amanda to the DMV on friday and she passed her written test. Woohooo! Right now she is enrolled in a behind the wheel training and will have to wait 6 months to take her actual driving test. Should be enough time to be well prepared and practiced.

- Had a "wedding" meeting with some of our friends that are willing to help us execute the whole wedding production. Kinda sad though cause now that we have all talked the agenda over, my whole vision for the event have totally been changed. Huhuhuh! I know they mean well and most of their inputs and suggestions meant more sense that what I've thought about but still it makes me sad that the idea in my head has all been changed. Oh well, it will all workout. right?!

- Mitch went on a day hike with his high school friend Ken. They went on a pretty strenous hike up in the san gabriel mountains. It was a blast (according to Mitch).

- I'm not one to announce my big day (since now it's a symbol that im getting older) but it's coming up on saturday and Mitch let me get my gift already. Actually it's still in transit and won't probably get here till AFTER my b-day but I'm just so psyched about it, I can't resist to share. Here's a sample photo of it. Can't wait to get this "baby" and use it.

- And finally, even though I'm so busy, I was still able to manage making some layouts. Here are a couple of them. They are also posted in my gallery (http://www.scrapbook.com/myplace/index.php?mod=galleries) at scrapbook.com.

Had a fun 4th

How about you guys? was your 4th of July festivities fun and safe? Hope it was.

For us it has been the tradition to get together at the Tolman's home in Garden grove for some bbq, swimming and fireworks at the end. It's always fun to hang out with family and being our family is quite large, everybody has somebody to visit with. The grandkids dominated the pool the whole day, although they did let the tolman kids (jenae, dana, jerry, mitch and tyler) play their annual marco polo game in the afternoon. The sisters- in-law chatted away and grandpa and the other guys played horseshoes. Fun times. Oh the food was yummy too, as always. Anna (Dana's wife) brought this very tasty green jello salad with pineapple and nuts. I have to get the recipe from her one of these days.

I made a batch of cinammon pinwheel cookies. First time I made it but turned out to be a hit. I didn't even get to take any leftovers of the cookies home. hehehehe! *if you want a recipe of it, leave me a comment and i'll post the recipe here. It's very easy!

So that's it for right now. Gotta go back to some more wedding planning and summer fun.

Have a great day,

Grace

Have been a slacker

So sorry for missing so many days of posting. Everytime I get on the computer to check my email and fave message boards I would always have the best intentions of getting in my blog and writing something but after all that I normally do and check the thought doesn't come back to me until I have turned off the computer. Aaaarrrgghhh!

The summer season is not helping either. Everyday it seems like something is going on that takes precedence to getting on here. They are good reasons though. That means I have a life and i'm living it. Feels good to say that. Now if only I have that kind of attitude when kids are bouncing off the wall and I have a million things to do!

Thursday, Friday and some saturday was spent looking for the perfect outfit to wear to Mitch's 20th high school reunion. Of course we were gonna go and being this was a first for both of us, we didn't know what to expect. I spent thursday with my kids and Gem at the block at Orange (an outdoor mall) to find something to wear. Of course I was unsuccessful. Kids plus more than three hours at the mall was not a good combination.
On friday we went to park day in the morning then left the kids at my parents' house to take Gem wedding decoration shopping. We hit this store called Fabric Barn (http://www.fabricbarn.com/) oh and it was ribbon heaven! If you live locally here and is into crafts go check out this store. Give me a call so we can make it a field trip. LOL! You won't be disappointed by the selection and price. That night Mitch and I went to Kohl's to get our outfits and spent way too much. But we both look hot!

Saturday morning I attended an "emergency preparedness" workshop at church. It was great. We already have our 72 hour kits but needed a car kit and so that's what I signed up for. We also was fed some great food made out of food storage staples. Overall inspiring activity.

That night we went to the Marriot hotel at Long Beach for the reunion. Most of the alumnis there didn't recognize Mitch without his nameplate with his senior photos. You gotta admit, the bald head kinda throws you off. hehehehe! He met up with one of his closest buddies in high school. Pretty cool. We didn't get out there till 12 am. A very late night for us "old foggies"!

Sunday was church and family time.

Yesterday (monday) was all about getting chores done and prepping the garden for some replanting.

Today was free movie day and more wedding planning/prepping.

All in all busy days and a lot more to come since our big wedding (Gem's big day) is coming up at the end of this month. I promise to try to post some pics of our July 4th events though.

And finally something I've had my eye on will (hopefully) be purchased very soon. Check it out here- http://www.nikondigital.com/main.html

Have a great day,

Grace

Some summer fun

So the kids are out of school and summer have officialy started in our home. Yesterday we went to our first of many free movies at the galaxy theater inside the mall. We watched "everybody's hero". It was a cartoon film about baseball, specifically the Yankees and babe Ruth. It was cute. Then today me and the kids drove to Garden Grove to G'ma Tolman's house to do some swimming. I'm so surprised how Marcus loves the water now considering just about two summers ago he despised it a lot. Soon before I know it, Maddie will be the same. But right now she's just happy sitting in her yellow floatie.


I don't know if I've mentioned in my previous blogs at sb.com that I've started a garden around April and I've been harvesting some of the veggies but yesterday I harvested a bunch of them. I picked our carrots, corn, 2nd batch of radishes, cabbbage and green beans. It's so much fun to actually "taste" the fruit of my labors. Last night we had this filipino dish with green beans and ground beef then tonight Mitch will make his pork and beans with cabbage tacos. OOhhh haven't had that in ages.

So that's it for us today.
Hope you have a great SUMMER day!

It's all about the organization

So i've been meaning to do this post for a long time now. In april, I was feeling a bit overwhelmed at all my kids' clothes in multiple boxes in our attic. I was telling my good friend Allison about my need to purge and organize but i'm afraid of letting go of everything bec. I don't know if I will have another baby or not. *Before I continue I just want to say that Mitch and I have decided NOT to have any more kids BUT since both of us haven't done anything permanently that is still a possibility.

Now that's out of the way, back to the kids clothes. I couldn't believe two kids can fill up about 5 big diaper boxes and a few more rubbermaid tubs.

Allison shared with me a great system that now I want to share to everybody. All of us needs some purging once in a while. Here's her system, she said to save 10 outfits for each age bracket. For example, 10 outfits for 3-6 months, 10 for 6-9 mos. and so on and so forth. Now since I have outfits for cold and hot weather, she made me pick 5 of each. Some other tips she mentioned was (1) pick clothes that are neutral in colors like denim and khaki which can be for both girl and boy; (2) for onesies pick 7, one for each day of the week; (3) for socks pick about 7-10 pairs; (4) for jackets and sweaters pick about two for each age bracket; and (5) the most important thing is throw away anything else that have stains, rips and are faded. They are not worth hanging into even if they have some sentimental value. Allison said with the ones that have really great meaning behind it, take a picture of them and scrapbook it. Cool huh!

Now I would totally testify to this system. It works! Why didn't I think about this before? I do not know but now that I've seen the light, I'm never gonna go back to any other system. I mean think about it, the less clothes you have, the more times your kid can actually wear them and they're not collecting dust in your ever changing kids' closets. And another thing, you wash clothes every week anyways so why not just have 7 of the underclothes and socks?

Spending about three hours going through all the boxes of kids clothes was a little overwhelming but once I was able to sort them out and gotten rid of all the ones that have stains, rips and are faded ( I didn't even realized I was hanging to a lot of these) it was smooth sailing from then on.

After folding all the clothes, they looked so much better.

And after all the hardwork of organizing, purging and inspecting.....tada!!!! here's the result...... one big rubbermaid tub and one diaper box. Now isn't that worth bloggin about.

Oh I got to tell you, I was able to put clothes for BOTH boy and girl from 0-4T in those two boxes. Preeettttyyyy cool!!!

Have a great day!

Weekend in review

First of all thanks for all that played along with my RAK. You guys are great guessers. Congrats to Genevieve for being the first one to post. Your goodies was sent in the mail today.

As for the "defining" moment in my life. It is true- I am now an "official" american citizen. Woohoo! But you know the interesting part was that it didn't really hit me till the judge who helped us take our oath gave his speech. As he was talking he mentioned that this is a defining moment in our life. After he said that, only then did I realized the oath I just took and the decision I've made to (somewhat) turn my back from the country I've called home all my life. I vow to still keep the ties I have to my philippine roots but at the same time I'm excited to experience what true americans can do and that is to vote! I've never voted before, not even when I was in the Philippines so this would be a first for me.

this is a pic from Gem's camera phone so it's small.

I was so blessed to have my mom, sister Gem, Mitch, Amanda, Marcus, Maddie and even my in-laws come support me at the LA convention center to take my oath. There were 3,525 people sworn in at the session I was in. According to the officiator, we were the third batch of that day and the previous two groups had about the same number as we had. So on that day there were about 10,000 people that officially became US citizens. That's some crazy numbers.

Here's a pic of me being hugged by my mom-in-law. I didn't really get great pics. We were not allowed to bring a camera to the oath taking so no close up pics from me.

After the ceremony we all went to Don Jose's for a late lunch/ early dinner celebration. We celebrated my success and also for Amanda's birthday. The waiters even sang happy birthday to Amanda and gave her a small plate of flan. We love mexican food. Yummy!

On saturday we decided to go on a bike ride. This was our second bike ride as a family. We started at the El Dorado nature center and rode the bike path along the san gabriel river to Wilderness park in Downey. At first Mitch said it was 15 miles (roundtrip) but after we came back he checked his book again at it was close to 20 miles. No wonder I was struggling at the end to try to finish the ride. It kicked my butt! I haven't ridden my bike in a long time (since I was about 12 yrs. old) and I found out that it takes a while to get back into the groove of riding again. I had a slight injury with this ride though. There was a part of the path were we go under a bridge tunnel and I was going down in a pretty fast pace (or so I thought), I was concentrating on staying in my lane when I hit some puddle of water and it scared be. Before I knew it, I was going straight onto the wall, I quickly lifted my right arm to block the hit to the wall and went right into the other side, almost hitting that wall. It all went fast and I knew I was hurt but didn't really now how bad it was till I was out of the tunnel and into the light. When I finally looked at the damage, I saw a big scrape wound on the back of my right arm and a blood coming out of my leg. I got hit by the sprockets of my bike. It went pretty dip into my leg causing some flesh to come out. Yucky stuff and painful too. Good thing Mitch is a scoutmaster and had brought a first aid kit. Oh man! this was definitely a hard and scary ride for me.

After the ride we went and had lunch at Carl's Jr. Mitch asked me if this would be my last ride since I got hurt. I thought about my answer for a little bit and all I said was, I'm not gonna hop on the bike for a while. hehehehe!

Even with my injury, we're still very grateful that nothing major happened.

That night we went to our ward's social/fundraiser for the youth to go to summer camp. Cool entertainment of mexican folkdance and Amanda got some high bids for her to do some cleaning at some member's houses. She will be busy this week. I also got a lot of good compliments with my hair. So funny one of my girlfriends cut her hair this week too. Hey we're starting a trend.

Yesterday we had our ward conference and everything went ok. I don't think there's any day in primary that's just smooth sailing but we survived another week.

So that's our weekend.

Have a great day!

A birthday celebration plus a RAK

So our family had quiet a packed friday today. Lots of things going on.

(1) Today Amanda turned 17. Wow can you believe it! I remember the time when I met this little blonde haired girl. She wasn't shy at all and loved talking about everything and anything to you. She was a typical middle schooler trying to figure out her place in this world and where she belonged..... and today I'm looking at the same girl but with a lot more confidence in her eyes. She knows where she belongs now and have a pretty good hold onto the standards she wants to live her life by. We are so proud of her, she has really evolved into a beautiful woman. Don't get me wrong, she is still a typical teenager sometimes and now that "dating guys" are in the picture, it will be more interesting but with improved grades and a new discovered talent in arts she has truly blossomed. Happy birthday girl!

(2) Got a new haircut today. It wasn't a very good experience though. You see I wanted to try the "famous" Katie Holmes style. I believed it's called a bobb look. I heard it's the fad with haircuts nowadays so I didn't even bother getting a picture/sample of it when I went to supercuts this morning. When I got there, the lady I was assigned to didn't even have any clue what I was talking about. I knew it was going to be a disaster from the beginning. I tried my best to explain it to her but unfortunately she didn't do it. Not even close. Even after she blow dried it, it was still very far from what I was expecting and now with a short apple shaped hair, it made my face look fatter. I was so sad. She was apologetic and even offered to redo it for me. She said to keep my reciept and within the week try to find a pic of the hairstyle I wanted and she'll try to fix it for me. Huhuhu! So I went home and my sister Gem ( who was at my house at that time) didn't have to say one word and I knew it was not a good look for me. She instinctively offered to flat iron it to make it look better. After about 30 minutes, my hair was made into some kind of a mod look which I really like. So now I might just keep it. But it will take some work to "always" make it look good. We will see.

(3) and finally- something happened to me today. A great thing. Something that was a "defining" moment in my life. Here's where the RAK (random act of kindness) comes in......... look at the pic. Guess what major thing happened to me by leaving me a comment and the first person that can guess it right will win something from my stash.

So that's our day. Whew! im pooped. I will tell more details about the 3rd event of today in a couple of days and at the same time announce the winner of the RAK.

Have a great weekend!

A farewell story

So last week, one of our dear friends moved to Alaska. I was so, so, so sad when they left. I couldn't even see them off at the airport cause I knew I was gonna breakdown. Allison has been my bestfriend for over 2 years now (since they moved to our ward) and I just don't think I can manage without knowing she's just around the corner. Marcus and Maddie lost some great playmates too. Huhuhuhu!
Anyways before they left, I decided to make them a farewell album. It was a scrapbook/directory for them to take to their new home. I asked all of our closest friends to give me some pictures and messages plus their contact infos to put in the book. I dedicated two pages for each family. The book itself wasn't hard at all to make. It was a cinch making the pages. The harder part was being a pest to these people, reminding them over and over again to give me their stuff! Oh boy it was a challenge. I felt like a debt collector or something, they promise you something then they forget and in turn you bug them through 20 or more phone calls and emails. But at the end, it turned out great. I also planned a farewell bbq for them where we presented the book. It was a very tiring week for me but it turned out really well. We had it at one of our friends house (thank goodness it wasn't at mine, or I would've been totally stressed!). They loved the book, I cried, she cried, we all cried and then we all gave them a big huge hug.
Here's a pic of the front of the book and my family's page.


Anderson family, if you are reading this blog, we miss you!!!

Our disneyland trip and Father's Day happenings

Sorry I'm a bit late updating. Just got home from disneyland. Marcus and I bought annual passes for our birthdays last year and we got the cheapest ones. That meant we were blocked out on all holidays, weekends and summer. Which, if you think about it, is kinda good cause you don't want to go on those times anyways bec. it's the most crowded times. Anyways today was our last day to be able to go this summer. According to our calendar we're blocked off until the last week of August. The kids and I didn't stay long there. The crowd's just too much for us to handle. We wanted to try the new Nemo submarine ride but the wait was 3 hours and there's no fast pass for it. Bummer! So we just did our usual buzz lightyear ride, a trip inside the innoventions so Marcus can play video games and then we hopped on to California Adventures where the kids got soaking wet at the bug's life wet play area. Didn't have to do a lot to get my little ones all tired, and now they're sleeping quietly for me. woohoo!

So this past weekend was father's day. Didn't do anything spectacular. Helped the little ones make Mitch a crown. They doodled on it and stamped some flowers (of all things!) and I wrote "king for the day". I made Mitch wear it for breakfast and Maddie kept on staring at him. While Marcus shouted "king of the castle!, king of the castle!" So cute! Made him his favorite breakfast tacos but I've forgotten that we've ran out of salsa, so it didn't taste as good. Oh well!
At church they gave the dads cupcakes, Amanda gave a talk about fathers and I helped out our primary children sing their songs at sacrament. I was doing double duty at primary today- doing the conducting and sharing time. Our president had given birth and so she was out and our pianist was out too so our first councilor did her job. Oh is a good thing Tiffany knows how to play the piano. Imagine if she was gone, I would be totally panicked!

Mitch has a 20 year high school reunion coming up and he's decided to shave his mustache. It's pretty different. A great change but still different! He made heads turn at church today. I must admit he does look 10 years younger. I like it, it just need a little getting use to.


We had dinner at the Tolman's. The men were complaining that they still had to do the bbq even if it's father's day. Too funny! It's really nice that my kids are not babies anymore. I can let them loose in the backyard with their cousins and I can sit and chat with my sisters in law. No more carrying babies, or needing to nurse or watching them crawl around. I'm liking this!!!

Tonight is Gem's graduation and after tonight were full force on wedding preparations. I can't believe my youngest sister is getting married next month. Aahh!

Oh and by the way, our roof is finally done!!! Mitch decided he would redo our whole roof by himself. It really needed to be done and since we really can't afford to pay somebody to do it, He has decided to take on this challenge. Oh and it was a major challenge! took him about 15 days from start to finish. But now it's done and I'm doing the happy dance. Finally our lives can get back to normal. I will post some before and after pictures soon.
Have a great day!