Happy Birthday Grandma and Papa!!!

Today is my dad's 80th birthday, and my mom's birthday is coming up next weekend. We went went out to dinner at our favorite "special occasion" spot... Todai!

Todai is an all-you-can-eat Japanese buffet. AND we sure EAT! After chowing down on great food, they brought out a cake, and we sang "happy birthday."

Here's a close up of the cake... it's so tiny you can hardly see it, but it was perfect for us! There were 15 people in our party, and since we were so full, we couldn't even finish it, lol!

Want to see Grandma's and Papa's birthday present?

THIS IS BUDDY!!! He's a 4 month old terrier mix that Grandma's friend rescued from the pound. Can you believe that they were going to euthanize this handsome little guy?

Jena puts up with his puppy antics, and they get along just fine. We put our name first on the puppy sitting list! :oD

I hope everyone had a great weekend! Monday comes too fast!

What a GREAT weekend!

First of all we had tickets to see Les Miserables at the Orange County Performing Arts Center. All of us! Jim and Chris too. The singing was amazing, and the play was as sad as I remember. This time I brought tissues, and I shared them with Cheryl too, hahaha!

Saturday was cleaning, laundry, market, and a Galaxy game! What a GAME! The Galaxy won 3-0! They are finally playing well. It was so much FUN!

Sunday, we took the truck out to get dirty. Jim wanted to try the 4-wheel drive while it was still under warranty. Well, it works GREAT! Jim is very pleased with how the truck powers up hills and handles off road. Here are some pictures from today (again from PicMonkey).


... a lot of driving, a little hiking, and a picnic... We had a nice relaxing day in the mountains.

It's Card Kit Time!

Happy Monday! I hope you are all having a good weekend. Mara put together the kit for this month... a perfect kit for Father's Day! I cut into this kit right away, so it's a good thing that Mara sent us a picture of the kit for our blogs.


My project this month is not a card, but a box. I always love the GREAT decorated boxes done by Mara. She's on the design team at My Time Made Easy. They have such wonderful box templates! Beth also makes great gift boxes for gift card giving, instead of just sliding them in an envelope.

Well, here is my box. I made it to hold my dad's Father's Day gift. I recycled a mailing box, and prettied it up for gift giving!




I LOVE all the wonderful embellishments! That's my favorite part of the kits. Everything matches! I also get some embellishments that I would not normally use or try myself. Look I created my first flags :oD



Thanks for stopping by, now go checkout the wonderful projects from the other ladies in the group!

Mara

Mary

Beth

Sea World!!!

We finally managed to make it Sea World before our free tickets expired! We got there early and it was EMPTY! We walked right on the rides... no waiting in line. It did get busier later in the day. We missed the ride lines, but got caught in the lunch lines! Here are some pictures that we took yesterday. I used Pic Monkey to create the collages. No signing up or registering, and so SIMPLE to use! I LOVE it!



After our full day at Sea World, we had to run to LAX to pick up Chris. He was supposed to come in on an 11:30pm flight... because of delays, he didn't get in until 12:30am... AND because of the 605 traffic, we didn't get home until 3am! We all wished Jim a Happy Father's Day and then went to bed, hahaha!

This morning, we all had a slow start. It's almost noon and Chris is still sleeping. It's almost time to wake him up and get him up and get this Father's Day started!

Happy Father's Day to Jim and Papa, and all those dad's out there!

No Sea World, but....

We had planned on using the free Sea World passes from the Rock n' Roll race, but Cheryl was working this weekend. She was scouting for new players at the Mission Viejo Tournament both Saturday and Sunday. Our second plan was to go to the movies to see Snow White or the Avengers... that didn't happen either.

This weekend, I broke out my sewing machine and made a baby quilt for the neighbor. The baby is expected any day now. The quilt isn't done yet, but it's getting close.


While my machine was out, I made a new happi coat for Cheryl. Hers has been too small for about 5 years! It's about time I got around to it. Does she remind you of a hana fuda card? The one with the deer and the star flowers? lol!



And lastly... Jim bought a car... well, a truck. I see some off-roading and camping in our future!


Jim actually just went to look at the truck. He just wanted to drive a 4-Runner. Well, the dealer gave him such a GREAT deal that he couldn't resist. So, the truck is ours!

On top of all that Jammer came to stay. She and Jena were playing playing playing all weekend long! I hope everyone had a great weekend... Monday comes to FAST!

Rock n' Roll Baby!

We are ran the San Diego Rock and Roll half-marathon today! The picture below is us at package pickup. What a zoo that was! There were 31,000 people registered for the marathon and half-marathon and most of them did package pickup between 12-5 yesterday! We did have fun at the Expo. It was great with LOTS of freebies :oD

Cheryl decided that we should run in costume. Chris vetoed the tutu, and I veto's the fishnet stockings (can you imagine the rash?), YIKES!

We decided to start slow on the costume thing... Michael's had t-shirts on sale for $3 each today and I had a 20% of coupon. We all picked a rock and roll band/personality, and made t-shirts. We used iron-on transfers. They were so easy and the results came out GREAT!

The shirts aren't done by a long shot... Next step, we will all take scissors to our shirts and personalize them for the run.

Here we are dark and early this morning!

You can't see Cheryl's shirt in the picture so I had her model it for me when we got home. Isn't that COOL?!!!

Anyway back to the race... We got up at 4am. Jim drove us to the drop off site at 5:05am to catch the bus to the starting line. I have never seen so many buses! There were buses as far as you can see!

Bye, Jim! See you in a couple hours!

We thought that we'd be waiting at the starting line for an hour! Well, not quite... the bus got stuck in traffic and dropped us off a LOOOONG way from the starting line. There were 40 corrals. We started in corral 9, so we had to walk past legions of port-o-potties, baggage drop off, and 31 corrals before reaching ours. We had only about 5 minutes to wait before the race started! Jim told me that it took them 1 hour and 15 minutes to get all the corrals started.

I'll post some more pictures of the race when I get them, but here are our results:

Chris : 1hr 57mins
Cheryl : 2hrs, 10mins - 2 minute port-o-pottie break = 2hrs 8min (a new PR)
Me : 2hrs, 8min - 5 minute port-o-pottie break (there was a line) = 2hrs 3min


That reminds me.. Check this out!

They were selling port-o-pottie Fast Passes! Yes, believe it or not... It's TRUE!!!

Happy Memorial Day!

Happy Memorial Day! I hope everyone had nice weather this weekend. Our weather was gorgeous! Beach Weather!

It's a perfect day for doggie beach, and fun and games in the sand!

Jena is getting to be a real Frisbee dog!

Hmmm... a swimming dog?

YEP! A SWIMMING DOG!

Good girl, Jena!

This is what FUN looks like! LOL!

I hope everyone had a fun Memorial Day. Three day weekends seem to go by so FAST. It's back to work tomorrow...

Card Share..

My niece graduated from college and we got the cutest graduation party invitations from my cousin. I couldn't resist those great colors! So I cut up the invitation and created a quick and easy "Happy Graduation" card set.

Here is a closeup of the card. The stamp set is from my friend, Mary. It says "Follow your dreams..."

And the stamp for the inside of the card makes me LOL!

Congratulations, Karin!

It's Card Kit Time!!!

I'm so blessed to have found a great group of ladies online to play with! This card kit club has been so much fun! We have already completed a round of fun and have just started around again. This month, Beth shared a wonderful kit stuffed full of Berry Goodness! Thank-you, Beth!

In the past, we have been so BAD at taking pictures of our card kit before cutting into it. (I just get so excited when the kit comes in the mail) We decided to have the hostess of the month take the picture for everyone. So, here is the kit that Beth sent to us (picture taken by Beth):

The first thing that caught my eye was that big strawberry stamp. I just knew that's what I wanted to use first! I got out my Copics and colored it:

Next, all those cute embellies were just screaming "CLUSTER ME!" So, cluster I did! And I created this card using one of the cute BERRY sentiments. I added a little strip of red paper (I think this might have been left over from Mary's kit)to add a little color POP!

I just had to use this next sentiment. It's that time of year when I need graduation cards, and this is such a cute sentiment for congratulations! I needed something to make the fussy cut "berry" stand out, so I added a strip of aqua paper which again was from Mary's kit last month. (Don't you just love it when things are on hand, when you don't clean up, lol!)

I LOVE the uniqueness of round cards and was excited to use the tag image to create this FUN card! I got my Copics out again and colored away!

Thanks for stopping by, now go checkout the BERRY goodness from the other ladies in the group!

Beth

Mara

Mary

Happy Mother's Day!!!

I wish all the Mother's out there a Happy Mother's Day. My family is making me feel very special and blessed this morning.

Look what Cheryl made for me... I just LOVE it!! She is the SWEETEST and talented too, hehehe... I'm going to frame this one for my scrap room!

Chris made me a new blog header.. with this message:

Happy Mother's Day Mom <33333

I made you this blog header. I didn't think that port-o-potties matched people places and things that you love very well, so I made you one with people, places, and things that you love <3

I love you <3

That is a lot of pictures! He did a great job picking out things that I LOVE! What a special gift from my SPECIAL guy!

I got these beautiful flowers from Jim. I don't know what I would do without him. He is the BEST!

He also got up early this morning made breakfast, washed my car... AND made heart shaped cookies. The kids appreciated that one too :oD

Did anyone tell you that they love you today? Hi, Jena, love you bunches!

Happy Mother's Day to ALL!!!! Have a WONDERFUL day!

OC Half-Marathon

Today was our 5th race in our 12 races in 2012, AND it was Cheryl's very first half-marathon. We got up at 4:30am to get to the race for a 6:15am start. This is a point to point race... starting from Fashion Island and ending at the Orange County Fairgrounds.

We met up with my friend, Paloma, from work, which was a miracle considering there were 10,000 people running in this race. Look at that sea of people... and that sea of people need a whole fleet of port-o-potties, hahaha! Have you ever seen so many port-o-potties? (blog header)

Well, somthing went wrong with the web site... my stats and Cheryl's stats are missing. We ran together and finished in 2hrs 9 minutes. That's faster than my first half marathon! She ran the whole thing without stopping.

Here's Chris's stats:
Overall: 1353 out of 8708
Men: 930 out of 3472
M 16-19: 15 out of 42
Age/Grade: 53.01%
Place: 2528
Finish: 1:54:20
Pace: 8:44

I told Cheryl that her first half-marathon would be her hardest. She said that she hopes so, because that was really HARD!

Next race: Rock n' Roll San Diego Half-marathon!