Girls Day 2010

My girls are growing up fast. It's hard to notice when you see them everyday but when I look back at old pictures it really shows. This one is from 2005. Awwww, they're so little!

Joshua Tree NP

Sage's Homemade Super Bowl Saints Shirt

Sage made this Drew Brees shirt to wear for the Big Game. He used some puffy fabric paint and had fun making it.

Sledding Fern Valley

Got a call from Brendan in the morning, he wants to go sledding and knows of this cool sledding trail. We head out to Humber Park and began clearing the path of our trail which will down town to a street below. Here's Katie and Brendan cutting some Manzanita trees that was in the way of our trail.

The trail went through a tunnel of Manzanita trees. Nice, isn't it?

Here's the crew pushing down on their sleds packing in the snow for our run.

Pregnant Mary helped too, riding the snow shovel!

Ran into some people which we invited to join us and they offered to shuttle a few runs.

Storm #4

There had been a series of storms this week, the first three weren't bad at all but the fourth one, man, that one dumped a whole lotta snow.

Usually snow storms cause blackouts, this one last a day and a half. Blackouts are fun in their own way, we ate dinner by candlelight.

Having already prepped curry, I had to cook rice in a pot. This had never gone right for me, too hard, burnt, or just gooshy. But this time it actually came out really good. So good that my girls say it tasted better than when rice is cooked in the rice cooker!

Made some vegetarian curry, usually our curries always have meat in them, but with the recent changes of my girls going vegetarian, I made it with lots and lots of veggies.



Having no TV nor video games, we entertained ourselves making funny faces.

The next morning the sun was out and was absolutely beautiful.

So we went sledding in our backyard. We're getting spoiled, being able to sled without driving anywhere. ^_^

Metal Mouth Emi

The day has finally come, auuugggh braces! Emi's teeth is soooo crooked (just like Daddy ^_^), we knew long ago that she'd need to get her teeth fixed. So I've been trying to cook soft foods, otherwise she's been cutting them up real small. Two days before getting them, she indulged in some gum knowing it'll be a long time before she can have some again. At least her teeth will be perfect when she goes to high school.

QuikShade Tarp Carrying Bag

Turned an old canopy top fabric into a carrying bag to carry my portable clothes rack. Made a small pocket inside to hold the smaller pieces. Durable and waterproof.

Heat Transfer Tiles

I found this cool project in a book of Photo Crafts, heat transfering photo images on to tiles. Basically using iron-on transfers and putting onto blank unglazed tiles. So I made these for David's x-mas present (the bikes that he's had).

And these for Brendan's b-day (Siren bikes, of course, except Dave the dog...) Aren't they cool looking?

New Years 2010

In Japan, New Year's is a bigger celebration than X-mas so every year we stay home for x-mas and head down to SD to spend time with my folks for New Years. This year, the big x-mas present for the kids was a Wii. So we brought it with us and we all got into it. ^_^

A cute pic of my folks.
My brother Teru was offered an opportunity to become a live-in student at an Aikido dojo. So we brought our sleeping bags with us and joined him for the night. First thing was to wipe the mats clean and although for those who do this daily it is a chore, but the kids had fun doing this.

They had a blast playing in such a wide open matted area with huge balls.

They made little forts with the chairs for them to sleep in.

Next day we headed to the park for a little fun.

Traditional New Year's food, we ate it on New Year's Eve cuz my mom had to work the next day.

We found out that the trolley was free after 9pm so around 10pm we hopped on and went to Old Town. My mom decided to stay home cuz we'd get back too late and she'd be tired for work. But when we came back, she was still up, playing the Wii !

Surprising Old Town wasn't crowded at all. We were hoping some of the stores would be open, but only the restaurants were open. So we got some chips and a drink before heading back.

We got back at 11:50pm just in time to watch the ball drop on TV and go to sleep.