Here we go again!

Well...this weekend will be BUSY! Two birthday parties. Ours. Miles' and Claire's. TWO! Ugh. Not sure what I was thinking doing them on the same weekend. It's a lot of kids. TONS OF KIDS! Invading my home. Eating our food. Messing up every room in the house. And leaving it all for me to clean up.

Yay!

Oh well. Miles' party should be pretty easy. He has invited a few friends to go and see a movie. Easy breezy. Claire on the other hand has requested to "decorate cupcakes". And hell to the NO am I going to do that in this house. We are going to our local bakery. They do it. But..then back to the house for lunch. Fourteen, 4 year old girls. I shit you not. FOURTEEN!!!! (In case you were wondering about all the capital letters? Yes I'm yelling!)

I imagine Ryan is cringing at the thought of all the naked Barbie dolls that will be strewn about the house. Cause you know that's what 4 year old girls do. Strip every doll naked and check for them to be anatomically correct. Oh no? Just mine? Ok...nevermind.

Poor Miles. Thankfully his little friend Brody will be here. Keeping the testosterone flowing freely with Star Wars and Bakugan. But I am more than sure they will be holed up in his room with the door shut. Cause you know...they're 6. And girls are gross. Especially 4 year old girls. Sheesh.

It just goes to show, once again, what kind of kids I have. Miles is very low key. Simple tastes with parties. Claire...all out high maintenance. It's ok though.

Next week will start Miles' first year at Korean Culture Camp. I loved it as a kid. I was one of the first kids to go. And my mom was the president of the camp when I was little. Hopefully he will love it like I did. So we are a busy group over here in Suburbia.

Photos to follow. I promise. Get ready for Star Wars and Princess crap. Again.

I have two completely different kids

My parents are doing something special with each of my kids for their birthdays. They were given the opportunity to choose something fun.

Claire opted for what she calls, The Pedi Shop. She gets a pedicure and manicure with my mom. Sooo freaking girly.

Miles on the other hand will be spending the day doing Meals on Wheels with my parents. He asked to help once he found out what it was. He told Ryan all about it, and is very excited about going.

See.....totally different kids. But both SO them. Birthday parties to commence this weekend. Lord help me.

Get the barf bag

I went to see SALT this weekend with my BFF for her birthday. I don't do movie reviews, but I am doing this more as a PSA.

This movie is pretty cool. It's very much like the Bourne movies, but with Angelina Jolie in the title role.

For our birthdays we have decided it is best to do movie and dinner together sans husbands and kids. Just us. Depending on who's birthday it is, the other pays. It's awesome. We avoid having to get coffee cups, chocolate, and cutesie gifts for each other, and just be able to hang out together.

We were planning on seeing Eclipse. But I've seen it twice already and my BFF was not into this time. Oh well...I told her I would totally see it again, cause it's not bad...but she wanted to see Salt. Cool. I was very cool with it.

Either way...like I said, the movie is way good. But.....

Don't sit close to the screen and don't eat before you see the movie.

HOLY SHIT! Hello motion sickness. I don't think there was ONE scene where the camera wasn't jiggly. Ugh..my guts were doing flip flops. Half way into the movie we decided to move UP to the top/back of the theater. It helped. Immensely. But the damage was done. Wonkey stomach prevailed. And my BFF had a bit of a headache.

But once again...pretty damn cool movie. And there is an awesome kill scene. I mean...if I were going to off someone...it would definitely be as cool as that. I'd just need some handcuffs. But I said if, and I'm not that strong.

I don't feel like me today

I feel completely off today. And it's only 9am. What the hell? I slept well. I think. Ryan woke me up at 2:04am. He was having a nightmare. Something about being a gun slinging movie star. And everytime he shot one of whatever was chasing him, they would multiply. I guess it would freak me out too. But he woke me up in the usual way. He sounds panicked in his sleep. It's loud too.

I have banned Ryan from certain video games because of his "dreaming". One time he was way into playing Call of Duty. On one of the levels he was storming the beaches at Normandy. And he had been having a hard time passing that level. So he played it. A LOT.

Later that week I woke to Ryan crawling all over the bed yelling, "OH MY GOD!!! GET DOWN!!!! HOLY SHIT!!!!" Yeah. That's what woke me up in the MIDDLE OF THE NIGHT! I didn't know if we were being robbed at gun point or what. Seriously. Banned! For a long time. Thank god it was before kids. Otherwise for certain Miles would have ran his little ass in the room crying. Claire would have slept right through all the video game induced dream drama.

But last night was a run of the mill, I'm-panicking-cause-something-is-getting-me dream. And then Target had their online Black Friday starting at 2am...so I took a quick gander and then went right back to bed.

So I have no idea what is going on. I think I have a bit of anxiety. There's been things going on in my life that are kinda sucking right now. Things I have no control over. I thought I had it all in check, but I guess not.

Oh well.....it will pass...and when it does, I will continue on, in my happy oblivion. Until then, I will feel "icky". And just be super vague so no one knows what's wrong with me. They will just whisper behind my back, "What's wrong with SJT? She's kinda not herself today." Meh...it could be a lot worse.

Why can't she just smile?

For my mom's birthday this year, my sister Cindi and I have decided to put together a photo collage of the grandkids.

First of all, this is quite a feat since my sister Sara and her son Lincoln live in Los Angeles CA. But...my mom goes ga ga for her grandkids. She lives for those little people. My poor dad...he's definitely second fiddle to them.

So we got the kids together the other day and I photographed them. Nothing fancy. Nothing special...just photos of THEM.
And they all wore white t-shirts. It would be easy for my sister in CA to replicate this for her son.

Check them out:
TYRA

TARYN

ETHAN

MILES

Last but not least.....CLAIRE

Now...Claire was IMPOSSIBLE to photograph. She did the I-hate-this smile. The I'm-gonna-grimace-till-I-get-cheek-cramps smile. And the I-will-say-cheese-until-it-looks-like-I'm-trying-to-get-a-huge-shit-out smile. Needless to say, Cindi and I were potty talking, and face making like crazy. I think both of us were breaking out into a sweat at some point. Even the other kids tried. But she didn't want to smile AT ALL. This photo you see here? Luck.

Then of course we went for the group photos....Ha! Clearly Claire had had her limit.



Now the two boys...they are adorable. They smiled the entire time. Hopefully my sister can get me her son's photo...hint hint Sara...I know you're reading.

UW Stout and other stupidity.

Well friends. I did it. I finally headed out, overnight, without kids. For the first time in EVER. And it wasn't even with Ryan.

I headed East about 45 miles and landed square in Menomonie Wisconsin. My old alma mater. UW Stout. Polytechnic now. What the fuck is that? I have no idea. I graduated with a Vocational Rehabilitation degree. Weird.

Anyway I digress. It had been planned for a while. A few girlfriends of mine from college of whom I haven't seen for 9 years, and I decided to head out to see what had changed. Along the way, we invited a few more of our cohorts from the Fleming Hall days. And we only had one other taker. Our bold and daring friend Erik.

Here is Selena, me and Erik standing outside of the Student Center...no change by the way.

Even the seating in the Pawn (food dispensing locale) was exactly the same as it was when I graduated in 95. Gross....I ate there hung over. As a matter of fact I believe a friend of mine threw up on said chairs.

When we all started at Stout, we were on North campus. About a half a mile from the main campus. About a half a mile from any classes. And that half a mile was a bitch to walk when the temps got below 0 degrees Fahrenheit. Ooohweeee and if the wind was blowing...GGGAAAHHH!!!!

The only saving grace in the winter was on occasion the Swiss Miss factory close by would be wafting in the air. Otherwise in the fall, spring, and summer, you got the sewage plant.

The dorms are all crazy different. Our dear Fleming Hall is now being connected to the two other dorms behind it.

And just east of those dorms are these beauties! They have AC. Those lucky bastards.

We walked around campus for a few hours, in 91 degree weather. Kill me now. And I am sunburned. I'm Korean. I don't get sunburned...but son of a bitch if it wasn't hot.
Here is Andrea, Erik, and Selena at some kind of weird placard they "erected".

Oh and the Fortune Cookie is still there next to the Subway. Seriously. I'm not just pointing that out cause I'm Asian either. The damn restaurant looks EXACTLY the same. Anyone who lived on North campus has eaten that crap food and lived to tell the tale. Trust me.

So after our tour of campus, we drove by some of the old places we lived off campus. Not too thrilling. Just got us talking about all the dumb, illegal, immoral things we did back in the day. And we headed off to Eau Claire to have dinner and a few drinks and check into the hotel.

Once we headed to Eau Claire, there really wasn't anything going on. We went to dinner downtown. Then a few drinks. We tried to find places we wouldn't TOTALLY stick out in, but that's really hard to do in a college town when the three of us are circling the middle age drain. But we did ok. Until, that is, we decided to head to another bar called.....The Pickle. Jesus.

We walked down to it, and looked in the window. Harmless enough, but once we saw the plastic keg cups we were all, "fuck no!" Our days of, stashing plastic keg cups down our pants so we wouldn't have to pay the 5$ at the next party, are long gone. And we decided to mosey on back to the grown up bar. Which incidentally, drinks in Eau Claire Wisconsin..Dirt.Ass.Cheap.

Once we heard the tornado sirens go off, we decided to head back to the hotel. What a poor showing on our parts. But....meh...I was tired anyway.

Safely tucked into our hotel..the madness began. Talks of kids, marriage, boobs, showering, the olden days, and everything else under the sun were had. And before we knew it, it was 2:30 am. I had officially been awake for 22 hours at that point. Lame.

This is what the end of the night looked like....what a mess. I told you we were mature.

All in all a very nice trip down memory lane with a few friends. The only casualty we had was when Selena was imitating Kristen Stewart's hunch. She pulled a muscle in her neck and it was worse by the morning. God damn we're old.

Is this wrong? And that's rhetorical thank you very much.

So I have never been shy about my sickness. The Vampire saga sickness that is. Be it Twilight or The Sookie Stackhouse novels. I love them all.

I love vampires who are deep and emotional and would die all over again for their lady. I have read all these books over and over so much that the book bindings are breaking.

When I get another book in either of the series, my husband says, "See ya in a few days." He just knows. Smart man. Thankfully they are very easy reads, and I can pretty much finish them with all the distractions that being a stay at home mom entail, in about 2 days at the most.

I've seen the movies for Twilight. I have groups of people that I see them with. I ALWAYS see them with my BFF. The first Twilight movie, we were so excited to see how they were going to interpret the book. Once it started the acting was so bad we gawfawed out loud in the theater multiple times. Much to the chagrin of the tweens surrounding us.

I also see these movies with my 13 year old niece...who is NOW 13, but was 12 when we saw New Moon. She swooned. Like girls her age should.

And this year with Eclipse out, I saw it for the first time (yes I said the FIRST time) with a high school friend of mine and a college friend of mine. In complete luxury. Full bar, restaurant, and leather barcaloungers. Then again with my niece and soon to be with my BFF for her birthday. Yep. I will have seen Eclipse 3 times IN the theater in the month of July alone. I imagine I'm not alone or even near the record.

Now True Blood....that's where I swoon for the vamps. Love that Eric Northman. And really? It's on tv. I can watch the dirtiness that is True Blood in the privacy of my own home. I mean...it's basically Twilight with sex. Lots and lots of sex. Oh and lots of boobs. Ryan watches it with me. He, on the other hand, will roll his eyes till I just see the whites at Twilight. Eh...can't win em all.

Even my kid knows Twilight. When we are strolling through Target's toy aisle and there are Twilight Barbies, she yells out, "Look mom! Twilights!" She's 4 and should have no idea about it, but I guess she hears EVERYTHING!

Where was I going with this? Oh yeah....I have finished reading the last Sookie Stackhouse novel in the series, and will see Eclipse one more time this month. I have the rest of the season of True Blood to look forward to. And oh yes...I'm obsessed.

Summertime!

Doesn't this look like fun? Wish it wasn't totally out of the question for me to "slip and or slide". Most likely I would "bust and or break" my way down.

I have never been fond of this season. With all it's hot, and humid, and bugs that bite and leave huge ugly red welts. (By the way I have a mosquito bite in the middle of my forehead. I look like I have put a Tilaka on.) And I'm just not down with the lack of clothing that is required in the summertime. I like my turtlenecks, and jeans, and boots, and scarves, and heavy duty sweaters.

But my kids love the summer. They can prance around in very little clothing...cause don't all kids like to do that? And they don't have any responsibility. And they love the outdoors.

My kids are in love with this Slip -n- Slide. It's a double width, with some kind of inflatable boards to ride on. I never had one growing up, and so that must be why I am ALL OVER getting one for them.

We were at my parents house with cousin E. The Slip -n- Slide is travel ready too! I mean really. Best summer toy ever.

My favorite photo here is the one where E looks deranged. Don't know why it cracks me up. There are my two smiling all sweetly and there is E.....all his personality in one photo. I love that face he's making.

These kids will hopefully be close when they get older and look back at these photos and think...."man my mom/aunt was obsessed with the damn camera." Cindi and I will look back and think...."Damn those kids were cute." I am most certainly going to miss this. Things are easy now.

I am starting to like summer a little. I know....crazy.

Thinking...thinking....thinking....

What is a blog for?

I always thought my blog was to entertain, and to "get it down on paper". It usually just tells people of the trials and tribulations of being a mom to MY kids.

Cause really? My kids are hilarious. At times infuriating, but most likely they are doing or saying something that cracks me up. And I feel the need to share it with everyone. Because there is no way, any other kids, are as hilarious as mine. *note sarcasm*

Another reason I write this blog, is to keep track of things. To remember things that I would otherwise lose in my file-o-fax of a brain. There's just too much crap up in there to remember EVERYTHING.

I also write to complain about my stupid old giving out body. I hate it. It makes me so angry. And that has to go somewhere.

But recently, I have wanted to write about things that are going on in my life that stress me out. And I haven't. Why you ask? Because I am not comfortable with people I am annoyed with, stressed out with or just plain bitching about, reading about my annoyance in such a public forum.

Ok...sure, I talk a big game. And truly, I WILL tell you what's on my mind if it's not going to really hurt our relationship. But the big-blast-you-into-next-month crabby that I am capable of, so not ok. I don't want to totally alienate people who make me mad. I'm not a grudge holder. So once it passes I'm good. And if I wrote things here...it's out there. And once I'm past it, they may not be. See the problem?

And I know most people hold on to things. Also there's the whole...I'm not talking about you, but you think I am.

I AM NOT TALKING ABOUT ANYONE SPECIFIC HERE TODAY. THIS IS JUST A TOPIC ON MY BRAIN.

Lately there have been things I have wanted to write. But I don't. Poor Ryan has just had to hear it. Incessantly, hear it. And he's been really great about it. But maybe just maybe I shouldn't hold back. I should just not worry about what people think. And I should start writing it all down.

Right?

Any way you can say it. Courtesy of the Potty Talk Fairy

Claire has taken to potty talk. Not a new concept in our house mind you. There's the "butt", "poop", "fart", and "private body parts", potty talk. Then there's the words "she can't say" potty talk.

There's this gem, and there's also the song the Stewart children taught her....."Cha cha cha cha cha CHA! We are big fat people!" Cause you know I'm not down with my kids talking about PEOPLE being fat. Fat is a naughty word in our house when talking about people.

I do on occasion encourage or participate in the potty talk. Only because I notice if we "let it all hang out" it ceases for quite a while. So we go into the whole...."did you see that monkey? He farted out his butt!" And of course double-over-snorting-laughs ensue. But it pretty much stops the potty talk for a while. It's almost like she gets it out of her system and is good for a bit.

Recently Claire has become enthralled with the Cooking Channel. Not the Food Network. Oh no...she is loving the old time cooking shows. Her most favorite is Two Fat Ladies. I figured it out though. Not only does she love the show, but it gives her legal license to say the word FAT.

What a butt.

Happy 4th!

Today was a spectacular day. We started off doing nothing. That's how I like to spend my weekends.

But we had people coming over so I had to get out of my pj's at some point. But really, they weren't scheduled until 3 so what was the rush?

We had a nice leisurely brunch. Then on to "getting ready" for company. That involves, cleaning the bathroom and shutting my bedroom door.

Friends came. Amy, her husband Ron and their 2 kids. Rachel and her husband Dan. I went to HS with all but Dan. It was quite an evening.

We ordered pizza, because accommodating all those people was out of the question. Besides, Ron is the pickiest eater this side of Miles. Truly. The running joke was that we were going to have 3 different pizza deliveries. The last time I had pizza with Ron and Amy, I was at their house, and I shit you not, they had two different pizza places pass each other on the walkway to the house. It's awesome.

Pizza satisfactorily devoured, and brownie sundaes. Seriously. I make a mean brownie sundae.

The kids trashed the house. No surprise. And the grown ups talked about old times, iPhone games, running, shoes, and whatever else we could think of.

We decided since it wasn't ever going to rain we would venture to the St. Paul fireworks display. Best idea of the night! We met at the Science Museum and they shoot them off right below where we were standing.

The crowd around us was interesting to say the least. I mean....I think for one of the first times the people I was with, were the minority. There were few white folks. Very few. I believe the Asians were the majority.

And some of the people there were just....classy. Wow. And by classy I mean...yowza. NOT CLASSY.

Once the first fireworks went off, Claire's face was like, "whoa!" and everyone settled down. Amy and Ron's daughter who is 9 was very concerned she wouldn't see the fireworks cause the guy in front of her was so tall. Eh...she was fine once she realized they were going off about 50 feet above her and the building we were standing by.

Pluses and minuses standing in such a large crowd. Plus...no bugs for some reason. And it was a hot a humid night. Minus....sweaty business, and stinky people all over the damn place. And when you're short like me...it's gross. And stinky. Plus, the kids stayed very close to us because they didn't want to get lost. Minus, still hot and it was still smelly.

In the end, I giggled like a little girl when the finale came, cause I love it. And Claire loved that part too. Miles was very inquisitive regarding the how and the what with the fireworks. At one point he asked Ryan if they were magic. I love that.

We waited downtown for traffic to clear. All the while watching the kids turn cartwheels in a big grassy area, and chatting with Dan and Rachel.

Great 4th of July. Thanks friends.