2008

1.) Don’t forget the writer’s workshop…click here for your assignment!

2.) I’m a winner! Momdot came up with a cohesive and thoughtful list of their top 50 favorite blogs and I’m ON it!! Not only am I on the list, but I’m number THREE. I know what you’re thinking. How the eff? I don’t know either. But I’ll TAKE it. Click here to see what other blogs Momdot fancies.

3.) I hate my internet lack of connection. I swear the last five times I’ve tried to download a picture I’ve been booted off the net.

4.) I’d like to thank this little lady for addicting me to the NBC Monday night hit Momma’s Boys. The premise of the show is that three eligible bachelors are up for grabs while a house filled with single ladies are forced to live with the boys mommas. Anyways this girl, Cara, was voted off last night and threw a fit about how she wasn’t given a fair chance, “I didn’t even get a date!!!”. She went into serious pyscho mode and she made my bowl of ice cream DELICIOUS.

THANK you Cara!!

Here’s her freak out:

Ahhhh….even better the second time around.

5.) I’m cheating on The Poisonwood Bible with Chelsea Handler. Oh my dear Lord, this book is hilarious!! I stay up far too late reading and I don’t want it to end. It’s filled with one liners that literally make my stomach cramp with laughter. Things I wish I had thought up myself. She’s vulgar though and uses the f word and has one night stands…so you Pollyannas might want to steer clear (mom).

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Directions:
For you newbies it’s never to late to jump in!! Here is what you must do. Choose a prompt that inspires you most. Write. Come back Thursday and paste your blog URL into the Mister Linky that will be up…this way anyone can click on your name and head over to your place to see what you wrote.

Feel free to write on more than one prompt if you so desire. I do it all the time (ok not really but I INTEND to). But it’s my game…and I don’t know how to shut-up…so it should be expected. And remember the more comment love you give, the more comment love you get so comment comment away.

The Prompts:

1.) Describe a New Year’s where you would have been better off just staying home.

2.) What do you do that drives your mother crazy?

3.) Share your favorite gluten free recipe (hey, so what if I rig the topics to suit my life…)

4.) Close out 2008 with your own TOP 10 list!

Which one will YOU choose??

ps Please take a minute and visit The Secret Is In The Sauce today! They have two really great bloggy tips that a lot of you need to pay attention to…specifically the second tip regarding emails! Click here to improve your bloggy way of life.

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So here’s the thing. I was born the day after Christmas. All six of us were c-sections and when given her choice of delivery dates my Mom chose the 26th of December for the tax break. The next available date was after the first of the year. Not a lot of thought went in to how I might feel sharing the limelight with the Dear Lord baby Jesus.

After I was born, however, my Mom decided to avoid the dual gifts and the extra party planning by celebrating my birthday six months later. June 26th. My entire life (with the exception of the “sweet 16″ and “21 run”) my birthday has been celebrated in June. It’s a concept that was most widely accepted by my family and not many more. It took a little work to get my high school friends on board and after high school I pretty much just get laughed at (mostly by my husband).

People think I’m duping the system and squeezing in an extra birthday every year…and while this may be true SOMETIMES….it is also true that sometimes my birthday has been altogether missed for over a year. If I celebrate my sweet sixteen in December and nothing that following June…then nothing the NEXT December because I’m supposed to celebrate in June…then TECHNICALLY I went a year and a half without a celebration. It all evens out in the end.

SO. This year was the big 3-o. That’s right. I’m 30. And at the risk of getting bitch slapped by 85% of my readers who are over the age of 30, I have to say…dammmmmm, am I really THIRTY!?! How did this happen? Thirty used to be SOOOOO old! And now here I am…not old at all, but still thirty. Am I going to feel like this at forty? fifty? sixty? At what point do you wake up and think, yeaaah. I’m old…no doubt about it…dyin’ any day now…when does that happen?

Since it was the big 3-0 I HAD to celebrate it in December. So I planned myself a party for myself. I invited all my high school friends and one of them even came! (actually great odds for us) and of course my brothers and sisters pulled through for a second night in a row.

We all met for dinner at a restaurant of my choice…and then we headed for drinks and dancing at a local bar.

From left to right: Bad Ass (note the lack of cooperation), Smart Ass, Pat, Handyman, The Daveman, and Chauncy (and I don’t think he’s a fan of that name)

My camera went dead before any dignity was lost on the dance floor…however Bianca had her camera going all night. I am CERTAIN she’s storing up ammo.

I’m glowing…and please note again Bad Ass’s lack of cooperation. Please also note Smart Ass being a smart ass…I told them all to put a hand on me…he took it to another level…he’s not actually touching me…as if that makes it better).

The best part about being thirty (for a whopping 48 hours now) is that Pat keeps making comments about me being soooo old. I tweaked my back and it’s because I’m soooo old. I’m tired at the end of the day because I’m sooo old. I can’t keep up with the kids anymore because I’m sooo old. He takes any chance he can to squeeze in the fact that I’m SO old now.

I just want to stop him and be like Dude. You’re 41.

But instead I just smile at his little jokes and love him through it…we both know the truth. He’ll be in depends in no less than five years. I’m willing to put money on that.

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I’m afraid this post is going to be a century long. It’s nice to get back into the swing of things…and yes we ARE doing writer’s workshop this week. I long to feel normal again. However, I am no longer holding myself responsible for reading all 60 (or so) workshop entries. I do like reading them, but I miss keeping up on some of my other faves and now that I’ve got that gluten free blog going…there’s just isn’t enough blogging time in the day. :) Sorry peeps. I’ll read as many as I can, but I’m not making any promises. Just keep loving each other and showering one another with comment love. Pick up my slack.

Moving on.

Are you tired of hearing about Christmas? Well too bad. Here’s how things went down in my hood.

First off the CALENDARS came!! And on time!! I’m so happy that Costco stepped up to the plate and was at the very least able to come through and deliver my Christmas treasures before Christmas, bad weather and all.

And the fam loved them and deemed them my BEST calendars yet. It all makes up for my near lapse of mental sanity when I was forced to re-do the calendars and yes. I will be using Costco again next year (just not the date importer).

The kids were SUPER excited to wake up to presents galore and stuffed stockings. They pulled Pat and I out of bed around 8am and we watched them shred hours of careful wrapping in no less than 15 minutes.



I was sure the girls would love their big ticket item this year. A boxed set of twin baby dolls complete with double stroller, swing, and high chair. A grand total of forty bucks a piece. I should have known better. They don’t even really like dolls. I have great memories of playing with baby dolls when I was little and they refuse to allow me live vicariously through them once again. Every once in awhile they go through a “baby” stage…but typically it doesn’t last for more than a week. Laina loves dogs. Maile loves crafts. There’s nothing I can do about it.

Maile’s favorite gift this year was a stuffed seal puppet I found at Borders. She saw a life like stuffed seal at the aquarium before her birthday and she’s been yapping about it ever since. This thing has not left her side since she opened it.


Laina basically plays with everything. She also took it upon herself to open all of Kainoa’s gifts when no one was looking. She doesn’t play with any one thing but instead imposes herself on EVERYONE’S presents. If I HAD to pick something though, I would say her favorite gift was a pack of The Littlest Petshop figurines. She loves that kind of stuff.

My oldest brother Bad Ass rarely makes family appearances. He says us girls make him feel like he’s on The View. :) And he hates all the picture taking. I’m surprised he hasn’t broken my camera. In retaliation though he usually messes up the picture. It used to be he’d flip the camera off, which really I can handle. Now he crosses his eyes and for a minute I was wondering if he was on some kind of drug because EVERY picture was cross eyed. I didn’t realize he was doing it on purpose.

So I put on my amateur photog hat and lined up the peeps in about a bajillion different poses so that I had every combination of every family and every sibling combo you can think of.

I think to myself, “man if Bad Ass dies this year then Lolo will really appreciate the 30 seconds it took for me to get them together for one last photo.”

I’m telling you guys, I don’t care how normal I appear…Daria is always lurking inside somewhere.

My favorite part of the picture taking this year was the siblings and mom combination. Baby sat on one side of mom, I sat on the other and I made my niece take the picture like five times so that I could be SURE there’s at least one good one. Niece would be like “ok everyone are you ready?? here we go”, and every time she’d say that my Mom would say “hello!” over and over.

After about the 10th “hello” Baby quietly says “What are you…a parrot? Stop that.”

And I’ve been thinking about it and laughing to myself ever since.

It just occurred to me that that might have been a moment you had to be there for. And by “just occurred to me” I mean I just told Pat that story and he didn’t even crack a smile. I was all “funny right?? A parrot? My mom??? A parrot?? You know cause she kept saying helllo…like a parrot would?? Awww forget it.”

And then I was going to delete it, but hell it’s funny to me and I can blog it if I want to. The parrot bit stays.

Anywho, after a long day of snow and gifts and me arranging my own birthday party, we headed home for a family nap and a long night of good old fashion movie watching.

Hope your Christmas was as merry!

ps If you must know Kainoa is not wearing pants because he shat himself.

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