This Joy’s Life

First and foremost, HAPPY HALLOWEEN!

Mmm...pumkins taste good!

Clara and I carved our pumpkins last night and this little guy will now light our front porch for the trick-or-treaters on Halloween night.

Only time will tell if baby Sydney will be helping us pass out candy at that point or not.  We are counting down the days, hours and, for me especially, the minutes to her arrival. I’m SOOOO ready.

Going to the gym to walk on the treadmill tonight, in fact, and see if that makes her want to “come on down” as the saying goes.  Plus, I have a new playlist on my iPod - Clara’s Playlist - which is pretty great.  It includes songs such as Lynn Anderson’s Rose Garden, Glen Campbell’s Rhinestone Cowboy, the Graham BLVD version of Sha-boom (Life Could Be A Dream), Lady Gaga’s Dance and The Black Eyed Pea’s newest Boom Boom Pow. My kid’s got a diverse musical taste and I love it!

Nesting is mostly done in the house at this point, though it did take over the entire house and was not merely isolated to the nursery. In fact, one of my favorite projects was to frame some photographs that my BFF Nicole took at a farmer’s market in France. I saw them on her blog (here) and knew they would look AWESOME blown up, framed and hung in my kitchen. See what you think:

That’s all for this post; I know it ain’t much, but once miss Sydney arrives I can just about guarantee some more regular posting than I have been of late.

We’ve had a big time the past few days.  Chad’s mom Vonnie had a milestone birthday on Friday and we arranged for a very close friend of hers to fly into town from Toronto to visit with her this weekend. It meant getting together with friends for breakfast and hosting a birthday BBQ for her on Friday night. It was a gorgeous weekend, the kind that reminds you why in the world you ever moved to this grey, rainy corner of the country in the first place.

The birthday girl, Vonnie.

Cynthia

Cynthia's hubby, Rick - our resident electrician.

Dana, who surprised us with the news that she got engaged last weekend - Congrats, Dana and Ned!!!

Gwen, Jane and Sherry (our surprise guest) Jack and Clara.

Josh (Jane's hubby) and Ryan (Jack's daddy).

Susie, Jane's mommy, who became a grandmother for a second time on the 4th when Jane had her baby girl, Payton. Congrats Jane, Josh, Sawyer and Payton!!!

Clara in the pool doing her best impersonation of a duck, i guess.

Saturday, the 4th, was spend in our traditional manner at a friend’s parents’ property with a private beach right on the Puget Sound which allows for the viewing of three different firework shows in nearby cities and neighborhoods. This is not to mention the firework show that happens right in front of us on the beach thanks to our friend Dan who has mastermind a barge that held 22,000 (yes, thousand) bottle rockets this year. Its “meger” beginnings three years ago included only 10,000 bottle rockets. I’ve missed this show the last few years as I’ve always had to get home to put Clara down for bed. This year, I really wanted to see it, so we let her stay up WAY past her bedtime

I made a kick-a** pot of meatballs in a sweet sauce and two batches of hush puppies for the gathering. It was all gone in 15 minutes or less and people were raving. Always makes me proud to be Southerner when I get the opportunity to share our food that way. And, low and behold, Southerners began coming out of the woodwork. There was a woman from Alabama, a Texan, a couple who’d recently moved from Virginia and a woman whose brother currently lives in Marietta, GA (where I grew up)!  Hush puppies just have that effect on people, I guess.

I enjoyed myself so much, that I never even bothered to pull out my camera. Thankfully, a good friend Erik Seo - who is an AMAZING photographer - did that job for me. Please check out the link to his blog below to see how we spent our 4th celebrating the country’s birthday.

A couple friends also got video footage of the bottle rocket barge in action and I will try to put the video or a link to it up on my blog once they start publishing them. It was a really awesome sight (as you can see from Erik’s photos).

Click here to check out Erik’s blog!

Went walking around the little neighborhood we are staying in yesterday afternoon. The “Somebody’s House” (as Clara calls it) that we are in backs up to a canyon and a park:

Laguna beach is SOOO vane

a kids-eye view

one of many palms

a great tree for climbing in

Later in the evening some friends drove in from the San Diego area for a casual dinner at Somebody’s House and good conversation:

Tim

Matt

Ryan

Chad

As promised, here are some pictures to give you a feel for the traditional Indian wedding I attended at a Sheraton in the cornfields of Iowa this past weekend. It was a full on two-day affair. The fan-fare, outfits and colors were amazing, but, of course, the best part was seeing my friend marry his beautiful bride:

Fun times at the Sheraton!

The happy couple at the Sangeet

Kevin, the best man, Suzanne and Sylvia

Me dressed in my Salwar Kameez for the Sangeet

Sylvia, Suzanne, Me, & Jessica decorating the groom's car

The groom in his wedding day garb

Sylvia, Kevin & Yashan

Mother of the groom, Chetna

The groom's father, Praful

The groom's sister, Ami

A ceremonial coconut

Surrounded by ceremony

Man & Wife

Thank goodness we're finally married!

I'll dance to that!

Chad invited folks to the house to watch the Super Bowl. I’m not much of a football fan, but there’s no rooting for the Steelers in the city of Seattle after the Seahawks run-in with them three years ago. So, by default we were a house full of Cardinal fans. Here’s some pix of all the “excitement.”

Jenny, who brought the fabulous lemon cake. That’ll make a football fan out of me!
Riveted: (Rt. to lft.) Chad, Dan, Nelly:
Ryan, working the cross-word (just like his dad) during this “high stress” game:
Justenny (as Clara calls them) or, individually, Justeene and Jenny:
Finally, some excitement right before half time:
. . . and again in the last 40 seconds:
Big boo, the Steelers won. Now Seahawk and Cardinal fans can share in their hatred of Pittsburgh. Go team!

On Tuesday we got to the Atlanta airport an hour early so that we could quickly meet Nicole and Brayden for lunch. Brayden has just turned 1, which is amazing to me. Tempus fugit. Them Latins said it best!

NicoleBrayden:
Clara and Nicole:
Choy:

Here is what we’ve been up to this week for those of you who simply MUST know.

A visit to Jenn’s new house and a park out in picturesque Issaquah:

A girls night out at the Purple Cafe in downtown Seattle:

A birthday party for Mason who turned 1 on Saturday:

And today we celebrated our sixth wedding anniversary (see previous post for more related to that). Sorry, no pictures from today. Got to keep you coming back for more . . .

It’s been a big weekend in The ATL for Clara and I. We went to the Aquarium and the World of Coke (actually the grass lawn between the two), drove to Marietta to see the burnt up shell of the house I grew up in, visited with my very first BFF Susan and her family, then, today, had a big playdate at The Pietro’s house which included some bounce house fun and a lot of catching up with old friends.

Here we are at The World Of Coca-Cola - sort of:






That was fun. Saturday, I drove up to Marietta to see some old friends and just had to stop by the house I grew up in. I knew that no one had been living in it, but about two years after my parents sold it, it burned down. I wanted to see it one last time, morbid as it was. It was emotional seeing it, as you can understand, especially if you read the blog post I did on it a while back. If you’d ever visited me there, you’ll be interested in seeing these pix.

All that still stands of the house is the carport and the front two rooms - the kitchen and dining room. Everything from the chimney on is gone (that would have been the living room, den and bedrooms):
View from the carport looking through the kitchen door (This was the way most people entered the house):
View from the back. Hello, wide, gaping hole!
It was evident by the debris - empty and broken beer bottles, fast food cups, forks, turned over garbage cans and the like, that more than one group of “hoodlums” and “riff-raff” had had their fun on the turf I used to roam, leaving me a bit nervous in my old stomping grounds and not at all willing to stick around this garden until midnight:
So, off to visit Susan, her husband Matt and her parents for a birthday celebration down the street. I met Susan in pre-school. Her’s was the second phone number I ever learned, so I wanted her to see how much Clara has grown, as it had been about two years since we them last!

Susan and Matt:
Clara, Susan and I - BFF’s always!
Today it was time for more playdate fun at “Monkey Pietro’s”, the house of Nicole and Dan (great friends from high school). It was my first opportunity to meet their second child Lucas, whose only 9 weeks old!

Bounce House Fun for Clara and Sophia Pietro. They were born on the same day about 20 minutes and 3,000 miles apart!:
Dan The (Sausage) Man:
(Seriously, that’s a great little shop in the town of Burien where I live.)

Dan The Girly Man?
Ouch. Dan is a loyal reader so this is so unfair of me. But, he really is THE MAN, so I know he can take it

Lucas and I. He’s such a sweet boy (just like his daddy
Big Sis’ Sophia is keeping an eye on him. She loves her baby bro:
Also at the playdate was Nancy with her son Jed, now about 16 months, and her newborn cutie-patootie, Meredith:

Meredith looking like a beautiful porcelain doll:
And, of course, the hostess with the mostess, Nicole, playing in the grass with Brayden. Thanks again for letting me stay with you this weekend, girl!
Clara and Sophia hot and sweaty from playing at Monkey Pietro’s:
Dan was kind enough to give the little girls soccer lessons so the big girls could talk for a while. Under his tutelage, the both came away with some mad skillz!
All done!