merry christmas from 1984!

it's christmas eve and i am watching Notting Hill with my bff, chris watson. actually, he is listening to/"reading" the third book of 'The Hunger Games' in one ear and watching this movie with me and enjoying a cup of chai. multi-tasking. it's just how we live now. and we love it!

so, i found this wicked good picture from 1984-ish:



that's jeehon in the ballet outfit. and my older brother is the strapping lad to the left. the weird looking one in the middle- that's my other brother. just kidding! that's me! and the tree isn't a funny homage to a charlie brown christmas or anything, it was just our christmas tree. we were such funny immigrants.

hope you are having a wonderful christmas eve with your loved ones, and an even more wonderful christmas with even more of your loved ones. yeah for love and yeah to the Father who shows us what love is. happy birthday Jesus!

"This is how God showed his love among us: He sent his one and only Son into the world that we might live through him. 10 This is love: not that we loved God, but that he loved us and sent his Son as an atoning sacrifice for our sins. 11 Dear friends, since God so loved us, we also ought to love one another." 1 John 4:9-11

six weeks

christmas is 3 days away and i haven't finished making one of my presents (hair clips) and i have not wrapped a single present. i also meant to make and deliver cookies to all of our renters but i just finished the baking part today and we will see if any of the decorating or delivering will happen before sunday. at this rate i am guessing NOT. oh well. i tried.

though i am busy and my monkey children are all asleep, which means my time is money right now, i wanted to post some pics of all my kids at their 6 week stages. (happy six weeks of being alive mia!!!) lots of people ask me who mia looks like- and these pictures don't do her justice, but i think mia is an exact replica of lily. for people who knew lily as a baby, they say that mia is lily. so precious. i cannot get enough of my new baby. and my old babies aren't bad either ;)

quick story- lily LOVES her little sister. she has been so helpful and wonderful. if mia starts fussing when someone else is holding her, lily comes over to me and whispers in my ear: "mia needs you mom." it's so sweet. anyway, i left mia on my bed so that i could throw out a diaper. lily was sitting next to her and i told lily to make sure that mia didn't roll of of the bed. not that mia can roll or anything. just wanted to give lily a task. anyhoo, i come back 30 seconds later and lily is sitting with mia in her lap. very dangerous, and i told lily not to do that again, yet so cute!

here's a pic of some supervised big-sister-little-sister time:


the other day ago chris and i were saying how lily and mia are so beautiful yet gross. this week both of them passed gas right in chris' face. topher would not do that. he is too proper (sometimes.) when he poops and it's gross he yells at me: "get out mom! it's too stinky!" he's so considerate.

anyway, hope you are all enjoying these wonderful holidays!

lily:



topher:



mia:

not quite a walk through the park...

having 3 kids is not quite like a walk through the park. maybe more like a walk through the forest- most of the time i am on a well-traveled trail. but occassionally i get derailed and i am just staring at a bunch of trees. like last week when i found myself sitting on the couch and all three kids were crying at the same time. it only lasted a minute. and i actually started laughing because the whole thing was kind of ridiculous. but that was definitely a 'derailed' moment.

i just noticed that i only have 2 posts for december, and it's already the 18th. i don't know where time is going. i bought an InStyle magazine last week, and i am still only 3/4 of the way through it! i am trying to relish my moments with my mia as best i can because i definitely realize how quickly this baby phase passes. lily and topher have been so great at entertaining each other that i find i really do have a lot of time to spend with her. and mia, on the flip side of that, sleeps a lot still so i have time to hang out with lily and topher. we've done a ton of baking this week, and even managed to get in a reading lesson! we are working on words that end with 'at'. there were many times when i felt like hitting myself with a bat, or wishing a fat rat would come in with a cat and slp my kids, but then i remembered my kids are 4 and 3, and that i haven't done any schoolwork stuff with them since the end of september...

i heard the transition from 2-3 kids was going to be very tough. cause you go from a man-to-man defence to playing zone defence. but it's not been that bad for me. i am no super-mom, my kids are just so much easier to handle right now. admittedly the transition from 0-1 kid was an adjustment. but not too terrible. the adjustment from 1-2 kids was- to be frank- an ass-kicker. i did not think i would ever recover from that! which is why mia came 3.5 years after topher. but what a blessing to have our mia in the mix. life is very good right now. very very good.

chris' birthday is in an hour and 6 minutes. which means our anniversary is in the same amount of time. so crazy how much life has changed in just 6 short years. last night we went to Some Burros, a cheap mexican restaurant, with some good friends to celebrate chris' birthday. all we did was eat, come back to our place for some ice cream pie and decaf coffee, and then everyone went to pick up their kids by about 9:30. and as people were leaving and hugging, everyone kept saying- "this was so fun!" we didn't do anything! but it was so fun! it was so relaxing and quiet. man we are getting so old! but it's so nice to get old with so many wonderful people by your side!

i had a really random 'daydream' today that i am going to share with you. chris told me i was a 'warrior' after i told him about it. that's because he often runs scenarios in his head about what he would do if something terrible happened- like if a crazy person opened fire at church, or something like that. so my 'daydream' occured in payson, a town an hour north of us, and we were there celebrating chris' cousin's daughter's birthday. and i got to thinking that if something terrible happened to us on our drive back down to the vally, like if we got caught in a storm, or crashed into the woods, that i could/would breastfeed my whole family to help us to survive. weird, eh? maybe i need more sleep.

mia is starting to stir, so i should go. but i will take this brief moment to wish my stunningly good looking husband a super-happy 32nd birthday, and a big ol' happy 6th anniversary! thanks for sticking so close by my side these last 6 years- with all the size and hormone changes that have occured along the way. i love you so very very very very much christopher joel watson! you have matured and grown so much in just 6 years, which has caused my love and respect for you to do the same.

(dang! i just re-read this post. sounds like i have serious ADHD, or like i may be high on meth, or both. ah to be the mother of a newborn again!)

4 weeks of magical goodness

i cannot believe mia is already 4 weeks old today! time is flying. i also cannot believe that i managed to blog last week. i feel like it's been forever. i am pretty behind on my posts. my girlfriend Jenny Bishop took some PHENOMENAL newborn pics of mia, and of lily and topher too, and i still haven't posted those. mostly cause i am using a bunch of those pictures for our Christmas card this year, but also because i have not really been on the computer much except to finish up my christmas shopping (Amazon.com is the most amazing thing since sliced bread. i don't really like to shop online but they made buying my last 3 presents ridiculously easy and painfree!) and the fact that i didn't have to load and unload three kids to get those last presents has almost fully converted me into doing all of my shopping online!)
anyhoo, i am also not going to post them today because i don't have the disc with me right now, and mia is going to need to eat soon so i have to wrap this post up sooner than later. but those pics are coming so just hang in there!

but for now i will post some awesome pics that my mother-in-law Barb took last week while my parents were out here. i told everyone to look nice for the picture and as usual, my overachieving husband showed up looking better and fanicer than all the rest of us ;)

three weeks

my mia (mee-ah. people have been asking so i am clarifying. not my-ah) is going to be three weeks old in about ten hours.

it's been a phenomenal three weeks! our little peanut girl has already gained about a pound and grown an inch and pretty much does not fit into any of her newborn-size pjs! this pretty much means that she is now the size of lily at birth. yowsers. my crotch hurts just remembering that... mia is pretty much still just eating and sleeping and pooping. but the few minutes that she is awake during the day, she smiles and stares and is just the sweetest looking little thing you ever did see! i love to stare into her big steel-grey eyes. they are so innocent and honest. mia has such a sweet temperament and easy-going disposition. i can't be mad at her even when it's 5am and i am changing the third poopy diaper of the hour- she's just too cute!

chris is STILL home from work (thank you scottsdale!) which means i am still living in a fantasy world and i do not know what life with three kids is really like. topher has reverted to acting like a baby for a few minutes everyday, but he's already toning it down quite a bit. mostly cause we ignore him when he whines and insists on being carried. but for the most part lily and topher have been INCREDIBLE and i feel super-blessed that i had them super-close together and that we waited quite a while to have mia. best of both worlds!

my parents have been here since saturday and they have been so great. they are beyond in love with their newest grandbaby, and thoroughly amused by the antics of their older grandkids. and my mother has been cooking and stocking up my fridge and freezer with korean food. yesterday chris, my dad, my mom and i all made homemade dumplings (aka 'mandoo' in korean, 'gyozas' in japanese, 'potstickers' in english...) funtimes!

today we went to Bass Pro for some winterwonderland funtimes. we met Santa, wrote him a letter, and rode the free little carousel twice. and looked at their creepy variety of creepy gigantic fish. so fun. i love love love our family.

and tomorrow our family is going to grow with the addition of one more member as chris' youngest brother gets married to the lovely miss alycia hall. we are THRILLED to be witnessing the union of two adorable, sweet, and loving kids (at 21 and 20- you guys are definitely still kids in my eyes!) yeah for family and love and marriage.

here's a smorgasboard of pics from the last week or so:

Mi amor

i started writing this post about a week ago. mia's 2 week birthday is tomorrow. it's kind of all over the place, but i just need to post it! if you can read this whole thing- you get a prize ;)

my mia is amazing. i cannot even believe how amazing she is. though i was very very upset with her when she would not come out to meet us earlier, she has proven to be a very good and obedient baby in her own way.

having a baby when you already have another kid is a pain in the butt to plan. because you can't really plan anything cause like the end times- you don't know when anything is going to happen. i asked mia to not come between the hours of 12 am and 6am. why? cause i really didn't want to have to call anyone to get out of bed and come to our house during those hours. sure lindsay and robert, and my friend grace who lives 2 minutes away from us, were more than willing to get out of bed for mia's arrival, but i just didn't want to have to harass them at such ungodly hours. and my wonderful mia started 'the process' at about 5:30am on thursday morning last week, and i ended up calling my midwife and lindsay at 6am. yeah! 6am is early, but 4am is earlier, so i think everyone was ok with getting the call.

so we got to the hospital at about 6:45am with my contractions coming about every 10 minutes. i was still on board with myself for this whole 'natural-drug-free birth' at this point. why did i want to do this? i'm not really sure to be quite honest. and would i do it again? probably not. but maybe. i don't know. the whole birthing without drugs is painful as all get out, BUT feeling everything in retrospect (and only in retrospect) is kind of amazing. like i could actually feel mia coming down the birth canal. very strange. and very amazing.

we got to triage at about 7am and i was already 100% effaced and 7cm dilated. surely i was going to pop this baby out asap styles, right? we got into our delivery room at about 7:30am, and i was kind of a hurting unit. chris was there, as was his mama, and my midwife, and a nurse. and that was my birthing team, unbenownst to me. i guess i should have talked more with my midwife beforehand to know what to expect. the only thing that i specifically talked about with my midwife was that i really really did not want to tear. i tore a ton with lily and almost not at all with topher. my midwife told me i was not going to tear with an uncanny degree of certainty, so i just went along with it.

basically, i don't know why i had this baby naturally. would i do it again? probably not. but here's the thing- i did not tear! it was amazing. my midwife was amazing. even though i felt like she didn't do anything for 80% of my labor- but apparently that's what midwives are there for- to not boss you around and let you do what your body is telling you to do. unlike doctors who are there to catch your baby and stitch you up. if for some crazy reason i have another baby- it will be via midwife with drugs. cause that's an option, and probably the best one out there. but my midwife also told me that recovery in general is much faster for people who don't have drugs, and though it is almost two weeks out and i still have some pain and discomfort in my back, i did feel 'pretty good' (considering a human being emerged from my body) hours after mia was born. the jury's out on whether we will have more kids and whether or not drugs are the way to go or not.

all i know is that life is good right now. chris is home and will be for another week and a bit. he has proven to be a ripe and mature seasoned veteran of a dad and husband. he is all over waking up with the older two so that i can sleep in every day. he empties and loads the dishwasher. he takes lily and topher to the gym so that i can hang out at home with mia. he also hangs out with mia and lily and topher so i can have moments entirely to myself. what a stud and a champ! i am surrounded by awesomeness and i feel so very very blessed.

people ask if i am sad that mia couldn't wait an extra 15 hours to be born on 11/11/11, but truth be told i really just needed mia to not be inside my body any more. and 11/10 happens to be the Marine Corps' bday, something that chris- a former marine, likes to celebrate every year. and every year i usually get him a gift, or a cake, or something to commemorate this special day. but i had nothing prepared for chris this year. until mia showed up! so happy belated Marine Corps bday my beautiful husband. and happy birthday to my sweet mia.

here are some of my favorite pics of my awesome husband and my awesome mia.

wait no more!

we had our 7 lb 2 oz baby yesterday morning at 8:52am. i'll blog about the birth story later (you can skip that post lindsay!) but today is just pics:

so happy to have our baby girl out in the world with us! welcome to the outside
Mia Joelle Sunju Watson!

still waiting...

ok. i just posted a post that i wrote five days ago. and nothing has changed.
except that i had a doctor's appoitnment on monday afternoon and discovered that i am 4.5cm dilated and 80% effaced. i was so excited cause i thought i was surely going to have a baby on monday. surely. SURELY! right? no. it's wednesday. still pregnant.

chris had been off of work since friday night. this weekend would have been a great time to have a baby. as we waited, chris and i went on two more dates on saturday- one luunch date for a friend's 39th birthday (thanks for watching lily and topher barb and jerry!) and then we went on a serious date- dinner and a movie, while our friends brian and carrie kept lily and topher overnight. thanks SO MUCH brian and carrie! (those are hobey's parents. i love them so much!)

but this morning he actually left for work, so i am home with the kids. i am going to do a while lot of sitting and hanging out. and then when he gets home i will probably do some jump squats and lunges and maybe find a trampoline...

mia is already proving to be a stubborn little monkey, much akin to her sister lily when she was in the womb. i have tried to ask her to come out very nicely, i have been walking around like crazy, i even did something according to doctor's orders to get labor started... and nothing. i have also been eating spicy food like it's going out of style, but i don't know if that counts being korean and all, and usually consuming a fair amount of spicy food on the regular. but i have to mention that chris 'made dinner' last night, which means he ran out to a korean restaurant and ordered kalbi (phenomenal short ribs), jap chae (noodles), and kimchi chigae (kimchi stew) all by himself! the korean lady at the restaurant was very impressed that he ordered without a menu and asked if he was mormon. interesting thing to ask another person, although not uncommon here in gilbert arizona.

oh yeah, i went to starbucks on monday night on my way to bible study/hoping to be on my way to the hospital, and there was a lady in front of me who told me i was so cute. very nice of her. she also asked if she could refill my drink for me (i had a almost empty starbucks cup, cause i had been in there 2 minutes earlier, but chris spilled 90% of his drink in the car so we turned around to get another one.) but the starbucks guy was nice enough to remake my drink for free. so much kindness and love in that starbucks! she then offered to buy me a pastry which i also declined, but it was my first 'stranger offering to buy me something' experience and it was so sweet! especially since this woman said she had 8 kids (EIGHT!) and that she loved being pregnant but was all done and therefore liked to live vicariously through other pregnant women. craziness.

anyhoo, i have been waking up a lot in the middle of the night to eat crackers, which has been so annoying, but i guess it's better than getting woken up 10 times a night to feed someone else. i know life is going to be very different and kind of exhausting once mia finally does decide to show up- but i just want her to show up already! chris is way stronger than me, and it's his turn to carry her now!

waiting. not patiently

today i am 37 weeks and 5 days. topher was already born by now. my friend erin, who was due a week before me, just had her baby on tuesday morning. i met the littlest dezago and he is amazing! congrats erin and co!!!

i was so happy for my friend that i thought i was in labor tuesday night. chris and i were out on a hot date to one of our favorite 'mexican' restaurants- abuelo's. i love it there. the food is never too greasy and it's always delicious. so great. but i was having contractions during dinner and most of our conversation that night revolved around- "wait? was that a real contraction? when was my last one? is this really happening?" and the answer was: "NO." this was not really happening. i prayed for lots of wisdom cause i did not want to go to the hospital and not have a baby, but the situation seemed so perfect because the kids were already at lindsay's and she was more than ready to have them spend the night. she is such a great sister-in-law! i really truly do not know what i would do without her!

anyhoo, we picked up the kids and went home and nothing happened. obviously. cause i'm still pregnant. but i am so thankful for the date that chris and i were able to have. in fact, i am so thankful for all the 'last' moments i have been spending this week. especially with lily and topher.

wednesday morning topher was in a picky mood and said he wanted banana bread for breakfast. i figured that eating cereal for breakfast everyday could get boring, so we went out for muffins! it was fantastic! extra fantastic cause we all got to wear sweatshirts! yeah for fall weather. my kids are so amazing and i am definitely soaking up these last days of ease and leisure with my two OLD kids.

halloween funtimes

there are some things that my awesome husband takes very seriously- his faith, his family, his health, football, and halloween. kind of in that order.

halloween has never been a particularly big thing for me. We had a convenience store growing up, so getting candy was never a big deal. My parents didn't have a ton of time planning out our halloween costumes, plus we lived in Canada so we always had to wear our winter jackets over our costumes anyway. Halloween was fun, but it wasn't a big event.

i'm not sure why it's such a big deal for my husband, maybe his parents made halloween a very special event for their family. or maybe it's just cause my husband is just a child at heart. at any rate, chris loves halloween, and when we decided to have a small halloween gathering, chris was very very excited.

we had a very small gathering with our friends on sunday night. part of it was as small as it was because i was a little afraid that i might have to cancel the party due to an early baby, but fortunately/unfortunately that did not happen. and even with just five families represented at the party, there were 10 kids (plus two baking)which made it feel like there were a lot more people in our house than there were. what a blessing!

i don't know what order these pictures appear in, but i know there is one awesome pic of the 10 kids- ranging in age from 3 weeks old to 4.5 years old. always a fun challenge trying to get 10 kids to pose for a picture together.

schnepf farms

here we are at schnepf farms 2 years ago. look how little my lily was! and topher and that bald giant noggin! so precious.

i am at 36 weeks, so from now til i have this baby, expect lots of 'flashback' pics cause i am feeling mighty nostalgic and sentimental!

anyhoo, thursday morning the kids, barb, and i headed down to queen creek to go to schnepf farms. it was great fun, if only it hadn't been 95 degrees that day. where are you autumn?!?!?!

i believe the farm is only open thursdays-sundays. and it's $15 per person (ages 2 and younger are free) which is kind of steep. which is probably why we didn't go last year... but it's $12 if you get your tickets at Fry's, but they also have 2-for-1 coupons on SRPs' website, or attached to your SRP bill. you can only use it on thursdays in october, which means this thursday is your last chance to use that coupon, so if you want to go- go this week! and it's actually supposed to dip WAY down to 82 degrees by the end of the week! yeah fall weather!!

you can go to the farm for relatively cheap, after you actually get through the gate, but we dropped more money on the train ride and pony rides. whatev. we probably won't go next year, so we were living it up big time this year :)
the petting zoo is free, and the kids had lots of fun in the also-free playground. we also managed to watch some pigs and goats racing which was pretty funny and out of the ordinary. all in all, a great time was had by all, and the kids walked away with pumpkins that they got to pick from pumpkin patch themselves. (for a small price of $2 per pumpkin.)

here are pics of our great day: (i have also included one pic of me in all my very pregnant glory.)

more chris love

my beautiful husband is in hawaii right now. and i am not. sadness! he is in paradise for a friend's wedding. i would have gone too if i wasn't 35 weeks and 5 days pregnant. us and our timing! boo... but because i miss him, i am dedicating another post to him.

on monday, chris' day off, he got called in to work. he left the house at 5:30am and did not return until about 11pm. that's a lot of overtime! thanks for that Jesus. a lot of that time was spent sitting around and waiting and watching. not that fun. for a normal person, working 17 hours does not make for a great day. but chris' day ended off with him tackling an unaware criminal who was so surprised that he peed himself. chris got pee on his jeans as well, and this made for a great day at work. so gross. so crazy.

speaking of chris' work, if you think about it, chris sounds a lot like a marvel superhero. he even has a kinda secret identity. but he goes off in his special car and fights crime and puts bad guys in jail. a lot like, say batman. and chris has actually convinced our poor son that he is in fact batman. topher is really into superheroes and really into his dad, so having his dad be a superhero is a major bonus.
me: "topher, who is spiderman when he isn't spiderman?"
topher: "peter parker."
me: "who is ironman when he sisn't ironman?"
topher: "tony starks."
me: "who is batman when he isn't batman?"
topher: "my dad."
no joke. chris has really brainwashed this boy!

lastly, i showed this picture to lily a few days ago:

it's a picture of lily and her cousin zoe.
i guess lily hasn't seen this picture in awhile, even though we go through old pictures fairly regularly. zoe lives in alabama now, and lily hasn't seen her cousin in over a year.
anyway, when we look through pictures, we always play the "who is in this picture?" game. so, i asked lily when we looked at this picture, who was in it. lily looks and says: "there's me, and there's dad's other baby."
i have never before heard lily make the distinction that daddy is caucasian and i am asian. but she fully thought that this caucasian kid in the picture was her dad's. so hilarious. and so wrong for so many different reasons.

man i love my kids and i love my husband! come back home soon chris!

the worst gift in the world

a few months ago, my dear friend mary beth decided to buy her hubby a groupon for sky diving. she didn't want him to have to go alone, and there was no way she was going to go with him, so she asked if my crazy husband would be interested in joining in on the fun. and of course my crazy hubby said yes. so i bought a groupon too.

chris has been sky diving before- in argentina before he went to antarctica. if he was going to die sky diving, it probably would have been there. he was in a foreign country, he was up in a rickety old plane, and who knew if his pack had a chute or a bunch of burritos. fortunately there was a chute. and it worked.

so chris and jeff ventured off to maricopa to get on a plane, only to jump out of it. they were both pretty excited.



mary beth and i joked about living together if they should happen to die. but surely, they would not die. lots of people go sky diving all the time and don't die. except for this 75 year old lady who went sky diving last week. she and her instructor died as both their primary and emergency chutes did not work. i only found out about this tragedy after chris' jump.

anyhoo, i went to church with the kids and i texted chris to text me when he landed safely back on earth. he texted me (praise Jesus!) but this is what he wrote:

"my first chute exploded so we had to use the emergency chute. i'm fine though."

omg people. chris is a major jokester, but i knew that he would not joke about that (he's trying harder to not play jokes on people that result in tears.) so all morning i kept thinking about how i almost killed my husband with this gift that i had bought for him. the WORST GIFT IN THE WORLD. it's like buying someone a pet shark. or a live grenade. or something equally horrible and dangerous. the bottom line: do not buy someone you love, or even like, a the gift of sky diving- aka almost dying.

Dogtober

this month has so far been over run with four-legged animals.

our friends, the vogts, went on the disney cruise last week, so we had the pleasure of watching their gigantic english mastiff, mally. if you've been a reader for a while, you know that mally actually used to be our dog. so we really couldn't say no when they asked us to watch her. the kids were happy to have her here. so was chris. pug was so happy he peed all over the living room, again. and as for me... whatev. dogs are not my favorite things in the world.

here's a picture of lily feeding mally. mally is a big big girl. this picture does not do her girth justice:


and even though dogs are not my favorite things, you would think they were cause i actually made a halloween costume for pug. there is a fun thing that the city/town of gilbert puts on every year called Barktober. supercute. especially if you really like dogs. my kids really like dogs, and my friend lainey really likes dogs, so we go, almost every year with lainey and her two dogs. this year chris tagged along, which was awesome, as did pug.

topher really wanted pug to be a superhero, and i saw these ridiculously cute superhero costumes at Old Navy, but was not about to drop $20 on a costume for my dog, so i made a super-ghetto version of the Old Navy costume using felt. i spent less than $1 on three pieces of felt. that's a great deal! i actually had a ton of fun making the costume, and also had a ton of fun hanging out with my friend, my family, and my crazy dog at Barktober:

the magic of felt and an old t-shirt (for the cape)


batman-pug


batman-topher and batman-pug


lily and lainey and grendel and griffin (who were dressed up as converse shoes. super cute!)

woody, toaster, eating mia

monday morning, robert and lindsay headed out of town, leaving their three little monkey children behind. i am so happy for them! they really needed a break. they come back tomorrow and i am looking forward to hearing about all the sleep that they got, and all the hot food they got to eat that they didn't cook. a giant village of people stepped up to do what robert and lindsay do with the three kids every day and night. i had a very short shift from monday to tuesday. i started off with just emma, which was nice cause chris took lily to ballet, so just topher and i hung out with emma and it was quiet, and calm, and lovely.

then lily, topher, emma and i headed to the other watson house where gabe and corban were napping. when the boys woke up from their nap, chaos ensued, but it was a very manageable chaos. having the five kids awake together for an hour was ok, but had it been for much longer, who knows what would have happened. but it reminded me of my incredible mother, because the age range from lily to emma is about the same from my sister to my twin brothers. how my mom had five kids, raised them, and didn't kill any of them is amazing. props to you mama ham! you are amazing.

anyhoo, corban, who is 2, is hilarious. he has this hilarious little voice and speaks in an interesting way. he is much easier to understand now than he was about 3 months ago, but he still says things in his own way. for instance, i just noticed this week that he calls lily 'woody' and topher 'toaster'. it has made me laugh all week just thinking about it. i love that crazy kid.

then yesterday i went to the hospital to see my beautiful friend cindy who just had her second baby girl. so awesome! praise Jesus. i will do a separate post about that later. but i brought lily and topher to the hospital with me, and my superpregnant friend erin had her son, greyson, with her, so we took turns visiting our friend and waiting in the lobby with the kids. great times! when i came out from my visit with the brantons, the kids and erin were looking into the nursery where a little newborn was under the uv lights, wearing tanning goggles, and chillin like a villain. so cute. lily loved it!

when chris got home, she told him all about it. this is their conversation:
lily: "we saw a tiny ittle baby and it was wearing sunglasses and it was so cute!"
chris: "when mia comes out of mommy's belly she will be that small too. and then you guys can meet her. aren't you so excited to meet mia?"
lily: speechless. look of horror on her face.
chris: "aren't you excited to meet mia? your baby sister?"
lily: "what??? we can't EAT mia! she's my baby sister!"
chris: "i didn't say EAT. i said MEET. we will not eat your baby sister."

i love little kids cause they say, and i guess hear, the darndest things :)


ps. have i ever mentioned before that we are naming our baby Mia Joelle? maybe i have, maybe i haven't... i'm losing my mind... if i haven't- now you know!

a kind of disgusting week

one day last week, i was having dinner with lily and topher at home (chris was working) and i sneezed. for normal people that's fine. i am no longer normal. i totally peed in my pants. not a lot. but enough that i had to excuse myself from the table so i could change my underwear and shorts.

but then that evening my girlfriend cindy came over to hang out for a little bit. cindy is also pregnant (maybe having a baby today? tomorrow? definitely this week!!!) and she has the sweetest heart. i told her about my dinner-sneezing-urination fiasco. she laughed and came to sit on the couch with me to give me a hug. but when she did that, she knocked over a bottle of water that started to get her butt all wet. she laughed nervously at first as she jumped up. she looked at the couch to assess the situation and was relived to see that there was a bottle of water spilling water on my couch. she thought that i had another 'outburst' and that i was peeing on her! amazing. that would have brought our friendship to a new and very different level.

then on tuesday, i was getting ready to go out with chris and some friends, so i put on a t-shirt and was doing something in the kitchen by the sink. i just happened to look over on my shoulder and what should i find perched there but a scorpion! A BIG OLD DISGUSTING SCORPION! omg. i almost died. i started screaming for chris to come and help me (he was giving the kids a bath) and so he comes running and i am for some reason trying to get the scorpion off of my shirt by running water on it. but then it started crawling into the arm hole and chris was yelling at me to take my shirt off. not something that happens often ;) so i finally took my shirt off and my brave husband proceeded to kill the scorpion with my tshirt. my kids were safe in the tub. though they were very interested in the commotion.

how did the scorpion get on me? did it crawl up my leg and back and find a nice resting place on my shoulder? did it fall from the ceiling? or was it in my closet and already on my shirt when i put it on? i am banking on it being the latter, so i have already told chris i need a new wardrobe.

in other disgusting creepy crawly news, i also found a gecko and it's dislocated (though still moving) tail in my newspaper last week. it's been an interesting and kind of disgusting week. i'm glad it's over. happy weekend people!

being a mom rocks my socks

being a stay-at-home mom is great. and sometimes not so great. some days are better than others. i just read my sister-in-law's blog, and it sounds like she had one of them 'others' kind of days. sorry lindsay! corban will stop being a two year old one of these days ;)

as for me, we had plans to have lunch with a friend, but she cancelled, so we had the day to ourselves. we went shopping, we had lunch at home (fiscally responsible!), we had ice cream cones and sat by the pool (the fill-up yourself kind), and then we watched 'Despicable Me' and ate Cheetos. i sat and watched the whole thing with them. dishes and laundry be darned! then we did our sticker books and puzzles, and then we had dinner at home- and chris even managed to join us for that! yeah family time!

it was just a really great day. the calm before the storm. not a bad storm- but having a newborn in the house again is definitely going to feel like a storm.

here's the video of my kids doing the Lord's Prayer. i made the mistake of trying to take this video while the kids are eating ice cream. topher is not focused! and my camera may be kind of broken cause the volume is no bueno. but turn your computer volume way up and try to enjoy!

what up watsons

chris: has been a working fool!!!! in fact he just got called into work- on a monday night! poopers. but as annoying as it is to have my husband whisked away to deal with criminals when all i want to do is watch some tv with the guy, we are so thankful for the overtime! thank you Jesus! and when chris isn't working, he is being crazy. chris did another triathlon yesterday. this one was a sprint, which means he only exercised for one hour and forty minutes straight, as opposed to the last time when he exercised for three and a half hours in one go. he's so stinkin crazy! why he does this to himself, and pays people money so that he can do these things- is beyond me. but i had a great time watching him, and his equally crazy brother, robert, racing for no reason. even though we woke up really early to support these boys (and their other crazy friend dan) i had an awesome time hanging out with barb and lindsay.

me: i am 32 weeks pregnant and i waddle around like a pissed off duck. it's not attractive. the day before the triathlon i felt like i had shrapnel in my crotch and couldn't walk. it was creepy. i am trying to be productive and all that, but i waste a lot of my time playing sudoku while laying down. i had a terrible week last week- my allergies nearly killed me, and i had to take the 3-hour glucose test. i do not have gestational diabetes which is great news, but fasting for 12 hours before the test, and not eating for the 3 hours during the test just about killed me. lots of dramatic 'near death' experiences for me last week. (i am becoming weaker and more dramatic as this pregnancy continues...)

lily: she has a new-found love for the asian baby doll she received for her birthday 6 months ago that was supposed to replace 'Jun Lee', her creepy asian baby doll that she has had since she turned 1. this new baby doll is now named 'Mia' and lily loves putting her to bed and getting her dressed and pulling her hair and swinging her around by her ankles. it is sweet and terrifying to watch. it's good though because then we have a chance to talk about what is ok and absolutely not ok for her to do with her little sister. here is a video of our latest project- working on the Lord's prayer. we introduced it to the kids a few weeks ago and they have latched onto it and won't let go! which is so great. you may have to turn the volume way up. my camera is kinda crazy.

topher: is loving Christian music right now and really pays attention when we are listening to Klove (a Christian radio station). he asks great questions about what he hears and i am just amazed at his brain and heart. the other day 'Manifesto' by 'the City Harmonic' (a canadian group- happy almost thanksgiving to my canadian friends out there by the way!) came on, and i told the kids that the Lord's prayer was in it. when that part of the song came on, they were riveted. i actually just purchased the song on iTunes- the only song i have payed for on my iPod! your welcome Apple, use my $.99 wisely... here is topher saying the Lord's prayer:


i lied. no videos. you can't really hear the kids. so i will retape em and repost em. maybe tomorrow. we'll see...

back to cupcakes

it's been a seriously long time since i have had a cupcake post. i made some cupcakes in june for robert's and for sungu's birthday, but i never really bothered writing about them cause they weren't stunning (sorry boys. there was lots of love in them, but they just weren't that pretty.) i don't even have any pictures of the cupcakes that i made for robert that had a 'words with friends' theme to them, cause quite frankly my brother is addicted to that game. here are two pics i found from sungu's birthday party. yeah for decorating for a four year old- they don't really care what the cupcake looks like, they just care that they are eating a cupcake! sungu did request batman cupcakes, and that's what he got:



so, since june, i have done no real baking and therefore no decorating. until we celebrated grandma's birthday this weekend. grandma said she liked chocolate cupcakes with chocolate frosting. easy! it took a while to figure out how to make chocolate frosting special, but then i remembered seeing people make cupcake bouquets, so i decided to look that up. it was pretty easy! i didn't have the necessary supplies to make the bouquets (flower pot, styrofoam ball, etc) but i will make one of those one day! but i did have the right tip to frost the cupcakes the way that i wanted to, and i also had pretty qhite pearl-like sprinkles which helped to add a little more pizzazz to my chocolatey treats. i was really happy with the way they turned out, and this was probably the fastest and easiest cupcake-decoarating endeavor i have ever undertaken. maybe i will add a video or step by step pics on how to do this cause it was really that easy. someone just needs to have a birthday and needs to request that i make flower cupcakes for them...

here are my kids helping me/helping themselves to a lot of sprinkles:




and these are the cupcakes i made for grandma's 80th birthday.