tony stark and ariel in the mail

i got the mail yesterday and there was nothing for me. or mia. but chris got his sweet 15 free drink from starbucks post card, and lily and topher got some mail from two of their favoritest people!

topher's card is from tony stark, who is actually ironman. the return address even said: "stark enterprises, new york, new york." topher opened his card and found a sweet message that said:

"dear topher, i'm so excited to be writing you from my office in new york. i've heard what an extraordinary brother you are and wanted to tell you i'm really proud of you. it's not always easy to keep peace with others, but you do a super job. jarvis keeps me updated on the superhero acts you do. just the other night at dinner pepper potts was telling me how fast you are on the slip n' slide. you are one cool kid! sincerely, tony stark."

then lily's card came from 884 w triton way, pacific ocean. her card reads:

"dearest lily, hello, you beautiful girl! i hope this letter dries before it gets to you! i'm writing this in me dad's castle under the sea. yesterday i swam to the surface, as scuttle told me that he flew by your house.  he said you were outside in your flower swimsuit. i bet it's gorgeous. i wish there was a way we could swim together! i hope you have a fantastic week. you always do such a great job of loving your sis + brother, and listening to your mom and dad. keep it up! love you! ariel."

can you believe how sweet and thoughtful tony and ariel are?!?!?

i don't know why i didn't have a camera on these kids' faces when i read their cards to them, cause i really missed the most precious, sincerely awestruck looks that cannot be recreated.

now, obviously tony stark and ariel are not real, and did not send the kids cards on the exact same day- how coincidental would that be? no, instead my super-thoughtful, very knowledgeable about the things my kids like (and wear!), AND pro-active friend sent my kids those cards. i can think about being sweet and thoughtful, and i do often enough. but do i ever act out on those thoughts? pretty much never. especially if it is a 4-step process that involves making cute cards, writing in them, finding stamps, AND mailing them off!!!!!!!!!!!

it's one thing for me to be blessed by having an incredible friend, but for my kids to be blessed by my friend- that's special. so, thank you dear friend of my heart, for being a dear friend, and for making my kids' days. love you love you love you!

keeping up with the joneses

we live on a really nice street. i am blessed to live on this street. people take really good care of their homes, and their lawns, and their bodies.

there is an older gentleman that chris and i have noticed before, running on the main street near our house. he must be in his 60s or so. he runs up and down the street, without a shirt on, even when it's 100 degrees out. one day we saw him on our street, and realized he lives in our neighborhood.

the other day i was driving onto our street and i saw a guy taking care of his lawn. it was 100 degrees out. he was wearing jeans. crazy. and no shirt. crazier! you'd think i lived in that town on desperate housewives...

anyhoo, our street is the street of shirtless guys. chris decided to mow the lawn yesterday, but decided he would make it an opportunity to exercise by running up and down our street and then mowing the front and back lawns and then running up and down our street again. it was 110 degrees yesterday.

 i told him he should do it shirtless, to match all the other guys on our street.

so he did:

i love my hubby. cause he is fit. he is crazy. and he will do just about anything to give someone else a good laugh. and i had one yesterday, and i hope you had one today.

he's a happy father

a bit on the late side, but i just wanted to write a quick post about my children's father- chris watson.

this year marked his fifth father's day. we started the day out with his favorite breakfast- blintzes, with lindsay and her kids, jerry, and our niece christina. robert and barb didn't join us cause they are too cool for us. and they also happened to be in honduras building a school or something ridiculous like that. typical barb and robert.

anyhoo, after our feast, we went to church, then had a quick lunch, and then went to chris' dad's. we swam, watched a lot of sports, and ate an obsurd amount of food. it was wonderful!

the whole day was so wonderful that i managed to not take a single picture of all the fun-having... terrible, i know. fortunately chris doesn't care about pics and girly stuff like that. the only girly 'things' he cares about are named mia, lily, and jihae. ok, i guess there are a few more than that. but they are his top three!

and let's not forget his little mini-me, aka topher. chris ordered all the star wars movies, and they finally came this week. topher LOVES them. he watched episodes 4,5, and 6 in one day. i know my pediatrician, and all the members of the pediatric association would be having a giant cow about that right now, but fortunately i don't think any of them follow my blog. and it was a special occassion! and it's a furnace outside, so we couldn't go outside even if we wanted to...

 chris loves catching bad guys, and bringing home the bacon to provide for his family. but he really really loves catching up with his kids after a long day at work, and being home to eat (turkey!) bacon when the occassion calls for it.

the message we heard at church talked about being a kind and compassionate dad. chris is the kind and compassionate one in the house, and i am glad i heard that message as a reminder to ME to be kinder and more compassionate to our kids! 

and i wanted to throw out a Happy Father's Day to my God, who loves me and hasn't struck me down with lightning as my sins deserve. everyday should be Father's day, especially for the One who created the heavens, and the earth, and me, and my kids, and their phenomenal father.

thank you God, for all your blessings. Happy father's day to You!

"As a father has compassion on his children, so the Lord has compassion on those who fear him; for he knows how we are formed. he remembers that we are dust."

-psalm 103:13-14

happy father's day to you chris. i am glad that God allowed us dust balls to find one another in korea many moons ago, so that we could parent three of the cutest and craziest dustballs together.

love you stud.

above: watching star wars

below: watching mia

asian invasion

 these pics are not related to an asian invasion. although mia does look kind of extra asian in the last one... not just cause she kind of looks like a sumo wrestler... or maybe that's what it is... anyhoo, they are pictures of mia and her friend Bree hanging out together last saturday while Bree's mama went to a baby shower. bree is 4 months older than mia, even though they look like they are the same size in the pictures. they played so cutely together. it was sweet.

anyhoo, chris and i are sitting here, at 11:30pm, watching the last episode of our korean drama. it's called 'coffee prince' and it's basically a modern day 'yentl' (a movie with barbara streisand who pretends to be a boy so that she can further study the torah. ok. it's not a modern day yentl at all. but there is a girl who pretends to be a boy in it...) i love hanging out with my husband SO MUCH and we have lots of fun doing all kinds of things, but i really really love watching korean dramas with him. i don't know what we are going to do when this one finishes in 10 minutes...

on another absolutely unrelated note, lindsay and her kids were over for dinner last week. maybe it was the week before. anyhoo, my nephew corban is a rice monster. that kid put away 3 helpings of rice while all the other kids struggled to put away 1. the key to his success is soy sauce. lindsay said she came in to the kitchen one day to find corban shaking the last drops of soy sauce, straight up from the bottle, into his mouth. crazy monster! lindsay says he doesn't eat that much rice at home, even though she tells corban that it is the same rice that i make. then she said the most ridiculously hilarious thing- "maybe he will marry an asian lady someday. just like his uncle!"

i love our family. so much! or as real koreans would say: "so much-ee!" 

making it all worth while

i am always wondering what is really happening in lily and topher (and now mia's) sweet little (gigantic watson-issue) heads.

as i was getting lily and topher ready for bed tonight, i prayed and thanked God for chris and how hard he works for our family. then lily prayed this prayer:
"dear Jesus, thank you for topher and dad who works so hard. and thanks for mom who stays home with us..." and then she prayed a bunch of other stuff but i was so amazed that she thanked Jesus that i stay home with her! i don't know if she and topher feel like i have nothing better to do and that's why i am always home, but to hear that she sees it as something to thank Jesus for just made my day!

still playing catch up

this picture didn't make it into the last post. look at those rolls! better than anything Pillsbury could ever come up with. i love them so much.

this is how Mia likes to relax- with her legs crossed. are those not the cutest little chubby feet you ever did see????

my little Mia moo has really started crawling this week. pretty fast for a girl who can't actually get her belly off the ground. Mia continues to be the awesomest, happiest little monster, with few moments of crankiness. she babbles with such ferocity i'm sure she is trying to communicate something seriously important with us. maybe: "quit telling me i'm chubby..." who knows.

yesterday i got to see my small group girls, after not seeing them for about 3 weeks. maybe more. we went to Frost, a wicked good gelato place. there were 11 females and 1 topher. it was amazing! mia, lily, and topher and their sweet friends cambry and colbie were dragged to the this shindig,  and they were so good and quiet while christin and i caught up with the high schoolers! a few weeks ago topher told me he was going to marry cambry. if i were on pinterest, i would already be planning their wedding. fortunately for everyone, i am not so i have not... yet...

i had big plans for the kids this evening. i watch taylor till about 5pm, and then i am free. so i told the kids we would go to the library to start their summer reading program, and then we would feed the ducks. the kids were really excited about this. but we ate dinner, and then we got to the library- an hour after they closed. then there were TONS of people fishing, so i didn't feel right about feeding the ducks and disturbing the fish. so then i offered up something the children do not know how to refuse: ice cream. we went to mc donalds and the kids each got a cone, and we watched Wall-E and played on the slides. why go to disneyland when the kids think mc ds is the most magical place on earth:

look! he's high on his $1 ice cream cone. or maybe he's high on sugar since this is his second night in a row going out for ice cream!

while we were sitting there eating our treats topher said: "i want to work here! then i can keep watching movies!" and then lily said: "i want to work here too! i want to be a helper!" (cause someone was sweeping near us.) and then she dropped her ice cream cone on the floor and had a hair in it. grossness.

here is our mail girl. she likes to get 'the mail' and deliver 'the mail.' here she is with a letter that dad 'wrote' to her. obviously chris did not write that letter to her: cause chris knows how to write real words as opposed to wavy lines. but it was sweet of lily to write herself a love not from her dad. she's a funny girl.

yesterday she brought the 'mail' and said someone sent a naughty letter about topher. it described some false, and some real things that topher did that day. it was a real cheeky way to be a tattle-tale, something the kids love to do and that i abhor hearing.

then topher wrote a rebuttle to the annonymous letter and said that there was a 'naughty mail girl who brought naughty mail.' these kids crack me up.

and finally, i don't have a picture of this, but we've been watching 'Rio' a lot. i showed them the bonus feature of Will.i.am and Jaime Foxx in the recording studio. they are two artists who do voices for two birds in the movie. lily and topher were watching this with much interest and few words. i kept saying: "isn't that cool? those guys are in the movie!" finally lily spoke as she was watching Will.i.am and said: "and then the witch turned him into a bird."

the pesky witch is responsible for so much mayhem in lily and topher's world.

going to the dark side

i used to be an animal lover before i had kids. actually, the term 'lover' is too strong. 'liker' may be more a propos. anyhoo, i have a friend, christie, and she is a lover of animals- namely cats, aka my nemesis (cats, not christie! i love her. and 'love' is a term that is barely strong enough in this case!)

anyhoo, she is probably the busiest woman i know, but for some crazy reason she decided to raise a ton of kittens over the last couple of months. she is so good.

here is a link to a blog that she made just for these kittens who are now getting too big to still be living with her. if you are interested in adopting one of these cats drop me a comment or something and i will point you in the right direction- even though that direction is to the dark side ;)

www.kittensfromthedarkside.blogspot.com

life in pictures

 i don't know why it is so hard for me to write along with the pictures i just now uploaded, so that's why this post looks like this- i have no idea what i am doing.

so the picture up top is lily, mia, and their sweet cousin emma in matching bathing suits. remember when chris and i said we were going to not find out the gender of our baby when i was pregnant?!?!? crazy talk. if we hadn't found out then i wouldn't have been able to buy these matching bathing suits over a year ago!

the picture below is a picture that lily drew of me. flattering, i know. when i saw the picture, i loved it, and then i went into the living room and found a toy that i apparently bear a striking resemblance to... have i mentioned that i love that my kids are artists?!?!?

awesome ice cube trays. they are a bit annoying to get food into (more so than just the regular cube trays) BUT they are so much more beautiful! mia is an eating champ, and i really enjoy making her food, and feeding it to her. i actually just got one of those hand-grinder things so i can give her mashed up bananas and avocados- two of her fave foods.

wow. i seriously have no idea what is going on here...

anyhoo, the kids watched some 'REAL' movies with chris last weekend. 'real' as in 'not animated'. he actually just ordered the star wars sextology (omg. is that a real word? there's six star wars so that makes it a sextology, no? yes?...) anyway, they watched Superman and loved it. actually, topher really liked Superman 1, and not Superman 2- cause in Superman 2 Christopher Reeve has a moment when he is not Superman and so he bleeds a bit and topher is not a fan of that. we have not had the heart to tell him what really happened to the real Christopher Reeve...

and in the picture below, topher is being thrown by his dad on the slip and slide. the weather here in the desert has been in the 110+ and so needless to say- when we are outside, we are wet and/or eating popsicles. the kids cannot 'work' the slip and slide to save their lives, fortunately they have an awesome dad who keeps trying to show them, and then eventually just throws them down the darn thing.

(i have not become a more awesome photographer. Instagram is probably my favoritest app!)

here is my son when he wakes up in the morning. stunning. i love him. i love looking at this face. a few days ago he told me about a bad dream that he had that involved some of the cast of 'my little pony' coloring pictures that were scary. i love that he watches 'power rangers' and 'my little pony' and then has nightmares of the latter and not the former.

lily is an artist and an architect. i need to take pictures of her Lego creations. everyday she makes a new condo complex that i believe she will one day design. creative genius she is. and cute to boot!

 i tried to take a picture of this man sitting on the traveling saddle at Texas Roadhouse, but alas, they all came out blurry.  (remember, i am not a photographer) happy birthday wes! so fun celebrating your special day with you!

and finally, my sweet mia moo. she just started crawling, and it's pretty funny to watch. it's like an army crawl, but she is a soldier who got shot in the shoulder. i'll have to try to get some video of that one of these days. she may have teeth coming in, and she may have another ear infection. needless to say- she has not been sleeping well, and so neither have i. so i took this pic to remind myself that she does sleep on occasion. and when she does- it's so adorable.

actually here is a video that i took a week ago when i was trying to capture my beached whale trying to crawl. instead of capturing a momentous occassion in mia's life, i captured a regular occurence from my life:

yup. my kids are really social and like company when they are using the 'loo. and actually, i stopped the video right as lily was saying: "mom, can you wipe my bum?" great times!