Fun in the Sun

After the baby shower Paul and I hung out at the Askew's for a bit and then took the kids to the park to get out and play for a while before bed time. Drew loved climbing up and down the stairs and going down the slide over and over again. Abby had fun meeting new people a girl named Sara and another little girl about the same age, they held hands while going up the stairs and then would go down the slide together. It was really cute. Abby had a bit of an incident with a pop up sprinkler and then after she was wet started running around in the sprinklers on the grass. We had a great time seeing them play and have fun.

Sousa Shower

This Saturday Paul and I drove out to riverdive so that I could go to Tricia Sousa's baby shower for their soon to be newborn baby boy. The shower was a lot of fun. Jen M. gave a small speech about the struggles of concieving that Tricia and Shawn had gone through and what a blessing Connor will be, she shared some verses that summed up what the Sousa family has come through with strength. We played games and had a delicious lunch. I was able to see some women from a Bible Study I attended in the OC that I haven't seen for awhile. It was a great day.

Yes Drill Sergeant!

Drop and give me TWENTY!

We had a small BBQ/ Going away party for Charlie as she is getting ready to go to Basic Training. She leaves on the 5th of August. We had some good steaks for dinner and cake for dessert. Paul and I bought a cake that had the flag on it and then we bought some little army men to put around the edges. We watched a show called Mail Call that has a sergeant on it who answers questions about the military. Then we played a 3 hour game of Scategories. (we kept getting distracted) Charlie's roomate and her boyfriend got back from their dinner date and we played a new game called Hoopla. We had a good time. Keep her in your thoughts and prayers as she enters her training.

Audition

On Sunday after Paul was done with work and Cyndi finished with putting the house back together we drove down to the exit directly before the border of Mexico to some outlet shops for an audition to be on Who Wants To Be A Millionaire. We got up really early (5am) to drive down and get in line. We were part of the first group to be tested. The producers were giving two tests one was only about movies the other was for the regular edition of the show. Each test was 30 questions long.

Unfortunately we did not score high enough for an interview. I do however see how some people can get on the show and lose before the $1,000 question. These were luck of the draw, you either knew them or you didnt and if you didnt then it was a game of how good a guesser you are. I am glad to of had the experience though. I hope we can get out to NY before the show ends to maybe get another shot at trying out.

We did get some lovely parting gifts the pencil we took the test with, a magnet with out number on the back and some millionaire t-shirts which are size L so I dont think we will be wearing them any time soon. It was a fun day even though we didnt pass the test. We walked around the stores afterwards and then went out to get some lunch. We waited for my mom to get home and then it was off in search of a swimsuit for me for the trip in August. After shopping we ate at Chili's (another of my favorites) and then we had to pack up and get home because Cyndi had to go to work at a school in the morning.

Thunder, Lightening, Rain and Heat

Friday the 22nd I drove down to San Diego to help my mom get ready for her garage sale on Saturday. I got there and because of the heat wanted to leave immediately or at least stay in my car where the air conditioning is the wole weekend. My mom and I worked for a while and then went to Costco to pick up somethings we have been needing. Around 7:30pm my Aunt showed up with her 4runner full of stuff so we unloaded it and went to dinner at Red Robin. One of my favorite places to eat. Then it was already around 11pm so we decided to head home. While my mom and Robin went to bed I watched shows like Boy Meets World and Forensic Files that I dont usually get to see since we dont have cable.

I went to bed around 1am thinking I could snag a few hours of sleep before I had to get up, I was wrong. I dont think I slept for more than 10-15min at a time. The entire night it was thundering and lightining. I would barely fall asleep before a flash of lightining would wake me up. At 4:30am I gave up and got up for the day. When I went outside at 5am It was pouring rain.

Lucky for us around 7am it let up and stopped for good. We had the garage sale but not as many people from TJ came as they normally would have so we still have a lot of stuff and are planning another one for the end of August to try and get rid of some more. We did make a little bit of money though. Erin came down for part of the sale and was able to get rid of a painting, ab exercise thingy, and their fooseball table. My mom also got rid of some bigger items an entertainment center, dryer, BBQ. The best part of the day was getting to see and hang with Erin for awhile. More on the rest of the weekend later.

Surgery

Last week my dad went in for a routine check after his angeoplasty in May of 2003 and the doctor found that there was some blockage in his heart so yesterday he had to go in again. He had two more stents put in which brings the total to four. He is home from the hospital this evening and says he is feeling pretty good. We are praying for a quick and continued recovery. For someone who doesn't like hospitals very much he has been there quite a bit this past month. (Dad, take care of your fingers and you heart! I love you.)

Coming Soon...

...To a theatre near you

The Island

Thanks to Curly's mom I was able to see this movie at a free screening. I met up with Charlie, Curly and her mom at the Krikorian in the Buena Park Mall. I will not spoil the movie for any of you who are planning on seeing it. I was not planning on even going to this movie when it hit theatres but suprisingly I enjoyed it for the most part. It brings up many hot button issues but does it subtlely so as to not overpower the movie. I love the action sequences which is abnormal for me since I usually gravitate towards romantic comedies. It took me awhile to get into the movie but by the end I felt satisfied. Maybe this is because I had low expectations who knows. The "toys" in the movie were awesome. I am a sucker for sweet cars, boats and flying motorcycle thingys.

Drewski

Charlie enjoys hanging out with Drew for a few a bit.

Snowflakes

Curly's tortilla snowflake

Curly and I had fun making tortilla snowflakes with Abby.

Baby Shower for James Askew

Suprise! On Sunday Tricia Sousa put together a suprise baby shower/ luncheon for Moe. It was held at Don Jose's in Riverdive. I missed the suprise part because Curly, Charlie and I were a bit late. In fact Moe and Nick ended up behind us at the stoplight turning into the restaurant. Lucky for me I realized it was their car and told Charlie to keep driving, we went down the road made a U-turn and went into another parking lot and waited for about ten minutes so we made sure to not ruin the suprise. We had a great time just hanging out and eating good food.

Under the Sea

I finally get a vacation this year, and thanks to Cyndi's mom we will be going on a week long cruise around Hawaii to celebrate Cyndi's 25th birthday and our 4th anniversary in August. The only problem is that I'm not allowed to go unless I learn how to swim beforehand.

On Saturday I had my first lesson at the YMCA. I took lessons when I was a kid, but we never had or went to a pool so nothing really stuck with me. The only thing I remember is getting thrown off the diving board every Friday.

The class I'm in is an adult class. There are 5 of us and everyone sort of knows how to swim except me. The instructor knew that my swimming experience was zero, but somehow thought I was ready to try the backstroke and butterfly on my first day. Seeing as how I can't even tread water, it didn't go well. I did manage to avoid drowning so far so I guess that's a plus. We'll see what happens the next few Saturdays.

I got a golden ticket!

On Friday afternoon we went to see Charlie and the Chocolate Factory. Since I am a big fan of pretty much anything Tim Burton, Danny Elfman and/or Johnny Depp do, I wanted to see the first showing, but had to wait a little bit longer.

I thought this movie was one of Burton's best and it was much better than the 1971 Gene Wilder movie (I do like Gene's performance). Everything looked wonderful. The songs used the lyrics from the book and weren't anywhere near as annoying as the original movie. Depp did a good job as the socially inept, oddball Wonka. If you haven't seen it yet, it is worth a trip to the theatre.

I should have followed my parent's lead...

I think one of the worst decisions I've ever made is when I agreed to be the house manager at work. It was something I thought I wanted ever since I started there and realized just how insane my boss was. She didn't have one bit of common sense in her. I knew whatever I did would be better.

When she left suddenly in 2003, the house was in chaos due to several other staff being let go the same week. I was being considered for the position, but turned it down because I didn't want to mess things up even more. I also knew it would be better for me to stay as an assistant with an experienced manager brought in rather than hiring someone new to the field to fill my spot. The guy they brought in was great and I still had some control without having all the responsibility. Unfortunately he left after a year. Things were a little more stable then so I agreed to the promotion.

Now I realize what a mistake that was. It's sad when most days my biggest problems aren't from the gangbanging, crack smoking kids, but from the college educated adult staff. The worst part is that my bosses think that if there are any problems with the staff, that it's because they aren't being managed/supervised properly. I'm sorry, but when a graduate from UCLA is setting up gang fights in the backyard or someone with a Masters in Psychology from USC is bringing an alarm clock so he can take naps in a pillow fort on the couch while the kids run wild...IT'S NOT MY FAULT. That person is a moron. And every time I do interviews to replace people like that, I get 5 people with just as many issues trying to work their way in the door. It just means that instead of doing the work I should be doing now, I end up getting stuck out with the kids the whole time doing what I was happily doing before without the hassle of staff issues.

Sorry for the rant. It's been a long week. If I actually get to take my vacation next month, it wouldn't surprise me in the least if I came back and the house was a giant pile of rubble.

Girls Night Out... 42!

Tonight Moe, Charlie and Myself all drove down to Irvine to meet up with Curly. We decided to have a beginning of the week girls night and finally saw Hitchikers Guide to the Galaxy. I must admit I wasn't to sure about seeing this movie but I enjoyed it more than originally thought. Afterwards we decided to go over to Islands to get some dinner and hang out for a bit longer. Then as it was 10:40 and most of us have to get up at a decent hour it was time to hit the road. Good times with good friends. A nice ending to a Monday.

Self Portrait

cyndi and paul outside the reception hall

Smile

mom and me with glenn and michelle

Congratulations to the Happy Couple

Paul and I went down to San Diego this weekend. We hung out with my mom on Friday and went to Michelle and Glenn's wedding on Saturday. I have known Michelle since we were kids we lived on the same block together. Pastor David Fabarez officiated the ceremony. The wedding was beautiful but it was hot in the church. It was held at Scott Memorial and was followed by a Reception at San Diego's Marina Village. It is a beautiful place. The food was great and it was good to catch up with old friends and neighbors. On Sunday we went to my home church in SD Vista Grande and I had the opportunity to catch up with more old friends and church members.

Dumb choices

Today while I was trying to read for my class this afternoon two of the tenants from upstairs thought it would be a good idea to jump off the railing from upstairs into the pool. Everytime I heard the guy hit the water I held my breath until I heard him getting out of the water. His wife stood down by the pool video taping the whole thing several times. Oy.

Disneyland w/ the Askews

Today we met up with the Askews at Disneyland. We went to check out the Block Party Bash in DCA. Drew thought it was the coolest thing ever. Then we went over to Disneyland and rode its a small world, followed by the new parade (which abby enjoyed), had dinner followed by Buzz Lightyear. I had a disappointing score once again. But I dont think I will ever reach my 350,000 that I had a month or so ago. Then we got to watch the fireworks. Paul had not seen the new show yet and we enjoyed it despite being wall to wall people and one lady behind us saying wow, look at that (to herself) at every single firework. We had a lot of fun, i am glad paul took off work early and could come hang out.

BBQ and Fireworks

July 4th was a lot of fun. Paul unfortunately had to work the night shift so I went over to celebrate with some friends in Riverside. We had a BBQ, went swimming and set off fireworks in the middle of the street. Most of the young ones got to have their first experience with sparklers. It was a blast.

Happy 4th/ Birthday

Happy Birthday Dad H.
and Happy 4th of July although on our street it has already been the 4th for about a week now. Everyone around her buys massive amounts of fireworks, lucky for us the majority are the safe and sane fireworks and shoot them off for about a week before and a month after the 4th.

I hope everyone will take a minute and remember what today is about, our country, our freedoms, our independence. I dont care if you are for the war or against it but you need to be for our soilders. I have seen the fall out when our country doesnt support our troops and it is not good. Take a minute out of your BBQing and time spent with family and friends and just pray for the troops, the world leaders and those who you care about.

Weekend

Yesterday Angela came over for a while. We went to look around all the funky little stores at the Circle in Orange. Cyndi found a birdhouse made of old license plates for her mom's backyard project. After we took Angela home, we went up to Alhambra to do laundry while mom, dad, and Amy are in Santa Cruz. We tried watching some of the Live 8 coverage, but all they seemed to want to show was Madonna. We picked up some dinner at KFC and hung out until Bradley got back from a wedding reception at 9. Christie came over and the four of us went bowling in El Monte. It turned out to be glow in the dark bowling which made it harder. Despite the lights and the rap music they were playing, I managed to beat Bradley 156-153. When we started the second game the music got a little better (80's) except that literally every other song was Madonna. This time Bradley beat us all and I finished 3rd behind Cyndi.

Congratulations Dippy!

On July 2nd Sonia said her "I DO's" Congratulations Sonia!

Paul and Cyndi's Mouse Hunt

Cyndi and I went to Disneyland just to walk around for a while today and got a big surprise. Space Mountain was open for the first time in a long time (2 years?). It's not officially open for another 2 weeks, but they were doing a trial run this afternoon. It is definitely better than it used to be. It's a lot darker even though there are more stars. Even the track is covered in stars and the walls are mirrored so it's almost impossible to see where the track is. It used to have all right turns except for the one at the end, but now they've mixed it up a bit. We ended up waiting about 45 minutes for it, but it wasn't too bad. We spent a lot of time talking to the 2 couples in front of us who were here for the first time from Scotland.

After that we went to try our luck on the Buzz Lightyear ride. I got my personal best score of 181,300. Cyndi was disappointed with her 161,000.


While we were there, we decided to start our search for the 50 Mickeys hidden throughout the park for the 50th anniversary. Some of them are huge like the flowers here inside the main gate. A couple of them that we found were about the size of my fist. According to cast members there are a few that are etched in glass and really hard to find. After walking around the whole park, we only had pictures of 30 of them. We'll have to look at everything real close next time.