Weekly video 12/30/10

This week's video is by a really great DJ. He did the same video last year that highlighted the biggest pop hits of 2009 and did a "mash up" in a music video...this one is for 2010.

Enjoy and Happy 2011 everyone!

Meet Tommy

A few weeks ago, I wrote that my Dad's cat, Jack, had passed away suddenly. It was a shocking and traumatizing time for my father because he was #1 the one who found Jack in his closet and #2 was home alone when this happened. This had never happened to my parents before since our other two cats who had passed before Jack had done so at the vet and because they were visibly sick.

The day after Jack's death, I emailed the rescue society that my parents adopted Jack from. They also adopted their 4-year old cat, Sunny from the same society. It's a network of people who foster the kittens and cats and then bring them to places like Petsmart and Petco for "adoption drives". They also have a website where you can apply to adopt a certain cat and then pick him/her up at the adoption drive. After I emailed, I got 3 responses from different board members expressing their condolences towards my parents. One lady who emailed me was the president of the organization, and the lady who fostered Sunny when she was a kitten.

In her response, she explained that she remembered my parents from the other two adoptions and could tell they were very caring with the animals, especially my Dad. She mentioned since she personally was picky about who adopts the cats, she had a little orange and white tabby boy kitten named Tommy T who she would offer to my parents exclusively since he wasn't "showcased" yet in the website and adoption drives. There was some email correspondence between her and myself, and my Dad and myself arranging the adoption. My Dad had made it clear that he wanted to adopt after the New Year because he didn't want the experience of a new house to be so traumatizing with a new sibling (Sunny), the Christmas tree and lots of people around at the same time. Well, that didn't really happen. There was an arrangement, after pictures were passed of Tommy to my Dad from the lady, that my parents would meet Tommy at an adoption drive, but the lady would hold him until after the holidays. Well...I met my parents at the Petco where the adoption drive was and my parents took Tommy home that day.

Jake and I got to spend some time with Tommy over Christmas, and he is such a little love. He's very playful and sweet, and best of all...he LOVES my Dad.

I managed to snap a photo of him with my cell phone in the midst of his playing. Sorry it's little blurry, but he kept moving. Tommy is now 13 weeks old.

24 weeks

24 weeks along...wow. It's REALLY hitting me that I'm about 2/3 the way through my pregnancy. Now I'm getting scared. In 4 short days, it will be the year Jake and I have a baby. I will be giving birth in less than 4 months (approximately).

I think my biggest fear is the labor part. Everything is so unknown when it's your first and every single experience is different from another. It scares me that I'm not prepared like I want to be. Things can go so unexpectedly in one direction or another at any given moment that it's terrifying to me. I like knowing what to expect. I like being prepared for what lies ahead of me. Being in labor and the events that it will consist of are so far out of my control. Yikes! But in the end, I know Jake and I will have a beautiful little girl and all the pain will wash away and be over.

I guess that's what I have to tell myself: No matter how much it hurts or how scary it is...it will end. The pain will fade away and the fear of labor will stop because it will be done in a second.

Thanks...I feel better now. :)

2010 - A Year in Review

I usually wait until a couple of days before New Years to do this, but I felt I should do this now because I've been making an attempt to blog more often (hence the multiple posts last week after weeks of nothing). So here's mine and Jake's year:

JANUARY: I turned 26 with a dinner at one of my favorite restaurants, The Cheesecake Factory on New Years Day in San Jose with my family. Jake and I also moved the following weekend into our house barely missing the rainy weekend by one day. One day. We also met with our RE in SF to aggressively move forward in the infertility journey. Our appointment was on my actual birthday.

FEBRUARY: Valentine's Day was spent at my other favorite restaurant, The Dead Fish, as per our yearly tradition. I can't get enough of that crab!!! Jake also found out that after the Spring 2010 semester, he'd graduate FINALLY! Justus (my little cousin) turned 1 and we unfortunately had to miss his official birthday party, but I got to spend his actual birthday with him to give him his present. We also had our first Super Bowl party at the new house, and everyone enjoyed themselves.

MARCH: Not much happened in March. We were in full swing of tax season and everything was great.

APRIL: Tax season finished with a bang (well, not really) and we spent the following day in San Francisco at the zoo. It was quite the relaxing day and just what we needed after a whirlwind season. On Easter, Jake and I found out that my cousin Katie was pregnant with her first child! We were sooo happy for her and her wife Lori. We still are. :)

MAY: Jake and I celebrated 3 years of being married! We decided to hold off on celebrations until June because the weekend following our anniversary (it was on a Wednesday), my cousin Megan and I made a covert cross-country trip to New Jersey to surprise our cousin Marie for her baby shower. That was a fun trip, and I really miss hanging out with the East Coast family. Jake also graduated from Diablo Valley College with an AA in Psychology and got accepted to SF State!

JUNE: Lake Tahoe was the perfect place to celebrate Jake and my anniversary. We stayed in South Lake and on our last day, drove all the way around the lake. It was about a 3-hour drive all the way around, and we made several stops along the way to check things out. We also went to Reno for a seminar where I met Jean, an old friend of my MILs who is one of the sweetest people I've ever met.

JULY: Adam and Barbara made it all the way from Arizona to spend 4th of July with our family. We miss you guys! Adam and Jake also hatched a plan to spend a week in Jamaica for the International Raggae Festival. They plan to go in 3 years. My Dad celebrated his birthday. :) Also, Jake and I took my cousins Jon, Megan and their sons Jalen and Justus to the California State Fair for the 2nd year in a row. It was hot...to say the least. Also, on the 18th, our nephew Jaxon Maddox was born. :)

AUGUST: This was it...the big one. On the 4th, Jake and I got the news that we're expecting! Jake's birthday is the 8th, so we announced to our parents via a picture in a frame at dinner for Jake's birthday and they were so excited! We announced to our families 2 weeks later and then spent the weekend with my Mom and Dad for my Mom's birthday. Jake also began his first semester at SF State pursuing his Bachelor's in Psychology.

SEPTEMBER: September was a busy month. I had my first doctor's appointment with my OBGYN and we got to see the baby wiggle and dance around on the ultrasound. I also went to 2 baby showers for friends and family. Jake and I attended our first Oktoberfest party at my friend Roni's house, and it was a lot of fun!

OCTOBER: Jake and I got to decorate our house on the outside for the first time for Halloween. Jake kind of dressed up by putting on prosthetic eyes (it's a long story) and we did it up right with spider webs, pumpkins and tombstones. It was fun to have our first trick-or-treaters ever.

NOVEMBER: My parents celebrated their 30th wedding anniversary on the 8th! A couple of weeks before Thanksgiving, Jake and I went to Texas to visit his Dad and Step-mom in Fort Worth. It was 5 days of relaxation and thunder storms. What a mix! The day before Thanksgiving, we found out we're having a GIRL! We got to tell our families in person through the weekend and everyone was really excited. Even my Dad acted like he had scored his own home run. :) Also, the results of the ultrasound itself revealed that Scarlett Leigh is perfectly healthy with everything measuring and functioning normally.

DECEMBER: This month started out a little sad and somber with the unexpected passing of my Dad's cat, Jack. I went to San Jose from Richmond, which in commute traffic took 2 solid hours (I was not happy), but to be there to comfort my Dad was worth it. I got to get together with Megan to make peppermint bark and I barely got my Christmas cards out in time. Jake and I both got everything on our lists (which he is especially excited about) and we got to hear Scarlett's heartbeat for the 2nd time.

For 2011:

2011 is no doubt going to be a year full of big events. The main one of course will be the birth of our daughter. I must admit, this past weekend I felt a twinge of "baby love" where I found myself falling in love with her, and I haven't even met her yet! After she's born, both Jake and I plan to change our lifestyles to be more active and healthy for her sake. We want to teach her how to play outside vs. inside with video games and TV all the time. We've picked out her furniture and I am anxiously waiting for furniture to be moved out of her room so we can move her stuff into it. I must also say that Jake is already feeling twinges of baby love himself. He always looks forward to seeing and feeling her move and kick. He also LOVES talking to her.

Happy (early) New Year!

Weekly video 12/23/10

I originally wanted to post a video of Neebs and playing "catch" with the leftover scraps of wrapping paper that I took this past weekend. Of course my phone is being a butthead and won't email it to me. Cest la Vie...

Anyways, there's always a milestone that must be crossed for me in order for it to feel like Christmas time. For some, it's hearing a certain song, or decorating the tree. For me, it's this commercial...

Enjoy! Happy Holidays!

Holiday pictures

I sent out our Christmas cards yesterday, sans pictures. The past couple of years, I've taken pictures and included them in our holiday greetings. This year, time got the better of me. November FLEW by and December is doing the same. I mean, wasn't it just the 4th of July last week???

Jake has some amazing friends...two of which are named Gina and Kimiyo. Kimiyo is a photographer who is trying to build her business, and so decided to offer a discount on holiday pictures. Jake and I wanted to help her out, so we said we'd have them taken by her. She got some good pictures of us and after a really funny debacle with sending us the wrong CD, we got some of the images via email the other day. Of course, I ended up sending the holiday cards without the pictures included, but that's OK. I can share them here!

Electric Holiday Overload

Jake and I were proud to put light up on our house this year. I was all enthusiastic and had ideas of grandeur of where lights would be put. Jake, on the other hand, decided that he was too nervous to brave our gravel roofing to fulfill my ideas of said grandeur. Nevertheless, we comprimised and decided to just decorate our porch. I haven't taken a picture yet because as you've probably have heard, we're having quite the soggy season...that, and my camera's battery is dead.

But, today I saw pictures online of some people who go REALLY overboard with lights on their houses for the holidays and decided to share some of them with you. There are always two things that pop into my head when I see pictures like these: #1, Wow...would hate to get THAT PG&E bill, and #2, Some poor sould had to actually spend the time to put up those lights, make sure they were in the right place for extension cords, and calculate the voltage to not blow a fuse. That's talent my friends...

Original photo by MSVG via Flickr

Original photo by DMcGrew via Flickr

Original photo by juliejigsaw via Flickr

Photographer unknown, posted on BlogTo by Jerrold Litwinenko

Peppermint Bark

Every year for the past three years, my big cuzzie Megan and I make Peppermint Bark together. It's become a sort of tradition for us. The first year we did it, she was pregnant with her youngest son and this year I'm pregnant with Jake and my first child. The funny thing is, this year when we got together I was only 6 weeks behind where she was when we got together the year she was pregnant.

I was raised in a neighborhood where the neighbors look out for each other, and give cookies or some kind of homemade goodie around the holidays. When we moved to my parents' current house, we weren't that close with our neighbors but I did manage to make cookies a couple of years.

Now that Jake and I live on our own, I cherish the thought of having neighbors on friendly terms, because they're the ones who will call the cops if someone suspicious is casing your house. They're the ones who will help you out, say hello, invite you to neighborhood functions. It's important this day in age to have that sense of community, and Jake and I have that where we live. So I make Peppermint Bark for my neighbors because #1, they are awesome people that I'm glad are my neighbors and #2 because I like visiting them and letting them know that I do think of them, especially this time of year.

So, onto the recipe...

Peppermint Bark
Prep time: 10 minutes, cook time: 45 minutes = TOTAL: 55mins
Makes 2 9x13 inch pans

1 regular bag (forgot the oz) semi-sweet chocolate chips
1 regular bag of white chocolate chips
(You can of course have all white, or all semi-sweet and therefore would need two bags of that flavor rather than one of each)
6 regular-size peppermint candy canes
Wax Paper
a cookie sheet

Unwrap candy canes and put into a ziplock bag. Crush candy canes with either hammer or rolling pin (make sure your countertop is adequately protected). Make sure when crushing that there is a good mix of small chunks of candy and more powder-like candy. Take a small mesh collander and separate the larger chunks from the powder. Set aside.

Melt semi-sweet chips either in a double-boiler or in the microwave - be careful to melt chocolate slowly so it doesn't burn. Mix in half of peppermint powder into melted chocolate. Spread a 1/8 inch layer onto wax paper-lined cookie sheet. Place in refridgerator.

Melt white chocolate chips either in double-boiler or in the microwave - again, be careful to melt chocolate slowly so it won't burn. Mix in rest of peppermint powder into white chocolate. Take semi-sweet-chocolate out of fridge and spread 1/8 inch layer of white chocolate on top of the semi-sweet. Sprinkle peppermint candy chunks on top of white chocolate.

Take large piece of wax paper and using that, gently press peppermint chunks into the white chocolate. If you don't do this, the candy won't stick into the chocolate as it cools and will fall off.

Refridgerate for 45 minutes. Take out and break into pieces.

Weekly video 12/17/10

I would normally post something very festive and Christmas-y for the weekly video before Christmas, but this one had me laughing so hard I was getting some tears. It's still "holiday-based" but oh so funny.

Enjoy!

22 weeks

Here I am at 22 weeks.

This one was taken 10 minutes before I walked out the door to go to Sacramento and make peppermint bark with my cousin Megan. Scarlett's middle name is after Megan since it's also Megan's middle name. Megan is 6 years older than me, but has always been kind of a big sister and best friend to me. She's been a huge cheerleader of Jake and mine throughout our IF journey. I can't wait for Scarlett to meet her big cuzzie, and the rest of her amazing family.

Rollercoaster week

I do apologize for my absence from the blog.

Many of you probably read about the new addition to my Mom and Dad's house - a little silver tabby kitten named Jackson that was a Father's Day gift from Mom, Jake and I.

Well, last Wednesday, Jake received a call from my father, who was beside himself in tears. Jack (they shortened the name) suddenly died in my father's closet and my Dad found him while home alone. Jack wasn't even 2 years old. It was a shock and my Dad was completely devastated. He was inconsoleable on the phone, and since I live an hour away, it was heartbreaking to hear my Dad so upset.

Some may say "it's just a cat", but Jack was more than just a cat to my Dad. He was like a child. He and my Dad had a bond and he was a part of the family.

I jumped into action and called my parents' vet and asked if they could find out how Jack passed away. So, they did an autopsy and Jack apparently had an enlarged heart and most likely died of a heart attack. I knew having that information would give my Dad some peace of mind knowing he didn't do anything to cause Jack's death. Dad is still upset and sad, but he's doing better.

So I apologize for my absence, but I've been pretty busy.