Happy Birthday Dad

HAPPY BIRTHDAY DAD!

Today was my father's birthday, and actually, since I live in the US and he lives in Hong Kong, yesterday was his birthday. I love my Dad, he has been a great father to me, provided all the necessities of life when I was growing up, and figured out how to give me many of the luxuries too, braces for my teeth etc. So what did I get my Father for his birthday?....

Nothing

Did I forget to get something? No, I just can't seem to find the right thing anywhere. He has worked hard in his life and has achieved much, He travels a lot now and has seen things I only dream about, he makes a very decent living and no longer has to support me, and my 5 siblings. I guess I feel like if there is something he needs, he gets it. Occasionally I find a book I think he might enjoy, but even that is only small repayment for the love of literature and joy in reading he helped to give me. I try to send pictures of my children fairly often and I look for things all the time that I hope might be a present he would enjoy, but mostly I think nothing is just the right thing. So tonight, I think maybe I have thought of something that He can really appreciate, and feel free to use over and over again, something he probably longed to hear many times over his years as my father, here it is;

"You were right"

There it is, in large bold print even, You DAD, you were right, in the following ways

1. When you wanted to provide for me in ways I didn't like, such as trying to use your contacts to get me an "easy" or at least clean job instead of me doing early morning janitorial work. At the time I had a huge "pride-induced" need to assert myself, make my own way, and spread my wings. Now as a parent I already seen the beginnings of this in my own girls, and while I don't regret the instinct to learn to do things on your own, you were right, I didn't have to do it with cleaning products at 5 AM each morning.

2. There really was someone for me. I remember once when you visited me at school, my senior year, post mission, facing graduation, and still oh so very single. I remember you asking me about my social life and being very quiet when I broke down and confided my loneliness and admitting that I too had concerns about my future and where it would take me. You were very reassuring and supportive and told me not to worry.
You were also right to like Eddie, maybe even more than I did, right from the very start. I got a little nervous when the two of you began conversing in Chinese and I didn't know what about, but you liked him and you didn't push me too much, and here we are married 7 years and 3 kids later.

3. You sent me to China. Ok you didn't actually send me, I chose to go, but when I graduated
and had nothing specific to do, you gave me a chance to go do something good, in a place where I had to rely on prayer and the kindness of English-speaking strangers to survive. You kept me from just sitting sround or from doing something dumb just for the sake of doing something. You also gave me a chance to be a minority, to live on the other side of the world and really embrace the love of most things China you gave to me in my youth. You taught me from the beginning that people are people, no matter the color of skin, shape of eye, or language they speak.

4. You helped introduce me to God. As a teenager, searching for answers to the future, I remember going to a youth conference where they sent us out on our own to meditate and pray for a while and they gave us envelopes to open after a while, inside was a note that I still have somewhere, it basically said that you had tested the Book of Mormon, and that you had gained your own testimony. At that time, I prayed, really prayed for the first time to know if God really exists, and I got my answer, I know that God lives and that He loves me. Later in my life I prayed about the truthfulness of the restored gospel and again received my answer, and this time, a clarity, that my whole life I have known that God loved me, because you and Mom loved me. You taught me to have faith and to serve God by serving others.
You were also right when you asked me to babysit children I didn't like and to be friends with the odd ducks or strays that ended up at our house for the holidays. You were right to make us go as a family to scout camp, to teach us to work and serve together.

5. You were right to make us garden, and really I can't remember if you really made me garden, I just remember that we always had something growing that was edible. I think I learned patience and appreciation for food from that time, and now if I don't have at least a tomato plant in my garden, I feel a little sad.

6. I could go on and on, and maybe I will in a more private email, but I wanted to say too, that you were right when you married Mom. As Eddie and I have figured out a few things in our married life, I think about the example of you and mom. You aren't perfect, either of you, but you are together, and that sticking together is harder than it seems sometimes. I see so many of my childhood and even more recent memories as studies in togetherness, whether it was a vacation or a move across country, we were a family together, for a great amount of time, and that's another gift you gave me, a really fun family.

So, thank you Dad, for all the lessons you have taught me in life, and all the advice I expect to still receive. Thank you for being a great dad and a fantastic Grandfather,
I love you Dad, Happy Birthday!

Necessity is the mother of invention

"Necessity is the mother of invention",
I believe this is true, but sometimes, being a mother also necessitates invention. I have been thinking of all the things I have created in my job as mother

Benedryl pops
There was a time when my daughter Ella had to have this lovely antihistamine every 4 hours for 5 days (due to her peanut allergy – I promise I wasn’t just trying to get some sleep.) After the second day, whenever she saw the dosing syringe come out, she ran. We had previously mixed said med with juice, but it was hard to predict if she would drink it all. In a flash of inspiration, at 3:30 AM I cut off the ends of an otter pop and filled the two sealed ends with benedryl and stood the little mini-pops up in my ice cube tray to freeze, the next two doses were an ease to get down and I thanked Heaven for it (while I ate the middle of the original otter pop!)


Expandable flat paper party hats
OK someone somewhere may have made these before, but they were probably made by another mom; who also forgot to buy party hats for their 3-year-old’s garden tea themed birthday party.


Brown bag birthday purses
This was a rough year for birthdays; my 5-year old decided the night before the party that we needed goodie bags. Instead of just giving the jewelry etc for the girls to wear at the princess party directly to them, we needed a method of containment and portability! It may seem extreme, but with a not yet 2 months old baby, a 3 year old, as well as said 5 year old, and a husband at work, anything seemed easier than a last minute run to the store. So, we made the purses from lunch-bags, ribbon and foam flowers left over from the aloha-themed-party the year before. Thanks to scrap-booking supplies I never seem to have time to use, the girls even had their bags monogrammed.


Recycled Hobby Horses
When it is raining for a week and your daughter declares that she and her sister NEED horses, you come up with these fine steeds
Lycee Lanterns
When you are Chinese, and you celebrate the New Year, you are given a lot of red envelopes, many of these you may reuse to give to other small children in your extended family, but some you must simply throw away, or must you?

In the past we have cut them up for valentines, glued them together to make belts, and cut them into tubes as bracelets (for tiny arms only.) This year Ella came up with a new idea, and together we refined it into the cutest little lanterns you ever saw (I haven’t lit them up yet, but I think Christmas lights would be cute)

Halloween Costumes

Ella at 4 wanted “Cinderella, but not the kind you buy” say hello to sequins and netting, and a lot of praying as you cut the fabric, pretending that you know how to make your own patterns and wishing you had taken that class in school.

Ella at 3 wanted to be a witch, no problem, but Liana at age almost 2 was inspired by Ella’s dance class and wanted to be a “peacock” Of course Peacock feathers are not cheap, so I ended up gluing a few brightly colored feathers together, and stamping a white "eye" on each stack, repeated a hundred times or so... and then sewing them on a Liberace worthy cape.

I love my work here at the experimental lab of life, what have you created out of need? I’d love to hear about it.!

Please take a moment to backup externally!

A few days ago, Eddie was on our main computer, fully protected with firewalls, surge protectors, etc., etc., etc., when the power went out, for just about 3 seconds. It was annoying, but not the end of the world, so after resetting a few household clocks, he turned the computer on again to finish what he had been doing. As he was starting up, the power went off again, for only 3 seconds, again, annoying again?
Actually devastating, apparently this is one easy way to corrupt Windows.

Now when we turn on our lovely computer, containing our precious thoughts and photos it loops around and around through the start menu. AAARRRRRRGGGGGHHHHHHH!

So, while we are hopeful that the geek squad will be able to recover access to our hard drive, and thankful that we do have all our digital videos on tape, we are mostly wishful that we had an external hard drive or something so that we wouldn't have this problem!!!

Learn our lesson, make sure you are backing up regularly!

Older post new blog

I wrote this, my only other myspace posting, in September of 2007
This now exausts my source of old material, so for the 2 of you who followed me over from there, new material is coming.

Friendly little house fly
Ok, so I am having a minor crisis of identity, am I the mom who wants her children to be open to new things and see beauty in nature of all kinds?
Or am I the mom who is grossed out by things like bugs, in her house, on her children?

I always thought I was the former, I once held a praying mantis for five minutes so my girls could watch how slowly it walked, I have picked up more "roly-polies" than I can count so that my girls could hold them without squishing them in the process, I have dug up worms and millipedes and looked up everything from ants to wasps online so as to answer my children's queries, however, it seems that I have drawn a line without realizing it - FLIES.

Yes, flies, I hate them, they are gross, and they are everywhere, and my stomach turned when I saw my daughter hold one the other day.

My beautiful 4-year old came into the office where I was trying to check email for the third time that day, (if you ever want the attention of preschoolers, just try to accomplish something else). She had something in her hand and was talking in a sweet little voice saying;
"Hello little cutie, you are so friendly, you are so nice and not scary at all."

I assumed that she was talking to a little doll or toy until my beautiful 2-year old started chiming in. "Mommy, it's a fwendwy fwy, it doedn't fwy way or nuffin" (I recognize that the typing out of baby talk is enough to turn the stomachs of those of you without children by itself, sorry, but it explains why I didn't understand what was going on right away.)

I stopped what I was doing and found that there was indeed a fly in Ella's hand, that it would not/could not fly away, and that they were treating it as if it were the most adorable thing in the universe. She did stop short of trying to kiss it, but she was wanting to pet it. My inner squeam shouted "smash it and trash it!" but my mother censor realized I really don't want my kids terrified by flies and so instead I said "Wow, that is really something, you know honey, flies are kind of dirty sometimes, so how about if we don't play with them?"
- And before I could even suggest releasing it to the wild she smashed it with her fingers threw it in the trash and went to wash her hands - with soap!
So now, I have a new identity crisis, am I the mom who needs to teach her children about respecting all of God's creations? or am I the mom who is proud of her fly smashing kids?

old post new blog

I wrote this posting for my briefly lived MySpace blog, I still think it rather entertaining

Thursday, June 28, 2007

Mopping classes, starting now
This morning as I was waging another battle in the war against ANTS (A SoCal scourge) I was mopping my floor. And as I made the cursory sweeps of the mop Ella, age 4 1/2, observed as only a 4 year old would
"You are a really good mopping one Mom!"
"Thanks Ella." I answered sort of automatically, but since she stayed around to watch my technique I started paying more attention to getting every corner, every speck of debris or stain, and I was rewarded with the following;
"Maybe you could be a mopping teacher, Mom, and the ladies (a general term for women older than her babysitter and younger than her Grandma) - the ladies could drive there cars over here and park them at our house. And if any kids came they could just use our toy mop cuz it's a good one we got from Santa!"
"Mopping lessons huh? What would I teach them?"
"Oh, just mopping and stuff, and you could teach the kids to sing really good and you could make notes to cut up and give out and give each person the same notes, every single one!"
"Why would people come to mopping class?"
"Because then their kids could play upstairs in my room until it's time to come down and do the mopping."
I must admit, I'm seriously considering it, I mean aside from the time to converse with actual adults and the promise of children singing "really good", just think of how clean my floors would be! But hey! even if I don't make millions in the floor cleaning education industry, it's nice to know that even in the midst of tantrums and meltdowns, my four year old thinks I have something to offer the world.

Last Saturday was a big day for our little Nina, a celebration in honor of her surviving her earliest infancy, a 100 day celebration. Because she has survived for so long and seen so much, I thought I would take advantage of her wisdom and knowledge and interview her for you, the reader.

So Nina, how do you feel having reached this milestone in your life?

I heard it was some party, did you have a good time?

So, how was your experience being inducted into the wax museum?

I understand you have had some incidents with stalkers, what happened?

How do you reply to the rumors that you have a drinking problem?

What about the rumors of wild hot tub parties?

-At this point Nina’s representatives stepped in and reminded me that this interview was agreed to on certain conditions and I was unable to continue this line of questioning.


And what designer will you be wearing this season?

Thank you for your candor, Congratulations on your big day!

Once in a Blue Moon

The title of this blog is indicative of how often I expect to post. Not that I won't be brilliant all day every day as usual, but lets face it, I have three little girls and I don't get much time to type. I hope I can maintain my statistics of humor, I estimate that one in ten things I think are funny or poignant actually prove to be of worth, I promise to try to edit the 90% drivel.