love this!

One of my favorite artist is holding a contest. I love her print and would love to win it!

http://happydoodleland.blogspot.com/2010/03/print-give-away-alert.html

Wish me luck!

Crafty.

One of Aria's favorite craft products is a bag of pipe cleaners. She loves them and she's very creative with them. I've gone through 3 bags in 2 months. She has free reign to them and will make random things throughout the day when she feels creative. This also means that there are pipe cleaner creations throughout the house. I was in the bathroom the other day, looked down and there was an Aria creation on the counter. I don't have the heart to thrown any of them out so they'll just slowly grow in numbers lie tribbles from a Star Trek episode.

New Year.

Happy Chinese New Year! I decided to treat Aria and myself to some dim sum for lunch. I ordered way too much and now we're stuffed. Aria's favorite dim sum are Ha Gow (shrimp dumplings) and steamed b.b.q. pork buns.
We're going to have dinner with A.'s family at at a local noodle and dumpling restaurant. Yum more food.

Deadline looming.

I've been preoccupied for the last 3 days doing a freelance illustration for my friend's magazine. She's a senior editor for an Asian magazine. It's very sweet of her to ask me to do this since I've been so out of the graphic loop since I've became a stay-at-home mom. The art is to accompany a poem on a two page spread. That's why the middle is blank. I'm not too thrilled with the left side of the art but I do like the right. So glad I finished it within before the deadline. The artwork has been fedex and will hopefully arrive at her office tomorrow morning. Hope they like it.

Long time.

Long time no blog. So much has happened since my last post. The most impactful event was a death in the family. I don't want to go into details but I happened very unexpectedly and Aria and I flew up north to deal for the funeral. I was surprise by how much Aria understands death. I guess that's not surprising since she has seem the passing of her Great Grandfather on A.'s side and her baby brother in the recent years. She understands that death means that the individual is gone from our present lives but not from our hearts. She believes in a heaven where all people and animals go after live. She explained everything to me so clearly too.

Sat.

We're cruel parents. Even though Aria's still sick we took her out for dim sum on Sat. with our friends and their children. The sad part was, Aria slept through the whole meal and ate nothing. We headed off to the mall afterwards so the kids can play together. We got there a little before our friends and while Al was carrying Aria around, she threw up on him. He had to do a makeshift cleanup job. My poor daughter is still not feeling well. She pepped up after that and played with Alicia for alittle bit. We headed home soon afterwards where Aria threw up some more.

Aria pretending to be Ariel The Mermaid.

Tony pushing Aria, Alicia and Ian.

Yuck.

I guess Aria caught a bug something and we were not prepared for the outcome. Friday night, right as A. and I were tiptoeing out Aria's room, I heard a gurgling sound coming from Aria and I knew, knew, knew, knew, that she was vomiting. I didn't understand how she could be sleeping one sec. and the next be vomiting every ounce of food that she ate that day up. I was endless and I, like an idiot, stood there and watch. My reflexes failed me. The cleanup was very disgusting. I love my daughter but the stench made me want to hurl. A. had the unpleasant job of cleaning the vomit off of her. I had the even worst job of cleaning the vomit from her bed, clothes, and bed sheets. Sign.

Skirball Friday.

Yes, we hit Skirball for their Noah's Ark exhibit after not going for 2 weeks. This time I took my friend's daughter Isabelle with us. Isabelle is a year older than Aria and Aria really enjoys playing with her. They had a blast at the exhibit and we left after a couple of hours. I took them home where they played for another 4 hours.

In the kitchen area of Noah's Ark.

She found some new stuff animals to love. Thankfully, I didn't have to buy them at the gift store.

Big hug.

Those crazy girls are trying to catch the raindrops.

What to do on New Year's Eve.

If you're in our shoes, you'll call up Alice and have her and her kids meet up at Ikea! Well, we met up at a bookstore, read some books and them strolled across the street to Ikea to have lunch. The place was packed. Guess everyone had the same idea that we did. Afterward, we hung out at the kids' area where the kids played. Alice, Cassidy and Michael soon left us. We purchased a few things (sheepskin rug, pink frames and some cards) and capped off our visit with vanilla ice cream cones. Yum!

The girls are crazy. I told them to pose for me in front of the giant Christmas balls outside of Ikea and Aria started to breakdance. Cassidy soon follow suit. Why can't they just stand there and smile nicely???

Here's another one of Aria's freestyle moves.

For Sue.

Interested??? It's yours.

Squirrelly.

Today, I made this squirrel from this book that I ordered online a few months ago. It took me longer than expected but Aria and I are both satisfied with the end product. I'm so glad that I actually made something from it!

The book with the squirrel.

Post Christmas gathering.

I met up with some of my friends for a potluck the day after Christmas. I wanted to avoid the whole shopping madness and just mellow with good friends. My friend Lina hosted the event at her house. Unfortunately, I was unable to cook any food (long story, something to do with a gas leak) and just purchase some Chinese noodles at my local Chinese food place. Lina, being the great cook that she is, made yummy chicken curry. Alice brought lasagna, Patrice made her famous coconut cake, Marylou brought mac & cheese, Keiko made pasta salad. God, what a feast.
Aria has known these kids for the majority of her life. I've seen each of them grow into their own unique selves. I hope they become life-long friends, especially Cassidy and Aria.

Everyone was very excited for the Cassidy's arrival, especially Aria. She literally sat by the door for a half an hour waiting for her to arrive. I was slightly concerned with her behavior because she was getting pretty sad, but as soon as Cassidy showed up, Aria perked right up. From left to right, Cassidy, Josh, Aria, Monty, Mandy and her cousin Emma.

The kids decorated their own gingerbread man. Let's just say that it was very messy and chaotic. Everyone wanted more gumdrops and there were alot of fingerlicking going around. I hope Aria didn't catch anything.

After the chaos, Zoe, Cassidy and Aria ate their creations.

Christmas recap.

We had a pretty mellow Christmas this year. It consisted of alot of eating and having a lovely time with the people we love most. We had a few dinners with A.'s family and had lunch with Alice and her family on Christmas day.
Boy did Aria get alot of gifts. My sister gave her (not excluding me and A.) tons of stuff. The bottom of our tree was so packed with gifts that it was pretty hard to maneuver around at times. Majority of the toys that Aria got are still in its box because she's so engrossed with playing with one or two new toys. I think I'm going to hide most of them and bring them out for her throughout the year. Aria received clothes, Littlest Pet Shop activity center, more Littlest Pet Shop animals, Leapfrog's My First Computer in pink, Barbie RV, geez the list goes on. A. gave me a Canon Photo Printer. I haven't used it yet but A. did. The printout looks great and A. said it's super easy. It's pretty shop to shop for A. so I just got him a few comic books, a Batman lego set, and clothes. Overall, we had a very Merry Christmas. Cheesy but it's true.

We made dumplings from scratch at A.'s grandmother's house. They were delish! Here's a picture of Aria's grandparents. They're old pros at making dumplings.

Aria got to make one too, without the fillings.

This is Aria's favorite present. My sister gave her a build-a-bear machine (after I told her not to) .

This is one of the presents that I got Aria and I thought it'll be a hit. I was wrong. It's still sitting here unopened. Ariel's head is bigger than Aria's.

We had lunch with Alice and her family at Marie Callendar's. It was the only place that was open on Christmas day. We gave Cassidy a Belle baby doll. I have no clue what they're laughing at.

Princesses on Ice.

One of the planned highlights for the end of this year was to take Aria to see Disney's Princesses on Ice. I wasn't sure if Aria could handle sitting through over 2 hours of this but since she loves the princesses so much I decided to take her. Photos were prohibited but everyone was using their cameras so I jumped into it too and snapped away. Aria had an okay time but I think we're going to skip it next year and do it the following year. She was still very antsy in her seat some of the times. She also said that the show was 'bad' because of the fireworks at the end and that they 'always forget about Pocahontas'. She's a tough one to please.

Aria wore her mermaid costume to the event.

The finale when all the characters came out in pairs.

The 'dreaded' fireworks.