Years together and Years apart

As of January 6th, 2010, my parents have been married for 31 years. We celebrated with a Costco chicken and a Red Velvet cake. My dad whined because my mom was making him kiss her too many times in front of the camera and my mom received a pineapple. Fun was had by all (me and the happy couple).

I would be proud to have a 31 year marriage where:

My husband is so enthusiastic about the cats he screams at them and I have to tell him to scream at the cats more quietly so I can remember what I have to do.
My wife loses pajama pants and finds them in the refrigerator.
My husband balances his newborn babies on one outstretched hand and continues to do it until they are toddlers
My wife encourages my children to pull netted vegetable bags over their heads and make faces
My husband buys a shotgun in case the neighbor comes by to harass me again and then teaches me how to shoot it
My wife buys me broccoli every week so I can eat it every day at work and scare my co-workers with my dragon broccoli breath
My husband picks me up from work and takes me home when I'm so tired I can't walk straight.
My wife stocks 10 cans of sweet rolls in the fridge because she knows I love them
My husband makes sure I don't fall to the ground when the kickback to the shotgun he bought almost knocks me down
We both call each other the same nick name and confuse everyone around us.
We are very strange and insist our childrens' friends get to know us.

There are tons more reasons why I would be proud to have many aspects of my parents' loving marriage in mine. Happy 31st anniversary Mommy and Poppy!

This past week, I visited my little sister AT COLLEGE! It's almost unbelievable how time flies. I'm 22 years old, completing my graduate degree and my sister is 18 years old and completing her bachelors degree. She is majoring in bioengineering and pre-med at UCLA (my parents' alma mater) and just began her second quarter as a freshman. When I got there we set off to do all the collegey things on campus. We also went to all her classes. It was super fun for me to actually go to class with no obligation to take notes or tests. We went to Stem Cell Class, Life Sciences Class, Statistics Class and Chemistry Class. The first night we went to a $2 showing of The Invention of Lying, which I enjoyed and then we went to the gym!

The next day we visited the student store and found tiny, pink, fuzzy valentine hedgehog friends. They were so cute and soft we just had to pick up an assortment of them and give them tiny hedgehog kisses!

Also, my loving sister delightfully covered me in all things UCLA and took pictures.

The little guy I am hugging is a dashboard friend with magnets in his butt, He dances around and costs $25. I did not purchase him.

The most UCLAey thing on campus is, of course, the Bruin Bear. He is a large metal statue and all the students sit around him and eat and socialize during the game. At times during the football season, they cover him in a wooden box to protect him from predators. I appreciate the security of the Bruin Bear.

Another very collegey thing to do is to eat in the dining halls. UCLA dining is famously very good, and indeed it was. They had more food courts than I could count, a Coffee Bean that accepts card swipes and multiple dining halls. The first night there, I had home made mac and cheese, green salad with blue cheese, mexican chicken plate, and fruit with whipped topping. Yum! Oh yeah, did I mention you can also use card swipes to get pizza and chicken wings to your room late at night?! Way more options than I had. After lunch the second day, the one available bathroom in the dining halls was closed, so Elyse and I went up to friend, Tina's dorm room to pee and on the way we discovered...

The master key ring idly hanging in a random door. I had a very strong urge to "borrow" them, but decided that would be not the best idea, so we just took this picture instead to record the moment.

My last day at UCLA, we toddled into Westwood to eat GIANT AND INEXPENSIVE ICE CREAM SANDWICHES!

This place is home to a line a block and a half long nearly every night and sells these huge ice cream sandwiches with your own 2 choices of cookie and 1 choice ice cream flavour for $1.50. What a deal! It also sells Hawaiian Shave Ice (Yes, Shave Ice, not ever Shaved) which has delicious ice cream at the bottom!

After ice cream, we headed over to the promenade to meet Mr. Vova. Whilst perusing, we came across this poster of a lady doing a very strage yoga pose. I deemed it the reverse praying mantis. Vova was so intrigued, he demanded we try it, and try it, we did.

I'm really not sure we did it justice though.

I had a super fun time hanging out at college with Elyse and really hope I can do it again. It seems it was just yesterday that Elyse came to visit me at college and we would ride unicycles around the dorms and climb the trees on campus. Aaaaah college!

When I got home, I set up the DDR pad Mr. Nathan Peterson had given my mom for Christmas. She has been wanting DDR for years now and was delighted at its arrival. Before we got to set it up though, the cats decided that they liked the DDR pad as well. Here they are gaurding it from being taken away.

More adventures to come!
~Out