So THAT'S How Kelley Does It...

I've long been teased for failing to keep up with my oldest sister, who can only be called a master blogger - usually posting multiple times every week... compared to my hardy "once in awhile when I think of it..."  But today, I realized (one of!) her secret weapons, and that weapon calls herself Juliette - who's natural tendency to ham it up renders her full of readily available blog post content!  Behold:

 The kickoff, her school's Christmas show, where she was a very excited and musical camel...

The hamming picked up some momentum when we grabbed an iPhone and started playing at GiGi's (my mom)'s house...

We then moved to some emoticons - an old favorite of mine since college...

The Classics:

"Angry" 

"Surprised" 

It was on "Suspicious" that I realized I couldn't compete with the acting skills of my 4 year old niece...

Kelley and GiGi got in on "Confused"

Not even sure what this is - but it simply rocks

"You love GiGi soooo much!"

"Magdalenne (her sister) just took your toy"

"What is the face you make when I say you should take a nap?"

"What is the face you make when I tell you to eat your vegetables?"

Sassy and She Knows It

And finally some bonus shots I just snapped while she was hanging with the girls...

Love this little lady!! xoxo

Meet Simone

Heya... In yet another blogging absence, Kei and I pulled one of our signature moves: got impulsive.  For some reason, Kei thought it would be entertaining to tempt fate and bring me to SPCA because I had long been longing for a dog.  Though we entered with full commitment that we couldn't manage a dog at least until after the holidays, the universe had another scheme in mind for us.

In my defense, I know myself well enough to have uttered this sentence, verbatim, as we walked through the doors and faced the decision of turning right for cats or left for dogs:

"Don't even let me near the cat section, I won't be able to help myself..."

Kei smiled his devilish grin and turned right.

Meet Simone (AKA "Pip-Squeak" or "Pips" or "Squeak-Box," so-called because she literally squeaks rather than mews when she wants attention... and she's such a pip-squeak):

Our new baby is becoming predictable with a few key MO's:

(1) Non-Stop Action (rendering her VERY difficult to photograph!!)

(2) Plot-While-Appearing-Innocent... usually dedicated to figuring out how she can best taunt her older brother and sister.

(3) Snuggle Time!  This is one seriously snuggly kitty... which is absolutely awesome except in the middle of the night when you wake up to her purring like a motorboat and rubbing her face all over yours and/or licking your defenseless nose...

(4)  And.... true for any kitten out there: SLEEP - anywhere, in any position, anytime.

Love.

Kelley Will Be So Proud of Me!

My sister, the amazing blog-master, Kelley, has been "hinting" at me (on more than one occasion) about how easy it is to make all my pictures bigger on this blog, and how much better it is for the readers. At long last, I went back and fixed them up today.  So in case you once found yourself thinking "Badlands?  I can't see what the big deal is," or "Who are these people that are so interested in pumpkins?" - then you may enjoy looking back and finding enlarged pictures that had been previously posted.

Good job, Kell - your message finally got through! :-)

Jellyfish Saviors of Stinson Beach

Yesterday we gathered our favorite troop of San Francisco newbies, packed our Prius to the brim, and headed out to Stinson Beach for a BBQ and getaway.  We were graced with a gorgeous day, easy parking, and awesome company... and in the case of Neil & Kei, the opportunity to be heroes of the beached jellyfish (we won't discuss whether or not they were already dead, nor the fact that jellyfish overpopulation is generally threatening seas).  Behold:

Can't very well be on a beach without one of these shots, am I right?
 

Hero squad in the making... and a beautiful background to boot.

At this point, I confess, I love these pictures more for the scenery than the plot, but in the spirit of narrative continuity, I'll say "the heroes stumbled on the first hapless victim..."

 This one I just plain love... but the jelly is disgusting.

My man.

Hooray!  A great day!

Photo Dump! SF Life As We Know It and More

My sisters recently pointed out how much trouble I'm in after claiming to have emerged from the Yoga Bubble, only to disappear into unexplained silence all over again.  Whoopsie Daisy.  Here's my photo-dump and mad-dash catch-up to show you what we've been up to while I've been ignoring you so shamefully...

Wine tasting & picnic at Dry Creek Vineyard in Sonoma (I know, I know, tough life that's been keeping me away from this blog...)

The Yoga Bubble.

Birthday Power Hour & Drinking Games

(I'll never grow up, never grow up!  Not me!  Not I!  Not me! ♪)

Enjoying sunshine at Delores Park...

complete with Bi-Rite ice cream and/or Kei's new favorite neighborhood candies... ;-)

Making our own cheese!  It's true!  

Finding surprises at the many farmers markets.

Getting to really know our vegetables...

... then ruthlessly murdering them & becoming experts at pumpkin pie!

Spreading pumpkin love to our great friends and SF newbies, Yoriko & Neil.

Some labor more than others...

...but all enjoy!  Feeling awfully proud of our carving artistry (patterns or not - this was tough!)

Seriously.

Then last week we lit on out of SF and had a great visit in Wisconsin (though I was not even remotely on-the-ball with my camera... whoopsies again).  We got to see the family, Kei got in a full flight lesson (what what!), and we closed out with an awesome BBQ from master chef, The Chen, and a gracious welcoming by the whole Chenhalls gang.

Then, we went forth to Baltimore, where things appear slightly weirder, but we still had a great visit with Adam and his fiance, Yoshie!

Outside the AVAM, the American Visionary Art Museum, where they showcase amateur art like this here school bus.  An awesome place, where I again failed to take ample pictures inside the museum.  Noting a theme here...

Kei celebrating fall colors!  The whole inspiration for the trip!

Satiating our marine-cravings indoors instead of underwater at the National Aquarium; where we almost lost Kei and Adam to this here set of jaws.

Ooo'ed at jellyfish - which, with tentacles like these are best appreciated whilst separated by a pane of glass.

Then scampered off to DC for an evening and a day!

Never disappoints.

Much love all!  Sorry for my continued delinquency!  I'll wisen up and resist making too many promises of super frequent updates to come... :-) xx

Back from the Yoga Bubble... Sort of

Ah, dear readers who still check this site after weeks of silence - much love to you!  I've been a TOTAL slacker on the blog front because I've been doing another yoga teacher training that has consumed basically all the time and energy I could muster, so outside of that I had to pretty much just focus on eating and sleeping.

The training itself was really wonderful, though.  I feel so lucky to have met all of these amazing people, especially since we've just moved here and know so few people.  I was just trying to describe to Kei how teacher trainings tend to get emotional - he was wondering why he saw tears when he was a trooper and came to our graduation potluck - and it is tough to explain, but these things cut deep.  Learning to teach itself requires you to take a certain step into vulnerability (the public speaking factor alone...), and then you add in all the work you do to learn and to begin to use this incredible, rich philosophy of it (which is like shining a super bright light on all the little crevices of your personality and history that you'd rather leave in the dark...) and you have yourself a pretty overwhelming recipe.

Anyway, I still have a lot of reflecting to do on much of this and I genuinely hope to stay in the "yoga bubble" in a way but it should be less consuming from here on out, and allow for me to emerge from it enough to write more often, but for the moment, all I want is to say: hello!  I'm back!

Saga de Selene

Many apologies for leaving you hanging on the Crazy Pants saga.  For reasons you'll soon understand, I can now tell you that our beloved Crazy Pants had actually gone by the name Selene throughout our entire correspondence - which didn't match the name on her PayPal account, but we assumed it was the nickname she went by and never thought much of it.  Anyway, to address the questions I received: no, Selene did not break in that day... but never fear, your thirst for entertainment will not go totally unsatisfied: we did have more drama before finally finishing with her and moving out of the apartment.  It coalesced shortly after the last entry, when we had basically moved out, but returned to clean the apartment, and she was unexpectedly living there (before our lease was up) with her mother and two big boxers: one of which had "allergies" causing him to growl and bark viciously the entire time we were there, and the other - well, just you wait for that part of the story.

I've never actually witnessed a person act the way Selene acted while we were there; she really lived into and beyond the illustrious title of Crazy Pants.  She literally stomped around with her head shaking all over the place and talked herself in circles saying one thing one minute and then saying the exact opposite the next, all while intermittently yelling at/dealing with allergy beast, and frequently snapping at her mother and Kei (who was doing his bestest just to hash out what was going on but rarely getting to say three consecutive words without being cut off by either Selene or her mother with their matching shrill, Greek voices).  It was such a whirling mess of tempers and utter crazy-pantsness, that at one point I literally conjured the yoga teacher in me and made everyone in the room do a collective deep breath.  No, that's not figurative, we really did it.  I even employed the corresponding arm-movements I use for my students.  Still got it.  At another, I had to conjure the woulda-been-lawyer in me to sternly inform Crazy Pants that we would not tolerate her behavior and she had better pull herself together and start acting in an appropriate manner... complete with the parental pointer-finger-gesture and "don't mess with me" eyes.  It was a weird afternoon.  After probably about two hours of attempting to follow Crazy Pants Selene's scattering trains of thought and struggling to eek out whole sentences so we could figure out a way to finish up our term and handle all security deposits, we did somehow come to a workable solution, and both the woulda-been-lawyer and the yogini in me felt pretty good about how it all turned out.

Here's my favorite part of the whole story.  While allergy beast stayed "locked" in the kitchen by a clearly insufficient gate (causing me more than one pause and consideration for our physical safety), in the middle of the whole scene, Crazy Pants let the other dog out.  The dog took a liking to me, and was sort of jumping up on me looking for attention, when the mother reached out for the dog and said..."knock that off, Selene!"