My dear mum's birthday

We had the honor to celebrate my sweet mom's bday by taking her to a nice (and delicious) dinner at the Embassy Suites. We had a very nice time together.


Happy Birthday Mommy! I love you so much...
My sweet husband. (Yeah, I know, same pose as the previous picture...)

My birthday!

My birthday thought:


If I viewed the world now at 36 like I did at 26, I would have completely wasted 10 years of my life.



For the weekend, I viewed my world from this charming little hotel on the hill in Avalon on Catalina Island. I have to say it had some of the best views of the Harbor

This was off the terrace right outside our room
On our daily -and numerous- walks to and from our hotel to downtown (lots of stairs!)
Dan got me the birthday ice cream of my choice!
We spent the entire day on the beach... listening to the music coming from the bar and being served drinks and food on the sand... it was luxurious!
It was the nicest way to spend a birthday...

The night OF the bday Dano took me to Mexican food and of course we loved it... Margaritas and Dan shot back a few Tequila shots. This man can get so LOCO!
We rented a golf cart and explored Avalon and whatever parts of the island we were "allowed" to go on the rental carts. It didn't take long...
We ate a lot. Basically when we weren't luxuriating on the beach, we were eating...

Two of my lovely girlfriends, Destiny and Emily, and Dano took me to dinner earlier in the week

Dan and the women
Thank you to my friends and family for all the birthday wishes!

Coral's "GRACE"

Our sweet friend Coral McPhee is in the top 20 finalists for BRIDES magazine Operation Dream Dress contest. SHE has designed this wedding dress, appropriately named GRACE. She not only designed it, she sewed it together herself. She MADE the entire thing, herself. It is so impressive and it deserves recognition!

Coral needs your vote, and your friends and family's vote to make it to the next stage of the competition- the top 5-10 designers will be flown to NYC by BRIDES Magazine where the top dresses will be shown in their fashion show to determine the winner. Winner receives $10,000 and their dress on the cover of an upcoming BRIDES Magazine cover!


Vote at www.brides.com/dreamdress


Meet GRACE. (Being worn by Coral's sister, Kaely)




Coral (on the left) and her sister Kaely wearing GRACE.

Voting begins May 19th 2009 and ends May 26th 2009. Please log on to vote at www.brides.com/dreamdress to help make Coral's dream a reality!

She might have gotten to this point on her own but won't get any further without our help!

Thank you all so much, now let's send Coral to NEW YORK!

A bit of indoor climbing never hurt anyone

Not being able to head outdoors for real climbing in a while and becoming frustrated by it, my friend Des and I started indoor rockclimbing again, which has proven to be pretty fun. And highly convenient, considering we can go after work for an hour when pressed for time!

Concentrating on my job at hand. Do not drop my friend...
Destini halfway up this climb
Marlon tries the route the both of just just got spanked on...
And....she's done!
My turn at the beast.
This one kept giving us problems, but we gave 'er hell! It was pretty fun. It's a great addition of a workout twice of thrice a week instead of the regular old gym!

Time with Eden and Nevie

I went up to see my brother for his birthday this past week, but while he was still at work I got to take my nieces to the park. We had SO much fun! (I was pretty exhausted afterwards, though, I have to admit)
Nev, Eden and Aunt Tati
The garden of Eden...
And...SOMEhow I don't have any pictures of my brother. I guess that's what happens when two little girls distract you!

Blog update

So I finally joined Facebook. Yes, I'm "on it." So because of that I've been slacking on my Blog posts. I realize that not the whole world is on or will ever get on, Facebook (mom...) so I have just updated. A string of bdays, a karate test and the annual Quadbooza.

What can I say, life can be hard. After all, it kills you...
It has been quite a year so far, with lots of ups and downs, but here, we'll just be posting highlights of the "ups." :)

QuadBooza IV

We grabbed the beachcruisers and headed out for the 4th annual QuadBooza beachcruiser pub crawl in Hermosa beach. This pubcrawl of course is honoring 4 friends' birthdays (hence the "quad") that happen close to each other in the months of March and April. The boys are Dan, Phil T, Doug and Wayne. Kyle's bday is also close and was also celebrated, so it should be called QuintaBooza. Marlon's bday also falls in the same timeline but since he couldn't make it it doesn't count.

This year the shirts were a nice pepto-bismol (pepto-Abismal) pink. One pink shirt would not have worked. But dozens of them in a group works pretty good! Gearing up to hit the boardwalk: Dano, DJ, Doug and Jaci

People kept asking us, "What is this? What do the pink shirts mean?"
And I finally said, "It's the race for the cure."
"...OH, cool. The cure for what?"
"The cure for sobriety, of course!"
Beer me.
Destini looking stylish in pink shirt and pink bike
My BFF Jeff came all the way down from Camarillo to partake in the festivities.
Dano and Jeffro
Des and I with Dan the man
Oh, and I recognized Micheal-Raymond James at our first stop, which was Naja's. He played Rene in True Blood season one.
This wig made it around a bunch of head throughout the day


Dan and I with Kimlicious and Phil T. It was SO nice to see those guys!
The crawling ended at The Poopdeck. We forgot to take this picture right at sunset. Every year we say "this is the last year we do this" but we all know that's simply not true. :)