Wicked!

I've seen this musical three times now and I haven't gotten sick of it yet.  It still brings me to tears when "Defying Gravity" is sung.  What would it be like to have that much talent?  I will never know.  

I know what you're thinking..."Hasn't she seen that play twice already?"  Yes, I have but I couldn't resist taking Emerson to see it since it's here in San Diego.  We also took our neighbor JLo with us too.  They both loved it.  Emerson loved Glinda, of coarse.  I caught her doing an imitation of her in front of the bathroom mirror during intermission.

We also took a couple of my Young Women.  They were dying to see the play.

I quickly took this picture before the show started.  I got yelled at immediately after for using my camera inside the theatre.

Aww!  So adorable.  She is getting to be such a tween!

Emerson really wanted her hair crimped for this show.  She planned out her "look" days before the show.

Happy 4th of July!

I hope everyone had a wonderful 4th of July. As usual we tried to stay clear of the tourists and crowds. This year Kari and Hoon came down for the weekend. We miss them so much now that they live in LA. We went down to the Coronado golf coarse for a few hours and played some bocci ball and let the kids play in the sand pits. I had a lot of fun and it wasn't really that crowded. We might go down there next year and stay for fireworks.

My 4th of July creation.  I saw a picture of this dessert and I had to have it.  It's a giant chocolate chip cookie topped with cool whip and fresh berries.  

As tradition, we roasted some s'mores.

Kari and Hoon brought with them their adorable bulldog, Chloe. Putty had so much fun with her over the weekend. He was tuckered out. This really made us consider adopting another dog. Any suggestions on what kind of dog to adopt? We want a medium size dog like Putty.

Hoon and Kari. Kari is Grahams cousin. Everyone thinks that Hoon is the one related to me!

Emerson has her ears pierced!

For years, I've been asking Emerson if she wanted to get her ears pierced and she would always say no.  I told her whenever she wants it done, we'll go get it done.  She told me a few weeks before Michelle was leaving that she wanted it done.  She said she wanted to do it before Michelle left.  That's how much she loves Michelle!

She picked out the blue topaz because that's her birthstone.  I was actually really surprised she didn't pick the pink studs.

You can't see from the picture but there is a blue marker dot where the the piercing will go.

She got to hold a little teddy bear to squeeze.

We all thought for sure she was going to cry.  My friends son, Miles, came to just watch Emerson cry.  When Eme told me that "Miles only wants to come to watch me cry."  I told her, "Well Eme, you can prove him wrong."  She responded just matter of fact, "No I won't!" 

She was so brave.  She had a little nervous smile the whole time.  When the gun pierced her ear, she didn't even flinch.  The 14 year old girl who got her ear pierced right before Emerson was way more nervous and had tears in her eyes when she got her piercing.  Not Emerson, she was so tough!!!!

I love this face.  Look how proud she looks.

Happy 7 1/2 Birthday, Emerson!

I bought a cutting machine so I made the birthday banner. I think it turned out pretty good.

Atti loved putting his own topping on his cupcake. When we took off his swimsuit, he had melted M&M's on his wiener. It might not melt in your hands but it sure found a place where it could melt. The worst was he found it and picked it off and ate it and said "mmm, Yum!"

These pizzas were 28" I couldn't believe how huge they were.

Emerson had her 7 1/2 birthday party on her last day of school. Those of you who are wondering why Eme has a half birthday, it's because her actual birthday is a week before Christmas so we decided it would be better if she had her birthday party with her friends on her half birthday. We had a pool party again. We were hoping the sun would shine but June gloom was in full swing. The kids were freezing once they got out of the pool but they didn't seem to mind. They were too busy eating giant pizzas and decorating their own cupcakes at the cupcake bar.

Relay for Life

Graham's work had a team for relay for life so the whole family participates in this event every year. I really like it. The event has games and food and a live band. It also teaches the kids the reasons why it's important for us to be involved in this cause.

Michelle's Graduations

 

Michelle graduated at the beginning of June.  I can't believe this year with her has gone by so quickly.  Her parents and brother flew out for the graduation.  It was so good seeing them. 

Bye, Bye, Birdie

For the past 2 months, we have been the home of a hummingbird family.  We first discovered the bird when I looked on my patio lights and I saw a bird nest with a hummingbird sitting so still, I thought it was fake.  Also, I thought it was completely astonishing that the bird (Tweeker, Emerson named her), built a nest on the strand of a Christmas light.  If you look closely at the nest, you can see that she made it out of some of my shredded bills that was sitting in my compost.

After a month, there were two baby humming birds.  Emerson named them Linker and Dexter.  After a couple of weeks the nest was too small and unstable for both birds.  Linker kept falling out of the nest so we put her in a small bowl and placed her on top of a ladder right next to her brother's nest.  After a week, we weren't sure if either one of the babies would survive.  We saw that Dexter was not thriving and after a couple more days, he died.  We held our breaths for Linker and it seemed that she was getting bigger and stronger and her wings would flap like she was trying to fly.

After Dexter died, we didn't know if Tweeker was coming to feed Linker anymore so we did some research on the internet and started to feed Linker some sugar water mixed with some dead bugs we crushed up and fed her through a medicine dropper.

She seemed to really like the food we were feeding her.  It turns out that Tweeker didn't abandon linker and she was coming around a couple of times throughout the day to feed her baby.

Alas, we come to this fateful night.  We went to the Padres game tonight and when we got home we went to the backyard to check on Linker.  We saw Putty licking something.  "Graham" I said.  "Will you see what Putty is chewing on."  Well, you probably know what came next.  That damn, Dog!!!!  Linker was probably getting strong enough to attempt to try to fly and fell out of her bowl, off the ladder and landed on the ground.  While we searched on the internet on how to take care of a humming bird, I specifically read, "If you have a dog, don't let him near the nest."  Why didn't I listen!!!  Now, all I can think about is poor Tweeker.  She won't know what happened to her baby when she comes to feed Linker in the morning.  And I have to tell Emerson what happened to her beloved Linker.  Damn, dog!!