happy birthday!

i can't believe my sister is in her twenties!  here is to many many more years of birthdays - happy birthday little sis.

spending time with family

annual trip to brentwood

every year we try to go to brentwood to pick cherries - it's been two years in a row now and i think we should make it an annual thing.  cherry season lasts about 3 weeks and i believe it starts on memorial weekend.  several years ago we were all excited to pick some cherries and found out when we got there that the season was over - so we ended up picking peaches instead.  so i made a note on my calendar when cherry season would start so we wouldn't miss it again.

i picked 11lbs of cherries.  mom and dad picked 15lbs.  not sure how many pounds huong picked, and tin picked 50 "top quality" cherries.  i'm not exactly sure what tin did the whole time we were there.

projects around the house

we have been slowly checking off our to-do list around the house -

• take out shrub on the side of the house - completed, now i just need to plant some annuals
• find a couch that will go in the family room - completed, ordered the couch today and it will arrive within 4-5 week

we are slowly furnishing the house the way we want it and i can't wait to see how it all turns out.  hopefully it'll turn out nice.  :)

speaking of nice, this is what i found in our family room when we got home after shopping for a couch.

tin and huong got this for me!  :)  I absolutely love it!  it will go in the family room. 

paper flowers

i saw on a blog that had a tutorial on how to make paper flowers.  since it was spring and i wanted some colors on the dining table, i'd figure i'd give it a try and thought it turned out cute.  i used tissue paper to make the flowers.

strolling on a beautiful sunday

while aaron ran around campbell this morning, i walked emma and dexter in downtown.  we love the campbell farmer's market and since we live closer to it now, we'll definitely be there every sunday.  i wanted to buy a crate of strawberries (1/2 crate was $8) so i tried to bargain the whole crate for $14, but the guy wouldn't budge and wanted $15.  i walked away.  i know, what's a dollar?  but hey, a dollar is a dollar.  i will try again next week.  :)

some cute building in downtown.  can you spot emma and dexter?

here is a close-up view of them :)

only house on the lagoon

it's one thing to watch hoarders on tv and it's another to actually experiencing seeing it in real life.  aaron's job was to go through paperwork in the office and mine was aunt lil's bedroom.  going through the clothes in the bedroom wasn't too bad - until i got around one corner of the bed and the magazines and newspapers that i was picking up was a little damp.  this is when i needed a break as i was coughing (from the dust) and gagging (from the smell).  one thing i found that was really neat was aunt lil's diary.  i scanned through the pages and couldn't wait to read about what her life was like back in 1943-1944.

when i was cleaning aunt lil's room and going through her stuff, i thought of how sad it was to have lived like this.  i thought "did she feel ashamed living like this?"  "what was it in her life that triggered the hoarding?"  "has she always been a hoarder?"  of course no one could give me those answers. 

back to the diary - aunt lil was 25 years old in 1943 and was a WAVE (women accepted for volunteer emergency service) in the navy.  there was about 15 entries spanning about 8 months - how i wish there were more so i could read what her life was like back then.  in one of the entries, she described how ed (her future husband) made her feel like gold and everytime he's around, everything was brighter.  uncle ed passed away about 5-6 years ago and aunt lil passed away on easter, 4/24/11.  i know that their spirits are out in the water sailing as this is what they loved to do. 

before - aunt lil's bedroom

after - all those bags that are in the back are garbage that we bagged and waiting to be tossed

before - the office

it doesn't look like aaron did anything to the office, but he cleared all the file cabinets and had to painstakingly go through all the paperwork to make sure he didn't toss out anything important

aunt lil's bedroom view - only house on the lagoon

bolinas

we headed over to bolinas (20 miles north of SF) on wednesday to help leroy and charlotte with aunt lil's house, but before we got down and dirty, we took emma and dexter to the beach.  on the way back to the car, there was horse poop and dexter ate some.  good grief.  why do dogs like eating other animals poop???

CUTEST apron ever!



if you don't remember, i posted this apron and said that it was the cutest apron i had ever seen and guess what?  my friend lisa got it for me as a house warming gift.  it is so darn cute and i seriously just want to wear it everywhere.  thank you lisa!



busy weekend

this morning aaron had a 5k at golden gate park.  our friends brian and wren also came and took their dog, sadie.  while aaron and brian ran, wren and i walked sadie, emma, and dexter around the park.  i forgot to bring my camera to take a pic of the wet doggies as it rained on us, but luckily it didn't rain hard and stopped after 10 minutes. 

later in the day, we hosted our first dinner for my family at our new place - everyone enjoyed the food (at least they said they did).  we made tortellini (it was supposed to be soup, but the torellini soaked up most of the soup, so we just made an entree out of it), scalloped potatoes, baked ravioli, and cucumber salad.  we had ice cream and homemade cupcakes for dessert.

since it was easter, i surprised lianne and pierce with an egg hunt in our backyard.  needless to say, they had a great time hunting for eggs.  i put princess band aids, change, care bears and dora stickers, balloons, and gold fish in the plastic eggs.  kristen and thanhha colored eggs last night and brought those over for the egg hunt too. 

when pierce's basket got too heavy with the eggs, he would drag his basket and some of the eggs would fall out.  thinking that those were eggs he hadn't picked up, he would picked them all up again and the cycle would start all over.  so cute!  lianne saw that pierce had some eggs that she wanted and she grabbed them from pierce's basket and put them in hers (that girl know what she wants!) between lianne and pierce, they found all 60 eggs!