why you should never give lip gloss to a baby

the baby was not happy, not happy at all, on our short drive home from the ward pancake breakfast last saturday. so, i grabbed the lip gloss sitting in the console of our car and handed it back to her, thinking it would calm her down. i didn't think she would be able to unscrew the lid, i mean, one year olds haven't developed that fine motor skill yet, right?

well, apparently i was wrong. i was very wrong!

fruit makes my girls happy!

i guess fruit in the stocking makes my girls laugh with joy!



and i thought it was the candy and presents that would do it!

one carrot each!

can i just tell you how much i love nani and lala?! they put the biggest smile on my face the night of christmas eve.

that night before bed, nani and lala were too busy to sit and listen to mitch read twas the night before christmas. he waited and waited, but they still would not go sit by him on the couch. finally, he just read it out loud so they could hear the story while they sat huddled around the desk, busily working.


just before we went up to tuck the girls in to bed, this is what they laid out for santa:

so that you can understand the importance of every item in this picture, because they put a lot of careful thought into this, let me walk you through it.



first, we have some instructions for santa regarding the carrots...

they are for the reindeer, but santa you must make sure that the reindeer ONLY get 1 carrot each!



next, we have this lovely card written by nani ("santa look in the mitl ther is a pictur. and look on the back.")



and illustrated by lala. this is nani standing by the christmas tree.



now, this blank card (circled in red) was for santa, just in case he had time to write a little note to them thanking them for all the goodies they left for him.

but, in order for santa to write said note, he would need sharpie markers. i tell ya, these girls think of everything, don't they?!

and last, (it's hard to see in this picture) wrapped around the santa mug full of egg nog, nani made a bracelet out of beads for santa!

and santa's response???

that will just have to wait...the camera battery died!! arrgggh!!

to be continued....

i'm dreaming of a white christmas

merry christmas!

snow is falling all around, on the rooftops on the ground.....



IT"S SNOWING! my very first white christmas!

okay, so it's not exactly covered in white, but there is snow falling outside and getting heavier by the minute! give us a couple hours of this and it will be a white covered christmas! the girls are drooling at the windows and having visions of sledding down our driveway on "the rocket"!

we also got wood this week to burn in our wood burning stove! ahhh, so toasty warm!

can you picture it? snow falling outside our window as we cuddle up in front of a warm fire! what could be better! well, having our families surround us while it snows outside and we are cuddled up infront of the fire, that would be even better!

the perfect end to a beautiful christmas morning!!

it's about time!

do you remember this post? well, i went out that very day to nordstrom rack to buy up the whole store's supply of their it, diva jeans in my size. remember!?

well, they didn't have anymore, but assured me they would be getting more. they get a new truck in everyday! they told me to just call beforehand and they could check to see if they had some in stock! brilliant!

so, for the past month i have been stalking the store several times a week, harassing them with my weekly calls! each time i called i would ever so slightly change my voice so they wouldn't recognize me! i swear i spoke to the same lady at least four times! she was probably thinking, "oh, it's the diva chick! we still don't have them! stop harassing us!" but, of course, customer service oriented as she was, she wouldn't say that to me. i know she was thinking it as she pleasantly told me, yet another time, that they still did not have my jeans!! i can't blame her, i mean, i was starting to get annoyed by me!

well, today was the day!! i called and it was a girl i had never spoken to before. she put me on hold.... she picked up the phone and she said the words i had been waiting to hear for the last month, "yes, we have them. would you like me to put them on hold for you?"

unbelieving and wanting to make sure i heard her right i asked, "are they diva?"

nordstrom rack girl: "yes, they are the diva style."

me: "how many do you have?"

nrg: "i only saw this one."

me (disappointed, yet jubilant at the same time): "i'm on my way!"

now, i'm just trying to figure out how long i should wait until i start calling again!

the one thing i didn't think about

one thing i forgot to do before i sold our camera was to have a photo shoot with our girls.

yesterday morning i got a call wondering if the camera could be picked up that day! yikes! that meant i HAD TO get pictures of my girls that afternoon! problem was that nani didn't get home from school until close to 3:00 and the baby needed to go down for a nap by 2:00 at the latest. on top of that, we had swimming until 2:00 with lala and then again at 6:00 with nani!

so, as soon as nani got home i told her to change and we tried to snap some quick pictures so that the baby could go down for her nap, asap! well, as i'm sure many of you can attest to, a tired baby does NOT make for a good photo shoot!! and i have proof!

now, doesn't lala look so cute! oops, the baby is not too happy! let's try again....

lookin' good lala! kawena this is fun, really!! just smile and then i'll put you to bed! i promise! where are you going? get back here! i'm not done yet!

i give up!!

"national treasure: book of secrets" movie review

so, did you know that the movie national treasure: book of secrets is coming out on friday?

mitch and i really enjoyed the first national treasure movie, in fact we own it on dvd. it was very refreshing to see a funny, entertaining, suspenseful, action movie that was clean, for a change.

so, when we heard there was going to be a second movie, we were very excited! when i got us FREE tickets, popcorn and drinks to a private pre-screening of the movie i was even more excited (i kept it a surprise from mitch. did i mention he hates surprises? so it was fun for me, but not so much for him! but he forgave me!)! it was hard for me to contain my excitement, which probably just infuriated mitch even more because he had no clue where we were going!

i had never been to a private pre-screening of any movie, and we loved it! we felt so important and special!

we give it 2 thumbs up! if you enjoyed the first one you will enjoy this one! it was entertaining, exciting, funny, adventurous, and it was clean!

go see it!

do you got stinky buns?

how stinky are they?

oh... that stinky, huh? that's bad! let me help you with that!

to have or not to have?

we have an ongoing thing between mitch and i about how i wear my hair. bm (before mitch), and for several years after we married, i always wore my hair without bangs. when it comes to my hair i've just preferred low maintenance, easy to fix styles. having no bangs was super duper easy. just dry and go! how much better could it be?!

well, enter mitch in my life, a wonderful moment, of course, but with it brought a new opinion on the hair issue. several years after being married, mitch casually mentioned that he thought i should try bangs! what?! so, i had a personal, inner struggle. bangs would mean that i would actually have to fix my hair, something i tried to avoid. however, i was a bit curious about how i would look with bangs, but if i didn't like it, it would take a long time to grow them back out! what to do??

so, i figured, it's just hair and it will grow back. i went ahead and got my hair cut with bangs. i liked it and i hated it, for the reasons that i knew i would! i hated having to fix my hair and i hated not being able to just tuck my hair behind my ears. i hated not knowing if my hair looked funny when a hair was out of place. i hated the maintenance. i liked the style it gave to me. i liked the different options. i liked that mitch loved it.

it lasted only until our third baby was born when i decided i didn't have the time to mess with it. so, i grew out the bangs. and that is where i am right now!

last week, we went to get our hair cuts and mitch mentioned that i should try bangs again! and so it begins!

this is where you come in. i need your honest opinion! bangs or no bangs? let me tell you, it was soooo hard to find pictures of myself, but after searching long and hard, this is what i came up with:

no bangs (carefree and oh so easy):




bangs (high maintenance, but stylish and preferred by hubby):

what do you all think?

So long farewell, auf weidersehen good-bye

wow! you guys are amazing! when i decided to sell my camera, i thought that i would post it on my blog, just in case any of you would be interested. then, i would post it on craigslist. i fully expected to post it on craigslist, but it never even got that far! i was amazed at the quick response that i had from several of you!

i wish that i had a camera to sell to each of you who were interested, but of course, that is not the case! it was hard because i didn't want to choose between friends, so i decided that i would just have to sell it to the first offer i got. and so i did!

the only problem is, i realized too late, is that now we will not have a camera for christmas! i know! how can you do christmas witout a camera!? let me tell it will be hard, especially for a photography enthusiast like myself! mitch did reminded me, however, that we do have nani's camera. yea, her 3.2 megapixel fuji point and shoot! it's going to kill me, but it will have to do! what other choice do we have? so, any pictures taken from now until the end of the year, when we get to california to claim this beauty


will be pixelated and grainy and not up to par! i will be okay, i will be okay, i will be okay! i just have to keep telling myself it will be fine! christmas without our camera??!!! this will be tough, but i know it had to be done in order to get our new baby, the nikon d200 with the vr 18-200mm lens! oh yea!! i can't wait! i feel like a kid again!

my turn

when nani and lala were babies, they were always so excellent at their doctors appointments. i remember numerous times waiting for the doctor to come to our room and i would hear the most horrendous screams coming from the next room over. i always felt so bad for the baby, but not only the baby, but the mother, as well.

i was so grateful for my perfect little angel baby that would smile at the doctor and cry minimally when given her shots.

i heard horror stories from my friends about how traumatic their trips to the doctors were and i again was so grateful and wondered why my girls were so good. why was it so horrible for everyone else??

well, our third daughter has changed all of that! when she was just a brand new baby the doctors was very uneventful for her. i think it was her 6 month appointment when things began to change. at first, she just hated that crinkly paper covering the patient table, which was easily fixed. we would just move the paper out of the way and she was fine. the appointments, however have gone from bad to worse!

today, kawena had her 14 month appointment. when we got into the room i laid her down on the crinkly paper and she freaked out, i mean major freak out!! so i moved it out of the way and it did nothing to calm her fit! so, i struggled to strip her down. i laid her on the baby scale and she almost flipped herself off of the thing she was flippin' out (literally) so bad! the nurse and i tried to keep her on there without putting our weight on the scale, not an easy thing to do!! i don't know how accurate her 20 pound measurement was, but we both were satisfied to just get her off of the scale and into my arms.

after letting her calm down for several moments we had to attempt to get her head circumference and height! to get her height we have to lay her down on the crinkly paper so they can mark it on the paper. kawena went into screaming fits when i laid her down again! let me tell you, that girl is STRONG!! we were both holding her down and she was still squirming under us! she was screaming so hard, you know the kind when you're staring at your child thinking, "okay breathe. breathe! BREATHE!!" and then they finally do and then you're able to breathe yourself!

while measuring her head, kawena ripped the tape measure off before the nurse could get the measurement. of course, then the nurse just had to do it again!!

at this point i was thinking, "and this is the easy part! the bad part hasn't even happened!" i think the poor girl just remembers the doctors office and what happened the last few times she was there! she knows!! my other girls never even batted an eye when it came to the doctors!! so weird how different each child is!

she did much better than i thought she would with her 3 shots, considering everything leading up to them! i am just glad that is over and i won't have to do it again for another 4 months!!

so, in the end, i turned into that poor mother in the next room with the screaming child! isn't it funny how that happens!?

for sale by owner

what am i selling?? well, i am selling my camera! that's right, my beloved camera that has captured so many great moments for our family as well as those of our friends families (the may's and the wilde's and the dimit's )!

it has been a great camera for us and i wouldn't be selling it if it weren't for the great offer my dad has made us for his nikon d200. his is probably more camera than i need at the moment, but i will just grow into it, right?! i can't pass up such an awesome deal!!

anyway, i thought i would post this just in case, by the slight chance, any of my friends are in the market for an excellent digital slr camera. christmas is only 9 days away, people!!

i want to sell it all at a great price! here is what i am selling:

• nikon d50 camera body w/ body cap
• nikkor 18-55mm lens (great basic lens)
• nikkor 55-200mm lens with lens and end cap, soft pouch, and lens hood (this is an awesome zoom lens for all of the close-up that i love to do of my girls!)
• targus camera bag
• two 1 GB sd cards
• battery and charger
• the box and all of the stuff that came in the box (manuals, camera strap, software, all cables, you know the normal in the box kind of stuff!)

basically, you won't have to go out and buy anything extra for the camera.

if you are interested or have questions, just email me at mahinamason@comcast.net.

fyi, if you are in the market, if not sorry for this boring post! more entertaining stuff tomorrow! you know, things like cheerios in the nose or toddler poop on the carpet....

you what?

lala cracks me up! but this is no surprise to anyone who knows this second daughter of ours! she definitely got the entertaining/funny gene!

yesterday, i was making a very nutritious dinner of chicken nuggets and fries for the girls when i hear lala groaning in the other room. then i hear a very urgent yelp, it was a very strange sound. lala comes and stands in the hallway to the kitchen holding a tissue and she has a very scared look on her face and close to tears.

me (very concerned): lala what's wrong?

lala: i have food in my nose!

me (wondering if i had heard her right): you have food in your nose??!

lala (almost crying): yes!

me: well, how did it get there? did you put it up there?

lala: nods her head

me (trying hard not to laugh): why did you do that?

lala: shrugs her shoulders with a sheepish look on her face

i proceed to try and get the fruity cheerio out of her nose with my pinkie nail, only to have it get pushed further back into her nostril. so, i grab the next best thing for extracting cheerios out of noses...a toothpick!

me: lala don't sniff in! blow out!

thankfully, without doing further damage to her cute little nose i successfully removed the cheerio. but i had to make sure...

me: so, are you going to put food in your nose anymore?

lala: no!

unfortunately, lala would not let me take a picture of her during this whole ordeal! no amount of bribery would change her mind! dang it!!

ornaments

i got the macro lens out yesterday to see if i could capture any good shots of the ornaments or lights on the tree. a macro lens is pretty tricky to handle, so because this is only my second time using it, the pictures are not as crisp as i would like. but here are some of my favorites!


doesn't the purple and gold look nice together? i do realize there is silver on the purple ball, which would normally bother me, but i didn't notice it until just now! so, i obviously can't tell on the tree! good thing!

we've got little gold bells and purple bells on our tree.





snowflake




oh look, it's me in the gold ornament! cool!




everyone wave hi to nani!

o tannenbaum

for those of you who have been waiting, i finally took pictures of our decorated christmas tree! i think all in all, mitch ended up putting 1200 lights on our 10 foot tree!! wow! that's a lot of lights! it sure is brilliant! mitch keeps telling everyone that we don't need to use any other lights. just turn on the christmas tree and it gives off enough light to cook by and eat dinner by!

after our annual ornament discussion, we decided to try purple and gold this year! i wasn't sure how the two would look together, but it actually turned out very nice!

the night we decorated, i don't know why, but it took us until 10 or 11 at night to get all the decorations on and to put out our snow village. here are the girls in the pj's enjoying the decorating process. if you'll notice the bottom 2 feet of the tree is pretty bare! kawena has actually been surprisingly good about the tree. she loves to look at it and every once in awhile she forgets the tree is not for touching. we'll quickly remind her and she'll step back and just look!




here's the tree at night. mitch played around with the aperature and shutter speed to get these two very different exposures of the tree!

here you can get an idea of just how bright 1200 christmas tree lights are! the reason it takes that many lights is because mitch meticulously wraps the lights around every branch of the tree all the way to the trunk! i love the effect!

we really could eat dinner by tree light! so romantic!!

lame blogger

i've been getting some flack from some of my fellow bloggers, for being such a lame blogger the last few weeks! i don't know what has come over me, but i have been struggling to blog! it's not for a lack of material and stories in my life, believe me i have been swirling ideas around in my head for over a week! i just can't seem to sit down and put them into words! i wish you could all just link into my head and read my thoughts!

uhhh, on second thought, that might be bad for me and scary for you!

maybe, if you could just tap into my "blog thoughts" that would be much more productive and it would make my lack of blogging desire, moot! plus, you wouldn't have to know, first hand, what goes through this little head of mine (it's enough to drive one crazy, namely, me!).

maybe one day, hopefully one day very soon, i will get over this slump and you will be bombarded with posts from me and you will wish that i would just stop already!! or maybe i'll just snap out of it and get back into my weekly blogging routine!

whatever happens, i'm just glad to know that you'll be there to welcome me back!!

12 days of Christmas with a twist

these guys are very talented and so funny! enjoy a little holiday treat for your ears!

the dispute

you asked what the dispute was about in this post, so i will tell you, because i love you all and it's not nice to keep secrets! so, here it is:

since we got our tree this weekend we naturally started discussing what color we want to decorate our tree this year. now, i understand that most of you probably don't even have this discussion in your family, at least it never was a discussion in our family growing up. we would just decorate the tree with whatever ornaments we had in the christmas boxes. but for some reason, which reason i am unsure about, we have this discussion each year.

the first christmas that lala was able to talk and share her opinion readily, she informed us that she wanted a purple christmas tree. so, mitch and i thought, "hey why not!" (points to mitch for agreeing to have a purple tree, but i guess that is what happens when there is no other male representation in the family) so, that christmas we bought a huge box of purple plastic ornaments (that look like glass, a wonderful invention) and a box of silver plastic ornaments. that year we gave our second daughter the purple tree she wanted, because we are just nice that way!

during the after christmas sales that same year we went and bought a box of the same ornaments that were red, highly discounted, of course! so, last year we had a red tree.

but i digress! back to the dispute. on tuesday night mitch went to freddies and bought 600 more white christmas lights so he could add them the already 800 lights on the tree to finish "lighting" it. while he was there, he bought a box of gold plastic ornaments that he thought we would use this year. when he got home i told him that we did red and gold last year, so i didn't want to do gold this year. he, however said that it was red and silver.

that's when i got all high and mighty and said, "we've got pictures of the tree! i'll go find them and show you that the tree was red and GOLD, not silver!" he told me to look in the morning because it was too late. then he told me to post the pictures on my blog with the title "this is for mitch" and the words, "see i told you so!" that way he could see it at work.

well, you see how that turned out, and there you have it!

"tree"dition

on saturday we braved the weather and, despite the snow flurries and freezing rain, we made the scenic drive out to banks to the schmidlin tree farm in search of the perfect tree! this is always a fun outing for our family and we really look forward to it! last year was the first year we went to schmidlin's and we decided that that was the place to get a tree! they have the best trees we've ever seen in our many years of u-cut tree farms!

you're probably wondering why we drive all the way out to banks to buy a tree when we could find one that is so much closer to home. like i said before, the trees are awesome and the people are super friendly! we also, have made a day out of getting the tree. after finding the perfect tree, on our way home we stop at the little main street pizza parlor for pizza. nani even picked out the same booth that we sat in last year! she takes this tradition thing seriously!!

when we got there the heavens opened up and poured down buckets. then it turned to a few snow flurries, which are much more bearable than buckets of rain, especially when we didn't bring rain jackets for lala or myself and we had no umbrellas. as we walked through the fields to get to the trees, we could feel our feet get heavier with each step, as our boots got caked layer upon layer of fresh, squishy mud!

as is tradition, we find the first tree that we like, but can't just pick the first tree, we must look some more. however, inevitably, after sloshing through the muck and mud for another half hour, we always go back to the first tree that we found and cut it down! maybe next time we will save the thirty minutes and just cut down that first tree, but probably not! it's all about tradition, right!?

here's mitch educating the girls on how old our tree is! do you like the foggy effect on this picture? well, it actually occurred naturally, i didn't mess with this photo! really, i didn't! i was protecting the camera from the rain and wet by keeping it in my coat. i'd quickly take it out snap a few shots, then quickly hide it in my coat. apparently the lens fogged up. kind of cool looking, huh?


here's my strapping, youthful husband carrying our tree, and not to mention about to plow over our second daughter, single-handedly without any help! you should have seen him throw that tree over his shoulder, as if it were nothing! oh how i love a strong man!


this is probably my favorite part! first they shake all of the water and needles and bugs out of our tree (i wasn't quick enough fumbling with my coat buttons to capture that on film). then they send it through the "wrapper", that's what we call it.


and this is how it comes out, all cute and easy to maneuver!


and here are the girls toughin' it out in the cold, wet weather.


i'm not sure what lala was doing here. maybe trying to catch a flake or two of snow? she caught some in her hair!


now this is the way to go! kawena was the only one that didn't have mud caked on her pretty little shoes!

and the perfect tree! isn't it lovely? naw, i just thought the tree looked so funny that i had to take a picture of it as they unwrapped it!

i will post pictures of the tree once mitch finishes putting the last 600 lights on. yesterday, he worked on getting the lights on the tree, but i guess the 800 lights we had wasn't quite enough so he went out last night and got 600 more! i know, we go a bit crazy with the lights, but it is the dang brightest tree you'll ever see!

this is for mitch

okay, so you were right! gulp...

but look what i found while searching for our tree from last year! i just had to share because they were so dang cute! the baby doesn't look too sure about the whole thing, but look how little she was! it's amazing what a year can do! nani even looks younger in this picture!

this is what you're supposed to look like

last week i had a very bad yelling day (read: i was yelling a lot at my 2 oldest daughters)! when i have days like that i always feel horrible about myself and sorry for my children! so, why, you might ask, do i have bad yelling days? if i knew the answer i wouldn't have bad yelling days anymore!!

anyway, after yelling at nani for, goodness knows what, i went into the kitchen to make dinner. about 2 minutes later nani comes up to my side and says, "mommie this is what you're supposed to look like!" then she holds up this picture that she drew for me, probably for moments just like this:

thanks, sweetie! i'll try to remember that!

lightbulbs

yesterday was a yucky, stormy, rainy, and windy day! actually, i should say the last two days were! i can't remember it ever raining for this long without stopping since we moved here 7 years ago!

while i was fixing breakfast for the girls yesterday morning, there was a slight power "wobble" where the power was trying to decide if it wanted to fight the storm or just give in. you know what it's like; the lights dim, then they flicker, then they dim again, then the power goes full force and the lights, thankfully, are shining brightly!

well, that is what happened while i was scrambling up some eggs. then suddenly, the girls ran into the kitchen with great urgency and purpose screaming, "mommie, mommie, we need to buy new lightbulbs because all of the lights are dying!"

i love when my day starts out with a giggle! i knew it was going to be a good day, despite the gloom and lack of sunshine!

no time! I've had a crazy, busy day, but i did want to quickly just say that

I LOVE MITCH!!

we have been married for 8 years today, which, oh my goodness, just sounds like a long time, especially since we are both only 21!!! how did that happen?

anyway, i wanted to do more than just say this, but i have no time to compose a sappy, witty post gushing with love and such things! maybe i can do an addendum to this post tomorrow!? we'll see!

happy 8th anniversary to us!!


we are off to the macaroni grill where it all started with our first date, only difference is that we are 8 years older, driving a slower, more sensible, not to mention more responsible and safer vehicle. (mitch picked me up on his bullet bike for our first date! vroom vroom! it was exciting!! his only rule was that i hold on tight! i did a pretty good job!)

here is one last picture! ahh, so sweet!

note: sorry about the pictures! we got married way back before the digital era, so i had to scan our pictures from our wedding album! yea, i know, what does that say about how old we are?? but that's the way it is!