A Day in the Life

Happy 1st Birthday Sebastian!

August 14, 2012

Pick up Daddy from the airport.

 

 

Lunch at Wahoo's.  Ordered his first kids meal - cheese quesadilla, beans & rice.

Birthday dessert - Golden Spoon. He didn't like it, it was too cold.

 

 

Watching the fountain at Daddy's work.

Reading his birthday cards.

Chocolate cake from JJs.  Note: frosting in the eye is a very bad thing.

 

 

Staying up late for presents. A red car and dump truck with Mega Blocks.

 

Confession - Dirty Little Secret

I have a confession to make. I used to feel so smug because my kitchen didn't have a junk drawer.  Everyone has one, right?  I thought I was the queen of organization because my kitchen didn't have the space for a junk drawer.  My coupons are organized in an envelope.  Take out menus have a little bin.  The worst offender in my kitchen was an old flower pot that held some batteries, a nightlight, and some gift cards.  That made me better than everyone else who had a junk drawer in their kitchen, right?

Wrong.

So, very, very, very wrong.  It's WORSE.

Look away, don't stare for too long.  You may go blind!

I have a junk CABINET!!!  It's probably the size of 50 kitchen junk drawers.  It's in my bathroom, of all places, and it's my dirty little secret.

Ok, it's kinda organized.  Photo albums on the top shelf.  Craft stuff and candles on the bottom, and a little of both worlds on the middle shelf.  But...in my eyes it's far worse than a kitchen junk drawer due to its size and the amount of stuff I keep cramming into it. 

I browse lots of blogs on here and some of the more crafty, thrifty, on-it, women would follow up with an after picture of their newly organized, so fresh, cleaned out, beautified cabinet.  I'm not going to do that.  I know where everything is and I haven't run out of space yet.  I just wanted to give myself a reality check and share that just because my KITCHEN doesn't have a junk drawer doesn't mean my BATHROOM can't.  To anyone reading, open your kitchen junk drawer and smile that it's so cute and compact and a billion times smaller than my cabinet.

Summer Sport

Hmm, I still have more to post about the birthday, but, I thought it would be time for a non-birthday post.  In part, I'm feeling a bit unmotivated to crop, resize, and edit the pictures I want to share.  So, I thought, since its been a week since I said anything, I would go for an easier post.  If you wanted to read a baby post, you should just stop now, I promise, this post won't interest you.  It's more for me and my typing, and the picture(s) I want to post are already to go.

One of my earlier posts was about my hockey love and how I sort of accidentally started following it.  A few years ago, I stumbled upon another sport and I fell in love.  I joke that it's perfect because it fills the void in the summer months when I don't have any sport to follow, but it's no joke, I really love it.  I still have a TON to learn, but, I consider myself a Formula 1 fan.  Yup, me...following, motorsport.

Haha, I know, what?!? 

Here's how it accidentally happened, and I kid you not, it's even more crazy than me following the NHL because I couldn't believe how low the scores were.  One night we couldn't sleep so we were channel surfing.  Adam stopped on the Speed network briefly to watch some car race.  They were racing in Europe, it was POURING down rain and I was fascinated by the little blinking red rain light on the back of the cars.  The cars all have a cameras on them and when we would get the view from the various cars, I couldn't believe how little you could see and how unbelievably close they were getting to the other cars because you seriously couldn't see them at all, only the little blinking light.

Done.  Haha, that's it.  THAT is how I came to follow F1.  The blinking red rain light called to me!

I eventually got sleepy, the sound of the engines was just the white noise I needed to get to bed, but I made Adam record it because I wanted to see who won.  Ok, maybe I wanted to see if there were any accidents too.  We started following along that season.  The Speed announcers are unbelievable, so everything I've learned is from their commentary and reading online.  There aren't any US drivers, the sport is really popular in Europe and Asia, but not so much here.  Someday I'd love to go to Europe and go to a Grand Prix there.  They're building a track in Austin, TX, so realistically, there's a better shot of going to a race there some day, but a girl can dream!

After following along about halfway through the 2010 season, we picked our favorite driver's.  We both liked the Red Bull team, but different drivers.  Naturally, my favorite driver is the better one since he's been the world champion the last two years ;) 

Earlier this season I saw something that was really neat.  Red Bull partnered up with a charity, if you made a donation you got to upload your picture and they put all the fan pictures onto their race car for the weekend.

Close up of the paint job.

They emailed these pictures after the race as a thank you for participating.

Vettel (my favorite driver) & Webber (Adam's favorite driver).  Go Red Bull!

 

The whole campaign had to do with spinal cord injury and cures.  I felt it was timely given my recent surgery and spinal cord tumor.  We had to donate!  The cars looked amazing.  It was so cool to see how the fan photos were incorporated and it was a really neat promotion.  Both driver's even finished on the podium that weekend too.

 

Who knows if some other sport will call to me in the future, right now hockey and F1 seem to be a nice combination since F1 races March-November, it fills the off-season hockey void.  One things for sure though.  I definitely love my sports fast paced.

Birthday Cake

I still have to go through Sebastian's birthday pictures, but I had to post a few from his birthday cupcake (and I needed to get in some typing practice for the day) - still hitting "S" when I want to hit "A." Super annoying.

Sebastian hadn't really had sweets prior to his birthday party.  We'd given him a few bites of Golden Spoon, but no cake or candy, and he tried juice once and didn't like it.  I didn't know how he'd react to having free reign of his cupcake so I went safe with funfetti and white frosting.  I'm happy to report he was calm for the singing of Happy Birthday too.  :)

Let's see if I can get away with touching this...

Instead of posting a bunch of individual pictures of Seb discovering cake, I tried to compile them like a film strip.  Basically he didn't know he could eat it.  He squashed it and reduced it to dust, and only a wee bit ended up in his hair, in his lap, and on the floor.  He ate about 3 bites and they were the ones I fed him, and then he tried to eat the fondant cupcake topper, which we then took away because we didn't want him to choke on it.

He smelled like cake for the remainder of the day.  Take a look at his hands and it's no wonder why! Poor cupcake didn't stand a chance.

It's a good sensory activity...right???

Happy 1st Birthday Sebastian!  Mommy and Daddy love you very much.  XOXO

My Boys

It's been a busy first birthday for Sebastian.  I'd like to post some pictures of what we did to celebrate...but I'm exhausted. Who knew a first birthday could be just as exhausting for me.  I realized today, as I was working on some stuff for Seb's party, that it might darn well kill me in the future for me to have Seb's birthday on the 14th and Adam's on the 17th.  I gotta do my best to make sure each of my boy's has their own birthday celebration.  This year we've got Seb's party on Saturday and we're going to celebrate Adam's birthday with my family on Sunday.  Come Monday, I might be passed out on the couch while Sebastian's at day care!



My blue eyed boys! <3

Coming up on One!

With everything that has gone on in my life over the past year it's no surprise that Sebastian's first birthday is less than 48 hours away.  Holy cow!  My baby is almost ONE.  I look back at his pictures over the year and can't believe how much he's grown and changed.  I'm definitely one proud (but tired) mama.  His latest discovery has been the stairs.  He can go up, but not down.  So we follow behind him as he climbs, then let him crawl around on the landing a bit before we carry him back down.  He never tires of this.  Ever.  We, on the other hand, are tired by the 5th or 6th time.  :)

Every kid's gotta have a first birthday party, right?  Seb's no different, but I didn't want to go too crazy since he's, well, one, he can't talk, doesn't really have friends, and has no concept of what a birthday is.  But...mommy and daddy have friends!  So I decided to keep it simple and do a BBQ lunch.  We're going with a race car theme because we're big F1 fans and the year I was pregnant there were 2 driver's named Sebastian.  Hearing their names during the races is what helped me get used to and warmed me up to the name (which Adam has always liked).  Nobody attending will get it, but I thought it was perfect to do race cars because one of the drivers always flashes a "1" finger when he wins or gets pole.  It's perfect for Sebastian's FIRST birthday. 

Seb's birthday invitation

In recovery news, the fingers on my right hand are still unable to feel temperature, but they don't have the heavy numb feeling my left hand does (still numb though).  I also seem to have better control of my right hand with typing than my left hand, which is difficult because I never realized how often one needs the letter "A" when typing...and I almost always miss it.  I also picked up and held a pen normally when I was writing checks and paying bills last week.  I still reposition it within my hand several times because I don't quite "feel" it, but it was huge to hold a pen normally and not drop it.  Baby steps, frustratingly small, but progress nonetheless, right?

Hockey Love

Growing up I was a total girly-girl.  While my sister was busy riding bikes and playing soccer with the boys outside, I was perfectly content to stay in with my barbies, cabbage patch kids, coloring - you name it, if it was an indoor activity, I was probably doing it.  My favorite part of girl scouts was the crafts.  I remember being bored out of my mind the year my sister played soccer and we had to go to the park during practice.  It's not that I didn't enjoy the park, but I was tired with it before practice was over.  I enjoyed riding my bike and roller skating, that was about it for my outdoor activities.

Somewhere along the line I surprised myself when I discovered hockey.  We were at my grandparents house for dinner and I think I was at age where Nikelodeon was too young for me, and since we didn't have cable TV, I hadn't yet discovered MTV.  There was an LA Kings game on, and for some reason I stopped and watched a bit of it.  I remember thinking, 'they suck, there should be way more goals scored.'  When we got home that night I recall watching the evening news and for the first time ever, actually paying attention to the sports report to see the final score of the game to make sure the local team had won. 

That is how it all started. 

My grandpa and I learned the rules of the sport together.  He bought me a book, we read about the Kings in the newspaper, and watched games together.  I loved babysitting next door because I could put games on their big screen TV when the kids were napping and after they had gone to bed because they had cable.  It was the 1992-1993 season and boy did I pick a good year to want to follow the sport!  The Kings went to the Stanley Cup finals but lost against Montreal.

I'm not sure if it was that year, or shortly thereafter, but the Anaheim Mighty Ducks joined the NHL and since the Pond was within bike riding distance from my house, it was fun to follow the progress of building an arena and an expansion team joining the league.  Prior to their existence I had never been to s professional hockey game.  This was back in the Kings silver and black days and there was that gang association with the jersey, I never asked my parents to take me because I figured they wouldn't, so when the Ducks came around, it was my chance to go to games often since it was about a 10 minute drive from our house.

Around 1999 or 2000 my brother was playing roller hockey when my dad came home one evening all excited to tell me that there was a women's league.  Did I want to play?  Umm, heck YEAH!  Well, I really wanted to play ice hockey but had no idea where to start and I knew it was expensive, so I figured roller hockey was my way to go.  For years I played, at one point I was even playing on three different teams at three different rinks.  Women's and co-ed, in Anaheim, Brea, and Huntington Beach.  I was playing everywhere and loving it!  I was the definition of rink rat.  I even got Adam playing because everyone knows it's way more fun to play than sit in the stands and watch.

Eventually a friend from my very first job, Jason, who also loved hockey and had started playing, started up an ice hockey team.  By this point in time I had graduated from college and was working full time so I could actually afford to upgrade and go with the more expensive version of the sport I loved.  :)  Unlike my roller hockey career, I played all my ice hockey in Anaheim at the Ducks practice facility and I didn't stop playing until mid-2010 when I had to give it up because we wanted to start a family.  I fully planned to go back after Sebastian was born too, even signing up to split a season with Adam so one of us to be home with the baby but my stupid tumor had other ideas.  My neurosurgeon very strongly advises against me ever playing again.  One big hit (even though the leagues are non-checking) or a bad fall and I could end up very seriously injured.  They're adult leagues, 98% of the players are men, so all 5"2 of me wouldn't win in a collision and the risk it too big. Now I hope I can look forward to Sebastian wanting to play hockey because I'd love to be a hockey mom.

Top row: Playing on NHL ice at the Pond (2005), Sofa Kings team (2008), final Kings home game of the season (2007)
Bottom row: Sitting on the Kings bench at Staples Center (2008), my 10-game weekend season tickets (2010)

Oh, and to bring this long post full circle, I've been a Kings fan since that 92-93 season.  :)  There were lots of miserable years, but since I followed the Kings before the Ducks even existed, I wasn't about to switch my loyalty.  This year was an amazing year to be a Kings fan too because they finally won the Stanley Cup.  I was watching and cheering (and maybe crying) the whole way, and loving every minute of it.

The DOL's

Have you met the DOL's?  My street is full of them.  In the late afternoon it can be quite the watering hole, a sort of happy hour.  There are usually 3, but sometimes several more join in.

What are the DOL's?

Dad's of Leisure.

Today the DOLs had found themselves a new hang out.  It's quite genius actually.  They were hanging out in the grassy area in the center of our street (which is circular shaped).  From this location, they can watch the incoming cars to know when their wives/girlfriends return home from work.  One of the DOLs has two young kids, so he's able to keep an eye on them as they ride their bikes around.  The center 'median' for lack of a better term, has some trees, so they get some shade too.  The one whose backyard borders the median was actually participating in the gathering by talking over his fence, kinda Wilson style from Home Improvement.  It's actually quite comical, but hey, as far as I can tell, they aren't employed, so by staying home and drinking their own beer, they're actually saving money, right?  They were out at 4 when I got home and they were still out drinking and chatting away when we went out for our evening walk at 6.  Maybe next time I should try to sneak a picture!