A Year in Review

So, I've got a pile of Christmas cards to mail off (late I know) that promise a year in review slide show here. I've been (mostly) good about keeping the blog up so if you haven't been keeping up and want to know more of what's been going on just scroll down.

Let's see what are the big things that have happened?
1-2. Daniel cut 2 new albums this year. One for Rotten Musicians and one for his Fisch Loops project. Yes that is my Ba Gee (lovely aunt that passed away when I was little) on the cover of the new Fisch Loops. Daniel and I both really loved that picture of her.
3-4. We took a trip to Vegas, stopping at thrift stores looking for records for daniel, and quilt stores looking for fabric for me. See this blog post for more pictures of that trip.
5-6. I became obsessed with making bread from scratch. I've got a tupperware full of dough in the fridge even now.
7-9. We made a music video. Let me teach you a new word "larp" live action role player. Well, they are basically people that dress up like characters and act out dungeons and dragons games with swords and "spells" and shields and all that. If you haven't watched the music video, either click here or on the right hand column to see it.
10-13.5. My RaeGun store has really taken off, so much so that I've purposely limited the number of orders I take so I can work on the dissertation properly. I still love making the baby clothes for sure but I know I need to get this dissertation done. I do update that blog A LOT if you want to check that and I've sold a bunch of stuff through one of the local boutiques and a good number of them around the country and even in Singapore. It was really hard to find the balance between this and school but I think I did it.
14-19. This year Daniel added me and Kelli (Mark's girlfriend) to the Rotten Musician show. It's loads of fun for all of us. In addition to the normal music we've got sesame street style spell-a-longs, dancing and even bubbles. Practices have been in Josh's garage -good times.
20. I entered a dress (commissioned by a friend) into the state fair and won second place. I'm excited to really work hard on something for next year.
21. Daniel has had some fun times with needles this year, putting us in the ER twice and giving him a fun 24 hour EEG (yeah that freaked out the boys at the pizza place). He's fine but for some reason his body just can't recover on it's own after he faints. The doctor's say this kind of thing just happens so hopefully laying down and hydrating before doing needle stuff will prevent any more ER visits in the next year. Although I believe Daniel intends to do everything to avoid needles, I'm pretty sure he's supposed to be getting a TB test.
22. I've had the absolute best class (teaching-wise) ever. They were all so pleasant, smart, eager and well prepared. I think I'm spoiled for any future students, they were that great.
23-24. Daniel has gotten some press in the local papers. Here's the link for the web version of one, another, another, a podcast interview, a write up about Julio Child project (my personal fav) those are all of them that I can remember.
25-28. We watched Tanya's Tiraya grow into the spitting image of her mother -sadly through Tanya's blog and not in person.
29-32. We welcomed a new baby niece Lanna (another from Tanya) into the family. We're hoping she and the rest of them will be living close by very very soon.
33-35. We'll that's about all we've got for you. Hope you all had a good year too.

 

Some Sights from the Week


At the very last minute I came up with Halloween costumes, I'd been bugged for a month trying to come up with something good. I'm quite happy with the outcome. I was an underage Chinese gymnast. Daniel was Bela Karolyi, I had like 8 puffy colorful hair clips and I sewed a Chinese flag to the sleeve. I made grips but of course I left those at home.

We've been super busy (Tuesday's are my only unscheduled weeknight) but here are a few shots of what has gone on this week.


Here's a little movie from Elektra's birthday party. She seemed quite happy with the Fancy Nancy dress and boa we gave her and totally ecstatic over Mark's gift. She actually held it to her chest and said "this is the best day of my life" too bad I didn't get that on film but this is cute too. Oh I also added a little button to my flickr to the right I put a few more pictures of Halloween and I add pics there regularly.

Goings On Lately

1. I've been making loads of costumes, including many fancy nancy dresses and costumes for baby lanna (french fries) and tira (pebbles).
2. Daniel's been doing a lot of meetings with different press folks for Rotten Musicians. Listen to an interview here and be sure to pick up this week's City Weekly if you're in SLC.
3. I gave a good presentation at school that hopefully will be turned into a chapter of my dissertation.
4. I've scaled down the store so I can focus on school more.
5. We've had loads of practice for Friday's show at Kilby Court. Please come if you're in town.
6. We had the first snow of the year.
7. I feel like we've been so so busy, but I guess it's just the normal busy of life, work and sewing, not much to report
8. We watched WALLE which we thoroughly enjoyed, we do have a few questions though: what was the dust storm and why didn't it happen when they returned (more of daniel's question), how did they make babies if they didn't move, how did the plant grow in the fridge without light or C02? yeah but we liked it none-the-less

Happy Birthday to Daniel's Mama

Now Happy Birthday to My Papa


It's technically not your birthday here but I guess you know when your own birthday is. We can pretend that this bread is a cake and that you are actually in the same country as me and that we are having a little birthday party. Lots of birthdays in like a two week span, 3 down 1 to go. If any of you want to read about my bread and my day go here.

Happy Birthday (observed) to Daniel's Daddy and Uncle Donald

Although the day they popped into the world to surprise Grandma Mary with the news that she'd be taking home two babies instead of one was Friday, the festivities will be today. So Happy Birthday. I'll try to remember to take a birthday lunch picture to add to this post later.

Happy Birthday to My Mama

 

Special for you delicious baby burger.

Highlights from the Week

 

1. Thanks to Adam, everyone's favorite dungeon master, Daniel is fixing the toilet as I type, the kit was very inexpensive woohoo.
2. We learned about the dine-o-round earlier than usual and we've already hit one restaurant with plans to go to another.
3. Daniel found a new box of Harry Potter Jelly beans with some new gross flavors including skunk and pencil shavings.
4. I finished (finally) that dumb Plato research.
5. We locked ourselves out of the house and Daniel climbed in through the window and as a result kind of fixed the screen.
6. And the best of all: I found out that jerk from Best Buy got demoted and there is a new geek squad supervisor.

(note: Daniel is now yelling at the directions so we'll see if the toilet gets fixed after all.)

It just happened.



We got sucked into Hole in the Wall.

It's so ridiculous regularly, but today I almost choked on a cookie it was so funny and then almost spit up/snorted up milk, all the while as Daniel kept on saying "he's mounting her...he's an adult...they are rolling around on the floor." (They had little people you know midgets on today and one hugged the female host -in her extremely teeny skirt- and wrapped his legs around her body. Her face was utter shock.) We just realized she's wearing knee pads just for them.

Utah State Fair

Getting Ready For The Green Desert



After a little pizza at Brewviews and Mark's little Geek podcast we decided to work on signs. I think they turned out very nice. This part of the show is going to be really fun. Here are some pictures. Click here to watch a funny movie I like to call "Don't Film me While I'm Dancing Like a Sissy" that I snuck while we were painting the signs. The festival show is on September 19th kinda far but I think they're planning on playing some more shows (or any shows)sometime soon. So stay tuned and I'll let you know.

One of these things is not like the other

 

This was a real cart that was behind me in line at the market, I had to ask to take a picture.

Life is pretty tiresome. Despite efforts to be responsible Daniel and I continue to be hit by annoyances. We worked really hard to get out of debt and build an emergency fund and it is now depleated. It's just been one thing after another this Summer. Thankfully we don't have anything but the house on payments so we can get by (thanks to Dave Ramsey's influence) but it's just exhausting. It seriously is just bad luck. It's like every (very expensive) thing we've had has died (some more than once) and inspite of research and getting professionals to pipe in on purchases we still have drama. We had a pretty good attitude at the beginning of all of this (hey that's why we had an emergency fund right) but not it's just so frustrating and tiresome now. And really I think we're fine money-wise (we can pay for it all) it's just dealing with everything and knowing that we aren't saving for a bigger place.

I started up school (I really like my students this time around) and I've had a couple of large RaeGun orders so I am extremely tired and Daniel is trying to juggle writing music for other people, getting ready for a show and changes in job stuff.

And I know that in the grand scheme of things we're still really lucky and things are good but it's still tiring and I find myself feeling bad about feeling bad because other people are having to deal with way worse.

Here you go the pictures are in

The baby is here

All the info I have are in these two emails from my mama, no pictures yet.

baby lanna anne was born this afternoon, bangkok time around 3:30 p.m., don't know exact time yet, and she weighs around 3.6 kg, but don't know exact weight yet, and have no clue how long she is.... hope to have more info tomorrow. lanna is beautiful, fair with dark hair, waiting to see what color eyes she has. good set of lungs, keeping all those black hair yellow skin babies in the nursery awake with her cries!!

tanya doing well, much better than the first time around in california.

will send pictures and more info tomorrow. we weren't allowed to take pictures of the baby through the nursery window and we left the hospital before they brought the baby to the room because tiraya was getting upset about seeing tanya in the bed and not being able to get in the bed with her, she had been at the hospital with us all day, so she was pretty tired and cranky.

will email more!!

Like Heidi my first thought was how is that pronounced...and this was the reply

"lah nah," means plains and rice fields, so in other words, abundance.... (actually kind of like lana turner, but we didn't want the rednecks calling her lay nah...)

she's so cute, we're going to the hospital now. wah wah woke up this morning and said "go" and when I asked her go where?, she made a gesture like rocking a baby and said 'baby" so i think she wants to go see tanya and the baby.

we're having a civil unrest at the moment, not a military coup d'etat, but a civilian take over of t.v. stations and government buildings... i'll keep you posted!!

After we confirmed the pronunciation Daniel immediately started singing

She's Lanna
From Tijuana
sits in the sauna
She drives a Honda
She's Lanna

I'm pretty sure none of those things are true but I have not meet her yet so I cannot be sure.

p.s. civil unrests and coups aren't uncommon in Thailand so don't freak out but I suppose prayers in their direction never hurt.

Some quotes I collected this week


"What's that guy about?" Daniel when he saw Chris Murphy (pictured above) looking bumish on the grass at Ava's birthday. He didn't know it was Chris and said it in front of a bunch of his family members hahaha.

"I think the customer will understand." 99cent store rep on TV speaking of raising their prices. No I don't think I'd understand.

"It's a big fat sausage, how is it swimming?" Daniel about the hippos pictured below

"Had I known I'd be around this many people I'd have gotten a Mohawk" Ebay after explaining that the barber at his black barbershop was trying to talk him into getting a Mohawk earlier that day

"Mrs. Fischer I poked my eye with general grievous." a new kindergartner, while rubbing his eye, to Cathy after church where he was playing with an action figure

Daniel Said, "Do you want to see something cute?"


And this is what he showed me.

happy birthday Ava
 

Hope you have a great birthday!

Enjoying the Olympics



Daniel and I are really enjoying the Olympics. I have the VCR set to record all the gymnastics and the diving. Apparently Daniel has never seen synchronized diving so that is pretty fun...that reminds me we've got to look up synchronized swimming and I didn't see rhythmic gymnastics, do they not do that any more? Any ways the gymnasts are fun but our favorite has to be watching Bob (Uptown) Costus and Bela Karolyi in between things. Bela is not shy at all that he thinks that the Chinese are using underage gymnasts and that there is cheating going on. And it's fun to see how Costus handle's Bela's super harsh remarks. If you haven't seen it you should look it up, it's pretty funny.

Well thank goodness it let me type this we've had major computer drama which I posted about on the raegun blog, but I'm mostly used to it so I don't want to ruin my decent mood by posting about it here.

What's going on



We've been super busy, overwhelmingly so and things keep on breaking adding to our already stressed days.

Here's a review of the week...
1. Finally got over to the Murphy Abode to meet baby Stryder who is reported to sleep less than Ava (yikes). I guess he'll handle 30 minutes and then wake himself up. So those guys are tired. But he definitely is cudley. Daniel found himself doing the chick dance with Ava as you can see in the video.
2. Nada Surf at Gallivan where I saw the infamous Jose. I guess they flew him in to do guitar tech stuff just for the day.
3. We did pool and dinner with Heidi and Daniel which was lots of fun. And I tried a new recipe...tollhouse pie, I really liked it. It's here if you want to peek (I halved the butter and added a tsp of vanilla).
4. Our car was in the shop twice this week yes I think that's a total of 5 times over the last 3 weeks.
5. The computer is on it's last leg to get power it likes the plug to be completely hanging out, so only balanced and it keeps shutting down without warning. So we bought a new one and what did they have there...a wii fit. So we got that too. It's nice not to have enough money to charge things but I guess it helps that we don't spend that much to begin with, but yeah so we had a big spending day which was a bit stressful.
6. We're successfully jugglying the one car in spite of Daniel's yucky new schedule that they forced onto all state workers. It's supposed to be 8:30 am to 7pm M-F but from what I see from the parking lot most people aren't sticking to those schedules and I haven't meet one person who doesn't complain about it. Daniel reports that many people are seeking other means of employment. It doesn't look like the State thought through this decision very well.
7. Lots of meetings, sewing, pushing the video, grades were due, all of that normal stuff. So we're good but we've been non-stop and battling little fires.
8. Oh and we've had lots of fun watching So You Think You Can Dance, especially Tabitha and Napoleon's choreography, but we totally disagree with America's voting through the whole thing.