*Have you checked out my birthday giveaway yet?  No?  Then get to it!  Click here! It ends this Friday!* —————————- I’m still recovering from the whole 3-day weekend/birthday celebration thing and have fallen behind with everything related to the internet (again). It’s amazing how so many things happen when you don’t read Facebook/blogs/etc for just a few days! Anyway, I had a great birthday weekend. It was a very low-key affair. No parties or gatherings or big fancy presents. Just a bit of family time with E and Jason which is totally fine with me. So here’s a quick-ish rundown of my weekend… Salvation Army BazaarRead More →

*Have you checked out my birthday giveaway yet?  No?  Then get to it!  Click here! It ends next Friday!* —————————- Dear mom and dad, Today, I wanted to thank you for giving me life. Mom, you had to deal with me for 9 months and then, on this day, 31 years ago, you went through one of the longest and possibly most painful labor just because I refused to be born.  At least this is what I’ve been told. You two have given me an incredible childhood, one where I got to know what being in a big family was really like. Sure, there was drama,Read More →

Tomorrow’s my birthday but I wanted to get a head start this year by giving myself a birthday weekend! It just so happens that my birthday this year coincides with a 3 day holiday in Japan so I felt that I should extend the celebrations over a few days 🙂 Today will be my pre-birthday day! Yay! But then again, celebrating my birthday this year feels a little weird for me now because of the passing of Steve Jobs late Wednesday evening. I am actually quite sad about his sudden passing though I’m not quite sure why. I still remember when Jason emailed me yesterdayRead More →

I’m turning 31 this coming Saturday. I’m totally psyched about it 🙂 Not because I’m going to have a big fancy party or that I’m getting a nice, fancy gift….just because I’m going to be 1 year older and I think it’s enough of a reason to celebrate. I celebrate life regardless of how old I will be. Of course, thinking about it now, I feel as if I should feel old even though 31 isn’t really considered old. Just that I spend a lot of my days in the company of 18-22 year olds who talk about feeling old but at the same timeRead More →

We had planned to go out to Tokyo Tower today since they have a Baskin Robbins in the small shopping area there and because we live close by. Except we ended up staying home most of the day since Jason was feeling under the weather and the three of us were a coughing mess. As we were getting ready to go out for some dinner, Jason and I had this amusing conversation (well to us anyway) Me: Aww, I wish we had gone to Tokyo Tower today. I wanted to get ice cream for daughter. Jason: Ice cream? Me: Yea, they have a 31’s there.Read More →

When it comes to clothes, E is especially picky about what type of pants she wears. And I mean throw-a-tantrum-and-refuse-to wear-pants picky. So on Thursday, I was doing dishes in the kitchen when Jason and E came home. As soon as her shoes were off and as she was walking past the kitchen, I hear her say “いらない!” (irainai, which mean “I don’t want it!”) and then she took off her pants, taking her socks off with them. I was unaware of what she had just done until Jason walked in, saw a pantless E and asked her in bewilderment “Daughter! Why did you takeRead More →

I was debating if I should participate this in this week’s Alphabe-Thursday especially since I’m behind in reading everyone else’s posts. Besides, X is a pretty hard letter to find a subject to write about. Plus, this fever of mine just won’t break for the life of me and I’m just hanging in this miserable place of being sick and not being able to get out of it. But my desire to blog trumps personal health (probably because I’m delirious at this moment) and so I present you my ‘X’ letter post! I had a tough time thinking of words that started with ‘X’ soRead More →

We had a 3 day weekend this week but I spent most of it sick in bed. It was inevitable since both Jason and E have been sick the past week and a half. I was hoping I could make it out of this one without catching whatever they had but on Saturday, I began to feel the aches and pains that came with being sick. E and I were hanging out when I started feeling tired and needed to lay down for a bit. E didn’t want me to go and then this conversation happened. (translation in parenthesis) me: Ellie, mommy wants to go lieRead More →