Those Asians All Look Alike

I came across some old photos from Ryan's childhood. One of them happened to lay around our house for quite a while because I was just too lazy to dig out the photo albums stuffed in Alexia's closet and put it away. The particular photo was of one of the tribal kids way back in the day (he grew up as a missionary kid in a tribe on an island in the Philippines).

Let me mention that I had recently got my hair cut to a bob above my shoulders (how my husband loves it), when Alexia finally stumbled across the photo:

And what was her response? 

Pointer finger to the face, and a very matter-of-fact, "Mama." 

Surely she didn't just say that. Nor did she think that little tribal boy was me, right? So of course I asked her again who that was in the picture. The girl didn't miss a beat and responded, "Mama." 

Awesome.

I probably would have felt self-conscious if I weren't laughing so hard. So much so, that I continued to ask her each day just to see if she still thought that was me in the photo. 

Hey, at least I have a good tan. 

Grossman Genes

It's taken me a while to finally show you what I'm talking about, when I say Naiya is a Baby Ryan.

Hello Ryan:

Hello Ryan Jr.:

Project: Budgeting

I realize I have a need for focusing on a project. I feel a bit lost and flounder if there's not a "mission" in my head. And considering my last project was to single-handedly pack and unpack a family of four (I'm not lying, Ryan will verify this-of course, not the actual manual labor of loading/unloading the trucks), I am now needing something that will somewhat stack up against it.

And being minutes from the mall and all the other shopping plazas, and maybe a slight nudge from my husband to stop making J.Crew shareholders rich, I have hereby declared my next project will be to get us back on a budget.

In the past, I have had several seasons of leading up the budget. With a slightly (okay, outright) obsessive style. To the point where I would call Ryan up at work and interrogate him about mystery purchases that were under $5. Not that the amount mattered, but I would get obsessed with finding a category for that purchase to go under. No purchase receipt left behind!

Ryan and I feel like this time will be the best time to focus on saving money. So watch out, here comes the new and improved Budgeter!

No, but really, I did just want to pass along a simple, and I mean simple, online budgeting tool. It's called Pear Budget. I'm doing the 30-day free trial, but I imagine the $3 per month price tag is something we can swing once my first 30 days are over.

I have used Microsoft Money in the past, and this time around with kids, it made my head spin to think about having to go through all those hoops again just to get our budget down on paper. I am in love with this website. I sat down and got us going in less than five minutes. No joke. Now I just have to start saving my receipts and be diligent to enter them in. But like I said, I'm looking for a project and I'm actually itching to start collecting receipts.

This girl's about to make Dave Ramsey one happy camper.

Condo Living

I've come full circle with living arrangements. I grew up in a 2-bed/2-bath condo most of my life, and here I am now with my own family, in a 2-bed/2-bath condo.

Although we miss our house terribly, to the point where we both kind of regret the decision to sell, I am trying to focus on the positives of our new, temporary home. And we look forward to the possibilities that moving into a new home next Spring will bring.

So we are renting a condo from our friends. They recently moved to Florida and haven't had any luck selling their place. And wouldn't you know, just around the time we needed to be out of our house, our friends were planning a trip back here to visit. And so we struck a double-benefitting deal to move in and got the keys to the place, and have the best landlords ever! It's so fun to live life here and think that my friend did the same mommy things here too. This place feels like such a gift from God, as we wait to move into another house this next Spring. (The older couple we are planning to buy from is waiting on their new house to be built, and we have both agreed that it would be best to let them not have to move twice.)

My main cup-is-half-full focus for our condo living is: convenience. 


Oh man, I could go on and on with how convenient this place is.

• Less space to clean, I've already realized how much more time I have to do other things than keep up our home.
• The washer/dryer is right outside our bedroom. Hallelujah! I never knew laundry could be so quick and easy. Why don't they make all homes w/ the laundry room right outside the master bedroom?
• Location, location, location. We are closer to downtown, in walking distance to Trader Joe's and the mall (I'm talking there's a path that goes straight to it). Grocery shopping has earned it's rightful place to one of my favorite things to do. I can just put the girls in the stroller and walk on over! 
• I have a walk-in closet! Don't mind the fact that it is also where Naiya sleeps currently. (I quickly gave up on my attempt to get the girls to sleep in one room.) 
• We have our very own master bath. No longer do we have to share it as the main bathroom. It is spacious, and private, and I love it! 
• I have a little reading nook in our bedroom. I've been telling Ryan that "one day" I would love to have a chair and ottoman in our bedroom to read/journal/just plain relax in. And that day has come my friends. Even if I had to steal the nursery rocking chair and ottoman to do so.

Some perks about our place specifically is that we are on the ground floor, and our sliding door opens to the parking lot, which makes it convenient to go to/from the car with two little munchkins. Our humble abode gets plenty of sunlight (in fact, maybe a little too much, we've had to invest in some heavy curtains to get some good sleep in these bright, summer months). The floor plan is great, really open and the handicap accessible has given us great big doors that when open, make the place seem much bigger.  We have a gas stove, my first experience of this beloved appliance. A gas fireplace. And bigger bedrooms. 

We are also closer to some of our favorite friends, but sadly further from our family and our wonderful neighbors. We've given up our water community, but hope to take advantage of our boat and invites to Ty & Jenna's place on the water. I think the thing I will miss terribly is our deck. I loved having my morning coffee and spending some sacred alone time talking with God, journaling and enjoying all of the summer sounds of the morning. (I have even come to grow nostalgic over the sounds of garbage trucks in the morning.) I looked forward to eating breakfast together on the deck, and coming together again for dinner. I will miss grilling on our gas bbq, I'm not quite sure what to do with this small charcoal grill we have on our patio. I know Ryan and I will both miss entertaining large crowds. But maybe we'll still be able to swing it here, we'll see. 

I want to leave this place with fond memories. I want to be sad when we leave this place. Because then I know we made the best of our time here, even with knowing we wouldn't be here long. I look forward to forming friendships with our neighbors and being comfortable enough to knock on their doors for an egg or a cup of sugar. 

We are so thankful for our condo! 

Birthday Girls

Another year passes by where I have unsuccessfully planned a birthday party. 

Last year, I was too tired and too pregnant to think about pulling one together for Alexia's 1st. Ugh. Failure. 

And this year, I was consumed with packing, moving and unpacking to even pull off a joint birthday party for the girls. Total failure. 

I had all these cute ideas running through my head....a Dr. Suess "One Fish, Two Fish" birthday party. Even came up with a cute rhyme for the invitations to the aqua and red fish-themed birthday party. 

But the weekends kept slipping away and I realized we would realistically be celebrating in July. So instead, I put in a request to Ryan's family to do a simple, joint party. Complete with family, food and chocolate ganache cupcakes. A princess tiara even got added into the mix, as we attended a Princess birthday party for a friend earlier in the day.

Naiya wasn't so sure about the whole cupcake thing. Uncle Ty tried to let her know what she was missing out on, by dabbing the cupcake to her lips. Not a happy camper.

But once she finally realized what all the hype was about....she was all over that cupcake: 

Alexia knows the sweet, chocolatey goodness all too well. Her Daddy is a chocolate junkie.

Here we are partying it up w/ the birthday girls' new shades:

And for the second year in a row, Uncle Ty had to share his birthday bash. Yes, there are 26 candles on that cake. He even let Alexia take a stab at blowing out the candles. The back-to-back birthdays are: Alexia-May 22, Ty-June 2 and Naiya-June 4. Ryan's mom was so sweet to host the shin-dig and capture pictures from that day. If it weren't for her, I wouldn't have had any proof of their 1st and 2nd bdays! Thanks Mom!

Here's 2009:

And I'd like to think this picture is the girls' stamp of approval for this year's celebration. "Good times, huh Sis?" 

M.I.A.

Where have I been? It's not too shocking that I've neglected our blog, I tend to live my life in "phases". I was actually pretty impressed with how long this last stretch of updating our blog lasted.

Here's my list of excuses of what has kept me too busy to blog in the last couple of months:

1. We completely renovated our master bath and finished all of the things in the rest of our house that were never completed from renovations over the last five years of living there. 
2. We found a prospect house in an amazing community of friends.
3. We put our house on the market. 
4. We got an offer in one week.
5. We went on our first family vacation (with three other couples and their kiddos) to South Carolina.
6. We went on our first vacation away from the girls, to Texas.
7. We moved into a condo across town (we'll be here until next Spring). 
8. We celebrated Naiya turning ONE and Alexia turning TWO! 

And if that wasn't enough to earn some sympathy, we've been living without wireless internet for a week. Skimping off someone's dial-up internet in the meantime has been enough to drive me insane. I gave up on doing anything that required more than five minutes at a time online. 

So I just wanted to say hello again. More photos and comments to come about the Eight is Great List above.