my forever baby

i must interrupt my series of month-old posts (the goal of catching up is looking to be a rather fruitless endeavor) because today is a special day.

today, my baby turns four.

remember my baby?

hi, baby.

and when i call her my baby, this is how i see her.  this is how she will forever look to me.  we even had a discussion about it today.  it went something like this:

lauren: mommy, i'm a big girl today.
mommy: you are?  how come?
lauren: because i'm four today!
mommy: that is a big girl number! so are you a big girl or a little girl now?
lauren: big girl.
mommy: are you a big girl or a baby?
lauren: big girl.
mommy: but, aren't you my baby?
lauren: no, jonah is!
mommy: but, aren't you still my baby too?
lauren: yes!
mommy: so you're a big girl to everyone else, but a baby to mommy, right?
lauren: yes.

whew, i'm glad we got that cleared up.

because no matter how big this girl gets...

and it really does seem like she turned into a big girl overnight...

she will still be forever my baby.  it's just how it is with this one.

and i fervently hope her love of twirly dresses sticks around for a good long time, too.  because i just can't think of the day when she won't want to twirl anymore.

so i'm holding on tight to precious today.  because today, she loves girly dresses, loves wearing her hair up "fancy", loves rapunzel, loves her pillow, loves her siblings, loves her mommy and her daddy, loves to sneak into our bed sometime in the night so that i wake up to find her snuggled up next to me in the morning (i not-so-secretly love that too), and loves being her sweet, sassy, spunky, four-year-old self.  this girl does crazy things to my heart and i thank God so much for adding her to our family.

happy four years old, my baby!

semblance of summer

i am still unpacking.  i may be unpacking into eternity. oh woe.

but in between the seemingly unending days of unpacking and settling in, we are trying to squeeze in a few days of summer fun.

remember when phil declared our family diehard angels fans?  well, we're looong overdue for our annual trip to root for our team.  as in, we seem to have missed the entire 2011 season.  aw well, no matter, the time is NOW for us to jump right back on that bandwagon.  (by the way, anyone know how our favored team is doing?  hard to gauge from the one game we attended. which was a win though- woo hoo!)

ahem.  anyhow, on to the pictures!

a nice stranger behind us offered to take a picture for us.  i love when nice strangers offer to do that because it's the only time i actually get to be IN the family pictures.

the youngest tsai really enjoyed his first game.  (btw, that is the exact same shirt lauren wore the last time we were here.)

daddy buying him his very own hot dog definitely made this the best outing ever in his book.

homerun fireworks!

still cause my children to plug their ears while everyone else is clapping and cheering.

some things never change...

but all noise complaints were silenced once the ice cream sundaes in plastic angels caps were placed in their hands.

and when all's said and done, there's nothing like being at the ball game on a warm summer night.

so i'm very thankful my little guys get to grow up with these kinds of memories.  even if we only manage to do it every other year.

go, angels!  ;)

girly girls

a couple weeks before we moved, our good friends james and jami came to hang out with us.  they are among our kids' favorite people.  you'll see why in a sec.

even jonah, who is sometimes randomly particular about who he likes and who he doesn't, took right to uncle james like a fish to water.  he kept wanting uncle james to hold him and thankfully, james was a good sport with this selectively high maintenance baby of ours.  (mikey was also standing in this picture, but unfortunately didn't make it in since i was already pressed against the wall to fit these three in.  he didn't make the cut.  ha ha.)

so while the boys went out to pick up dinner, my girly girls put auntie jami right to work.

first they asked her to braid their hair.  auntie jami can do such cute things with their hair.  they know this.  they also know their mommy cannot do such cute things with their hair.  which is why a visit from auntie jami is a special treat, indeed.

then they asked her to paint their nails.  not just one color, but five.  one for each fingernail.

auntie jami is also a good sport and not only used all five different colors, but put two coats on each nail.  she says she enjoys doing stuff like this.  who knew?  and see that little sister there in the corner?  she cracks me up.

because while she was patiently waiting for her turn, she narrowed down her nail color choices to just ten.

waiting patiently for one's turn seems to come with the territory of being a little sister.  and i must say she does it well and it is something her daddy and i really appreciate about her.

finally the big sister was done.  and was rather pleased with the results, i'd say. ;)

then came the little sister's turn.

and the little sister was happy.  because auntie jami actually did use all ten colors on her nails.  two coats on each nail.

auntie jami and uncle james?  they're good apples.  especially with our under 4-foot crowd.  can't wait to see you guys again soon!! (because um, the girls are wanting their nails painted again! heh heh...)

mother's day, father's day

hello, hello!  i'm still alive!  we moved in to our new home (YIPPEEEE!!!) a little over a week ago and it's been hectic and crazy and chaotic and wonderful all at the same time.  more on that later.  but first, i gotta catch up and stodgily go in order.  starting with... mother's day!  it wasn't that long ago, was it?

phil surprised us with dinner at the melting pot for mother's day.  it's one of the kids' (and my) favorite places to eat. 

spearing delicious morsels and then dipping them into lovely cheese sauces like this "loaded baked potato"... what's not to love?

me and my girls.

me and my boys.

and then there was this action here.  this was moments before jonah decided to turn around and drop daddy's iphone into the tiny space between the booth and the wall.  did i mention that the booth was nailed into the wall?  or that i had to spend most of the evening (in between the server's visits to our table) crouched down in the booth using a spear to try and coax the phone within grabbing distance?  or that there were plywood bars between my hand and the iphone and it was only through sheer determination and a scraped-up hand that i was finally able to retrieve that now dust-covered iphone?

hmm, i seem to sustain some type of injury each time i visit this restaurant.  maybe i need to pick a new favorite restaurant.  one that's less dangerous to my physical self.

ah, but the cheese sauce... pretty much makes up for the injuries i've suffered trying to get to it.

and the chocolate sauce at the end ain't half bad either.

so while celebrating mother's day feels like it just happened, apparently a whole month has actually flown by.  so here's one from this past sunday.  cuz it was father's day and all.

and a hard workin' daddy like theirs sure deserves a nice dinner out and lots of hugs from his little monkeys, too.  it's hard work being their hero, but he does it with a smile and that's why they love him.

and that's why i do too.  :)

to see what we see

i am in the throes of packing woes.  why oh why do i find myself here so frequently when it is one of my very least favorite things to do?

but the good news is we bought a house!

the bad news is i must pack like a madwoman!

but even madwomen need a break from the madness so here i am.  :)

a couple saturdays ago, phil was home and we had nothing in particular scheduled for the day.  i love those kind of days.

so as we headed out with the kids, allie asked where we were going.  i answered, "to see what we see."

and this is what we saw.

we found ourselves at the unique la show where we saw caine's arcade!

if you haven't seen caine's short video, you should.  that is a pretty cool kid.

we got our fun passes.  still $2 for 500 plays, good for 30 days.  still a good deal.

and played the famous basketball game!

also the claw machine!

and then we saw caine himself running one of the games.  here he is helping mikey line up the tube to drop a marble into a hole.  mikey won two duck tattoos.

this girl was all smiles after her daddy won her a little tiger.

a quick pic with caine.

and we saw nirvan, too!

and then we were off to la brea tar pits to see what else we'd see.

this picture makes me laugh.  when did they turn in to such hams?  the kids, not the elephants.  the elephants have always been hams.

it's a bird!  it's a plane!  it's superboy!

it is very, very hard to get a natural smile out of this girl.  this is what you get when you ask her for her "prettiest princess smile".

it's still pretty easy to get smiles outta this one though.  except his near constant thumb sucking does tend to block the view.

also very hard to get a normal smile out of this one, too.  but very easy to get faces like this one though.

and then we saw a big ole long line of food trucks!

it was very windy in food truck aisle.

but that didn't deter us from getting a sampling of food truck fare.  too bad it wasn't as tasty as we hoped it would be.  probably shoulda patronized the truck in front of this one instead.  korean bbq burritos.

once home, the kids asked if they could have some cardboard boxes.  i immediately answered, "NO!"  crusher of childhood aspirations, right here.  we're moving, remember?!  eyes on the prize, people.  then mommy and daddy went upstairs to take a nap.  when i came back downstairs, i found what they had been up to.  improvising their own arcade.

his version of the soccer arcade game.

this is where the tickets come out.

her version of the basketball game.  and that's where her tickets come out.

guess who got to be their very first customer?

and that is what we ended up seeing when we went out to see what we'd see.