29 for the third time!

32 came much too quickly and there's so many ways you can compare the number of years. You could say that I've turned 4 eight times or 16 twice or that I'm midway to 64. No matter how you slice it, the number stays the same (until next year) and I'm forced to deal with reality. I thought I'd freak out this year, but I actually liked turning 32. I remember waking up on my 23rd birthday and crying for an hour because it meant I was closer to 25, which is basically 30 and after that it was all down hill. What an idiot! :)

Fernando is always so great about my birthday. Since it's only two days before Christmas, he makes sure to separate the two (which many people never did) and make it extra special for me. This year he bought me a new camera which we just had to test out before he took me to dinner.

This year we went to the Macaroni Grill. This was the first restaurant we chose when we celebrated our first un-anniversary together in Miami. This year we asked Rob and Melissa to join us.

While I'm a great fan of any great dish, I have to admit that the bread is always my favorite part of the meal and their bread is amazing- an was very necessary while I was sipping a glassful of Riesling on an empty stomach. I'm not a wino by any means and rarely drink, but when I do it hits me ten-fold. Whew!

We had a great server! He was a "little person" and cool as hell. Towards the end of our meal, he asked if I would like someone to sing to me in Italian- well hell yeah, how can I pass that up? As they brought out our dessert, another server came to our table and sang Happy Birthday- she had such a BEAUTIFUL voice and anything said/sung in Italian gets 10 stars from me any day.

After the singing, I let everybody dig in to the complimentary birthday dessert, while I dug in to the dessert that came with my meal. Holy hell, can I just tell you how amazing it was? I love anything lemon but this was unreal...


After our fun and very yummy dinner, we headed to the movie theater to catch "4 Christmases." It had it's moments, but I probably wouldn't advise spending $8.50 to go see it. That's just me. I always enjoy spending time with friends, so that made it totally worth it. After the movie, we said our good-byes and went our separate ways. We enjoyed a nice, evening alone and I even got a birthday kiss!

A simple coupon...

I'm sure I'm not alone in saying that the holidays have a way of wearing you down. The crowds at the mall seem even more aggressive than usual and the "20 items or less" lanes supply ample opportunity for choice words to be exchanged. It's a horrible example of celebrating the birth of our savior. I have to admit that I'm one of those people that turns into a robot once I pull into a parking lot. Sure, I'll let pedestrians cross and am mindful of who saw what parking space first, but after that, survival of the fittest kicks in. It wasn't until last night while Fernando and I were grocery shopping for our Christmas dinner, that I truly was touched by a complete stranger. As we were checking out, she simply asked if we could use a $10.00 coupon. It wasn't a huge amount of money and honestly, it wasn't even about the money. She went out of her way to do something kind for others. Needless to say, I graciously accepted her offer and thanked her. As we were walking to the car, it hit me and I realized that she was a great example of what Christmas means. I feel rejuvenated and inspired by her actions. If we could all do the same, there would truly be peace on earth. I know the Spirit of Christmas is still alive. Merry Christmas and God bless you all!

Weekends with Hannah

Just before leaving work on Friday, I got a phone call and on the other end of the line was this little, sweet, angelic voice "Um... Aunt Mariko, do you think I can spend the night with you?" How can I say no? After checking with Uncle Fernando, I picked up Hannah on my way home. Hannah is tender hearted, loves affection, an animal whiz and LOVES- yes, loves sugar. Needless to say our big project this weekend was to make sugar cookies and decorate them.

http://recipes.pauladeen.com/index.php/recipesviewmonogrammed_sugar_cookies/

Friday night, we spent a couple hours making 2 batches of "Paula Deen's" sugar cookies- 1 red and 1 green. Hannah learned to measure ingredients, sift, and mix. I'm still cleaning my counter. :) Well, God bless Paula, but I'm not down with this recipe. I just figured with all that work, we'd get the 5 dozen cookies per batch like it said we would. We might have gotten 4 even after doubling the recipe. Que sera! Hannah was in hog heaven needless to say and I must have heard, "Oooh, can I lick that?" eleventy billion times, but it was totally worth it. We put the dough in the fridge to chill over night and watched several episodes of "The Barefoot Contessa" on the dvr.


Chewy adores Hannah 99% of the time unless he's being a brat. He even ditches ME to instead sleep next to her. I don't mind a bit really, I love the idea of him "protecting" her while she sleeps. So cute. This was the first thing I saw this morning when I got up....


We got dressed and headed to the office where she was patient for the most part. I only work half shifts on Saturdays so I don't mind bringing the girls with me when they stay the weekends. After getting home, we began rolling out our cookies and cutting our shapes. Yikes. After seeing the first batch come out, I decided we'd be better off just rolling dough balls.

Ok, so I'm a bit of a control freak though I really do try and let it go at times. I gave Hannah a nice chunk of dough to play with, cut out shapes, stick up her nose or whatever while I made ball after ball after ball. That didn't last very long and soon it was a nice crumbly mess.


She did let me know however, that it still "tasted real good!" even with the additional 2 pounds of flour. She got bored and took a break while I finished baking the rest of our perfectly round cookies. After they cooled a bit, it was time to decorate!


I gave Hannah one frosting bag and I took the other. She managed to decorate her's pretty quickly if I do say so myself. I went for the whimsical look, but not sure I got there. Oh well, they're pretty darn tasty all the same.


Shortly after the cookie project was completed, I decided I'd had enough "entertaining" for the weekend. Ahhhh... the joys of being an aunt- I just give them back! Gotta love the kiddies!