is it true??

i read somewhere that how your outlook on life/hurdles is all the good or bad that comes your way. so if you try to look at the bright side of things then good things come your way. i will try this out and see what happens. even when something happens that i would have thought was bad. but if i send of positive energy and vibes good will come my way.

now don't get me wrong if you know me i am not the cheer leader/peppy person. i try to see the good in people. but sometimes i just get annoyed and get mad. but i need to work on being more positive but in my way. i mean i try to do to others how i would and be a good person. but it's also trying to look at the brighter side... i heard that meditating is really good for the soul so i must try this in the morning before i start my day. and see if this is really true. although with the weather being so COLD it's hard to get out of bed. but there's no harm in trying because at least i can say it's true or not.

wishing everyone a great day! :-D

The fat lady is singing...

i never thought i'd see this day EVER.. my dad and i haven't had the best of relationship. if my grandmother (dad's mom) didn't pull the i am old card and ask me to ask my father to walk me down the aisle i never would have asked him to walk me. but around M's bday i started to notice a change.. i guess the universe had a shift and it affected him big time. He called on M's bday to wish him a happy bday. i know a grandpa calling his grandson to wish him a happy bday shouldn't be a big deal. but my dad has never called me to wish me a happy bday since my parents divorced. so yes it is a very big positive move on his part. then after that he'd make attempts. maybe even before that the change started. anyways he called to have the families over to celebrate M's and the T2s bdays. and asked us to come over for dinner every so often. when we do come he doesn't invite his church friends... just us which is really nice because we all actually talk. dad even stays at the dinner table after he finishes his dinner to chat with everyone. it's nice to know that M has his 'ojichan' and i am starting to feel like i have a father. i know our relationship is mending and i know it takes time. but as long as i see he is trying i will try too. and the nice thing is that he is getting to know his grandchildren.

he can be so nice and giving at times. i just hope it lasts and that we can all just get along and get to know each other. but for now i am enjoying every minute because this doesn't ever happen.

Goals for the week..

i need to put this down so that i know it's out there and commit:

1. Pack up clothes that need to be at the house
2. Clean the backyard
3. Buy curtains for M's room
4. Move the rest of items from mom's to our place
5. Pick up box from Fedex/kinkos
6.
7.

Jogging Stroller...

One of my goals this year was exercise regularly and not slack off.. whether i catch a cold or just feeling the blahs.. don't let myself fall off the wagon. and i am proud to say that I haven't fallen off and i am going more than just 3 times a week. i find that if i go in the morning i just get it done with. now i am getting more into just getting fit that i have purchased a jogging stroller (finally) thanks to BK. i went for the first time last night with the boss. we had a great time and i was able to jog and not worry that i may break the stroller because it wasn't made to jog with.

goal forever is to jog with the boss at least 2 twice a week until the end of the year. next year i will add another day but i want to be realistic with myself.

btw, the jogging stroller is the best stroller ever!!

Thinking positive...

Yesterday was a long day.. but i kept thinking positive thoughts. And I remember that it could always be worse. So just know that with every situation there's two ways of looking at it. In order to deal I have kept a mini journal for myself so that i can 'vent'. i am a big vent-er and need to in order to get it off my chest. Then I think about how I won't let this upset me and why. So far so good.. And I am back to wearing a rubber band on my wrist too.

also, my son made me a sunflower to look at when i am having a bad day. he also knows it's one of my favorite flowers. because normally when i tell him that my day wasn't too good he'll ask me if i looked at his flower he feels it will make my day better. which it does. :-D

Is there such a thing as a 'favorite child'??

I would have to say yes from experience. You know for all new and old parents you really should stick to only 1 or 2 children. Because let me open your eyes to something that you think we (the children) don't know. We know if we are your favorite or 'black sheep' children.

My sister was and still is my mom's favorite child. And lucky for my bother he is the favorite with my dad. They both can do no wrong in my parents eyes. So where does that leave me? From my dad's own mouth I am the black sheep of the family. I wasn't liked because I was from day one opinionated and 'talked back'. So I was not only the 'bad' one but the one that was the smarty pants or the child my parents couldn't control. But you know if they ever took a second to think about it. The only way for me to get attention is to do something 'bad'. And to put the cherry on the sundae I am also the middle child. so the saying goes is true.. i was never as good as my older sister and i was the bad influence on my brother.. now i don't know how that applies because i was never caught stealing or stole a car.. So i don't know how I showed him it was okay. I am not perfect by all means but I don't feel that I was the worst child you could have. But because of all this I do know in my teenage years I felt that my parents owed me. They owed me for all the times that their eyes shined and showed how they were so proud of my sister and brother. because i never got that.. i can't remember a time that they looked at me the way they did with my brother and sister.

now as i look back to the past and present.. i feel that i sometimes can revert back to how i felt when i was a child and teenager. i can remember closing (or slamming-lets be honest) the door and just crying into my pillow wishing that i had different parents. ones that would appreciate me for me. now i don't cry into my pillow but i do think god we are all in our thirties and my mom still has my sister as her favorite. and i can see that she still acts like a teenage and so on. but that's a whole different post.

now on the positive... there's always a good to the bad right? so i feel that by my parents being the way that they were with me i learned to not rely on anyone but myself. i feel that i have done well for myself. my husband and i paid for our wedding, bought our first house together, had a baby, sold the condo and now moving on to our second home. that hopefully will be our last. and we are doing it for the most part on our own. now don't get me wrong i am grateful that my mom is letting us stay with her while we have been in transition. but i am who i am because of all that i have gone through in life.

so please try to remember that when you have a 'favorite' the other children know! ;-P try to treat everyone equal.

Watched Coco before Channel...

it was a really nice movie about Coco Channel.. and interesting to watch about someone else's life prior to who they became. Their struggles and so on. But at the end of the movie i was ready to talk to L and see what she thinks because I definitely know it's a movie she has seen or in her queue to watch from netflix. and mind you it was not in english so it's hard to find someone to watch foreign films with. its a movie that we would have been watching in her dark living room and munching on some snacks. maybe after a shopping trip or something. and our last stop at tapioca express drinking our boba-s. so it made me sad that i don't have that. i don't know anyone that i can just hang out with on the couch and watch movies with... and talk off and on when it wasn't a part we had to pay attention to..

i truly miss having that friend that you can just call up and hang out and watch movie after movie..

i guess i will just have to consider times that i do get to myself my time and celebrate the people that are still in my life and want to share all my moments with. and learn to enjoy in a different way.

Another chapter in our lives...

I can't believe that we have put our condo on the market.. it's the worst time to sell but great time to buy. or is it? it's great for the people that will be making money on their current place. but for us life isn't perfect nor is it easy. but at least D and I can say we did it and we did it together. No one is giving us money for a down/deposit on a house like some couples get. Nor are we getting a new home as a gift.

we work for everything we have and buy. so as i am looking at what is available in what is our price range.. i am not so sure we'll get most of what we want. we may have to stay at mom's for 5 years to save money and deal with toilets that don't flush all the time. a dog that likes to eat poop and another that loves to bark. first thought is that i can only pray that my baby does not pick up any bad habits.

but whatever we buy we will know we did it. and it's all ours - okay well partially until we pay it off. but it's ours and we can call it home. i just want to start this part of our lives whenever we sell the condo. and move on and make the next home our home. put the E touches that i never did to our condo. because i always knew we were going to sell in 3-5 years. so i never attached myself... although when we do get to go home to the condo i realize how lucky we are. i honestly LOVE the condo. there's always a nice breeze and the condo maybe gets hot 3 days out of the year. the layout is great, there's so much light that comes in.... and our bathroom sizes our really nice.. as i realize after looking at other homes.

looking for a second home.. is easy and hard at the same time. easy because even if it's not the best of house we can see potential in what we can make the house. the first time i wanted everything perfect inside. just move in and be happy with everything. but now i am looking into what school district is this home in? is the area nice? can i jog in the morning or night without having D yell at me for going by myself? how much yard is there really? can this kitchen fit at least 3 ppl? can i see myself here in 30 years? how safe is it when you come into and out of the house area? is it easy to get to the home? and so on.....

last night was Fremont highs graduation.. and it made us really think do we want to live in this area where M would go to this high school? yes it's many years away but come on...?? do we? for the most part parents and guests were in t-shirts and jeans. need i say more?

Lead by example..

M learns so much by just watching D and myself. He sees how we are and takes in what we teach. I am slowly learning that 'do as I say not what I do' isn't a good thing to say to him anymore. If I want M to be the man I hope he will be D and I must show him by example too.

Right now I am trying to teach him to appreciate what he has. And if he doesn't play with a toy that we need to give it to another child that will play with it.. And that it is a nice gesture to give to people that have less than us. The other day I was cleaning his room to pack away the baby toys. Or the toys that he doesn't really play with. The next day he comes to me and gives me one of his toys and tells me that we can give this to another child. Because he wanted to share it. He just melts my heart.

Now what I need to learn is to not just buy random things. I want to teach him that when you buy something for yourself it's a reward. That you need to not only have money to buy items whether it be for yourself, a gift, gas, bills or groceries.. But you need to put money aside for a rainy day. As I am starting to practice this I will teach him after I master the 'budget'..

Mission Declutter..

Tonight I will try to declutter the way I have been reading to do. They suggest that you take everything out of the room and put into a couple piles. Throw away, give away and stay piles...

I am hoping that this will help me really look at everything and see if i can make our place more organized. So I am going to work on my closet first in the master bedroom. This is the smallest space plus i can do this and watch tv at the same time.. (or at least when i am outside of the closet i can hear when i am in there.) no matter how often i clean this area it doesn't look cleaned out. i wonder if it has to do with the fact that i share with M too.

So mission declutter is to make it so that i can clean out our home and organize. also to stage our place to look a lot nicer and sell-able.

Recipe: Tom Yum

Must attempt to make this year..

Recipe: Tom Yum (Tom Yum Goong)

Ingredients:

2 1/2 cups shrimp stock
10-12 shrimp or 8 oz (head-on and shell-on but chop the eyes part off. Devein if you wish)
3 tablespoons lime juice
6 bird’s eyes chilies (pounded)
3 slices galangal
6 kaffir lime leaves (bruised)
2 tablespoons nam prik pao (Thai roasted chili paste)
2 teaspoons fish sauce or to taste
1 stalk lemongrass (use the white part only, pounded with a cleaver)
6 canned straw mushrooms / fresh oyster mushrooms / fresh or canned button mushrooms

Method:

In a pot, bring 3 cups of water to boil. Then add a big handful of shrimp/prawn heads. Boil the shrimp head until the water turns slightly orange in color. Press the shrimp heads with spatula to extract the “goodies” from their heads. Let the stock reduce to slightly more than 2 1/2 cups. Drain the shrimp stock and discard the shrimp heads.

Add lemongrass, galangal, kaffir lime leaves, bird’s eye chilies, mushrooms, nam prik bao to the shrimp stock and bring it to boil. Add in the shrimp and fish sauce. Lastly, add the lime juice (if you add lime juice too early, the soup might turn bitter). Boil until the shrimps are cooked, dish out and serve hot.

Cook’s Note:

You can use also chicken, a combination of chicken plus shrimp, or seafood combination (shrimp, squid, scallops, green-lipped mussels) for tom yum soup. It’s really up to you, but the most popular tom yum is tom yum goong, goong means prawns.

Thanks to:

De-Cluttering..

Yes you read right.. I have decided that this is MY year!! I am going to be 35 this year and want to give away items that i no longer need or want. I am going room by room decluttering what i do not use anymore. I have decided that I want to organize my life and since i can't control what went on last year i have control of this. I need to simplify our home. We really don't use a lot nor do we need items that I am constantly buying. So I have decided to give away items that i have and let it be. The hard part is parting with items that were given to me as gifts. I feel bad about having to do these to items that friends had taken time to think of buying just for me. But I have to go with that someone else can use this and will love it just as much! :-D

And since my husband can't do his items i will be going over his items too.. And I will work on having M give away toys/games that he doesn't play with. Why not start teaching him now??? He is a mini me on so many levels.

Goals for 2010

1. Eat better - need to be healthy
2. Make our home more a home - no matter where we are.
3. Keep our place clean.. no matter how tired i am to clean up mess!!
4. Stick to my budget
5. Pay off my SMCU
6. Need to spend less and live within my means
7. Learn to cook different foods
8. Bake once a week
9. Make sure to do something special for Mason once a week
10. Learn to forgive D
11. Work on making D & my relationship better
12. Work on being forgiving and not so angry
13. Visit Mike at least once
14. S - call, text, email... keep communication open
15.
16.
17.

Make this my year!!! Live each moment as if it's my last. Enjoy every moment no matter if it's bad or good. Learn to be a better person even if someone isn't treating me right - DO NOT let it stop me.