Bill O'Reilly

Me: Keira, what did you want to watch on tv?
Keira: I want to watch Bill O'Reilly.
Me: You want to watch what?
Keira: I want to watch Bill O'Reilly.
Me: Did you just say that you want to watch Bill O'Reilly?
Keira: Yes...I want to watch Bill O'Reilly.

The Pumpkin Station

Keira and I are heading to Illinois to visit with Auntie Gigi, Doowa and Max this Halloween! It is going to be her first time on a plane since we came home from China so I'm not sure how she will be. The flight home from China was absolutely MISERABLE so I can't imagine this being worse LOL. We were still in the bonding stages and getting to really know each other back then not to mention it was an 18 hour flight. This time, Keira and I are totally in sync and it's a 4 hour flight. Hopefully that counts for something! LOL. I've been preparing her ahead of time by explaining that we were goin to be flying, so once in a while she asks me about the plane we'll be on.

Dan will be staying back to work, so he won't get to do any trick or treating with us. To make up for it some, this past weekend we headed over to the Pumpkin Station in Del Mar. They had tons of pumpkins of course as well as a petting zoo and carnival rides. Keira had a blast and although they totally killed us with the ticket prices (OUCH!) it was worth it to see her have so much fun.

Here she is going cruising in her Purple Buggie. There was a jolly big guy named Kemo manning the ride that let them ride FOREVER. That made it worth it as well.

She specifically asked to be in the Batman plane. Even though she loves her Princesses, she still loves pointing out Spiderman, Batman and Thomas things that she spots.

Ahh....the train ride. She loves trains and got to sit with the blue dinosaur until the dinosaur started crying and wanted OFF! LOL

We had a good time and still had lots of tickets left, so Dan and Keira are going to be there again while I'm working sometime this weekend. They are also going to pick up a pumpkin this time and work on carving it together. Hopefully I'll get to do it with them although honestly any pumpkin I have tried to carve in the past has been a complete disaster...

Pictures Pictures and More Pictures

I lost my camera a while ago and finally found it again on the floor in my car while clearing out Keira's millions of toys and jackets. Isn't it funny how we do that? End up with so many toys in the car as well as old bags of snacks and jackets? I didn't even know that Keira HAD that many jackets...and what about shoes??? How does it happen that there are so many shoes in there? She must have at least started out wearing them at one time or another and ended up barefoot. Anyway, I had so many pictures on the camera that I hadn't posted, so I thought I would post them now!

Here are some Disneyland pictures. Yes, we actually stood in that huge line to take pictures with Pooh! The last time we attempted to stand in that line, Tigger passed out and they had to drag him off. We weren't sure to be honest whether it was from heatstroke or if Tigger was drunk. This time, just about as soon as we got up to Tigger, he left for a break. He remains the ever elusive one...

We WERE able to get pictures with Eeyore and Pooh though!

She was a little shy around Pooh first, until Pooh wanted a hug. After that, he was her best friend.
We got this crazy looking blow up frog pool that she liked to play in during the summer. Dan spent FOREVER blowing that thing up. You would think that gadget man would at least have something that could have inflated that thing somewhere in his work area in the garage. It was a great little pool though. It even had a little slide that she could go up and down on.
I love her face in this picture. You can't tell that the water was a little cold that day, can you?

Princess Keira with her tiara and magic wand. I got her a little princess outfit so that she can just run around and be a princess whenever she felt like it. So far, she likes to be in disguise by dressing in just her regular clothes with her wand. I can't get her to put on the whole getup!
I definitely don't remember THESE slide pictures! Dan was the one that took them on a day when he took her to the park. She likes to climb up slides instead of going up the stairs. As long as other children aren't trying to go down the slide, we let her once in a while.
Here, Dan said that she was trying to make Baby go up the slide. She still takes Baby EVERYWHERE she goes. Every once in a while, she will let Baby stay in the car if I am able to convince her that Baby is taking a nap. Sometimes it works, sometimes it doesn't and she says, "Oh Come on Mommy!" It's so funny how she says it too. Kind of in that "You're kidding, right?" voice. Funny how they pick up on things like that so easily.
This picture cracked me up. She put my dirty shoes on the wrong feet and was doing ballet around the house
Here she was running around the house with Max's hat on.

She really is such a funny happy little girl. It's a very rare exception that she isn't being silly or laughing and just being the joy that she is. Dan and I are so thankful every day for her being our daughter and that she is in our lives.

Disney On Ice

Keira still loves everything having to do with Disney Princesses, so when I saw that Disney on Ice was in town, how could I not bring her? Dan came as well and joked that he had no problem seeing an ice skating show since he is comfortable enough with his masculinity...as long as Keira sat next to him so that people didn't think he came to see it alone! LOL

I've been telling Keira that we were going to see the Princesses to prepare her for the show, but I don't quite think that she got it. On the drive down, she had fallen asleep so I carried her in. She woke up as we were sitting in our seats and of course was a little confused with what was going on. The show started soon after and had little shorts of various Disney stories- Nemo, Beauty and the Beast, The Lion King and of course a short segment with all of the princesses! Keira sat through this completely silent and with a look on her face that was very difficult to interpret! Was she confused? Was she in awe? What was going on in her little brain?

During the intermission, she was still a little quiet and not her usual talkative self. It wasn't until the second half when we realized that she was just taking all of the sights and sounds in. When Mulan came out, she yelled, "Mommy...MULAN!!!!!" and from that point, she was excitedly pointing everything and everyone out to us..."Mommy...Princesses...Mommy...Castle! Daddy, Look! Spiderman!" (She thought the dad from the Incredibles was Spiderman LOL) She was having a great time.

We've been encouraging her to tell us about things that she has done during her day, so we asked her what she thought about the show when we were in the car. She was talking a mile a minute telling us about everything she saw...including how Ochidokio ate the whole shark by himself and he was going to bite you (This of course really means how Pinocchio was eaten by the whale LOL). We stopped to get something to eat and when she got out of the car, she immediately started shuffling around on the sidewalk spinning around pretending to ice skate. I'm glad she had a great time :) .

I Am My Mother...

A while back, Keira was running around doing something, but not something that I wanted her to. To get her attention, I said "SSSSSHHHHHHHHHHHHHT...Hey, Mommy said please go pick up your toy and put it back in your room!" Dan gives me a funny look laughing. "Did you just 'Dog Whisper' our daughter or something with that sound?" LOL I didn't even realize that I was doing it, but sure enough...there I was ...making that sound!

Most Filipinos know that familiar sound...SSSSSHHHHHHHHHT! It's how all of our parents got our attention when we were kids and something that we would all make fun of.

Every day when I'm with Keira, I'll find myself saying "OY!" or "Ayyyyyy!" or "Ayyy Nako!" Keira even says "Ayyyy Nako!" on a regular basis as an exclamation. Where is all of this coming from? My Mother! I have turned into my Mother LOL . Not that it's a bad thing...it's just something that I never saw happening as a kid. I HAVE stopped short of pointing at things with my lips though so I haven't completely lost it :).

Life Lessons and Pirates

(Keira on her fake plastic remote that looks like an iPhone)

This weekend was Harbor Days here in my neck of the wood. Dan had a booth there for his business so we decided to head over for a visit and to check out the festivities.

We started with the intention of going on Saturday, but ended up going clothes shopping for Keira instead with Auntie Lorraine at the Carlsbad Outlet Mall. As we were getting ready, Keira decided to put some powder on Amelia. I guess Life Lesson #1 is that most dogs don't like to have make up on. She ran around the house rubbing her face on the carpet frantically then ran off and hid in the backyard and decided to dig a huge hole in the grass. Perhaps trying to hide so that no one would see her with makeup on? Who knows! Keira is getting to be such a tall beanpole now and we had to get her size 3/3T clothes! Shes still very slim, so the perfect size waist wise is 2T, but they usually end up being floods now, so I have to get her 3/3T clothes hopefully with adjustable waists.
We were finally able to make it to Harbor Days on Sunday. After church, Keira and I got changed and headed to the transit station where you could park and take a shuttle to the Harbor. This was definitely going to be the best way to go since there are thousands of people that show up! Life Lesson #2...as soon as you are able to carry less things do it!!! I stopped carrying a diaper bag months ago and now Keira carries around her little Hello Kitty backpack with some wipes, a couple of pulls ups just in case, a change of clothing and a book. Hey! They are her things, so why SHOULDN'T she carry them? LOL Actually, she does con me into carrying it sometimes as well too. Anyway, after somehow carrying her with her backpack and the stroller, we made it on the shuttle.

It was very fun! It was a pirate theme and there were lots of pirates walking around handing things out to the kids like gold coins, beads, stickers and tattoos! Jack Sparrow gave Keira a skull lollypop which of course was her favorite thing. They had tons of vendor booths there and we found Dan to show him all of Keira's loot. We watched a Pirate Ship take off and at the Pirate's cove where they were making balloon swords for the kids and giving them their own pirate names. Keira was named "Killer Kay" the pirate. LOL She got to wear her little pirate certificate, played with sword for a while and got and gave lots of "AAAARRRRRRRRHHHH"s until she just pooped out. Life Lesson #3- Even Killers have to take naps sometimes!

The booth right next to Dan sold those mini guitars and wrestler masks! I bought Keira her own little pink guitar to play. Unfortunately it doesn't really tune and doesn't play well...oh well, she enjoys strumming it and pretending to sing. I guess that is what is important. We also got Max a Nacho Libre mask. He LOOOOOOOVES that movie! We sent Max a picture on my cell with a little sound byte of Keira saying "NAAAAAAACCCCHHHHOOOOOOOOO!!!!!" Gigi sent me a text back saying that they kept playing it over and over laughing.

Well, on the way back to the Shuttle, I had a bit of a dilemma. Keira was now napping, I had a stroller and a few bags. There was a line of people waiting for the shuttle and just as we were all getting ready to get on. It was a mixed bag of people...Old people, young people, couples, families, people that were dressed as pirates, people that looked like they would be the equivalent of modern day pirates (in other words...like street people). As the shuttle approached, I started trying to get everything together. I was carrying Keira, still asleep with one hand, carrying bags in that same hand and trying to fold up her stroller with the other. It was a mess and although I never like to portray myself as a damsel in distress, I was pretty horrified about the fact that there was a line of all of these people standing there watching me struggle and not offering to help. If anything many of them seemed more annoyed that I might cause a delay in them getting on the shuttle even though I had gotten out of the way specifically not to slow things down. Next thing you know as I was struggling still and trying not to wake Keira up, when I hear "Did you need some help?" It was a couple that looked street people. I said "Yes! Thank you!" The lady took my bags and the guy helped me fold up the stroller. They put it on the shuttle and made their way to their seats. When we got to our destination, they grabbed my things and carried them off the shuttle for me and even helped me open the stroller. I was reaching in my pocket to see if I had any cash to give them for helping me out and the guy stopped me. "When you do nice things for people, it always comes back to you!" They smiled and off they went. This by far was probably the best lesson of all that has always kind of been a cliche, but now I see as so very true. Life Lesson #4- NEVER judge a book by it's cover.

Burn After Reading

The other day after work, Dan and I had a little time in the afternoon before picking Keira up. We decided to have a "date afternoon". I had heard great things about Burn After Reading, so we thought we would go see it. The movie theatre is very close to us, so to save time since we were cutting it really close, I headed there straight from the office and Dan walked and met me there.

Burn After Reading is the newest movie from the Coen Brothers. Some other movies they have made were O Brother Where Art Thou, The Big Lebowski and Fargo. They usually do dark twisted comedies and this was no exception. The story is basically about a former CIA agent who decides to write his memoirs and some gym trainers that find his disk that they think is top secret CIA stuff and try to blackmail him. The story itself is kind of flimsy, and honestly, it really moves kind of slow at the beginning. The characters on the other hand are absolutely fantastic and although I'm not a big fan of Clooney or Pitt, they were GREAT and totally made the movie. Without giving too much away, my favorite person in the movie had a very small role as the CIA Director. He' a character actor and you may not know his name (J.K Simmons), but you will definitely know his face.

Dan and I left the theatre thinking to ourselves....It was ok. Nothing spectacular and even though there were some funny moments, it most certainly was not as hilarious as I had heard it was. Then something funny happened... a day later after thinking about it and remembering specific scenes, I would find myself laughing outloud- REALLY laughing. Dan and I were even in hysterics this afternoon talking about one scene in particular! It's one of those kind of movies...the delayed reaction.

I might have to see it again...on another "date afternoon"