Marika's Spring Sing

Last Friday, Marika had her Spring Sing at school. It was very cute to see her so excited about her performance. It was also an Open House, so Marika showed me some of her work around the classroom. Here is her "when I grow up, I want to be a...teacher" sheet. I was surprised to see this answer and asked her, "hey, I thought you wanted to be an entomologist...?" She sighed and said, "Mommy, I'm going to be both!" Oh, okay... excuse me for misunderstanding... =)

Since it was practically dusk by the time Marika's class performed, the lighting was absolutely terrible. Unfortunately, NONE of our group performance pictures turned out. One of the other moms in the classroom has an extraordinary high-powered camera and often posts her pictures on the internet to share (love that!). Hopefully she took some good photos...

Here's Miss Marika in her "costume"... the girls in her classroom were watermelon, the boys were corn and in the other class, the girls were strawberries while the boys were peas. They were very cute. As the classes performed, they went in order of age, so the children got progressively louder and more coherent - which was kind of funny to notice. Marika really got into it - I swear I could hear her (she has a distinctive voice) and her hand motions were very... passionate. Afterwards, when we told her how proud of her we were, her grin stretched from ear-to-ear.

I was really disappointed in Mika's behavior, though. Marika has to go to all of Mika's activities and at least pretends to pay attention, but Mika didn't even really watch Marika perform, even though she knew how excited she was about the show. It makes me wonder how Mika will be during the fall soccer season, during Marika's games. I guess we'll have to start packing her books to read to stave off boredom...

It was a weird weather weekend. It hailed during my soccer game but snowed during Daddy Dude's baseball game (he plays at a higher altitude). Is that wild or what?! Here's a lucky shot I took... he's about to hit the ball (it's about one foot in front of the bat). It was a single. =) Unfortunately, his team was mercied out (other team was leading them by more than 15 runs after 5 innings - yeah, that's not good).

Last week, a friend told me that there was a local Goodwill Industries bookstore. If you know me, the two things I love to buy the most are scrapbooking supplies and books - and I'm serious bargain hunter, so used books are a favorite of mine. The Goodwill store wasn't as good of a deal as the local library (where children's paperbacks are $0.25) but there were a few books I hadn't seen there that I didn't want to miss.

I know scrapper al won't appreciate this picture, but here's a rare photo of Hissamina coming out to look around (she's very shy). She might be lonely, so in July or so, we'll probably get her another companion or two. Hey, that would make a colony! But... reproduction is not allowed! These roaches produce an ootheca (egg case) but unlike most roaches, they retain the egg case inside (rather than popping it out) until the babies hatch and emerge. The last thing I want is to be surprised by 50 baby roaches crawling all over the place... that's *ick* even for me!

Happy Anniversary to Us!

Yesterday, we celebrated our 11th wedding anniversary. Because we are trying to be frugal, we thought a great way to celebrate would be to visit the Getty Museum, which just happened to be having a very special Leonardo da Vinci exhibit. We had this planned about 6 weeks ago and finally, the big day arrived.

It'd been about 4 years since our last attempt at visiting an art museum. The girls definitely weren't ready then and it was frustrating, because Daddy Dude and I really like to walk around museums. For the past few weeks, I'd been preparing the girls for this visit, explaining how special the things we'd see were and what the rules were - no running, no screaming, no touching.

After a long drive, we finally arrived! The girls seemed to enjoy the tram ride, which was a pretty efficient operation.

Here is a balcony view from the outside of the museum. We went to explore the da Vinci exhibit first, since that was the main reason for coming. Unfortunately, photography wasn't allowed in any of the rooms (I was gently reprimanded by the guard, but he was very nice about it -very professional). The da Vinci exhibit also included works by several of his friends and associates. We explained to the girls that everything was at least 500 years old and created by an artistic geniuses. The girls seemed impressed and interested. However, in one of the rooms, one guard did not like the fact that Mika was looking at the paintings TOO CLOSE (I had explained that with oils, the resulting texture really enhanced a painting) and so, she and I got yelled at for that (I suppose she could have been worried about Mika sneezing on the painting, I don't know). THEN, when Marika started to get tired and raised one arm up to stretch, the same guard rushed over to Daddy Dude and told him that the museum recommended small children be placed in a stroller and where he could get one. I was totally flabberghasted by (1) the suggestion (she was just slowly raising an arm, I didn't think she was in any danger of knocking down an art piece) and (2) her demeanor was really quite offensive (was I really going to allow my kids to ruin a multi-million dollar piece of art?!). I thought my girls had been behaving pretty well - so what is this guard like when a more active child comes in??? Not a single other guard treated us in this manner. She was like a chicken jumping on a june bug. This was the only downer during our entire excursion.

Our second priority was to visit the French Impressionism wing. It's probably my favorite art period. =) In this wing, I was trying to explain how valuable a single painting was to Mika. I don't think she grasps that concept yet.

Here's the gang just outside one of the buildings... (by the way, it was really windy and cold that day!)

And just outside the Family Room, there was a beautiful spot for photography...

The Family Room was a special little building for kids to explore and play. They made a mask and then went to have some fun. We had to wait at least 15-20 minutes to get in.

There were a couple of art prints that I really liked here... (especially the one on the right!)...

And I *know* you were just dying to see the girls' masks up close...

We stopped at the Sculpture Terrace, just before we headed off to see the gardens...

What you see here is some heavily trained bougainvillea (one of my favorite shrubs). Gorgeous, aren't they?

And here are some shots from the garden itself... we really liked those red poppies with the black spots (I called them ladybug poppies - I wonder what they are really called! I want some!).

And last but not least, while the girls zonked out in the backseat, Daddy Dude drove me around town. First we drove around UCLA, then we passed by Beverly Hills, saw some people selling "star maps" (which totally cracked me up - but I couldn't get a very good picture of their signs) and finally... cruising on Sunset Boulevard. I asked Daddy Dude to please drive here, because for years, I've had a "Sunset Blvd" scrapbooking title sticker - and NOW I can finally use it! They had some awesome billboards on the strip, especially one advertising Season 3 for one of my favorite shows, True Blood (Season 2 is available on DVD in 2 days!!!).

All in all, it was a good day. The girls only lasted about one hour, because they started to get tired. Lunch and a visit to the Family Room perked them up a little bit, so we left the museum after 3.5 hours - not too bad for a 5 and 7 year old! Maybe in a couple of years, we'll venture out to the Getty Villa...

Recent layouts...

I know, I know... most of you out there aren't big guinea pig fans. Here's one of our favorites, though... a very talented fellow who used to climb out of his cage to join his next-door buddy, Simon.

Patterned paper: Basic Grey (Obscure), stamps (Stampendous), ink (Memories, inc.), letter stickers (Scenic Route)

It's actually very unusual for male guinea pigs to tolerate each other. J.J. ("Jumpin' Joe Fly") accidentally went into Leaper's cage one night and was ruthlessly attacked. I think Simon was too fat and slow to care... he just looked at us in the morning, as if to sigh, "well, he's here... again". It was amusing to see baby J.J. with big fat (obese) Simon.

Here are some YSS Friday sketches...

YSS Friday sketch of 5/7/10.

Patterned paper (DCWV), cardstock (the Paper Company), fall diecuts (DCWV), sailboat and title diecuts (Quickutz), frame (My Mind's Eye), stamp (Heidi Swapp), pan (Sakura)

And here's my take on it. I know, I know... it looks like a 6-year made it, or a throw-back to the 90's when scrapbooking first began. I took one look at the sketch and all I could think of were mountains! I kept wanting to re-do it (hence my late posting) but finally I acknowledged that that was NOT going to happen.

And here's last week's YSS Friday sketch. I really liked this one!

Patterned paper: KI Memories (Bloom), negative heart frame (American Crafts), metal embellishment (Making Memories), fabric tag (Making Memories), pen (Sakura), letter stickers (Scenic Route)

I thought this was a great chance to showcase the KI Memories "Bloom" collection paper pack I scored at Tuesday Morning last week. For those of you who don't know, Tuesday Morning is am amazing place to get scrapbooking deals - they have top-of-the-line products at great prices. (It's scrapperal's fault I go there, she's the one who told me all about it!)

By the way, in case anybody else is interested, YSS will be announcing their DT search this weekend. So be sure to check out their blog!

And while you're at the blog, you'll see that I won National Scrapbooking Day Challenge #3, for cleaning up my scrap space. Daddy Dude just laughed when he heard that. It'll be nice to get some freebies in the mail, since we just invoked another spending moratorium... *sigh*

How Extraordinary Customer Service Impressed Even a 5-Year Old Girl

A few months ago, Marika broke the Sidekick machine that I passed on to her. This was a shock for a couple of reasons - (1) she usually is pretty good about NOT breaking things, unlike her infamous big sister and (2) we could not, for the life of us, unjam the die and cutting plates that were firmly stuck in there.

Since I knew the machine was past the limited 3-year warranty (and I was pretty sure the warranty wouldn't have covered this anyway), I didn't even blink when B. (Holly's hubby) asked if he could take it apart. He's an amazing mechanic who used to work in a print shop so hey, who better? One quick glance and he knew what was wrong - the large plastic gear (bottom right) was supposed to be D-shaped, but had been stripped. Apparently, my 5-year old is stronger and more persistent than anybody ever imagined. I'm sure panic and desperation were key ingredients there!

I contacted Sizzix.com customer service, asking if I could purchase the large gear to repair my machine. They responded right away, but said Sidekicks weren't considered "fixable", that even their repair guys had difficulty re-assembling the machines and would I like a discount on purchasing an upgrade? They offered me the Big Shot for $59.99.

I responded that regrettably, I couldn't afford a $60 machine right now and that my 5-year old probably couldn't even power the Big Shot - the Sidekick was perfect for her size. I asked if it was possible for her to dig up an extra large gear so that we could try to repair it? I offered to pay for shipping.

The customer service rep was great - she found a gear and mailed it the next day. Since Sizzix is only an hour away, it arrived within a couple of days - but my elation turned to despair when I saw that the gear was square-cut, not D-shaped. I think Sizzix must have changed their machines within the last 3-4 years - which really sucked for us.

I was afraid I was trying the patience of the customer service rep (who seemed so nice and sweet), but I tried one last plea for help - was there any possible way she could scrounge up a D-shaped gear? Once again, I offered to pay for the shipping. She said she would try, but I didn't hear from her for a few days, so I figured we were completely out of luck. I wasn't surprised, but figured I had tried everything I could to get the machine fixed and Marika would just have to learn her lesson the hard way. I thought the matter was over.

And then... I heard back from the customer rep. She said she hadn't heard back about the right gear, so she was going to send A BRAND-NEW MACHINE RIGHT AWAY so neither of us would have to worry about this anymore. I was completely flabberghasted. I felt bad and emailed back that I was totally willing to wait for the gear, that I didn't want her to get into trouble, and was she really serious?

Apparently, she was! This adorable new machine showed up on our doorstep Saturday. Marika saw it and timidly asked, "who is this for?" When we said it was hers, she was ecstatic! Her sister, of course, was totally green with envy, because it was PINK and with a FLOWER. I'm thankful it wasn't the Hello Kitty version or there might have been some major problems!

So here's Marika, trying out her new Sidekick. Check out her look of intensity (middle picture!).

And here she is, happy again. I told her if she ever jams another die, to immediately seek help. I hope this thing lasts a really long time, because I am *NOT* sharing my Cuttlebug...

So I'm going to have to add Sizzix to my list of "top 3" companies with awesome customer service. The other two are Quickutz and Making Memories. I will buy almost anything from a company who stands behind their product 100% and is willing to back it with outstanding customer service. Sizzix was amazingly generous in this situation, since I fully acknowledged that my 5-year old had broken the machine. AMAZING. They have definitely earned my customer loyalty.

I think I just might have to go to their warehouse sale to give them some money in return. Anybody want to go with me? =)

One Mother's Dream May Be Another Mother's Horror

Yesterday, the girls and I finally had time after my soccer game (a miserable defeat, I confess) to rush over to Daddy Dude's baseball game. There he is, leading off first base after hitting a single (his team, too, ultimately suffered another miserable defeat). I was kind of hoping he'd try to steal a base so I could get some good pictures, but alas... he did not do so... =P

The girls usually don't watch Daddy Dude very closely, although Mika is starting to pay attention to the finer details of baseball games. Here is my littlest one, rummaging through the grass for ladybugs. I know I'm one of the few, the lonely, the proud, but it makes me so happy to see her searching intently for insects. I'm so glad neither of my girls are "girly girls" and that they both enjoy playing outdoors for long stretches of time - you know, the way we used to when we were kids! After the game, the girls played outside with their pool - and new water launchers. Yeah!

But slowly but surely, the girls are growing up. As you can see, we allow them to exercise full fashion freedom (well, maybe 98%). Regardless of their attire, though, they never let it stop them from doing what they want.

A Really, REALLY cold day at the beach

The forecast said 67 degrees at the beach (the high was 82 for our house). I think the reality was more like 50-something! Brrr! The girls still managed to have a lot of fun, even though they did NOT strip down to their bikinis and run into the water like maniacs.

Yesterday was a big day. We drove over to meet F., Mom's new beau, and some of his immediate family. We had a lovely time meeting them - they were very nice people and F. was a very sweet and charming gentleman. He treated my mother like a queen and with such gentleness and tenderness... I was really touched by the kind gestures he made towards her on several occasions (and to me, too - he held doors open, he offered to help carry my bags, etc.). I hope they will make each other very happy. =) We are a little worried that Mom's messiness will make him crazy (he is impressively neat! I love it!), but at least he knows already she is messy.

Mom bought a couple of new kites for the girls. They were really attractive (I only buy $1 kites for the girls, knowing that they will destroy them) - a blue bird and a colorful butterfly. The blue bird kept listing to its left - regardless of how many people tried to fly it, it was a no go. We'll have to figure out how to balance the weight and make it fly.

The butterfly kite, though I had to repair (=sew) part of the wing before even trying to fly it, flew absolutely beautifully.

Here's DaddyDude, staring in amazement at the butterfly kite in flight, while the girls stuff their faces with snacks after a big lunch. =)

Here's Miss Mika flying the kite. You can see how overcast the day was... it was really cold!

Miss Marika agreed to take our picture. We are freezing and laughing here, because we were trying to coach Marika on how to NOT cut off people's heads and feet while taking a picture. The camera she was holding kept moving slowly to the right, left, up, down... but she did manage to take this picture.

Mom and F. will come to visit us on June 1st, so that gives me a little over 2 weeks to completely weed the yard! Ah, but it's time. You know it's a jungle out there when even a guinea pig isn't willing to trapse through the back planter. I also need to put in a new garden... although our grape tomato plant from last spring is still flowering and producing a lot of tomatoes.

Happy Mother's Day!

Hope all the mothers out there have a wonderful day! =)