Poor Mama

Mama got caught out in a rain storm last weekend. This resulted in a very bad hair day!! : )

The Other Ladies...

Here are our lovely ladies, all nice and grown up! The gray one in the front is Isa; from left to right in the back we have Coco, Speckle, Mama and Sis. Sis is our top egg layer, she is also the most friendly of all of them. She is always first at your feet and will let you pick her up most of the time.

I thought it would be fun to see some of their before and afters. So here they are as chicks and now, full grown:

She did it!!!!

Little Sis laid her first egg! We fried it up for breakfast and split it between the two of us. It was pretty tasty, the yolk was bright orange. Mike claimed it had a bit of an after taste...I was so proud of Sis I couldn't taste a thing except eggy goodness!! ...Saturday morning we had egg #2!

Thanksgiving

This year Funda, a graduate student in Mike's lab, joined us at my parents' house for Thanksgiving. This was her first Thanksgiving eating like a true American (she's from Turkey - how appropriate!!). Funda helped my mom and I prepare many dishes, she made her very first pie crust and apple pie! She was very excited, we took a lot of pictures for her to send home to her family. She was also quite interested in the process of frying the turkey.

We spent the weekend with my parents, playing with their dog and enjoying being out of the city and relaxing! We brought the Wii up and had a lot of fun seeing mom and dad try their best on the balance board and racing on Mario Cart! Unfortunately we didn't get a video of my aunt trying to head soccer balls and avoid cleats and panda heads - she slightly resembled Mama the chicken in one of her frantic phases!! : ) Good times!

More Hawaii fun!

I took my first 3-days off from work (this was quite stressful getting lesson plans ready for the substitute). It felt amazing once I got to Hawaii and I was laying on the beach on a Thursday : )

My mom and I found a quiet hotel in Makaha on Oahu, it was away from Waikiki and all the huge hotels and touristy stuff. Here are some photos of our 5 days:



We spent part of an afternoon at Hanauma Bay for some snorkeling, but a storm made the water cloudy with sand and the currents brought in some box jelly fish and some other terrible creature that was stinging people. So we decided to drive up the east side to the North Shore to witness the famous pipeline and meet up with Erin and Dominic for dinner. Here we are playing in the waves at sunset beach:



And eating some delicious shrimp from Giovanni's shrimp truck with fresh pineapple with Ling hing (dried plum powder) and finally some shave ice (essentially a snow cone, but much better):

Erin and Dominic's Wedding

Erin and I are good friends from college. She and Dominic have been together for a long time and they finally got married! One of the best parts was the location...Hawaii! Unfortunately, however, Michael was tuckered out from traveling, he had a conference to attend and wasn't able to go to the wedding with me. BUT, my mom graciously took his place (after some arm twisting!). I was the Matron of Honor...and honestly it was a little weird...my mom and I were two of three non-Filipino guests. So you can just imagine all of their wedding party photos - yep, I am towering above everyone!