For you grams.

A few weeks ago it was Obon season!  To see a previous explanation of what Obon is click here.  At first, I didn't really want to do it, I was just being lazy and feeling awkward.  I forced myself to go to the dance practices and remembered why I loved it.  It's that chance to honor those who have passed before.  Call me crazy, but I felt connected, to my heritage, my grandma, my family, my fellow Asians, my inner Asian self.   I really miss my Grams.  I'm still bummed that she never got to meet my babies.

(Little Brother's bug eyes.  Always.  I die!)

I'm sure Gram's would be telling me how I'm doing all sorts of things wrong, like how my hair looks like a birdnest, or that I'm eating too much, or that my clothes didn't match, that my boobs were getting big... she was just blunt.  I usually knew that whatever I did, she wouldn't like, and she would let me know.  I miss that, I knew that she loved me deep down, even when she wouldn't actually say "I love you" back.  She was just sassy like that.  She did like me, don't get me wrong, she was the best person and I hope I grow up to be just like her one day.  

I know she would have loved these babies.  Gram's would have sewn these babies their little yakatas and hapi coats.  Little Aiko has the exact profile of my gram's...all cheeks and no nose.  It's a good thing we named her after Gram's.   Hopefully, one day little Aiko and Orion will be dancing with me to honor their great grandparents.  

For now, Aiko will just watch all the big girls, learning all their dance moves, waiting for the day when she can walk without falling over. 

(This image is from the Standard Examiner.  It's my cousins little girl and her cousin and my boob!  The famous boob.)

Until next year Obon. 

Neighborhood Fireworks show

Just a whole lotta photos of my little onis.

Decking It.

So we have this awesome deck, with super awesome potential.  But with great potential comes great cost.  So we made do with what we have.  I'm a big barefoot person.  I purposely walk around the block barefoot so I can get my feet ready for summer.  Tender feet are the pits.  But splinters...those are even worse.  Especially with poor Aiko runs around on the deck, trips and then has 30 splinters in her feet and up her leg.  

It's a big deck.  We knew it would be too expensive to replace all the boards (which it could really use.) So we looked into repainting it. 

Before-ish  (Because we ALWAYS forget to take before.)

Wait, What?!  I actually did take some photos...or steal them from the MLS, I honestly don't know. 

Can you just feel the splinters?!

It's like that barefoot dancing commercial you see from Behr, their advertisement worked so dang well! Except Behr's was too expensive.  We ended up buying Rust-Oleum's Restore from Home Depot.

There was a 4x and 10x thickness.  We chose to use the 4x and purchased the 4 gallon.   I know, we chose the most boring color ever, but while we were at the store we only saw 4 samples.  Little did we know you could actual choose like 50 different colors, after we had the paint lady start tinting.  Le Sigh

We did power wash the deck before.  Surprisingly, it rolled on very easy and quickly.  While putting on the first coat I noticed some dark clouds looming over.  Of course.  It had to rain.  So we had to wait another day for the deck to dry out again.

Aiko watching her dad work.  Apparently, his waving was hysterical.

We did the deck in a couple different steps.  First we power washed, then we painted 2 coats on the boards.  Surprisingly, it rolled on very easily and quickly.  We did have to change rollers quite a few times and don't even try cleaning them out.  We left the posts and railings until we could agree on a color. The husband wanted to keep the redwood color above, but I don't care for it, like a lot.

In the end, the husband found the stain we'd used on our wood floors.  Here.  So instead, they ended up being a dark brown.   I thought we could work as a team to stain the deck, but in the end, I had a super crappy brush and a not so good attitude, so the husband ended up staining everything while I did who knows what.  (Like care for the children.)

After, he painted the railings with the same coating as the main part of the deck.  You guys, It looks awesome.  No more splinters in Aiko's legs, we can walk barefoot, I can lay on it.

It's amazing.  

Here's a few pictures of our days on the deck.

The only downside, is that the painted deck gets SUPER hot.  So we always lay down a blanket or wear shoes until it cools of. 

Every morning the babies are stripped down to their diapers and we go get some sun.  Aiko and I lay on our backs (little brother is happily kicking) and I point things out in the sky to her.  Planes, (current favorite) clouds and everything else are all so lovely from our deck.  

I should just blame her.

I mean, wouldn't you?  

But alas, I know we made our own decisions that day.  I am the eldest, eldest sibling, eldest sister... You would think I would have set the example, chosen the path of righteousness.

  I was sitting at church feeling super guilty.  We teach righteouness to the little kids and here I am the sinner, who actually took her husband, dog, two babies and her two little sisters to jump off an illegal bridge.  

Yes, we are still talking about it.  We may or may not have to go to court tomorrow.  We aren't quite sure.  See, we recently found out it will go on our record, like a criminal record.  You can imagine our horror.  Plus, the $680 fine.  Per freaking person.  That's $1360 ripped right out of our souls.  All. Of. Our. Souls. 

Yes, the husband has been researching like mad to see what we can do... He's been reading into all the laws and talking to lawyer friends.  Yes, he's kind of freaking out, yes, it's all because I pushed him to drive us out to jump off that dang bridge.  I thought he would really like it.  He did.  Now, I'm beginning to wonder.

A few days later.

So we do still have to go to court. Just, my sisters and I.  See, somehow, the husband's ticket is MIA in the court system.  Maybe the cop was being nice?  Maybe he didn't want to hit a fellow Cedar-ite with a double whammy fine?  Who knows.  Of course, we will be trying to figure out what happened with it, because the odds would be that he'd end up with a warrant out for his arrest or something. 

Neighborhood Life

Neighborhood Life

Aiko's two favorite people happen to both be named Jaidyn/Jayden.  What makes it even harder is that one is a boy and the other a girl.  She doesn't really care which is there, she's just happy to be with either.

These three girls are all within a year of each other, so we get together occasionaly to have some girl time.

Poor brother needs to find some guy friends his age soon!

Why do I always feel like Hali's activities are always illegal.

Because they are. 

As we drove up to this "activity," I kind of had this gut wrenching fear.  I don't let this be known very often, but I am a stickler for following the rules.  Always have.  When I'm older, I'll be the old lady that sits behind you in church, shushing the little people.  Oh, wait, I already do that.  

I should have said, "let's go" after seeing the "Private Property Sign."  We all saw it, but we all went anyway.  Hali's friends had just been there, I mean JUST barely been there, jumping naked (something I definitely wouldn't do) so it was okay right?

I should have said, "let's go" after tripping on a railroad track (some-freaking-how) with my baby boy strapped to my stomach.  Don't worry, I tucked in and somehow landed on my left side with all the bruises and cuts to show it. He didn't even seem to care.  

I should have said "it's too far" as we were trucking baby girl and little brother.  Little sister Hali said it was a short walk, who is definitely as wild as a recent returned missionary can get. Truly.  Also, her descriptions are always so appealing, yet so inaccurate in pretty much everything. 

Like the length of the walk and the height of the bridge.  "It's not that high."  she says.

YOLO right?

Don't worry, we set a prime example for little Aiko, who just squealed with delight while watching them jump.

Looks fun right?

Which is why I climbed right over that fence...and this is where I stayed.  You see, I'm not afraid of heights, really, I'm not.  It's not even the jumping part, it's the jumping into water.  I kind of hate water activities.  I hate swimming.  I'm more of a floater/bobber. So I didn't jump.  Which is weird, because I succumbed to peer pressure already to get there, but once it came to the jumping, I really didn't want too.  (Plus, I was still shaking from tripping, I mean it's one thing to trip, while it's another to trip with my little man's life.) Also, there was this weird sail boat on in the river...which Hali said they were filming them the last time she came.  Weirded me out. The Kona would have been there to save me even or the husband.  I literally walked away from it.  I kind of regret it now too.  

(Head bowed down in shame.)

As we were packing up to leave, Hali says "Oh, shoot."  Then she won't answer our questions and there is a super awkward silence.

That's because there is one lone man walking the long walk on the tracks towards us.  He's waving.  

Crap.

So we begin the long journey back towards what? A happy cop? An angry owner?  We don't really know.  As we get closer, it's apparent he's some kind of cop.  I'm not really sure what he thinks of our motley crew.  The husband's carrying Aiko in his new Father's Day gift, Hali's carrying little brother, I've got the Kona, Hannah's carrying a diaper bag, Aiko's just chatting it up and pointing at all the birds.  One happy family right?  

He was actually quite nice and perhaps it was because we didn't talk much on the way back.  We knew we were in the wrong.  Once again, I was hanging my head in shame.  Double shame.  You see, halfway back another guy shows up, this one is a Sheriff.  Cop A works for the Union Pacific Railroad Police.  (Which he said there was only 4 in the whole state.  The odds people!) Sheriff works for good old Cache county.  While they are chatting it up like old buddies, we walk the walk of shame towards our truck.  While eavesdropping, I find out he's from Cedar City.  Great.  Which, if you grew up in Cedar, you know everyone, including the husband and his family. This day is getting to be awesome.

Finally, we get back to the car and he asks for our IDs.  Which, out of the four of us, only Hannah somehow brought one.  

Awkward.  

As we are waiting for whatever to happen, we realize that not only are we trespassing, but we drove out in the truck, which doesn't have enough seats!!  So while sisters and I sit outside the truck, the husband is inside the truck (with the air and babies) looking up if it's legal to have somehow sit in the back of the truck.  We wouldn't want to get caught doing too many things wrong that day right? 


(taken before trouble.)

We sat there forever.  I mean it really was a good while.  We literally were running out of water and my babies were getting hungry.  Cop A got out of his truck and said we could sit in our truck out of the hot air if we wanted...Sheriff was sitting in his car doing who knows what.  I started worrying that maybe he was going to give us a second ticket.  I mean, I did hear whilst eavesdropping that Cop A has second jurisdiction while Sheriff has first.  

Could this be two separate infractions against the law?!  

Finally, Sheriff drives away and some time later Cop A got out of his car, carrying papers.  He proceeds to tell us that Union Pacific has a "no tolerance" for trespassers, especially when it comes to bridges.  So he's going to give a ticket, which is a misdemeanor and we'll have to appear before a judge.  It kind of appeared that he didn't really want to give us a ticket.  He tells us to spread the word.  He hands us our golden tickets and sends us on our way.

We did what anyone would do, we started Googling the process and how much our tickets were going to be. We found that it's a Class B with a fine of up to $1,000.  We worried in a quiet silence.  We even texted our mom who was in California with our uncle who is a lawyer.  I mean, we worried.  Finally, we talked to our mom and uncle.  He said it wasn't a big deal, maybe a couple hundred.  We finally laughed.  

Awkwardly.  

We still speculated away.  If only this...if only that.  I suddenly realized that I was going to have to pay for that unjumped-jump. I didn't even freaking jump.  We still don't know how much it's going to be, so we decided it was okay to laugh, until we find out how much we have to pay.  Hannah said "Well, boring people never have awesome stories to tell."  Which, while that is true, boring people don't have to pay for tickets because of bridge jumping (or not jumping.)

You only live once right?