Anna by Katie

I have a confession....

The lovely blog of Andrea Nguyen is a bit of an addiction for me, I will explain why...

I love adore and worship dumplings. Every time I make them for my family I feel like such a women. As I finely dice the ingredients for the filling I relax into the process and give into the time commitment ahead of me. The meditative process of folding the filling into each delicate wrapper and sealing it with your wet hands brings a calm peace into my body. I always make at least a hundred dumplings and either freeze some of them or give them away to friends and family, no one will ever turn down a gift of dumplings.

I like to sometimes fry the dumplings in sesame oil to make sinful pot stickers but I usually just boil the dumplings in water and then serve them with this insanely delicious and simple Chinese vegetable and broth soup.

Its safe to say that our kids have also inherited our feverish love of the dumpling as they can eat dozens of them at one meal! It worries me sometimes!

So what got me thinking about dumplings today? well a dear friend of mine is moving back to australia so I'm hosting her a little party this saturday night. The menu...well dumplings of course

> Dumplings with soup

> Pot stickers with a chunky sauce

> Mung bean noodle stir fry with gluten

For dessert I've shied away from the Chinese dinner menu and am planning on a very western indulgence overkill.....

> Lilikoi chesecake

> Blue berry cobbler

> Homemade vanilla icecream

Morning...baby

Leaving on a Jet plane....soon.....but we will be back again

Whenever we are going on a plane I start singing the song Leaving on a Jet plane by John Denver, I break into the song in the kitchen, in the bathroom and dance around the house with my little babies singing "I'm leaving on a jet plane, dont know when I will be back again" .... further evidence that I'm a strange bug.

So we're headed to Boston to see two specialists, my wonderful Scleroderma specialist Dr. Kissin at the Boston Medical Center and one of his colleagues Dr. Theadore who is a pulmonologist who specializes in Scleroderma induced lung fibrosis. 

We're leaving Hawaii on the 23rd of Oct and returning on the 4th Nov. We will be in Boston for 6 days and then we're going to head over to California for a little family vacation, we plan on making it a nature vacation. Yosemite is on the list of to do's and of course we're going to go apple picking and pie making. Because of my lowered immune system, which is a result of my chemotherapy treatments, we stay away from public places and crowds etc to help prevent from getting sick. But that aside I think it will still be a lovely vacation exploring what California has to offer outdoors. My husband grew up in California so it will be wonderful for him to go back and see it as an adult.

I'm so happy we decided to make it a family vacation and not just a trip to see the doctors.

I plan on taking millions and millions of photos so prepared to be bombarded when we return.

Daily Painting

Not yet finished but this will be another one in my series of personalized family paintings

Morning... in dada's "office"

We ventured into my husbands office this morning to try and drag him out for some breakfast and instead settled in for some impromptu photos. So I bravely share...

My darling little girl...

... doing what she does best....

Check out that funny face on yanti!

I could just eat them up for dessert

hehehehe.... funny face again and my chubby bubby little boy...

Hey dada if I smile at you like this will you let me play with your camera?

Oh hello their little monkey boy

 

Daily Painting

This painting is apart of my new series of personalized family portraits. I'm trying to get them up in my store in time for christmas orders. I've been painting them off photos of my friends, I love the idea. I started by painting a family portrait for my mom of our family and liked the idea so much.

I often paint at night times when the little monkeys are sound asleep, I put my ipod on with either music or a podcast and get lost in time till my husband taps me on the shoulder with a gentle reminder that the world is indeed passing me by.

Morning...self portraits

Morning...in the bathroom

 

 

 

POPCORN!!

We love popcorn in our house, we love the sound of the pop! pop! POP! pop! 

But we don't just love any popcorn, we have an obsession, passion and intense affection for  savory yeast, olive oil and spike seasoned popcorn. We will not have it any other way. We also manage to eat popcorn about 3-4 times a week.

I pop popcorn as snacks when we go out and put it in glad bags to seal in the freshness. Its always all gone by the time we head home.

So as you can see we have a little bit of a popcorn love affair going on in our little house.... here is today's evidence.

Dama digging in, whats that spoon for!?

Chubby little hands

Yanti steals the bowl and heads up on top of the table with it, queen of her castle...

Mamaaaaaaaa! she stole the popcorn!

Yanti, is always dressed up as one little adventurer or another... all day long. Her little wardrobe of cute adorable dresses goes untouched for weeks as she raids her dress up drawer from dawn to dusk. She loves this headband that I made for her a few weeks ago with flowers and white feathers. As long as its bright and colorful shes happy! :-)

"And so yeah there was this big frog who liked to ride a horse that was pink which lived in this big cave that had blue walls..........." if you where wondering, yes she talks ALL day long just like that :)

Morning...