Calzones at the Phelpi

When we watched The Walking Dead at Cory and April’s last weekend, April set up a create-your-own calzone station for us. It was really cool.

There were a variety of fillings to choose from.

Here’s Brian making his calzone.

Here’s Cory making one.

And April. We all just took turns at the calzone creation station basically.

After we made them, the calzones went in the oven for about 10 to 15 minutes and they were done. They didn’t need to be in the oven long because all of the fillings were already pre-cooked. This is my finished calzone. I wrote a C so I could identify it when it came out of the oven.

The calzones were yummy. Great idea, Cory and April!

Gavin modeled is plethora of hats for me over dinner.

I didn’t take a picture of him each time he came out with a different hat because he had too many. Apparently, Gavin loves hats. The best part is that he can remember where each hat is from or at least the first time he wore them. What a smart kid!

March 9, 2013 | Posted by Ching under Life

Brian’s Crowning Moment

Creepiest picture I’ve taken of Brian yet.

Brian getting worked on by two lovely ladies at the dentist.

And then by the handsome dentist.

And the end result…

Ta da!

February 12, 2013 | Posted by Ching under Life

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Funny Conversations

Brian and I have some funny conversations — in the shower, in the car, around the house, or just hanging out in general. Here’s a few of the funnier ones that I’ve posted on the Flip and Ching page.

BRIAN: Just so you know, as soon as you turn (into a Zombie) I’m putting a bullet to your head.
CHING: What? You wouldn’t want to be a Zombie with me?
BRIAN: Nope.
CHING: So we can get fat together and we can get fit together, but you draw the line at being Zombies?
BRIAN: Yup.
CHING: Fine. Since I have a gun now too, then the same goes for you.

So we’re no Romeo and Juliet… Apparently, when I turn into a Zombie, I’m on my own. LOL. At least I have a gun now.

This next one happened yesterday morning. We all dream of winning the lottery. Well, when we win the lottery, we’re getting a butler.

So I woke up this morning craving hardboiled eggs for breakfast, but neither of us wanted to get up out of bed to make it. I told Brian that it was times like these that I wish we had a butler. We could just be like, “I want some hardboiled eggs please, and a glass of water.” Then they would come back to the bedroom with our stuff and we wouldn’t have to get up out of bed.

A few minutes after Brian got up to make breakfast, he came back into the bedroom. Upon seeing me still in bed, playing with my phone…

BRIAN: What are you still doing in bed when I’m out there making breakfast? Have I become your Alfred?
CHING: No, I just need to play my “words” first.
BRIAN: Come play it in the kitchen.
CHING: But it’s cold!
BRIAN: Put a robe on. Better yet, go ahead and get ready so you’re not rushin’—
CHING: Who’s Russian? I’m not Russian. I’m Asian!

Brian was about to walk away but turned around, hopped on the bed and gave me a good spanking. After much spanking on his part and giggling and screaming on my part, he paused and looked at his hand for a second.

CHING: Did my buns of steel hurt your hand?
BRIAN: Buns of squish maybe.

I love mornings that start like this. Alfred or no Alfred.

This is what happens when we walk through Von Maur. Therefore, we try to keep trips to the mall to the bare minimum. Twice a year or once every three months is frequent enough. Any more than that and we’d probably have to sell some organs.

CHING: Ooh, I love that purse. (Approaches purse, fondles it, and tries it on.)
BRIAN: It’s Brighton. I can tell from the buckles.
CHING: I’m impressed. (Still wearing purse.)
BRIAN: How much is it?
CHING: (Takes off purse to check the price.) Umm.. $290.
BRIAN: Step away from the purse.

Here’s one that happened right after my thyroid surgery.

BRIAN: You should weigh yourself. You look like you’ve lost weight.

Ching steps on the scale. Scale reads 119.8, almost 5 pounds less than her last weigh in.

CHING: MY THYROID WEIGHED THAT MUCH?!

And this one..

BRIAN: I miss you.
CHING: I miss you too, baby.
BRIAN: So when do you think you can have sex?
CHING: I can have sex anytime. They didn’t check the “vaginal rest” box.

While watching Person of Interest one night…

CHING: The married couple hired assassins to kill each other?
BRIAN: That sounds like something we would do.
CHING: I wouldn’t do that to you.
BRIAN: You’re right. You’d kill me yourself.

Anyway, be sure to like our Facebook page so you don’t miss out on other funny conversations that I post there because most of them never make it on our blog anymore. Have a fantastic day! Until next time.

xoxo,
Ching

February 3, 2013 | Posted by Ching under Life, Relationship

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What Does It Mean?

Ever since I named our Facebook place Casa de Felitaciones, I keep getting asked what it means. A couple of people have asked me, “Don’t you mean Casa de Felicitaciones?” I had thought about that, but the word felicitationes means greetings or congratulations and doesn’t quite convey the feeling I wanted to evoke; so I decided to make my own word: felitaciones.

Felitaciones is derived from the Spanish word felitacion, which means wishes. I had to add the “es” at the end of the word because it just wasn’t quite exotic sounding enough for me. LOL.

Anyway, one could also think of it as wishes = dreams. However, Casa de Felitaciones isn’t so much a “dream house” — although it is the best house that Brian and I have ever lived in — but a house where all of your dreams and wishes come true.

Unlike our previous house where there was so much work that needed to be done, this house requires no work. There are no projects to consume our time so we can focus our energy on making ourselves better. We can spend our time and effort on achieving our goals and making our dreams reality. I realize that this explanation is long overdue, but that’s what the name of our house means to me.

February 3, 2013 | Posted by Ching under Home Ownership, Life

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One Heck of a Saturday

Teaching Zumba this morning at Evergreen Recreation Center (2700 N. Woodland – Come join me!), then going gun shopping at Cabela’s, followed by Flying Stove for lunch.

IVR testing this afternoon, and then meeting some friends at Margarita’s to celebrate Amie’s birthday. In between all of this, I guess I’m learning about dashboards.

Maybe tomorrow will be a little better, but I have a feeling that I have more IVR testing in my future. =P

February 2, 2013 | Posted by Ching under Life

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The Travel Junkie

If any of you guys want to go on a vacation, we know some travel experts that you should talk to… Jay and Becca at The Travel Junkie are the best. Although, they’re always trying to sell us on Sandals and we are diehard Couples Resorts fans. LOL.

January 27, 2013 | Posted by Ching under Life, Travel

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Beer Scavenger Hunt

Nick had a list of beers he wanted Carmen to look for so one night before dinner we stopped by Total Wine in Glendale. It’s not quite Table & Vine, but it’s pretty cool. They sell cheeses and chocolates and wine tchotchkes, pretty much everything that you need for a wonderful evening.

Despite two whole aisles of craft beers, they didn’t carry any of the hard-to-find beers on Nick’s list. Carmen picked out some good ones that you can’t get in Kansas that she thought he’d like, though. I asked Brian if he wanted me to get him anything, but he said no. We live by a pretty good liquor store so it didn’t really matter. Although, I did find that some of the prices at Total Wine are much better. They had bottles of Chateau Ste Michelle riesling for under $6. They’re usually $10-15 over here.

As good as Groves is, I kind of wish we had a Total Wine or Table & Vine here. Brian says that, by law, liquor stores in Kansas aren’t allowed to sell food. We actually found this out when we went to a Trader Joe’s in Leawood. They didn’t have any liquor. One of the store representatives told that us that we would have to go a store on the Missouri side to get the regular Trader Joe’s experience. This is definitely one of the downsides of living in Kansas.

January 12, 2013 | Posted by Ching under Life

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A Year in Photos

I’d been seeing lots of memory jar pins on Pinterest over that last couple of weeks and I thought it would be fun to do for 2013 so I suggested it to Brian the other day. I explained how it worked — you write down things you want to remember (funny moments, serious moments, something you learned, a first, basically anything you want to remember and cherish) on pieces of paper and shove them in the jar throughout the year, then at the end of the year (presumably while celebrating New Year’s Eve) you read the notes together to look back on all the wonderful moments of the year. He was like, “Why would we do that when we have your blog? You document everything.”

I thought about it for a moment and realized he’s right. The memory jar idea works for normal people, but not people like us. We have a very well-documented life. To look back on the year, I need only to go through the blog’s archives. Although, it’s not nearly as much fun looking through the blog archives on the Mac as drawing random pieces of paper from a jar and reading it one at a time. The memory jar idea definitely creates a more fun, interactive experience for all those involved. Specially if you’re old school. Maybe we could make one for his grandma or our parents or something.

2012 PHOTOS

January (235) February (383) March (474) April (263) May (560) June (235) July (176) August (277) September (299) October (223) November (131) December (248)

Speaking of a well-documented life, check out our year in photos on the right. You can also see links to previous years in the archives. While there’s something to be said about pulling pieces of paper out of a jar, there’s nothing like looking at pictures of all of these moments.

Thank heavens for Flickr so I can keep all of these photos in one secure place. Then I don’t have to scour Instagram and Facebook and Twitter and everywhere else.

BTW, the numbers in parentheses are the number of photos in each month. While this seems like a lot, it’s actually 2,201 photos less than last year and probably almost 5,000 less than the year before that. I think I’m mellowing out in my old age. LOL.

I used to take a thousand photos between Christmas Eve and Christmas Day alone. This year I only took 248 photos the entire month of December. I think this is because I quit carrying a regular digital camera around and have been relying mostly on my phone. These days I usually upload the picture immediately after taking the photo, as opposed to the old way of taking a whole bunch of photos on your digital camera and then uploading them as a batch later. I like the new process in terms of immediate gratification (that, and I don’t have to take time out of my week to upload photos) but it makes me far less prolific. I doubt anyone minds. I’m sure that others think that I can mellow out some more on the photo-taking.

Incidentally, I noticed that I took exactly the same number of photos in March 2012 as I did the same month the year before. Talk about consistency!

Anyway, I will leave you all with one of my most favorite photos of 2012. Keep making those memories. Until next time…

January 6, 2013 | Posted by Ching under Life

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Happy New Year

Once again, it’s time to recap the year that was… Before we review 2012, here’s a look at my year-end recaps of years past.

2008

2009

2010

2011

Now that you’re caught up, let’s look back at some of last year’s memorable moments.

We started the year with Liz and Robby’s wedding. Last year was actually a banner year for weddings. We saw several friends tie the knot, including Cousin Tracy. We first celebrated with Tracy and Jeff on their wedding shower and then continued the celebration in Jamaica. They had a beautiful wedding at Coral Cove Resort in Little Bay. Then there was Mark and Jarrica’s wedding a couple of months later. Fortunately, their wedding was held in town so we didn’t have to hop on a plane or drive to another city. There’s also Daniel and Angi and then, more recently, Pia and JP. Congratulations to all of our friends who got married last year.

The trip to Jamaica was great by the way. It was a short trip for us because Brian and I didn’t want to take too much time off work, but we wanted to be there for Cousin Tracy and Jeff’s big day. We packed a lot of adventures on our few days there, including a boat trip to Negril, a visit to Rick’s Cafe, some kayaking in the cove, and plenty of sunbathing.

A few weeks after returning from our Jamaica trip, I completed the Zumba Basic 1 training. I officially received my Zumba instructor license and joined the Zumba Instructor Network (ZIN) on April 20. We followed that up with a trip to Overland Park for the Gina & Tanya Rock the Stage Tour. We also had a fun t-shirt destruction party earlier that same month, where the girls made creative shirts to wear to the event. Incidentally, this was the same day as Stephanie’s birthday party at Ciao! A huge tornado came through Wichita that night. We all barely got out of the restaurant before it hit the area. Lucky for us, we lived right by Waterfront and we were home in a couple of minutes so we had enough time to evacuate to the tornado shelter under the clubhouse of our apartment complex. Pretty scary stuff.

For Brian’s 38th birthday, I took him to Nashville. He lived in Memphis for three years, but never got to go there. He was jealous when I went there for a conference the year before and kept saying how much he wanted to go so I decided that’s how we would celebrate his birthday. We stayed at Gaylord Opryland, which is actually like its own city. Brian got to see Nashville for the first time and also watch his first Grand Ole Opry concert. The best part about his birthday gift is that I got to enjoy it too.

I celebrated my tenth service anniversary with work at YaYa’s. It was pretty uneventful compared to the time Brian and I were there celebrating our ninth wedding anniversary. Speaking of restaurants and eating out, we got to eat out a lot in 2012 because I started writing restaurant reviews for the Wichita Eagle as part of Denise Neil’s Dining Panel. I’m so grateful to Denise for including me.

My cousin Reuel and his wife Sonny Jay visited Kansas in July. Reuel lives in Norway so I hadn’t seen him in almost twenty years. We were supposed to attend his wedding in the Philippines, but the airfare was quite high around that time and our budget just wouldn’t allow it. I’m glad they were able to visit us.

We spent our tenth wedding anniversary at Stewart Title closing on our house. We decided that our house is to be our anniversary present to one another… for the next ten years. LOL. We didn’t move in for a month because we wanted the entire interior repainted. We officially moved in around Labor Day weekend, which meant no trip to Texas this year. Ever since Sheryll and her family moved to Dallas, we’d been making the trip South every September. This would have been the third year of that annual tradition had we been able to do it. We were busy with moving and getting our new house in order, though. Perhaps we can resume the tradition next year. Although, now that we have extra space, we can host the Orbases when they visit us which hopefully will be here in a few weeks.

Since we didn’t go to Texas, we treated ourselves to an overnight stay in Kansas City for the Journey concert. That was my first ever concert in the rain. The concert was held at an outdoor arena and we had floor seats. I didn’t plan on it raining when I purchased the tickets. We still had fun, though.

Some of the other fun events we were fortunate enough to attend this year include Zoobilee, Oktoberfest (Newman University’s fundraising event), the sixth annual Brew Ha-Ha at Flint Hills National, and Becca’s 40th birthday celebration. I did some volunteer work at the Kansas State Fair and the Lord’s Diner. I really wanted to be able to do more, but was really busy this year since I started teaching Zumba.

Brian really enjoyed handing out candy on Halloween night, our first at the new house. We also attended a few Halloween parties.

We made our annual trek to Legends Outlets in Kansas City on the evening of Thanksgiving for Moonlight Magic. Brian and I have been doing the Black Friday thing for a few years now and I think we’ve finally gotten it out of our system. This should be our last year. There will be no crazy midnight shopping trips in store for us this year. Brian will be most happy about this news.

In December we hosted our first fight night here at the new house. Then I had my thyroidectomy. Brian was a mess, naturally. Other than an unnecessary trip the ER the Sunday following my surgery, recovery has been going well. I’m actually thinking about going back to doing some light running this week. I’ve been a slug all month and, now that my appetite is back, I’m starting to pack on the pounds.

Anyway, I think that pretty much sums up 2012. It has been an eventful year and I feel truly blessed. Each year that passes continues to be even better than the last and I have a feeling that 2013 will be the best year yet. I’ll see you guys again around this time next year as we recap the year’s highlights.

Until then… Have a fantastic year everyone!

January 1, 2013 | Posted by Ching under Life

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Christmas Morning

In honor of our first Christmas at the new house, Brian and I decided to buy presents for each other that we can exchange on Christmas morning. We never buy presents for each other because we usually just get a joint gift to each other or get a couples massage or take a trip somewhere and call it our Christmas. This year we wanted to do something different.

I get a kick out of being different so I wrapped Brian’s present in a Noodles & Company takeout box.

Brian wanted a new wedding band because his wedding band has gotten too big for his fingers since he’s lost so much weight. He wanted a tungsten wedding band this time around instead of platinum.