Archive for "Family"
Jenni is Officially a Cougar – JK
Posted on November 25, 2010 by Ching under Family, Health, Shopping.
I’m posting these photos in honor of Jenni’s 30th birthday. She looks like she’s 12 but, as of midnight tonight, she’s really 30. I guess, just like Dr. Begnoche, she is Dorian Gray-ish that way. =P
I normally have several options for working out on Sundays. I can either do Step and Iron at the East Central Genesis at 10:15 AM, Step and Core at the North YMCA at 1:00 PM, or Zumba at the North YMCA at 4:00 PM. Jenni decided to have her birthday lunch at noon, though, which made it difficult to do the 10 AM or 1 PM workouts. I guess I could have done the Zumba, but I was feeling rather unmotivated that day.
Here are some of my favorite pictures from last Sunday:
This is a photo that Brian and I took of our ourselves using Jen Teves’ iPhone 4. We were playing with her front-facing camera. It really makes taking selcas so much easier. I think my next digital camera will need a front display screen.
An awesome photo I took of Jenni and Q. I actually managed to make her look wholesome. =P I think she should make this her new profile picture on Facebook.
The two Jennifers: Jenni and Jen Teves. This was taken before the other Jennifer, Jennifer Cannady, arrived.
Jen and Armando brought the most delicious tiramisu cake. Yum!
Here’s another picture of the cake without the candles.
Gotta post this photo of Jenni and me, just for mom.
We got Jenni a Stoli gift set for her birthday because we’re sick like that.
Logan and Jenni – another possible Facebook profile picture.
Mom and dad showing us that they know how to salsa.
Mom and dad — you guys really need to come out to Suede with us one night! How about next Friday, December 3rd? No Suede for us tomorrow night because we’re going to be in Kansas City this weekend. I’m dragging Brian to Midnight Magic at Legends (Village West). Since he’s being such a good sport about it, I’m rewarding him with a couples massage at his favorite massage place (Serenity) when we return. See, I’m really not the evil wife that you think I am. LOL.
We’re busting out the flannel-lined jeans for the first time this season since Legends and Country Club Plaza are both outdoor malls. We’re also wearing sneakers. I figured since I’m missing my regular Thursday night Zumba class, this can double as my workout. We’re going to be doing a lot of walking after all.
Speaking of working out, I felt really guilty for barely working out last week and then skipping on Sunday that I had to make up for it by working out three days in a row. I did Muscle Pump (45 minutes) and Step (45 minutes) at North YMCA on Monday night, followed by an hour of Zumba at the Downtown YMCA on Tuesday (Thanks for trying it with me, VH!), and then another hour of Zumba at the East Central Genesis yesterday (Gina’s class). I think I really earned my Thanksgiving “pig out” this year!
Anyway, I was hoping that VH would be my workout buddy. Brian doesn’t really like my fitness classes and only reluctantly goes with me because I beg him to… I need an honest to goodness workout buddy like I had in my friend Divina years and years ago. I thought VH could be it, but she already has a set workout schedule. Unfortunately, it includes Yoga (something she loves that I’m not really too fond of). Don’t get me wrong. I like Yoga because it makes me feel like I’ve just gotten a deep tissue massage afterwards. It makes your body feel really good.
Except, I had the misfortune of trying an advanced Yoga class a couple of weeks ago. You know me. I’m not that flexible. Well, I was trying to imitate this old man behind me, while doing one of the Yoga poses (it’s one where you start out on your hands and feet – downward facing dog? – and then you take an arm off the floor and then stick one of your legs up and out; I don’t know what it’s called and I’m pretty sure I was doing it wrong), and I fell over. Brian and I both busted up in quiet laughter. Brian was smart and kept both feet on the ground instead of trying the more advance move so he managed to keep his pose even though he was struggling from laughing at me. I was an idiot and tried to copy the guy behind me, though. I figured, if he could do it then I could too. I was wrong. It was pretty embarrassing, actually.
The worst part is that Brian and I kept cracking up while trying our best not to laugh. It took a good 30 minutes before I was finally able to regain my composure. Needless to say, I’m not going to be doing Yoga for a while. At least, if and when I try it again, it will have to be a beginners class. LOL.
Gosh, I totally got sidetracked on this blog. Where was I? Oh, yeah. Happy 30th birthday, Jenni!
xoxo,
Ching
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Fight Night
Posted on November 15, 2010 by Ching under Family, Things to Do.
Brian and I were expecting about 20 people for the “Paquiao vs. Margarito” fight so we had to completely rearrange our tiny apartment to make room for everyone.
So we moved the ottoman next to the kitchen to create extra seating and then we moved the dining table against the wall to create more space.
Brian is excited for the fight. He doesn’t look it, but he really is excited.
Donna and Jan came out, but both left before the main event started.
We took this photo right before Jen, Armando, Apple and a couple of Armando’s friends showed up.
Apple and Jen.
We had the fight going on both TVs — in the living room and in the office — so that Jen could still enjoy the fight while she’s doing her school work.
Brian and Ching.
The pre-fights are kind of boring. I’m not really interested until Manny gets in the ring. Click here for more photos from fight night. 🙂
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Welcome Back, Feifel!
Posted on November 13, 2010 by Ching under Family.
In case you haven’t noticed, Chris Feifel is back. Welcome back, dude!
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This is the Oldest that I’ve Ever Been
Posted on October 31, 2010 by Ching under Family, Life.
It’s been fun celebrating turning a year older. I really don’t mind being ancient. LOL. My actual birthday was yesterday, but we decided to have our party a week early because we figured no one would show up otherwise. There are way too many parties going on during Halloween weekend, and then several of our friends are spending this weekend in Las Vegas, and then the people with children will be busy with kid stuff. As soon as it was decided that we were having a party, I agreed to compromise and have it a week early.
We began by having a pre-party dinner party at our place last Friday. It was a “thank you” dinner to the Dills and the Phelpi. We’ve spent a lot of time with them this year and we really appreciate their companionship and camaraderie. You all already know what went down on Saturday… It was so great to see everyone, specially those we hadn’t seen in quite a while.
We had originally booked Virginia for a couple of hours. She wasn’t feeling well that night, though. She was a trooper and played for about an hour before we broke for cake. We chatted a bit during the break, which I really enjoyed because I find her so interesting.
VW: Is it okay if I only play a few more songs?
ME: You don’t have to play another set.
VW: I just want to give you your money’s worth.
ME: I think everyone’s pretty much left. Don’t worry about it.
She’s just had so much going on of late, besides being under the weather. I wasn’t about to force her to play another one hour set just to “get my money’s worth” when there was only a handful of us left. Plus, I’m sure she was relieved to finish early so that she didn’t have to miss her friend’s birthday that night.
After most of the guests took off, we decided to play Guitar Hero in the movie theater room. I’d never played Guitar Hero before. I’d only played Rock Band and I generally only play the drums. I suck at playing guitar almost as much as I suck at singing. I eventually got the hang of it after a few songs, though. I had so much fun playing that I’ve decided I want to buy a Wii and get Guitar Hero. Well, I want that dancing game too so I now have two very good reasons to want a Wii system. LOL.
We started with the Tom Petty song “American Girl” but, being a noob, I kept failing. After a couple of tries, we decided to tackle some easier songs first. After a while, I started to get better. I actually outscored Brian on the Kings of Leon song “Sex on Fire,” which I really like so I got into it pretty good. A dozen songs later, we decided to try “American Girl” again and were able to successfully complete it.
It was well after 2 AM when we decided to call it a night. I think I stayed up until 4 AM or so because it took me a while to wind down. Too much sugar, maybe? The frosting on the cake was way sweet. Cory actually beat me by staying up until 5 AM because he was sick as a dog. Anyway, we all ended up at their place on Sunday for football and leftovers. The weekend was pretty much one long day for me.
The festivities continued on Friday night. Mom and Dad B treated Brian and me to dinner at Red Lobster. Donna was not feeling well the weekend of the Ponderosa Party so they couldn’t make it. The dinner at Red Lobster the other night was pretty much our family celebration.
Our server and a couple of others came to our table and sang “Happy Birthday” to me. It was nothing like Virginia’s sexy rendition for sure, but I think the idea is pretty much the same — let’s embarrass the birthday celebrant. I naturally pulled out my camera and snapped a picture of the girls (because I like to document every moment of my life). The girl in the middle actually tried to hide. When they were done she said, “We’re supposed to embarrass you and not the other way around!” LOL. Nothing embarrasses me anymore. That’s what happens after you’ve lived a third of a century.
After dinner, we stopped by Jan’s place to drop off her work laptop and bring her some dinner. She’d been at home sick all week. We rested a while before heading back out to check out Chris’ exhibit at Go Away Garage. That’s one of his pieces on the left.
I love Final Fridays, but we always seem to have something going on and are unable to go. This time around we just came out to support Brian’s coworker/friend Chris. We didn’t really hit any other exhibits. Well, except for the tattoo art exhibit at Tangent Lab, which is next door to Suede. Friday night is our Salsa night and since we missed it the previous weekend because of the pre-party dinner party, we didn’t want to miss again. Tangent Lab is conveniently located next to Suede, though, so it worked out great.
I did snap a couple of pictures at Go Away Garage before we took off. This piece below is by Chris’ friend Mark Walker.
Brian and I loved the phone booth exhibit and couldn’t pass up the photo op.
I wanted to put the phone next to my ear, but Brian wouldn’t let me. He was paranoid that it was exceedingly “germy” from all of the people who had played with it already.
These are a couple of pictures of Brian at Tangent Lab.
You can see more pictures from Final Friday and the Indelible exhibit here.
Speaking of people we hadn’t seen in a long time, we ran into Dominic as we were leaving Tangent Lab.
Rene and George (Salsa night regulars) were already at Suede when we arrived. Rene is probably the most polite, respectful guy there. The first time that I danced with him was the night that we were there with Sergio, Vivian, Jeremiah, Casey and Sarah. He had asked both Vivian and I to dance that night. At the end of the evening, when we were leaving, Rene took the time to thank Brian for letting me dance with him. We’ve liked him ever since.
We met George earlier that same night at the Harry Reese Dance Studio. He was one of the people teaching us how to Salsa. It’s funny because he asked me to dance the Bachata with him a couple of weeks ago and he didn’t realize that I was just learning how to Bachata right then. I guess he thought I already knew how to do it. It’s pretty easy to pick up (us Filipinos can dance anything), but I don’t think I’ll ever learn how to dance it as well as Richard and Amy. LOL.
Brian had a glass of wine as usual… He usually just chills until a Merengue song comes on. He loves to Merengue (or “marchy marchy” as we call it) with me. He will Salsa with me a little bit, but he doesn’t enjoy it as much as the “marchy marchy” songs. I think Brian is glad that there are other guys there to dance with me because he’ll usually get tired after a couple of songs and I’ll still want to keep going.
It’s nice when Rene and George are there because they’ll usually Salsa and Bachata with me. Rene really, really likes to Salsa. He totally gets into it. Chacha is my favorite, but Brian doesn’t like it. It was nice when George asked me to Chacha with him a couple of weeks ago because I rarely ever get to Chacha with anyone. We didn’t get to Chacha the other night, though.
He did ask me to Bachata with him the other night. It’s funny because I get so used to dancing with Brian that I’m not a very good follower. At one point he set up to do a turn (his own). I wasn’t supposed to turn with him, but I did anyway. It was pretty funny and we laughed about it afterward.
I got a good workout from dancing pretty much nonstop that night (check out the sweaty photo of us, above right). Rene and George and Brian kept me busy. I think that was the most I’d ever danced in a long, long time. Perhaps I was making the most of my last night as a 32 year old. LOL. I will never be 32 again.
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The Houston Trip
Posted on October 17, 2010 by Ching under Family, Travel, Videos.
I’m sorry in advance for bombarding you with blog posts both here and on FOODIES. I’m trying to get the blogs caught up. We’ve been so busy lately that the blogs have been almost a month behind.
This post is about the Houston trip, also known as Richard and Amy’s wedding or the road trip when we ate at Cracker Barrel not once but twice! Don’t look at me. I blame Jenni for that one.
I hope you all enjoyed browsing the wedding photos we took. Richard and Amy had a very beautiful wedding. I think it was the most unique (and probably longest) wedding I had ever attended to date. Every single aspect of the wedding was meaningful, though.
I love they had a harpist. It really set the tone from the beginning. The bridesmaids dresses were perfect. Great choice. I also loved that the bridesmaids carried lanterns (see photo at the left) instead of bouquets. That was so unique! The only thing that I was bummed about was that I couldn’t see what was happening from where we were sitting. I think if we’d have sat closer to the front, I might have taken twice as many photos at the wedding (as opposed to only three hundred or so). LOL. Maybe that’s a good thing.
Oh, I also loved that Amy sang during the ceremony. She is so talented. That was one of the most unique parts of their wedding. There wedding was just so interesting and different, but I wouldn’t have expected anything less from Richard.
The wedding started a little late and was standing room only, so the dessert reception started late also. I think it was almost 11:00 PM before it began, but the hotel shuttle service ended at 10:30 PM. Luckily, we ran into Casey (an old friend who we hadn’t seen in years). I told mom and Jenni that Casey didn’t mind giving all of us a ride back to the hotel after the reception since he was going to get a room at the same place anyway. Jenni was in a bad mood, though. I think mom was just worn out. So they both took the shuttle back to the hotel prior to the start of the night’s festivities.
It was great to catch up with Casey. We found out that he just got back to the mainland after a year of living in Hawaii. He currently lives with his Soulution bandmates in Austin, Texas. Casey said they have regular gigs at clubs around town and at Carlos Santana’s restaurant, Maria Maria. Sounds like they’re doing pretty well. Brian and I have decided that we’re going to have to drive down to Austin to see them perform before they move on to another town. 😉
The wedding reception was so much fun. Mom and Jenni totally missed out. I’m so glad we got to stay. (Thanks, Casey!)
Richard and Amy had the best first dance ever. I didn’t get to capture the whole thing and the video I took is crappy, but you get the picture. They started with “At Last” which was your typical slow dance and then, as the first song ended, the music seamlessly transitioned into “Stand By Me” so that Richard and Amy could show off their awesome Bachata dance moves.
They also did this amazing Rueda with five other couples or so. It wasn’t even set up or anything. It flowed so smoothly. The music was playing and then these couples showed up on the dance floor and they just started salsa dancing in a circle. There was even a couple that joined the circle after they’d already began. It was so much fun to watch. I wish that I could have captured it on video.
I think Brian and I were chatting outside with Jeff, Mike and Casey when they did the bouquet and garter toss because we totally missed those. It was a lot of fun catching up, though. We hadn’t seen these guys in ages. We stayed pretty late and Brian got wrangled into helping pack up. They needed guys for some lifting. It was probably 2:00 AM by the time we got back to our hotel.
Again, I’m so glad that we ran into Casey and he didn’t mind giving us a ride back to the hotel. We would have missed out on the fun reception stuff like the toasts and cake cutting and all of that amazing dancing.
I’m sorry it’s taken me two weeks to write about the wedding. I don’t mean to slack on my blogging duties, but we’ve just been so busy lately. We’ve had something going every weekend. We’ve also had so many trips this year. We had the Dallas trip in September, the Houston trip in October, we have Scottsdale/Arizona next month, and then I think we’re going to be in Las Vegas in late December so that we can be there for New Year’s Eve. We started this year out of town and then almost every single month we’ve had some sort of trip come up. It’s truly been one heck of a year.
So even though we didn’t have a major trip this year, we’ve had several smaller trips that were probably just as damaging to our bank account. LOL.
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