FLIP + CHING

Gearing Up for Our Vegas Trip

Posted on June 26, 2008 by Ching under Life, Travel.

Only 23 days until Corey and April’s wedding at Mandalay Bay! Woo hoo! Brian and I are gearing up for our upcoming trip. Though Brian has never been to Las Vegas and this will be his first, I seem to be a lot more excited about the trip than he is… He’s probably all tripped out from having had to go to New Hampshire a couple of times already so far this year. Brian has always been anti-travelling. If we could teleport to Vegas and cut out the part where you have to go to the airport and sit through a boring flight, I’m sure he’d probably be much more excited.

Anyway, one of the most important pieces of advice I read is to bring a couple of pairs of comfortable shoes. So my mission this week was to find my perfect flats.

I had found these Me Too “Neda” Mary Jane flats at Aspen Traders a few weeks ago. They were $77, though, so I couldn’t get myself to buy them. Usually, when I find something at the store I like I’m able to find them online for a third or half the store price. I searched and searched for these shoes and could not find them for less. Everytime I found them on sale, they were only in size 10 or 11 and not available in my size. Regular price online was about $83. With shipping it was going to cost more than just buying them locally.

Finally, Brian and I agreed that I should just go back to Aspen Traders and buy them. We went there at lunch on Tuesday. As luck would have it, they started marking down the shoes that day. My shoes just happened to be on sale! And, guess what. The only size left was mine! And, they were the final pairs they had in black, bronze, and silver. I managed to talk Brian into letting me have both the black and bronze pairs. We agreed that it was a good deal because I ended up getting two shoes for the price of one.

I wore the black pair once this week and the bronze pair, which is pretty versatile actually, twice already. They are so comfortable! No break in needed. I love them! I’m not the only one either. Just check out the reviews on Zappos. I’m so glad I found them. They are nice enough to wear with dresses or shorts. I’ll be living in these shoes during our trip.

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My Cousin Gladys

Posted on June 24, 2008 by Ching under Family, Life.

I received a letter from my cousin Gladys last month. She included some photos. One of her and I taken ten years ago, a recent photo of her, and also a photo of her brother Justin (below).

My! How time flies!

The above photo is of me at age thirteen, which is around the same age Gladys is now. She’s twelve in this photo, I think.

We kinda sorta look alike, don’t we? Everyone tells me that she is smart, too. Just like Ate Ching. =)

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Pictures from April’s Bridal Shower

Posted on June 22, 2008 by Ching under Life.

Probably the most creative invitation I have received in a while. Corey’s sister Christy made it. She is one creative woman!

April’s shower cake. Yummy!

Corey’s mom..

April and their new puppy, Mr. Miyagi.

Other photos…

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Interesting Day Yesterday

Posted on June 22, 2008 by Ching under Life.

Patricia tried a new nostril hair waxing procedure on me. Surprisingly, it didn’t hurt as much as I thought it would. She is still perfecting the technique so she asked if Brian would want to be a guinea pig and try it. I told her he probably wouldn’t. He’s a big baby when it comes to hair waxing. However, I relented and said she could try asking.

She must be a really good salesperson, because she miraculously convinced Brian to give it a shot. I so wish that I had my camera phone in the room with me. Of course, I couldn’t see it while she was performing it on me. However, I was able to watch her do it to Brian. It’s pretty interesting.

She uses a cold wax, which is dark green in color. She applies it to your nostrils, being careful not to apply it too far inside. Your nostril hairs are there for a reason so you don’t want to remove all of them — only the unsightly ones closest to the opening. Anyway, it looked like Brian had gigantic boogers. It was a comical sight.

As soon as the wax is dry, she removes it. The hair is stuck to the wax and so it just pull off like magic. It is brilliant! Brian said that it really didn’t hurt, which is the same observation I made. Patricia trimmed his eyebrows and waxed his unibrow as a perk for agreeing to be guinea pig, I guess. Well, she is just really nice and she does that sort of thing. Brian said that getting his unibrow waxed hurt worse.

So there you have it. A relatively painless procedure for getting rid of those unsightly nostril hairs that seem to peek out at the most inopportune times. I think the procedure is about $10 to $15 bucks. I told Brian that he could just do this every couple of months instead of trimming with his nose hair trimmer, which he forgets to do anyway. LOL.

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Dinner at the Brubakers

Posted on June 21, 2008 by Ching under Family, Flickr, Travel.

We were supposed to have dinner with Brian’s parents on Friday night, but I found out on Tuesday that we had a phone system upgrade that same evening. I had volunteered to stay through the whole thing a couple of weeks ago, but had forgotten all about it.

Pam Joni and I stayed. It was supposed to finish at 11:00 PM on Friday night, if all went well. Things never go perfectly so we were there until almost 2:00 AM the next day. It still wasn’t finished so they all went back this morning. I couldn’t because I had a full Saturday with my waxing, April’s bridal shower, and poker. I had originally planned to work out in the morning, but I nixed that idea so I could get some sleep.

Anyway, dinner got moved to Thursday night. We brought the bottle of Malbec that we won at Carrabba’s. It didn’t go that great with chili dogs, but we drank some anyway. LOL. Here are post-dinner some pictures of Brian and Dave goofing off.