Blessed garage sales

How I love my ukelele! My little bro picked this up for me at a garage sale the other day. It only had three strings on it (it was a $4 uke) but that minor set back doesn't keep me from still playing it (of course I'll get that last string put on though, can't play too much without your high G)

What a sweet brother to buy me such a gift (although I was frequently borrowing his ukelele before :)

I can already play a couple songs on the uke:

Find my way back home- http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=nJzYy5encCk&feature=related

&

Beautiful Girl-http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=64meUVyq7jk&feature=channel

Important detail !!!

What a STORY!

Yea, uh...no biggie. I just fractured my thoracic 12 vertebrae cliff jumping over 4th of July weekend in Cali with some girlfriends.

1st time I've injured myself this bad. I'd never broken or fractured a bone before this.

The brace had me feeling like a superhero. I was kind of sad to see it go after the 4 weeks were up.

Now it's time for good ol physical therapy and my back will be good as new.

I LOVE JAZZ

Hola, Hola!

PHEW! I'm one BIG PROCRASTINATOR!!!!

I'm too lazy to update you all on the last eight months..... so to the HERE and NOW

Went this last Monday to the Triple Door to see some friends play a show. I met these guys through my sister Laurianne. Being a musician she has a lot of musical friends. She and I will often go check them out at Lucid, a jazz venue on the Ave in U-district. They play every Thursday night from 9:30 to close to 2am.

This show at the Triple Door was a special show featuring clips from their new dvd they just made. It was a sweet show! They played a few songs, showed parts of the dvd and then brought a popular singer on stage, Chocolate. She sang a couple songs with them. Her voice was amazing.

SO a good, good show. Excellent jazz, vocals & company.

If anyone wants to check out The Teaching:

http://www.facebook.com/video/video.php?v=113536394368

Christmas 2008

Aubrey playing in some tinsel

Our living room all decorated for Christmas

Opening stockings! Dad's helping Aubrey with hers

Mom wearing a beautiful wrap I gave her

Tamanna's first time opening a Christmas present

Cody's admiring the wrap job on this present. Check out that pink tissue paper

Tamanna and I Christmas morning. I'm wearing a traditional Indian shirt she gave me

YO PEEP! Why you be thuggin?
My brother occasionally turns gangsta
He's sporting a jacket I got him

It was a wonderful Christmas! Now we look towards a new year, hopefully bringing with us the love, consideration and kindness that we extended to others during the Christmas season. Let's make it a new year for the better.

Christmas Cookies with Tamanna

COOKIES!

Tamanna had never made sugar cookies before, so we braved the roads and fetched her from her apartment Christmas eve so she could make them with us. It's a tradition in my family to make up plates of sugar cookies and pass them out when we go caroling.

Tamanna rolling out dough

Auraleen and her mother in law Linda cutting out cookies

Tamanna proudly displaying her pan of sugar cookies ready for the oven

A view of our cookie making table

Tamanna using a chop stick to paint a snowflake cookie. She was really good at decorating them

The finished products

Mom helping in the kitchen

Snowin it up! Cause WA hardly ever does this

SNOW>>>SNOW>>>SNOW>>>SNOW>>>>SNOW>>>SNOW>>>SNOW>>>SNOW

My friend Mike and I building a snow fortress

And we gots competition. My bro Stephen and our friend Jeff made one too

And my parents

The fight is on!

Mom and Dad totally cheated with those sleds

A view of my backyard. We got about 6 inches of snow

Making a snow man: a common occurrence when lots of snow is present

His head ended up being too lumpy to be a snow man, so we opted to make a polar bear

What better way to end the day than getting a free ride on the sled

Yup! In all my years living in WA (all 22 of 'em) I've never ever seen SO MUCH SNOW! A record setting winter fo sho. Let's do it again next year. I didn't mind all the time off from work ;)

The day I morphed into an Indian :)

Soooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooo benefits...benefits of having friends from other countries? Cultural experiences

I have this friend Tamanna Bedhi from northern India. She's in the U.S. for a couple months for work and so ya know we've been hanging out; I've been showing her some fun stuff to do during the holidays in WA. So the other day I went over to her apartment in Redmond and she made me some Daal and Roti (mmmm DELECTABLE!)...and ya know afterwards we decided to have a photo shoot (cause that's what girls do, it's obviously a universal thing) so she totally dressed me up in a traditional Indian dress and took some pics. She even painted a bendi between my eyebrows so I'd look extra authentic.

It was way fun! The pants are super skinny...forget skinny jeans, I think these pants top 'em or are definitely on the same level. They're not made out of stretchy fabric that would stick to you though, they're just cut so that they narrow more and more towards the bottom.