Thursday, November 29, 2007

23 Koreans and 1 blonde

So the anxiously awaited day has come and gone. Thanksgiving at the E&D Oh household was quite a treat this year. We had Rachel and Miriam come in from LA, Mom and Dad Oh from Seattle and Yeoungmee and Sean from N.J. - they all stayed in the basement and hopefully had a grand ole time. What was first going to be a nice Thanksgiving meal for the 9 of us turned into 23 people lickity split. I asked for it. Not that we are partial toward Koreans or anything, but somehow my house was full of them and it was fantastic! Of course the jello salad, sweet potatoes, marshmallow fruit salad, pies, and cookies are all continuing to go stale as they were a little more afraid of the sugary items. Asians aren't so fond of sweets from what I've gathered. So basically they prefer all the opposite to the Winter family households. I wasn't offended in the least as I was well prepared for the rejection. They still joyously ate from the other 67 dishes we had to offer:) Anyhow, Erik's cousin Sean is 15 and has attempted twice in the last year to test the so-called Utopian Utah snow, our mountains have not adequately provided. Therefore, he sat around a little bored, staring at all his gear in our garage every time we got into the car. Hopefully he and Erik had fun playing football and being boys.

Daddy Oh, Rachel and Miriam helped me with some pretty extensive leaf raking on Saturday. I think we all thought we were engaging in a fun simple activity which took a hard turn for the worse. We discovered more dog poop than you could ever imagine. Yes, this is not a duty Erik is really on top of. In all fairness to him, we have never really established whose job it is. You'd think that naturally would fall in the man's shoes but I tend to be the one found in the yard. Either way, it was nasty and Rachel had a little too close for comfort incident. As much as I love stories that involve...well....you know....I will leave it to your imagination to save the disgust of any prissy people who may be reading this. As my mother in law would say, "poop not dirty, come from body you know." Anyhow, so yeah, we had a lot of leaves to rake, filled 2 garbage bins full after mashing and mashing them down about 8 times a minute. It felt like we were dragging bins full of dirt they were so heavy!

Saturday we got family pictures taken with all of the Ohs up in Little Cottonwood Canyon. This was their first time taking a family pic outside of a studio. I insisted their serious and formal look had gotten a little outdated and that maybe we should ruffle the feathers a little and take a chance in the mountains. My friend Rima did Mommy Oh's makeup which was fun to watch. We took before and after pictures and decided that she turned my mother in law into Connie Chung herself! Seriously! It was hilarious! She looked fabulous. The pics turned out really nice although I still have to laugh. We were posed in some very nature-esque settings that were absolutely beautiful. There we were on all these rugged rocks with twigs and reeds all over the place, men in slacks, women in Christmas party type outfits. I'm not dogging the choice of our apparel by the way, cause we looked good, it just made for a unique but pleasing contrast.

Okay so the sad part of this whole post is that I have lots of great pics from Thanksgiving to paint the visual but unfortunately my camera or my cord is having some temporary issues and I've been unable to download pics for some time now. Still in process of resolving. So until then I will continue to blab.

p.s. loved August Rush, all should go see it.

Tuesday, November 13, 2007

Serious Vocab Frustration

So who here belongs to "word of the day" with dictionary.com and am I the only one so bothered and deflated? I've been made out to feel nothing but worthless in my attempt to be an average American citizen by joining the word of the day e-mail list. It was a simple effort to perk up my vocabulary gone wrong. Not just today, but day after day after day. It's just that today I finally decided to let it start bothering me enough to waste time writing about it. One would think this website would cater to the average citizen as I'm sure Harvard Law grads are not the only ones clicking on this site and yet these were today's examples to explain the meaning of perfervid?

"Good movies evaporate, while the market is flooded with inanity. Critics can't do much to stop this, but when you read perfervid reviews of the latest commercial offerings it's plain that they do little to cool things down." (mmmmm.....inanity........it'll get'cha every time)

"Years ago Philip Roth published a perspicacious essay on the pitfalls of writing satire, the gist of which was that the daily absurdities in our morning newspapers too often outdid even a novelist's most perfervid imaginings." (ooooooooh, I hate reading perspicacious essays)

Seriously. I just don't believe that using other vocabulary words that I have never heard of is really going to help me remember the initial vocab word. It does nothing but clutter my brain and aggravate me. And this isn't to suggest that today's examples were especially awful, oftentimes there will be 3 or 4 new words in a sentence and I won't even comprehend the gist of the sentence. Okay, so I just looked up inanity and perspicacious and after reading their simple definitions, I am realizing maybe you all already knew those words. Maybe I'm just plain dumb. Freakin Utah State, dang it! Will someone please validate me so I'm not on this bus all alone? I think my next step is to google S.A.T. practice word lists. Maybe I can form an after school study group with some of the tweens in the neighborhood.
p.s. I usually win Balderdash, would that redeem me in any way???

Wednesday, November 7, 2007

Crossbows & Catapults


"They say" you can tell a difference between a boy and a man by the price of his toys. Well clearly, Erik is a young buck. He has been telling me about Crossbows & Catapults (which has been given a new name titled "Battleground") since we met. It was a childhood favorite of his. Apparently he has been looking for it for like 15 years or something and this game quest has been a bigger deal than I realized. We were wandering around Toys R Us on Saturday night trying to find some cool toys for Kimball and as we were leaving, Erik started running to a display across the room. There on this bottom shelf lay 2 boxes of good ole C&C. He had to buy both (as one was the accessory kit where you could add even cooler weapons) and ensured me that this would be the best investment yet in our marriage if I would only trust him. I looked at the box and felt so unexcited but agreed he should buy it. Well, let's just say we've played it every night since and are really getting into it. We don't even talk the whole time, we just make noises of excitement or disappointment depending on whether or not we are killing off our opponent's battlefield. Yeah, we are pretty much like 2 seven year old boys. The boys across the street are already begging their mom to get it for them for Christmas and looks like my brother and cousin will soon be making the purchase themselves, 3 groups of knights and 3 groups of orcs would make quite a battlground! In all consideration I view this as incredible broken ground. I LIVE for boardgames and Erik despises them and always cheats or tweeks the game to make the other guys laugh and get the girls frustrated. So finally, we have found a boardgame other than chess that we both love! If you play, you too will be addicted!

Saturday, November 3, 2007

1 point for SLC

Guess what? We have a Cheesecake Factory here in SLC now! Next to Nordi's at Fashion Place for any locals who may be wondering. So when Erik asked where I wanted to go to dinner for my birthday, I thought it would be fun to go there since it was their opening day. The doors opened at 5pm and I figured there would probably be a line outside. So, we got there about 4:15 or so and were laughing that the line was already around the side of the building. Erik encouraged me to go cruise the mall while he waited, the selfish side of me agreed that would be a great idea. When I came back, I was just laughing so hard b/c he really was quite embarrassed to be "that guy" that's waiting in line for a restaurant grand opening. Apparently this lady a few people in front of him in line was going off for 20 minutes "educating" everyone on all the right cheesecakes and entrees b/c she frequents the CF all the time in Cali or Vegas or wherever. She was driving him nuts as it reminded him how silly it was to be waiting in the cold amongst all these restaurant die hards. Anyhow, he was so cute and patient I just had to take a picture to embarrass him a little. If you squint he's right there in the middle.

We had a great time and topped it off with Dulce de Leche cheesecake, a definite great pick, and it didn't come recommended from the annoying lady in the fuzzy boots.

And this, you just can't afford not to click on.

Could anything be sweeter? Seriously. I cannot believe my not so baby anymore baby is talking, time indeed flies...

Friday, November 2, 2007

Chewy and Yoda


Ladies and Gentleman, introducing....our great furry friend Chewbacca and his sidekick Yoda! It just wouldn't have been a complete Halloween if Nantou didn't join in on the fun. Over the past week, Kimball had a handful of opportunites to dress up in his little Chewy uni at the trunk or treat, Coop's party, Lola's birthday and the big night. I thought I'd switch it up a little for his girlfriend Lola (the skunk)'s birthday and dress him as Adam. I faux'd his hair and he was lookin pretty studly in those 'fig leaves', unfortunately it lasted roughly 15 secs. before he unglued each leaf one by one.

If you are ever so interested in a plethora of the fun Hallo pics that I took over the past week, go to my little Halloween video montage on http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Nrq1f5rq-Jc

Oh wait, and one more thing. I would like to announce my personal favorite for the year. Please tell me this is not for real. You may just have to know my niece Mikelle (she lives in Reno and is 10 years old) but this is by far the most incredibly uncanny and quite hilarious impersonation I have ever seen. I could not stop dying laughing, I love her!

Our very own, MISS NAPOLEAN DYNAMITE!!!