My sister’s request got me rummaging through my pictures, so I figured while I was at it, I might as well share some of those pictures on my blog.  I know we’ve already started the new year, but there’s still a lot of things left over from last year.  Here’s one of the pictures we took last August with my family and mom at the rice terraces with some Ifugao.

Okay so we’re blocking the view of the rice terraces, so here’s a better picture of one of the spectacular views there.

Looks like a postcard, huh?  There were so many scenic shots like this.  It reminded me of pictures we took while in the Yucatan Peninsula years ago where many of our photographs looked like postcards.

These terraces are in the Banaue area.  When we visited, we stayed at the Banaue Hotel, which was actually commissioned by Imelda Marcos from what we were told.  When we arrived, we found that they had a welcome sign with all the guests’ names arriving that day.

I guess they listed the guests in alphabetical order, so our name was on top.  Gosh we saw so many things there and took so many pictures, it’s hard to know which ones to share as there is only a small space on the blog.  I’ll just share a few more that I liked like this one of Brian walking through the rice terrace.  He really wanted to walk right in there and touch the rice. . .

The man behind him was our tour guide.  He was very nice and accommodating.  Luckily for us, there was still a lot of rice to harvest.  Other times during the time we visited, the rice would have been harvested already and we would have only seen brown terraces.  But fortunately, it was still quite green.

We visited a few museums, and also a small village called Taam Village, IIRC.  It’s customary for them to keep the bones of their ancestors in their home, so here’s a pic of a young gal showing us the bones of her grandfather.

The structure we were in was actually one of the homes, which is basically a hut.  I don’t think they all had wood floors like this one.

As we were winding up our tour of the village, my boys got ambushed by a bunch of Filipino gals taking a tour there, too.  It’s interesting how they can spot outsiders easily and asked if they could take some pictures with my boys.  Since they were all taking pictures, I joined in and grabbed a snap.  Ah, to be young again. . .

And finally, before we left Banaue, we had lunch at the People’s Inn, which had another nice view of the terraces.  There’s actually many, many views as the terraces are very extensive in size.  While we felt surrounded by terraces, we actually only saw a small portion of it’s entirety.

You wouldn’t know if from looking at the above picture, but not more than two minutes passed after this shot that it got cloudy and started to rain.  The sudden change of climate reminded me of Kauai.  It would rain for a short while and clear up quickly as well.

Well,  that’s it for now.  This wasn’t exactly what I had in mind for my first post of the year, but I’m already behind, ha! I’ll likely post a few more stuffs from last year before I get on with this year.

Marlakins

We were booked with American Airlines, but it turns out that AA is managed by Alaska Airlines?  Uh, I don’t get it.  And I also didn’t get who is this guy on the tail of all the Alaska planes?

It took me a while to see it, but maybe that black ring around his head is part of his Eskimo suit?  Or should I say Inuit suit?  Well, if anyone knows more about that, would be interesting to me to know.

So we arrived in Mexico City and stayed at the Emporio Hotel on the Avenue Reforma.  It was  a really quick trip, but we managed to get in a few sites like The Anthropological Museum, The Guadalupe Shrine, and the ruins of Teotihuacan.  I’ll share some of those pics once I get them uploaded and I can sort through them (yeah, that’s what I thought about my Philippine pictures that are still not up!  Ha!  One of these days I’ll try to post pics of our trip to the rice terraces).  Until I get those pics up, here’s one that Brian took of me at the breakfast buffet at the Emporio Hotel.

The breakfast was very good.  The green drink in front of me was a combination of cactus, celery, grapefruit, and a little bit of orange.  Interesting, huh?  First time I’d had that, and it was pretty good!  The little quesadillas on the side had cheese and cactus in them.   We had heard about the cactus to eat, so we wanted to try it.  The taste of them reminds me of cooked green bell peppers.  It turned out to be a very satisfying breakfast and really held me over during our tour trek.  Lots of walking and climbing!  All worth it, tho. . .   And everyone was so kind!

Marlakins

The birthday cards were funny.  I particularly got a kick out of Brian’s, heheheh.

Since both Brian and my brother-in-law are bald, there tends to be bald jokes in our family. . .

Tee hee!

Before our outing, I was working on using up some of the yarn I spun.  Aside from little pouches, I found the yarn was also usable for little knit toys.

The pattern for this mouse is in a book called, Itty Bitty Toys by Susan B. Anderson.  It’s actually supposed to be a Christmas mouse, but I just used the colors I had on hand.  I also did a little bit of modification by adding a mouth, heheheh. By the time we went out for dinner, I had two mice made up.  They were busy reading the menu when I took this picture.

By the next day, I had three done.

Well, now I know I can probably spin sock yarn since I was able to use my white yarn that I spun together with left over sock yarn.  They appear to be the same gauge.  I’m currently working of spinning up a 3 ply.  I’ve already spun up three hanks, but I’ll save that for another post.

Oh, before I sign off, I should put in a plug for Real Food Daily.  They’re an organic vegetarian restaurant here in Los Angeles.  My boys always order their burrito supreme, and I tend to always order either the yin yang salad or their stir-it-up with buckwheat noodles.  That night I had the stir-it-up.

Ummm, tasty. . . Their cookies are also a nice way to top this off.

Okay, now that our September babies have celebrated, now to prepare for the October babies. . .

Marlakins

It was nice to see how happy everyone was.  I could feel the excitement of the guests.  Maybe it was all the flowers, balloons, and gifts they were all carrying that tipped me off, heheheh.  I enjoyed looking at all the different flowers and balloons.  This was my favorite balloon.

Unfortunately, it rained.  Man, can you say “June gloom?”  And as you can see, the ceremony was held outdoors.  We all tried to hang in there as long as possible, but the ceremony was cut short because everyone was starting to get soaked.  Basically, they waited until all the grads collected their certificate holders, and then we all ran out of there.  It ended up cutting the ceremony down by a half hour.  Before we left campus, we managed to get a shot of us by the history building.

From left to right, Mom, me, Andrew, and Brian.

After we came back from lunch we dropped mom off at her house and took more pictures.   After all, this day only comes once!  Here’s Andrew and me, .

Later we had a dinner for Andrew at La Petite Greek.  Here’s the gang. I missed my dad, tho, and wished he could have been here yesterday.  I know he would have been very happy.

After the main meal Andrew opened some of his presents.  I thought this card was so cute.

One of the presents I gave him got finished just in time.  I picked up the frame just last Friday due to some complications.  But it worked out just fine in the end.  Here’s the project when I first started it.

I worked it over even weave linen.  Here’s another picture of it in progress.

And here’s the finished piece with Andrew holding it last night. 

I know it’s hard to see it in this picture, but on the bottom I stitched in Andrew’s name and year and university.  So here’s a closer shot of that part of the cross stitch.

Well, that about wraps up yesterday for us!  It’s still gloomy this morning, and everyone in this household is still sleeping.  So I think I’ll go find something to munch on for a quiet breakfast while they snooze.  There’s more activities scheduled for today because my sister’s having a gathering for her birthday in a few hours.  It shouldn’t be long before things spring back to life here.  But for now. . . a nice quiet breakfast for me.

Marlakins

This was taken at The Lobster in Santa Monica.  Dad LOVED lobster.  While it still makes me sad and cry, I’m glad I have so many pictures of dad, especially of this day because he was very happy.  We all were.

Happy Birthday Daddy!

Love always,

Marlakins

Well, we had already started dipping into it, obviously.  And since the restaurant was a bit dark inside I didn’t realize that my picture was blurry. . .

But, that didn’t stop me from taking more pictures of the other appetizers.  This is their keftedes (beef meatballs).

Their dolmades (stuffed grape leaves).

Brian, Andrew, and I had the lamb kabob, which was one of their specials for the day, something about it being organic lamb from Colorado or something.

This dish came with a great salad and lemon potatoes.  Aaron had a similar dish, but chicken instead of lamb.  We also tried their sanganaki, which is a flaming cheese dish.  Here’s our host lighting it up.

Here’s a look at what the dish looked like.

Other dishes around the table was another special of the day–a calamari salad.

This is their santorini (lamb stew).

I think this was their salmon palaki.

My dad had their pastitso (Greek version of lasagna).

Now, I’m sure I also had a  picture of their basic gyro dish, but for some reason I must have not uploaded it. . . hmmm.  But it was pretty basic, so I’ll forgo it for now..  Hope that’s a good sampling of the lunch menu at La Petit Greek in Larchmont for anyone interested in checking them out.  They also had friendly service, so two thumbs up!    Hope everyone else had a nice Father’s Day, too!

Marlakins

Then since the boys are on quarter break we decided to eat out at Real Food Daily, our local organic vegetarian restaurant.  I had the Stir it Up with soba noodles and tofu.

Brian and the boys had the Burrito Supreme dish.

So when Sunday came along, I hooked up with my friend again for “girlfriend craft day” and started off in the usual way–lunch with the family for dim sum, again.  This time we hit Harbor Village in Monterey Park.  Here’s how our table looked at one point.

My mom wanted to try their tripe dish.

Here’s what my dish looked like at one point with the sticky rice opened up.

After dim sum we headed out for tea (even though I had already had several refills of tea, but they wanted to go and chat some more!), then back to my parents to work on our crafts.  I was able to sew up a few of my ornaments and finished up my herb pattern.  Here it is framed and hung up on my wall.

This is actually a small picture about 5″x7″.   Since it’s so small I decided to just pick up a desk frame that I liked and remove the stand on the back.  I placed a tie on the back and hung it on the wall.  I saved the stand from the back in case I later decide to use this frame again for a desk.

I’m currently working on one of the Christmas decoration patterns that my friend and I recently purchased.  And I think soon, I’ll start on another larger cross-stitch pattern by Donna Dewberry.  I’m also currently reading a book called Nixon and Mao.  So far it’s interesting, and may blog about that later on.

Marlakins

For anyone who isn’t familiar with what dim sum is, it’s basically a Chinese roving buffet.  Women roll carts around full of various foods and stop at each table who wants any.  If you like what’s in their cart, they’ll just place however many orders on your table that you request and stamp your ticket.  At the end, they tally up all the stamps and that’s how they figure out your bill.  The nice thing about dim sum is that the orders are small, so you can try lots of different dishes.  Here’s an example of what our table looked like at one point.  Keep in mind that as you polish off your container, they take it away and more comes, so it’s ever changing.

Usually they have so many dishes that it’s almost impossible to try everything.  They also have desserts, but after my AA days, I don’t indulge in those anymore.  For that matter, since my AA days, I had even avoided dim sum all together for “years”, and only recently started venturing out again.  Here’s another closeup of more dishes.

I especially liked this one, which is veggies wrapped in nappa cabbage.

Now don’t ask me what these dishes are called.  While I have eaten them many times in the past, I have no idea what each dish is called.  And as a matter of fact, sometimes there is a bit of a language barrier, since these dim sum places are pretty much operated by Chinese, who speak Chinese and tend to have heavy accents.   And even so, there are mistakes in translation.  Here’s an example of what I mean.

You might ask for a lobster, and they’ll give you a crab, ha ha ha!

So moving right along.  After we stuffed ourselves we headed back to the house for our day of crafting.  We’ve been working on cross stitch patterns.  Here’s an old pattern I made years ago and finally decided to try making it into a small pillow.

Here’s the finished, well, “almost finished” pillow along with the other little cross stitch patterns I’ve worked up.  I’m kinda out of practice sewing and kinda winged it to put this pillow together.  It’s a bit crooked, heheh, but I’m just going to use it as part of my Christmas decor at home, so no big deal.  Plus I think I’m gonna put some cording around it to help dress it up a tad more.

Okay, so I still have a few more pics that I’ll post later because I’m almost finished with another shrug. . .   and I still have the museum pictures to share from last Friday.  We went to the Wende Museum in Culver City, but there is one pic I want to take to add to the post yet, so will hold off until I get that shot.  I’m also still reading a couple books that have some info that I think would be interesting to share.  The book, The Ayatolla Begs to Differ is turning out to be rather interesting.  I’m certainly learning a lot more that I didn’t know, and I also appreciate the different perspective.  I know that many cultures think differently, and understanding the culture does help to understand their behavior and decisions.  This book helps in that in a funny way because the author has a nice sense of humor.

So until next time, hope all is well!

Marlakins

Well, shucks, it’s a bit hard to see the ribbon my sister made, but rest assured it was quite complicated from the looks of it.  It was certainly a successful attempt at her handy work.   Kudos, Doll!

My sweet girlfriend even joined in with the gift giving and gave both my mom and dad gift certs to the Red Lobster.

Then there was the food. . . El brother-in-law with his soup and sandwich. . .

My Auntie’s Land and Sea dish. . .  Hmmm strange configuration. . .

My Uncle’s salmon dish. . .

There were a couple orders of the Taco Trio at the table. . .

My boys had the five cheese and artisan artichoke pizzas, which I think I’ve already posted pics of those in a previous post, so will skip it here.  I don’t know what Mom and Dad ate as they were already digging in as was I, so didn’t bother taking more pics, heheh.

Overall, it was a nice day.  I know Mother’s Day tends to be commercialized, but hey, I enjoy any chance to celebrate with family.  Now I can’t wait until Father’s Day!  Heheheh.

Marlakins

As usual, I love getting together with my family, and it was especially nice seeing that my dad was really enjoying himself.

I didn’t get pictures of everything, but first there were the appetizers.   Uh yeah, I call those jumbo.

Here’s my dad getting ready for his lobster meal. . . He just got through his soup and salad starter and is now anticipating a nice juicy lobster, heheheh.

And there it is! 2.5 lbs of lobster. . . ummmm

I had their Grilled Australian Barramundi with squash and sauteed spinach.  Oh wow!  Now I will vouch for this dish!  It was absolutely delicious!

There were roasted pumpkin seeds as well on top.  Absolutely yummy.  I highly recommend this dish.

Then there were the desserts.  My aunt and uncle as well as my oldest sister had these.

My other sister had the strawberry parfait.

El brother-in-law had the Tequila lime sorbet.

I refrained from indulging in the desserts, wah. . . As did Brian and my boys.  And lastly, here are a couple more pics of us–mom, dad, me and my sisters.

The pics of my boys are on my sister’s camera, so I don’t have those yet.  But here’s one with Brian and me.

After lunch we walked along the pier.  There was actually a lot to see, so I ended up taking more pictures there.  But I’ll have to share those on another post as there are too many pics already on this one.

Okay!  Now to find more mischief. . .

Marlakins