sperm, meet egg. egg, meet sperm

i think the moment my husband and i decided it was time for us to get pregnant, the pressure of that choice became a lot scarier than the thought of raising a child/ being responsible for another human being for the next 18 years of his/her life. i think it was because we weren't sure we were even physically capable of doing so. in the back of my mind, i kept thinking my eggs are old and dusty and his swimmers are probably old and lazy. ugh. i even started an IVF fund JUST IN CASE. my thinking was, i will save up for one shot and that will be that. we just can't afford anything more.

we definitely didn't get pregnant right away. i went and got checked out just in case and the hubs did too. turns out his swimmers WERE a little lazy. so i made him drink chinese herbs and told him to stop placing his laptop on his crotch. maybe they were lazy because they were too hot! i even got some acupuncture for myself just in case. can't hurt right? we didn't want to talk to a fertility doctor until we tried what we could no matter how far fetched or hairbrained it seemed.

hubs consumed some nasty and very expensive cordyceps

acupuncture for me. can you see the needles poking into my heel and knee?

i also went to costco and got a box of ovulation sticks. when i saw that double line indicating that i'm ovulating, you better believe i called my husband at work and told him when he got home that night that he had to drop his pants right away. haha, sexy goes out the door, it's work people, work.

time to get busy

then one day, while we had hot pot for dinner and i was sipping my usual beer, it really tasted funny to me. i don't know why, it just didn't taste the same as it normally does. i had to pour the rest of my beer down the drain. yuck.

i also picked up some weird aromas from food i normally ate. i would ask my husband & in-laws if they smelled this funk to the food. nope. weird. maybe my nose is broke.

turns out at that time, i was already about 1.5-2 weeks pregnant! some people say that pregnancy alters your sense of smell and taste. although it was way early in my pregnancy, i still think it had something to do with it.

so that morning when i took my first pregnancy test and saw the double pink lines, i remember frantically calling my husband to come back into the house (he was leaving for work and i was just getting ready to go myself) when i saw the results. he was skeptical at first so we took 2 more home pregnancy tests over the course of a few days just to make sure....

touchdown! woot. a blood test at my doctor's office officially confirmed it. we were pregnant!! from that day forward i walked around with my hands hovering protectively over my belly, feeling blessed for this little life-form inside of me. imagine, me, MOMMY!

married. soooo married.

i posted this a while back on my food blog, theroamingbelly.blogspot.com i'm going to pull a lazy move and repost it here so i can "move on" with my blogging.

dudes, i got married :0

on august 27, 2011 as a matter of fact. here's the top layer of my then day old wedding cake. the flowers were freakin' awwwwwesome on top don't you think? thanks to fleuretica for the beautiful burst of blooms...i wish they can fill my world with flowers EVERY DAY.

i also went on a horrible diet. i mean, it kinda worked and all...but a diet for a food blogger! that's like fucked up! but it was worth it not to souffle from the back of my white dress even though i still rippled in all the wrong places.

immediately afterwards, i went on an edible rampage...trying to fetch back the coat i was determined to shed for my wedding and what better way to do so than en route to vegas for our mini-moon (more posts to come on that one).

aria treated us well. we were upgraded to a mini-suite when they learned *cough* when i told them we were newlyweds. SCORE!

we were even greeted with a bit of sweetness. "yumz!" said my sugar depraved body as i INHALED and i mean INHALED most of it. no joke.

the mini-suite was spacious and awesome and let's not forget, an upgrade. wheeee!

the night view was uh-mazing.

so what does it feel like to be married? well, it feels just like living together except now everybody wants to know when i'm gonna get pregnant.

happy berfday charlie brown!!

totally dressed to party with his homemade party hat, minus the fallen bow tie.

my little beagle turned 3 yesterday. in dog years, he can legally drink and find himself a whore, but in my household, he just gets a little doggy berfday cake...a carrot/apple sauce birthday cake with cream cheese/apple sauce frosting to be exact. sounds yum enough right?

it was an easy batter and didn't take much effort, especially with my handy dandy kitchenaid mixer. 1/2 hour later, it was out of the oven and onto a rack to be cooled off while charlie and my other two dogs circled around me like vultures in the kitchen.

once frosted, i decorated the cake with a simple number 3 in carrot slivers for charlie's new age. i would have been more creative with my cake decorations if time permitted, but i had humans to feed as well. since the dogs get homemade cake, the humans got prime rib, cheesy smashed potatoes, garlic spinach, and tomato pine nuts salad with a balsamic vinaigrette for dinner. crazy yummy if i must say so myself. it IS a party after all.

after the humans ate and our bellies bulged unattractively with the grub, it was time to slice into the cake! the anticipation must have slayed my furry buddies...one by one. *wimper* charlie was so excited, he started shmeeing (this noise he makes through his nose. rather annoying actually...thank god he's cute!).

"drop it momma...please?"

he was smacking his beagle lips as i took my pics. give me a sec charlie! sheesh!

but his excitement built into an unbearable surge of energy (and defiance) because he sprung up to snatch the piece of cake out of my hands and gobbled it as quickly as he could, smacking his lips furiously as i watched in surprise. then i remembered it was his berfday after all so all was forgiven...dang dog.

of course lucy and bronx got to share in the cake eating as well and they LOVED it. ok, so i know dogs will eat anything, but i really think they were particularly excited about this cake based on their frenzied behavior after their first bites...it must be good right?! right.

it was good times and i look forward to baking many, many more berfday cakes for my sweet pups. happy birthday charlie brown!

pre-moon (part 1)

the ideal scenario is to go on a honeymoon AFTER the wedding, but given a lot of restrictive factors, my fiance and i opted to go on a "pre-moon" to hawai'i (already happened) and then a "mini-moon" right after the wedding to vegas (gonna happen). talk about us mooning left and right!

so let me backtrack and talk about hawai'i....oh beautiful hawai'i! we went this past april for a 5 night, 6 day stay in oahu and got us a hotel in waikiki. it was the first time for the both of us to visit this aloha state and i loved, loved, LOVED the 24/7 tropical heat. not only that, i got leid right away. woot!

since i can't swim (ever seen a pig drown?) we did a lot more beachcombing and touristy thangs rather than the swimming, sunbathing in teeny weenie bikini thang. for example, here i am, harassing a bunch of hermit crabs in north shore.

teenage mutant ninja turtle sightings at "turtle beach" in north shore.

i loved how the palm trees swayed in the wind. so relaxing.

waikiki's beaches were rather busy. my fiance jumped in the waters a couple of times to cool off, but i sat my ass on my nifty costco beach towel and ate spam musubis instead. we all relax in our own ways now don't we? :p

but my most favorite beach was hanauma bay. we got there early and was able to avoid a steady stream of people trying to pack themselves into this protected marine life conservatory.

hanauma bay is known for super clear waters and great snorkeling. i didn't want to snorkel cuz of my fear of water, but my fiance went on his own and had a ball. i surface snorkeled instead like this. hiya fishies!

i also hung out with some chicks. they didn't talk much and yes, so odd to see random chickens running about.

by noontime, hanauma bay got pretty crowded and all the sunblock from the swimmers started muddling the water making it rather hard to snorkel. so we packed up and bade adieu to this long line of people waiting to get in. would i come back again? OF COURSE. BUT, only if we get their early. it is definitely not relaxing to share a small space with tons of peeps...and the peeps kept coming.

as we drove away, we saw a ton of people gathered taking a snapshot of this scene....so i did too. do what the tourists do is what i say :0

so that's the bitchin' beaches part of my hawaiian story. the rest to be continued......

thank you for my fat ass

thanksgiving. we all know it's about family and a celebration of relationships, whether they be functional or dysfunctional (hopefully more functional than not). but the underlying goal of thanksgiving is to also turn you into a big fat turkey. seriously.

and if you look at the larger picture, from thanksgiving till christmas, it will be a month long of gorging, of eating till you're stuffed, and of wearing loose clothing to grow your fat belly as you make your rounds in the eating circuit, double fisting turkey and pumpkin pie. oh dear lord, it is a time to excercise restraint peoples! a time to say, "no more," rather than "yes, please." a time to look at your own thigh, rather than the turkey's thigh! one word of advice: put the mutherfuckin' slice of honey baked ham down, ya hear?!

did you excercise restraint this thanksgiving? did you? let me turn this question on myself, DID I? NOPE. CRAP. haha, i am a walking anomaly of conflicting messages...yes, no, maybe, ok! dang.

thanksgiving this year was spent with my fiance's clan, a boisterous group of folks that spilled out of the little house that it was held at. since i helped out with some of the prep work, i did not get the opportunity to snap a ton of pictures, but let me just say, asian gatherings always mean over the top, way too much food and a whole lot for you to take home.

there was a turkey getting fried. this huge tin pot was where it was entombed in. a greasy dead-bath of sorts.

here's my fiance, mixing a huge vat of mash potatoes. yes, it may look like he's getting ready for the salvation army, but in fact, this vat of mashies will feed all of us...all 40+ of us, bejeebus.

and one of the best thanksgiving items of them all, a WHOLE ROASTED PIG! it had the crispiest skin ever. this oinker was polished off in seconds. SECONDS.

so i'm THANKFUL. THANKFUL for all the usual things, fiance, family, friends, dawgs, my job, and writing blogs that actually have folks that read them...and i'm absolutely THANKFUL that i never have to worry about being hungry and that eating well, eating to the point of obesity, can be a possibility if i choose to...er, not that i would...just sayin'.

i will forgo stepping on the scale till new year's eve so i can then make my typical new year's resolution: i will lose weight.

till then, i am stuffing my face! holla.

happy howl-o-ween!!

halloween is that special time of the year when my fam (2 and 4-legged) geek out more than necessary. is it to the point of ridiculousness and downright embarrassment? sure, probably. hence i say geek out.

after a long day at work, i came home on friday to a very excited sis. VERY. a lot of the geeky excitement actually originated from her so we got in her car and drove to target to look for doggy costumes cuz our local dog park was hosting their 3rd annual "howl-o-ween" costume contest. omg. like you had to ask if we were going to participate.....

it went from us browsing the aisles, to figuring out a theme, to laughing hysterically at our brilliance when we figured out our plan.

we ran across a white rabbit costume (from alice in wonderland) and also a generic kingly robe. since charlie was going to be the white rabbit, i suggested that lucy go dressed as the queen of hearts. all i had to do was sew a red felt heart on her robe which i did and a smaller red heart on her crown to emphasize our point. hearts + more hearts = the queen of hearts. that's how we roll.

although lucy did look super cute as the white rabbit if i must say so myself but we wanted to stick to the gender roles. besides, the robe was waaaaaay too big for charlie. we tried. we really did as he struggled to get away.

unlike last year when charlie was the only participant, we upped the heat and wanted to make sure that we won SOMETHING this year, so we decided that the WHOLE family had to be a part of the act. since my sis had a blue dress, she was dressed as alice and my fiance and i became the playing cards. brilliant. you know you love it.

when we got to the dog park, it was PACKED. it was quite the celebration indeed because everybody was in a jovial mood and all i heard was laughing. i love that people celebrate with their pets in all manners of silliness.

i did see a not so happy butterfly. perhaps pink wasn't her color.

here's a dog straddled by an angry cowboy.

a cow that jumped over the moooooooooooon. omg, so cute!



and a dog with the largest set of muscles ever. what a great body guard he would make!

a mummified dog. so scary!

marie antoinette with her one eye.

and the smallest giraffe in the world. i was floored when i found out that the costume was all handmade by the owner. i'm telling ya, the heat was on!

but in all seriousness, my dogs were 10,000% cuter! come on now! C-U-T-E! <3

we saw another themed group there, but ha! please don't cry when we dominate you captain america...especially since yours is not a cohesive collection.

cuz we are rockin' it alice in wonderland style!



and we won! THE END.