Beijing Super Buffet

so there is this classically awesome chinese buffet not too far from our house. we joke about eating there almost every time we drive past it.

well, tonight emily was in the mood for chinese and since that happens once every 12-18 months, i knew i had to latch on if we were going to get all super beijing-y.

and this is what happened.

please don't read into this. i will lay the facts and that's all. let there be no speculation, for it would be baseless and uneventful.

so, after a wonderful meal, filled with much more than you would expect at a chinese buffet and admiring the many, many variations of hunting camo (vest, jackets, brim hats, shirts, shorts, etc, etc) that can be worn at such a dining establishment, we decided our fate with the traditional fortune cookies.

emily went first: her's read:

The coming month shall bring winds of change in your life.

so i said: ooh, a baby. then i read mine:

Through greater effort and hard work a precious dream comes true.

so i said, ooh a family, a sibling for little william. emily was not amused.

so we turned our fortunes over.

mine is on top. emily's is on bottom.

and i'm pretty sure, the egg roll refers to this (from a book called: baby-gami, teaching the ancient arts of wrapping your baby).

you know, the chinese are rarely wrong when it comes to this sort of stuff.

on an unrelated note, we decided last night, that it's time for Will to start pulling his own weight around here, so we made him start feeding himself. i think he figured it out alright.

fat tuesday

today was the day. fat tuesday. today's celebrations were the pinnacle of two weeks' worth of building anticipation. and William was excited. here he is getting ready to head to new orleans for parades, floats, and beads galore. he could hardly wait.

new orleans has had a great two weeks. first, the superbowl, and then mardi gras. so we got all dressed up and went to revel in the festivities.

it was pretty wild out there with beads flying . . .

roses flying . . . (good catch Will!)

and masses of people everywhere.

so now we can say we did it. we're only down here for a year (we think/hope . . .), so we had to experience mardi gras in all of its glory. and oh, how glorious it was!

BN-BFF

BN-BFF: brand-new best friends forever.

Will met his soulmate on Friday night. At least that's what the four of us parents were thinking.

She glanced up at him...

He looked down at her...

They kicked, they danced, they bonded.

They started the beginnings of a long and beautiful relationship.

At least we all hope so.

The cute girl baby pictured is London. She was born 2 days before Will, but this is the first time they've met. They are total twins. When we took them out, people thought they were in fact twins and were really confused how they were born two days apart.

For the weekend, Emily and I drove to Fort Walton Beach, FL to visit Mark and Ashley Olsen and their daughters Sadie and London. No, not the Ashley Olsen of Mary Kate and Ashly Olsen...

It was a short trip. But totally worth it. We stayed up late laughing and talking about how identical our babies were. Same size round head, same bloated cheeks, same chubby thighs, same cry, same laugh, same cough, yada, yada, yada. It was pretty hilarious. So of course we want them to grow up, meet each other at BYU and link our two families together for life.

While we were there, we also got a preview of the blindingly beautiful white sand beaches at Destin, we can't wait to go back when it's warm enough to hit the beach for reals,

Snagged a few more Mardi Gras beads at yet another parade, Will really got into it this time, as you can see, London really got into it too, she's even trying to snake a few beads from Will,

Ate at a restaurant with over $900K in dollar bills fastened to the walls and ceiling, delicious pub food, and creepy red lighting,

And almost made it to a rally for saving the oceans and drawing big red lines on oil drills...

All in all it was a pretty rad weekend.

a lot to pack into such a short time.

4 months isn't very much time. especially when you have so much to learn and figure out. and especially when you've only been alive for four months to the day.

you have to know how to be "a thinker" a la Rodin.

you have to know how to kick back and relax...

... after a day of flying around and saving the world. and being dead serious about it.

and you definitely have to learn how to look people in the face and say, "i'm not joking around right now."

that's quite a bit to figure out in four short months, but i think William has done alright with the task.

who dat who dat

it's been an exciting weekend for us down here in Saints' country . . .

it all started on friday, when we joined some of our friends and went to a real southern gem: Cajun's. it's an awesome, ghetto-licious, delicious, fried chicken buffet. and you can only imagine the clientele . . . the guy behind me had a full-on gold grill on his whole top row of teeth and we saw about 4 different women who had bright red-dyed streaks of hair running through their elaborately done-up hairdos. oh yeah, and we can't forget the old, toothless woman who apparently thought William was just too cute to not touch all over his hands and face. gross. i almost smacked her hand away. instead, i just smiled and patiently waited until she walked away and then quickly scrubbed him down with a baby wipe. sorry if i'm a brat, but come on. touching his face???? that's a little more than i can handle.

last night we went to the Air Force Krewe of Medics Ball. kind of funny, kind of awesome. it was like a mardi gras prom with costumes, ball gowns, masks, and mardi gras beads. unfortunately, peter got called in (he's the dentist on-call for the week on base), so i went to the ball stag for the first two hours :( but luckily, he made it in time to break it down on the dance floor with me.

the highlight of the night for sure was when the whole room stood up, started waving the American flags that were placed in everyone's seats, and broke into singing "Proud to be an American." only in the South. and only at a military event . . . oh, and don't worry, we documented the spectacle for your viewing pleasure:

then today, our boys the Saints brought it all home! go Saints!!!! we got all Who Dem Saints done up and watched the big game with some friends of ours. and we ate a lot of crap. but it was delicious. overall i'd say we had a very southern, very carnival-ish, party weekend!

mardi gras begins...

this is the first post of several posts that will inevitably follow.

in the deep south, especially this close to Nawlins', you can expect some wild awesomeness with mardi gras festivities. here we are a good two weeks out from actual black friday, but nonetheless, we found ourselves at the first of many mardi gras parades...

even though it has been in the 60's here for the last couple of weeks, it rained like crazy last night and it dropped down into the low, low 40's today. that being said, we spent most of the day trying to keep Will warm, happy and entertained. if only he could understand the spectacle that is the dirty south, we wouldn't have had to do much. Will mainly held it down by sucking his wrist as he has a tendency to do these days.

it must be great to be a little kid down here right about now. your hometown football team and hero (who dat, drew dat brees) are heading to the superbowl real soon. plus, you get to go stand in the streets and have people throw free crap off their floats at you.

but if i have to hear that ying yang twins' "who dat" song about the saints one more time, i think i'm going to go all confederate on somebody. cause the south will rise again. or so they seem to think and preach and show by STILL flying variants of the confederacy.

so the parade was pretty fun. we went with our friends, curt and paula (not pictured), reveled in the festivities and got tons of beads without having to do anything but stand there and have people chuck them at us. all in all, it was pretty rad. we're definitely gonna bust out our own mardi gras gear (purple, gold, and green) that we bought last week for the upcoming multiple parades, which will most likely be documented in obnoxious detail in a forthcoming post. so hang tight. you're not going to want to miss this one.

oh yeah. and check out this guy. nothing out of the ordinary about him. he totally fit in with the rest of the crowd that was out today for the kick off parade.

chatterbox

william is the biggest chatterbox these days. here he is telling me all of the wonderful things that are on his mind . . .

(sorry about the video being sideways; he was laying down and i was using my ipod so i couldn't change it to landscape.)

oh really?

this is Will when he doesn't really believe what we're telling him.

ballerina.

i guess it's the week for documentaries. today, while i was feeding Will, i decided to watch Ballerina, a documentary about 5 Russian ballerinas from the Kirov Ballet. it was beautiful. and interesting. to see the course that girls starting at the age of 10 take to become prima ballerinas in Russia is incredible and incredibly demanding. i don't know many girls who'd have the stamina to pursue such goals under such extreme circumstances.

my favorite ballerina in this documentary was definitely Evguenya Obraztsova. her style and technique are impeccable. however, watching Ulyana Lopatkina rehearse for Swan Lake in the studio against the light from the window was breathtaking. i could watch that all day. makes me want to go and work on making my arms flutter like a swan's wings . . .

after William was done eating, he finished watching the movie with me, however he was quite restless. i guess he's not totally into ballet. which is okay by me, and VERY okay by his dad, i'm sure :)

you can rent it here and here is the trailer, if you're so interested . . .

A man in the MLK mold

In the spirit of MLK day, Will and I woke up early and watched a documentary titled: Street Fight. You can find the trailer here or on Netflix. It's the story of Cory Booker, a young politician, who tries to unseat an extremely long standing incumbent mayor in the city of Newark, NJ. It chronicles the fight against years of political corruption and political machinery that dominates the local politics of particularly low-income areas, like those the exist in Newark.

It's a pretty shocking and inspiring story. I don't want to give away the ending, but you can read up on Cory Booker on his wikipedia page here. Even Barack Obama couldn't entice Booker to leave Newark for bigger and greener pastures on the national stage.

It's pretty rad to read and learn about people like this who fight against insurmountable odds and come out on top.

Anyway. Watch Street Fight and have a happy Martin Luther King Day!