Hit Me With Your Best Shot (Caption Contest Giveaway)

Earlier today, my dad sent me this photo in a text message and said:

DO YOU REMEMBER THIS PICTURE?

WHY DO YOU LOOK SO UPSET?

And I was like,

"Hahaha! I do remember it
but I don't know why I was so upset."

But seriously. I don't know why I was upset.

Maybe it was because:

- I saw someone else with my same bathing suit

- My brother/sister did something to get on my nerves again

- It was part of being a little girl who throws fits

- I crapped myself in public again

- I was born with a pre-packaged amount of attitude and it JUST now decided to show itself

Really who knows. I sat for a few minutes trying to think of a fun little caption for this photo, but I couldn't think of a good one. I mean, I know it's out there, I just don't know what it is.

Maybe you could help me?

Maybe if you help me I'll give you a nice reward?

Okay here's the deal. You caption the photo by leaving a comment on this post only, and at the end of the month, I will pick my favorite and send the winner a $10 Starbucks gift card, a little love note from me via snail mail, and a special cool gift that reminds me of you from my trip to LA. Sound like a plan Stan?

Really what do you have to loose? You have the rest of the month to put your thinking cap on. Your caption won't offend me—seeing myself in that bathing suit has already accomplished that. So caption away!

Under The Sea

While I was on vacation, I got to meet up with Jenny from Parachutefan.com and we got to spend some time hanging out at the Baltimore Aquarium! These are some of the pictures that I posted on my Facebook album, but a lot of them are only here. I hope you enjoy them!

BONUS PLUS!
One of the workers at the aquarium had us fake feed the Archer Fish. You hold up what looks like food to them, and they shoot a stream of water from their mouth to 'hunt down' their food. Here's a video of Jenny interacting with the Archer Fish. We had SO much fun!

Reflection

After my last post about being on the Westside softball team, I am pleased to say that I was able to walk away from the tournament on Saturday with a FULL heart, happy and excited that I got to be part of such an awesome team!

I went in with a positive attitude and walked away with an even more positive outcome. All season I'd been overwhelmed with the fact that I could never seem to hit the ball past the infield, which increased my odds of an out at first base. But on Saturday, I got some pretty awesome hits—including two past the infield! So I actually got a chance to run around the bases!


AND as a bonus plus, I even got to cross HOME PLATE! And THAT was such a winning feeling! We played our hearts out and made it to the championship game! And even though we came in 2nd in the tournament, I walked away with a 1st place smile! It was seriously such a great day! The fact that I got a nice tan during the games and got to go to a pizza party afterward wasn't too bad either. And I KNOW I got a really good workout too because even as I type this, my leg and arm muscles are still feeling the burn. I got to rest up yesterday and I'm ready for another great week!

Writing On The Walls

(click image to enlarge)

Other works of art from today:

Steady As She Goes

Some things you should know:

1. I LOVE my job—the workplace, the co-workers, the atmosphere—i just LOVE it all! I seriously wish people could spend a day with me and get to experience all the greatness of my workplace!

2. My office building is an old church renovated into offices.

3. My personal office has 2 huge round portal windows with beautiful views.

4. One of those windows is removable plexi-glass so that I can get a fresh breeze when it warms up in the summertime.

5. There are no elevators in my office building.

6. I work on the 3rd floor

7. There are still more offices higher up than mine.

8. When you gotta get things from one place to another, you get inventive.

9. When you sit and work at a desk all day, it's nice to get interrupted with these inventive ways

10. When these inventive things happen, I will most likely take pictures of it!

One day last week, we had to get a whiteboard into my boss's office, but there was no way to get it through the stairwell up to his office. So, my co-workers got inventive . . .

They tied rope around the whiteboard so that we could
hoist it up from my window directly into my boss's office

It wasn't holding right the first time, so they kept trying different knots

Finally found one and made sure it could handle being hoisted

We lifted it up out of my office and began to hoist it up!
(i promise i helped!)

Then they hoisted it up

Up . . .

Up . . .

And away!!!

It's a good thing my boss's office is directly above mine ;)

Wonder

More updates from my trip back home!

Okay so here are more beach pictures and a fun story to go with them. :D

To begin, I must confess, I am known by my family as the aunt who spoils my niece, Vanessa, rotten. I do. Ever since she was a baby she had me wrapped around her little fingers. I bought her so much stuff and every time I babysat her, we went shopping together. We've made about 4 Build-A-Bear bears together. She says, "I want that." and I say, "Here, have TWO!" I am the bad aunt. I always give her fun toys and sweet treats . . . when you're 'love language' is gifts . . . it can be a scary battlefield to trot. I am slowly learning to draw lines in right places. I kind of picked up on my treacherous training when I was last at home. I went to go see her and she says, "Are you going to take me shopping and get me a lot of cool new toys? Are we going to get new clothes? Let's go!!"

Oy Vey—the monster I've created. So now I'm moving toward teaching her limits and choices when it comes to gifts. After she said that, I took her shopping, but I told her she could only get 2 things. She kept begging for like 8 different things, but I only let her have 2 and I told her she had to choose, that way when all was said and done, it was her choice. I, too, am learning.

So one of my favorite things is that she now knows that when I come home, I'm going to bring her books . . . and she LOVES to read! And that makes me way happy! In fact, I was on the phone the other day with my mom and she was telling me how much like me Vanessa is. She told me how Vanessa likes to read and draw and will just spend lots of time sitting by herself with a nose in a book, consumed. She loves stories and she loves being adventurous. And that also makes me happy :D Last time I visited, I bought her Where The Wild Things Are, which was one of my favorite books as a kid. My mom says that she requests to read that book the most! So this time I brought her home another one of my favorites, Knots On A Counting Rope. She was really excited to get new books :D

On Saturday night at the hotel, I had one of the best conversations with Vanessa. I talked with her about giving to others and about loving people no matter what they look/sound/act like. I also told her an important secret: "You don't always have to do what adults tell you to do." I explained to her that one day there will be something she will really love to do and there will be people who tell her she shouldn't do it, and I reiterated—"You don't always have to do what adults tell you to do." Most would think this is a terrible thing to tell a kid. But she's got a good head on her shoulders. She has a good heart and I am trusting and believing that as she grows, she will learn to test and set limits based on her own judgement and not define her life solely based on what others say or do. I never want her to lose sight of her dreams that she will want to chase as she grows into an amazing little lady.

Shortly after that, she and I had a FUN pillow fight and we were both jumping on the hotel beds and hitting each other with pillows and tackling one another. It was the BEST EVER!! :D I love spending time with her and I know that the things I teach her, she will pass on to her baby sister, who she and I absolutely adore! :D

With that, here are more fun pictures from the beach:

Vanessa was trying to wash the dirt off of the jellyfish
(dont' worry, we made sure she didn't touch the jellyfish)

The family all gathered around chillaxin' at the beach

A cute pic of my sister and my niece, Annabelle

My sister doing a jello shot . . . i don't think she has decided whether she likes it or not. This is going in my weird family face collection . . . the fact that I even have such a collection says something about my family ;) PS: most of the pics in that collection are of me. :O

Vanessa's cousin Sable after Vanessa & Major buried her in the sand

Vanessa & her cousin Major playing in the sand

Vanessa was so intrigued by the fish. She loves their bright colors and she kept pointing to the clownfish, automatically naming him Nemo. ;)

You I Wind Land And Sea

Proof that I still play with my food. :D

I'm so sorry I've been MIA for the past few days, but this vacation was truly jam packed! I was having WAY too much fun hanging out with my friends and family live and in person!! woo hoo! I didn't have much time for any tumblr or blogspot updates! So, to hold you over until my mega update/adventure post tomorrow, here are a couple of pictures I took (more will be added tomorrow and in the following days) and a video that I took from the reunion! Primarily, these are of the grandkids (not my grandkids, duh, just in general they are grandkids). I love capturing their fun interactions on camera. I hope they never outgrow it.

Sable, Major, & Vanessa creating castles and other fantastic things.

Annabelle playing with a fun learning toy

Sweet dreams for my two princesses—i love my nieces!

Every year for our family reunion, we make family t-shirts. My mom's side of the family is the Arroyo family. They asked me to make the design for the shirts this year with simple guidelines: it has to have the family name on it and it has to have the UT Longhorns logo on it. Since my family is heavily involved in sports, primarily baseball, I made our shirts resemble baseball shirts, with a complete "team roster" on the back of the shirt! The kelley green with white lettering shirts were for the adults/older grandkids and the white shirts with the green lettering were for the smaller grandkids who couldn't fit into the bigger sizes. They all liked them a lot! :D

And here is a video that will probably be shown to their respective boy/girlfriends when they get older, to show just "what cute kids" they were ;)

Major and Vanessa spaz dancing! :D

Lisztomania

It's a Lisztomania!

People Awake This Morning At 5 a.m. Seattle Time:
1.
2.
3.
4. The driver of Metro Transit bus #41 (barely)
5. Me

Songs I Can't Wait To Hear Tomorrow Night At The Jack's Mannequin Concert:
1. Into The Airwaves
2. Swim
3. Spinning
4. Dark Blue
5. Only Ashes (cover of Something Corporate) . . . i HOPE they play it!

Thoughts Running Through My Mind Today:
1. I'm glad I'm not God because I'd give up being everyone's miracle worker way too easy.
2. No more Twizzlers. Okay one more. Okay just ONE more. Gah. Is that seriously the whole bag? Jeeze.
3. I need coffee. Coffee. Coff coff cah coffeeeeeeeee.
4. I love the manacle musings of artists
5. What am I forgetting to do today?

Places I Visited In My Head Today:
1 Madrid
2. New York
3. my bed
4. Charlie's Chocolate Factory
5. a hot tub

Thoughts Running Through My Mind When Confronted With Rude, Snarky Barista This Morning:
1. I wish I hadn't already PAID for my coffee.
2. I wish I could form a full sentence to tell you how barely awake I am.
3. Is that really necessary?
4. Please never work for Hallmark
5. Thanks for the snark, I was running out

Colors Of The Wind

I recently started following a blog called Color Me Katie. It's a blog that Katie Sokoler maintains. She's a NY Photographer and, I think, one of the most fun and creative people on the planet. Her blog always inspires the creativity that runs amok in my own mind.

Katie recently blogged about a Chalk Walk she did, where she went out in front of her home and traced her footsteps in bright chalk colors. You can read HER post about it HERE.

I decided I would do the same, and add some color to my block as well. I live on a fairly busy main street in the Northgate neighborhood. A LOT of people are constantly walking up and down my street to get to the store, the mall, the ice cream shop, etc. The fact that it was just a wee bit rainy outside just made this art project even more fun! Here are some pictures from my Chalk Walk:

my weapons of choice :D

You know, just so I won't be held liable . . .

Step One

Soooo fun and soooo pretty!

I'm in love with the colorful contrast!

One foot in front of the other . . .

Almost to the end!

Looking back at where I've been

It was SO fun sitting by my window and watching all the people follow the footsteps and laugh and question why the footprints were there!

Good Old Acappella

Last Sunday I got to go to my housemate, Karli's, A Capella invitational. It was so fun! I love watching people sing and it was fun to go out with some of my other housemates and cheer Karli on! Here are some photos and videos from the performance:

Before the performance

After the show

GARDEN LEVEL


GARDEN LEVEL: I'LL MAKE LOVE TO YOU

HusKEYS


HusKEYS: POKERFACE

WOMEN & CHILDREN


WOMEN & CHILDREN: DRIVE

MAJOR TREBLE


MAJOR TREBLE: LIKE A PRAYER

GUEST A CAPELLA GROUP


GUEST A CAPELLA GROUP: JESSIE'S GIRL


Now here's the sad thing . . . right about this time, my memory card got full and I couldn't record any more video. SAD. So I didn't get to record Karli's group, but they did GREAT! They sang Imogen Heap's HIDE AND SEEK, GOOD OLD ACAPELLA, Seal's KISS BY A ROSE, and John Fogerty's PROUD MARY. They were awesome! What I WAS able to find was another video of them performing TIME AFTER TIME, in which my housemate Karli is featured! Woot!

UNLEASHED! A CAPELLA

And I didn't get a photo of them, but here is UnDEFINED, an A Capella group from Western Washington University, singing a song called
McDONALD'S GIRL



------------------------

As a special treat, here is a video of another A Capella group performing Poker Face. One of the baristas at Caffe Ladro told me about this one and it's hilarious!