The Diva

Now I'm not one to brag but I have to say that I have the cutest neice ever. She just had her school picture taken and she made my sister, KB, straighten her wavy hair so she would be "beautiful." (I think she spent a little too much time with Aunt Ali this summer!) So anyways, here's her school picture:

I talked to her on the phone yesterday and made a point to tell her how beautiful she looked and her response was, "I know." Gotta love the confidence of little girls! ;) But seriously, isn't she adorable??

Fires

To be honest, it's not that suprising to me that California is having such horrible fires right now. We haven't had much rain at all this year (including last winter) and the dry conditions were met with Santa Ana (aka HOT) winds this weekend. I never trust weather people because they only seem to report the weather accurately on the 10 pm news (when they're discussing what the weather was like that day) but when they say the words "fire danger" they are actually right!

Sadly, California is just being ravaged by fires from Santa Barbara County, LA County, and down to Orange County. So many people have lost their homes or are currently evacuated because of the threat to their homes. I watched the fire reports all day yesterday and was sad to see the fire burning at my high school. Since my high school is surrounded by hills and brush the surrounding hills caught fire. Thankfully, the firefighters were able to protect the structure of the school but some storage units in the parking lot burned. School is closed tomorrow because of the mess left by the fires. However, not all were so lucky. The continuation school located just down the hill from my high school actually lost some buildings to the fire and those students will have to be relocated. A couple who attends my church lost their home in Anaheim Hills and others from my church were evacuated.

Thankfully there haven't been many fatalities as a result of the fire and my heart goes out to those people who are working so hard to fight the fire, those who have lost their homes or are evacuated, and those who are running evacuation efforts. Let's pray for them all!

Glen Ivy

For my dear friend Katie's birthday, we decided to take her to Glen Ivy hot springs for a girls day. I'd never been and was really excited to go. Our girls only entourage consisted of me, my sister Ali, Katie the B-Day girl, Laura, and Aubrey. Aubrey and Katie were the only ones who had been there before but I think we were all equally excited.

We started off the day by visiting the locker rooms and putting our stuff away. The lockers are like the ones at skate places or amusement parks with the little orange keys but the awesome thing about this place is you don't have to pay for them...they're free! Now that's class my friends! ;) So we change into swimsuits and then go to the mud pool to smear orange mud all over our arms and legs, let it dry and wash it off. I can't remember what it's supposed to do officially but it did make our skin smoother. When we were standing around smearing the mud there were two older women there (65+) and one of them looked at the other and said, "Clara, you are really white but this girl (looking at Katie) might give you a run for your money." LOL we all laughed

We pretty much spent the days going from different pools and spas to the next. They have freshwater pools and spas as well as salt water and even a sulfa spa. The sulfa is supposed to pull out toxins or something like that and Ali and I tried but just found the stink of rotten eggs not worth it.

At the end of the day, Ali and I went down in the Grotto (underground) where we were painted with a green moisturizer and spent 15 minutes in a warm cave rubbing it in. Then you go into a shower room and wash it all off. Then you towel dry and then go into a sitting room where you drink tea or water and eat apples. The whole thing was designed to look like caves so that was cool.

It really was a wonderful day but my only regret was going into a steam sauna. I love steam saunas but I tend to get sick after being in them (I guess too much moisture for my lungs) and the next day I came down with a cold. So now I'm battling my sinuses, asthma and a really sore throat. But hey, at least I'm relaxed! :)

TLC Shows

One of my guilty pleasures is watching The Learning Channel. They have such strange shows on there but I mainly watch it to watch the shows about the enormous families. There's a show called "17 Children and Counting" about a family of extremely right-wing conservative Christians who live in Arkansas who have 17 kids (and one more on the way). They live in a massive house that they built and spend over $2,000 in groceries every two weeks.

All of the kids have names that start with J (more than likely because Jesus' name starts with a J, shame that it starts with an E when translated into Hebrew...someone should have told them that). Their kids have names like: Josh, Jana, John David (that's a cheat--you know they just wanted to name him David), Jill, Jessa, Jinger, Jedidiah, Jeremiah, Johannah (another cheat), Joy Anna (cheat!!), Jennifer (there's a good one), James, Jackson, Justin, etc. All of the kids are homeschooled (I don't know how the mom does it since there's such an age range) and don't watch TV or use the internet. All of the girls wear dresses and everyone dresses very conservatively.

I think I find them so fascinating because they're so strange to me. Their kids aren't exposed to anything in the "normal" world and I just have to wonder what's going to happen to them once they aren't so sheltered. The parents don't believe in birth control so they're continually having kids and all of the older kids have a little kid to take care of. That's kinda sad to me. If you're going to have kids, YOU should be the parent...not another one of your kids.

Anyone else watch these shows though? Kinda embarassing to admit but that's why it's a guilty pleasure right?

Carmen Started Another Survey!

10 YEARS AGO I...
1. was enjoying my senior year of high school with a great group of friends (Alpha Omega!!)
2. was annoyed when gas prices were over $1.30 a gallon
3. had a huge crush on the boy that sat next to me in English class but never told him.
4. took photography as a fine art and learned how to develop film by hand (totally useless knowledge now)
5. thought I'd be married by 21...ha ha ha, that's actually really funny!

5 THINGS ON TODAY'S TO-DO LIST:
1. fold laundry
2. clean the kitchen so the plumber can come look at the sink that's leaking
3. print some political cartoons for my students to work on this week
4. take a bath to relax
5. wear my retainers to bed (I try to do this every two weeks or so because I'm paranoid about my teeth moving)

5 THINGS I'D DO IF I WERE A MILLIONAIRE:
1. donate money to charity
2. travel to Africa and Europe and China
3. buy a Honda that DOESN'T have a rattling sound!
4. buy a jacuzzi bath tub
5. completely redo the kitchen so nothing leaks or looks like it came from the 1950s (metal cabinets...'nuff said)

5 PLACES I'VE LIVED:
1. Long Beach, CA
2. Malibu, CA
3. South Kensington (London), England
4. Calabasas, CA (that place was cursed...always a fire or a flood, or a leaky ceiling, etc.)
5. Moorpark, CA

5 JOBS I'VE HAD:
1. Sears Sales Associate (I was 15 and this was a terrible job...selling purses and panty hose were not my life goals)
2. Disneyland employee
3. Nanny for Miss Mia in Malibu (she was so cute! I miss her!)
4. Curriculum Developer
5. Teacher

My Random Facts

Carmen issued a challenge to me on her blog to share 7 random facts about myself and since I, like most people, enjoy talking about myself, I have accepted the challenge! ;-)

1. I don't like magazines. I find them a pain in the butt to read with all of those advertisements and the articles are often too short (once I get into them, they're over). Plus, I hate all of the size 00 models and how society sees them as the standard for what a beautiful woman should look like. So I purposely don't read magazines because I don't like how they make me feel like I don't measure up to the standards of society.

2. I also don't like antiques. I find it upsetting that our culture doesn't appreciate the elderly in our society and we'd rather put them in homes than respect them for their life experiences and wisdom. So we reject old people but for some reason spend huge amounts of money on their belongings. I am just amazed that people spend HUNDREDS of dollars on antiques just because they are old.

3. I LOVE chocolate. I know most women enjoy eating chocolate but it's so far beyond "enjoyment" for me. I honestly don't know what I'd do without chocolate (especially dark chocolate!). I don't understand how some people don't like it. I don't really like cookies unless chocolate is involved (sugar cookies...what's the point people??)

4. I have a strange fear of having scissors near me. I use scissors at work but as soon as I'm done with them, I put them back in my desk drawer so they aren't around. I won't go to sleep if I left a pair of scissors on my nightstand. It just creeps me out.

5. I wish I were more adventurous with my eyeshadow colors. I tend to just wear browns and neutrals and it takes me a lot of courage to wear purples at night. I just don't feel like I can pull off a lot of colors. I've gone to make up counters and had them put different color schemes on me and it looks good but they're professionals and I'm not that great with make up so I'm not that courageous on my own.

6. I'm not a big fan of designer things: handbags, purses, clothes, etc. I could never really afford them anyways so I guess it's a good thing I'm not that into them. I do like high quality goods (I love FOSSIL purses but will only buy them from eBay so they're cheap) but I just can't justify spending $100+ on a purse. Plus I think that if I were to buy something really nice, I'd probably lose it, or it would get messed up and I'd be sad.

7. I wish I knew how to play the piano. I'm not a musical person at all and while I did play the violin as a kid, I was never cordinated enough to play the piano. My Nana tried to teach me a few times and while I can read music and know the keys, I don't have the coordination to get my hands to play different keys at the same time.

Okay, that's it! Thanks for reading!

Revelations from the Scale

So I stepped on my bathroom scale this morning and came to a very clear realization. I know weight is a major issue for women so I did what every woman in her right mind does when she steps on the scale...I took off all my clothes to see how much I weighed. Please note that I was about to jump into the shower so the nakey-ness was necessary. So anyways, I tap the scale to turn it on and wait for 0.00 to show up. I hop on and wait a few seconds for this little piece of glass and a dial to tell me how much mass I have and a few seconds later is when the realization set in. When I hopped on the scale this morning, I realized that I'm blind! (If you thought I was going to mention my actual weight, slap yourself in the face for being so dumb ;)

I had to wait for the dial to stop flashing before I bent down to see what the 1.5 inch numbers said. Now I'm not a tall person (my 6'5'' boyfriend reminds me of that) but apparently I can't read letters 1.5 inches tall from a distance of 5 feet. I can't wait to someday get laser surgery to fix my eyes but sadly I'm not a candidate for it and probably won't be for a few years. They want your perscription to be stable for two years before getting the surgery and mine is constantly changing. So since I can't get the surgery then I clearly need to get a scale with bigger numbers. ;)