Any San Diegans Out There?

Sawyer & I are going to San Diego next Monday with Jessica & Max and Brittany & Owen, and pretty much the whole point of traveling for me is to find food that is better than anything I've ever eaten before. (and when I say food, I mean cupcakes.) So yeah, who knows of the best places to eat, things to do and shops to shop in the lovely SD? And cupcake shops of course.
We will defiantly be making the trek to Santa Monica for some Vanilla Bakeshop action, but I'm open to suggestions.
Bueller? Bueller?

I have a testimony...

...of my new skin care routine.

I have always had great skin, but since having Sawyer I have gotten more zits than I ever did in junior high & high school combined. It makes me a wee bit annoyed. It is physically impossible for me to not pop zits, and therefore I am getting icky scars on my face. Not lovely.

But I recently discovered a few new products that I am in love with and I think it would be rude to not share.

#1- Kirkland Signature Daily Facial Wipes. I always wash my face in the shower, but at night, it's like pulling teeth to get me to take my makeup off, and Loreli Gilmore would be ashamed of me. I have often wished that I could give my face & teeth to Matt & have him take care of them while I snuggled in bed. But guess what, these little buddies fit right in my nightstand & one is all I need to get all my makeup off and have that "just got a facial" yummy feeling. My skin is back to good again!

#2- I am determined to have great skin when I'm 90. Sunblock, check! Vitamins, check! Lots of water, check! Sunglasses to prevent squinting, check! But I recently bought my first wrinkle cream & I am in love with it. It took a few days for my face to get used to it, but now I put it on every night and I totally feel firmer. Get it at Costco in a two-pack for much, much cheaper.

#3- The retinol in the RoC makes your skin more susceptible to sunburn, so be sure to load up on sunscreen in the morning. I especially love this'n. Aveeno Positively Radiant SPF 30 is bueno.

So yeah, there ya go. If you have any suggestions, or favorite products, let me know.

it's official: I'm spoiled

Yesterday I had pretty much worked my booty off trying to get our poor neglected house back into some semblance of order. Sawyer & I have been taking it easy this week because we've been sick. It's an annoying kind of sick though, because we aren't like, gonna die, we can pretty much do everything normally, we just have lots & lots of phlegm-friends that come along with us and coughing in public isn't appreciated. But not taking it easy last week did not help us get better & so this week we're staying in as much as possible. Obviously, the house has suffered. It looks like a used kleenex storage facility. There are toys in every possible nook & cranny. Or at least there were until yesterday. It was very very clean when Matt came home. (of course that only lasts for about 20 minutes with a kid, but whatever.) Anyway, Matt was supposed to have been working late & I had some plans to grout our tile while he was gone, and amaze him with a clean, completely grouted house. I left the bags of grout on our stairs in the garage, right where I wouldn't forget about doing it. Unfortunatley, parking cars in our luxury-sized Ivory homes garage requires an advaced degree in Tetris. Everything has to be in the proper place or else things don't fit in at all. Apparently Matt's nice new car overlaps the stairs, and putting the bags of grout where I did caused a bit of damage. Last week I put the stroller in the wrong place & scratched up his front fender. Anyway, when he came home, let's just say that the first thing that came out of his mouth was not "wow, Celeste, this place looks amazing, you must be tired, let me make dinner," like I was hoping. And of course I lack the ability to take criticism without becoming completley defensive and arrogant. Fortuntaley, we're talking about Matt Davis here. He is so incredibly perfect for me & didn't fuel my irrational fire, but looked at things from my point of view & made everything better even as I was turning things all around & being mad and stuff. Anyway, not only is he amazing & un-prideful and sexy, but he's also extremley generous. I got an early Mother's Day present. It's one of those cute little netbooks, a tiny laptop mostly for internet usage! I LOVE LOVE LOVE IT! There goes my productivitiy, right back down the toilet! I have named him Tiny Little SuperGuy. Which reminds me.
How great is Sesame Street? Besides Kirsten & Kierstin, I don't know who else would come up with the idea to draw a little dude on a cup.
"Hey, let's have him just go through countertops & walls, that'd be cool!"
"Yeah, and what if he sounded like a life-long smoker? Great idea!"
I love it.

ummm p.s.

just in case you were wondering, I've got a few significant news flashes for ya'll:
1- $500 does not actually go as far as it seems
2- I don't care what the commercials say, the Mayan restaurant has in fact NOT improved their food quality
3- having my parents home after 18 months is the BEST EVER!!!!
4- moving my computer to the basement has increased productivity at my house like you would NOT believe! Did you know that it is not actually necessary to get each email as soon as it dings into your inbox? Were you aware that IMDB-ing every movie related question that randomly pops into your head as you clean doesn't really help you get your cleaning done very quickly? Who would have thought?
and
5- I am going to be in San Diego this time next week. :p (that's me sticking my tounge out at you.)

I just won $500 at my gym. Cash Money!!!

What would you do if you won $500? I cannot even wrap my brain around it.

a lengthy post about a lot of different things

There are things I've been experiencing that cannot be attributed to anything other than a tender mercy from my loving Heavenly Father, or at least that's how I'm choosing to look at it, (had to (lovingly) throw that last part in for my brother Doug).
People are so kind. I'm learning this. We all have so much to give each other. So many ways to lift one another up. That is why one of Satan's best tricks is to get us to make snap judgments about each other that separate us and cause competitive thoughts or jealousy. At least it's one of the traps I'm best at stepping in.
There is an adorable girl at my gym. I see her nearly everyday. She is everything I'm not; petite, blond, slightly tattooed, yet somehow still classy and sweet and just really tight & toned. I always notice her but haven't really had a chance to talk to her much until recently. She's friends with one of my gym-friends, and now I know her name & enough to say hi. She heard I was expecting & asked about how I was feeling last Friday. Of course I told her that I was feeling quite fine as my uterus had returned to it's uninhabited state. My words seem trite as I try to describe the sisterhood I felt with her as we talked for the next half hour about the pain of our experiences and how we don't understand why these things happen; how we just kind of hold on to the hope that "it'll happen when it's supposed to" is true. Who made that phrase up anyway? I have kept people at a distance so often because of judgments I've passed on them based on their appearances or something I've heard. I have missed out on enumerable friendships and joys because of that. It makes me sick to think about. Also makes me want to knock it the hell off. There are people who stand up in fast & testimony meeting and tell the whole congregation that they love them. There are people who think that those people are on Ecstasy or something. But I know one thing, when gym friend & I had that talk, and she said "I love you", & I said & meant it back, it felt like that was a much more natural state than my normal place of judgment. That felt true. As Billy Corgan says, "there's a love that God puts in your heart." And yes, I did just bust out Smashing Pumpkins lyrics in this sappy post.
MOVING ON
I love that my daughter always just shimmies up to her teachers and holds their hands & loves them. Primary teachers, ballet teachers, swimming teachers, gym day-care teachers. Everyone. She is a little lover.
MOVING ON
You think I can cook? I make wedding cakes, I'd better be able to handle myself in the kitchen somewhat, right? Most of the time, I'm okay. But damn that Adam Lambert. Last week my DVR quit recording right before his performance, and so the next day, as I was making a batch of buttercream I thought I ought to google it and watch it because, although he isn't my pick to win American Idol, he's always worth watching. 20 minutes later I hear my fire alarm going off upstairs. The entire kitchen/front room/entry/dining room is flooded with smoke. Stop, drop & roll variety smoke. I had 2 1/4 cups sugar and 1/2 cup water on the stove that ooops I forgot about. Thank goodness Sawyer was over at a friends because I'm thinking she would have freaked out. Thank goodness it was a nice day & airing the house out was a highly pleasant experience. Thank goodness it didn't actually overflow, so clean up was as simple as throw my favorite pot in the garbage. Pretty ugly, huh?I stuck a golf club in it to make sure it was dead.
MOVING ON
But other than that little incident, I have declared myself the Golden Goddess of Cake. Let me have just a tiny little brag shesh. This last cake I did I was kinda not excited about because it was pretty plain. Just white fondant and fresh flowers. But can I just say that this was the most perfect fondant application I have ever done? She had me do one tier of foam & that always scares me because the edges usually give it away, but not this one, no one could guess which one it was. YEAH ME!!!! Go look at my cake blog if you want to see.
MOVING ON
My parents come home from their mission in less than 48 hours!!!!!
MOVING ON
Easter is the best. Sawyer loves Easter. She loves bunnies, candy, making cookies, frilly new dresses, finding things & Jesus. What could be better? The Easter Bunny went a little crazy at Ross this year & got her a new swimming suit (too big) and Ariel swim fins & goggles that she wore all day Sunday. The Easter Bunny (and Sawyer) just might be a little excited for their trip to San Diego in 2 weeks. The end.

I'm not really going to curse God & die

k, my last blog may have scared a few of you, my feelings that day scared me, I'll admit. Honestly I ran the whole gambit of emotions in a very short amount of time, anger, denial, grief and all that, but now I am at a very nice okay-ness. God & I made up on Sunday night, we're all good now, and he gave me a huge dose of the comfort & peace that I asked for. Seriously, I woke up Monday morning with a strange sense of euphoria and goodness. Everything is gravy. The timing of this birth must be really important in his/her life. Or something, I just hope it all makes sense one day. Its not even so much that I'm afraid I'll never have another baby, I just hate double HATE the process of t r y i n g. "We're TRYING to get pregnant." It just sounds so tedious. (and yes, I know where babies come from, that part isn't the part that sucks.) It's just that each month when Aunt Flo arrives you feel like a total failure. That beeotch sucks enough already without stamping a big fat FAIL on your forehead. I hate peeing on sticks. I hate finding the cutest freaking nursery ideas and not feeling free to act on them. I hate that my daughter prays everynight for a baby in mama's tummy. I also hate that she doesn't have anyone to play with all day except me, and am considering adopting a princess obsessed 3 year old with an outrageous imagination just so I can get things done around here. I just want to move on to the next phase of life. I am retardedly impatient! I think I need to go watch American Idol. That always makes everything better. ...........yummmm Kris Allen.....
Goodnight.

the second time around is actually worse....

...who'd have thought that was possible? For the like six people on the planet who I haven't told yet, I was pregnant recently. Friday was our first pre-natal appointment. Heartbeat & all was groovy. Joy! My adorable sister-in-law Jennifer is also pregnant & we were so excited to have babies close in age again. Whatever. This sucks. I'm really pissed off this time around. Is that okay? Is that normal? I'm just mad as hell. At what, you might ask. Name it. My girly parts. Myself. My husband. My daughter. My doctor. God. Not very humble of me, huh? I know these types of experiences are a chance for me to grow closer to my Heavenly Father & Savior if I just turn to them in faith. I'm supposed to learn something with each earthly experience, right? Or else what is the point of all this suckiness? I know this, yet I'm not ready to "make nice" just yet. Thanks to the Dixie Chics for a song that will hopefully get me through this part. Hopefully this part is short & in a few days I can remember that "all things will work together for your good." Actually even as I say that I know that in the past, in my life, when things just seem so not fair & I can't understand why I'm going through something, when I look back at those times years later, I see that the plan of the Father is always greater and more beautiful than anything I could have ever dreamed up on my own. It's gonna be fine.
um... p.s. sorry, if I didn't make it clear, Melissa, I had a f-ing miscarriage again.

K, really this time, Taiwan

Alright, so my dad just sent out a quick summary of what we did on my trip to Taiwan, so I think I'll just copy that & embellish it with my thoughts & pictures & stuff where I see fit. (Because that's just how lazy I am. Also, I don't have a proper computer chair yet in my office & I'm pretty sure some carpal tunnel is in my future if I don't keep it short.) So here's papa's summation: "Celeste came to visit us and we took her to a few close places that are unique to Asia. 1) Taipei 101 Tower and fastest elevator in the world. (Freaking amazing. There is also one of the best malls there that I never got a chance to shop, and it was Taipei Fashion Week of all things. I was DYING to go to everysingle fashion show they were having, but it didn't happen. :( Really cool regardless.) 2) Wulai waterfall and a Chinese market street. (Beautiful & freaky respectively. Everyone there was telling me how they had the best food there, and yes, some nice restaurants we went to were amazing, but most of what they're proud of is the street vendor food, including chicken feet, chicken with heads still attached, chicken butts (not kidding), snake soup, very small snails, grubs, warm drinks with gelatin cubes that do a darn good impression of ice cubes to the untrained eye, and many other unidentifiable food products.) 3) Zoo and Panda bears. (Also amazing, I'd definitely put the Taipei zoo up there with San Diego, it was fantastic. I thought a zoo might not be much fun without Sawyer to ooh & awe at everything, but apparently I'm still 3 years old when it comes to animals. I thoroughly enjoyed it. When you walk in, they hand you a paper with your appointment to see the Pandas, at that time, you join the other 3000 people in line and are rushed past the pandas by zoo security at a pace that didn't allow my dad to even get one picture of them. It was great though, Chinese people are funny.) 3) (yes, my dad did put #3 twice, he's so stinking cute.) The National Palace Museum; when Chiang Kai-Shek left Mainland China he brought many very old artifacts and artwork. Cooking pots and stuff that is several thousand years old. We also visited his residence (one of many). (I'm not a big museum gal, but this was definitely cool. It was great to see all the craftsmanship and beauty of simple ancient tools, I can't imagine taking the time to make things that beautiful during that time. It's crazy.
4)The Martyrs Shrine; just in time to witness the changing of the guard ceremony. (fanTASTic! When I grow up I want to practice marching 9 hours a day. And wear a mirrored helmet. Seriously these guys were awesome, not a single mistake, and I was looking for them. You can see the train tracks from their years & years of hourly marching.) 5) two very nice Chinese dinners, thanks to our LDS cab driver and the temple engineer and his family. (freaking yum, although I must say that shabu shabu or hot pot dining is much more trouble than its worth in my book.) Sunday while Joyce taught piano, Celeste and I went to the Craft store at the hospital and was able to see some of the great artwork the Chinese do. (and were able to have great talks & father/daughter time, something I forgot how much I love/missed.) We went to Longshan Temple (Taoist) and to Snake Alley. (these were both really, really cool. It was weird at the temple to see people worshiping in such a public setting, there were as many tourists as worshipers, but they didn't seem at all inconvenienced by people snapping pictures of them at their temple. Very odd to me. I kinda didn't like being there for that reason. At snake alley, another famous night market there is this one restaurant that specializes is snake meat products and has a pair of boa constrictors out front to draw a crowd. The snake-wrangler girl was pure entertainment, I didn't understand a word, but she was an awesome show-woman.) Monday we used the High speed train (up to 260 miles per hour. Wish we had those here.) and went to Tainan and saw the forts that was used to defend Tainan, the first Chinese settlement in Taiwan. Tuesday we went to Yeliou on the North shore and saw the Mushroom rocks and other strange rock formations created by the force of tide and waves. (Yeliou was probably my favorite of all. The coast there is primarily sandstone & it is like no other place I've seen or every heard of. I felt like I was on another planet.) Then we continued along the north shore to where the Danshuei river empties into Taiwan strait. Spent some time visiting the many shops there (I had soaked my shoes, socks & bottom part of my pants through at Yeliou, and was kinda miserable until my cute mom insisted on buying me not one, not two, but three pairs of socks. The cute lady who took us on this excursion was so sweet, she emptied her entire package of kleenex from her purse to line my wet shoes with, then we shoved my thrice-stockinged feet in my poor wet old man shoes and I was nice & cozy the entire rest of the night. What a difference dry feet make. And being babied a bit by your mama doesn't hurt either.) and then rode the train home to get ready for her return to the US and our trip to Malaysia. When she went to the airport; we went with her and went to Malaysia." Long story short- my parents are the greatest, Taiwan is awesome & I am so grateful to have been able to go on this trip. My husband insisted, my sisters & neice took care of my girl and I didn't worry about her a bit thanks to them. And my blog-readers told me I was a 'tard if I didn't go. So yeah, thanks for that.