Laughing Rebecca Face

I just loved this whole series of snapshots of Rebecca's face as she was laughing at the park last weekend. Since I couldn't narrow it down to just one to post on the blog, I decided to just give a whole bunch of them to you. Now, after looking at that giddiness, is it even possible to not smile?

I've had several emails this morning inquiring about the fires. So far, none of the fires are very near to us, thankfully. The Montecito fire is a couple of hours north and west of us. The Sayre fire in Sylmar is about thirty miles west of us and more to the north. However, it is screwing up our plans for socialization! We were supposed to be going to a dinner party in Northridge tonight, but even though the fire isn't too near there, they've lost power in Northridge so we may not be able to have it there. The conditions are certainly prime for wildfires anywhere around here. We're having 90 degree weather, extremely gusty winds, and single digit humidity.

Our weekend is off to a good start, in spite of the face that it is mid-November and still feels like July and I can't put any of Rebecca's cute fall clothes on her. All day yesterday, I thought it was Saturday. It was Ramy's day off, so we went out to eat at BJs for dinner Thursday night. Then we walked around in our new ToysRUs and watched to see what things Rebecca was intrigued by as ideas to give Santa Claus. After Rebecca went to sleep, we packed the huge balikbayan box to send to our adopted family in the Philippines. It was crammed full of everything from Spam to Hannah Montana notebooks to crayons to clothes to National Geographic magazines. Fortunately, everything we had been getting for them did fit in the box, thanks to my superb packing skills I've honed in all the trips back and forth from Tennessee to California. The company that will be shipping it came to pick it up yesterday morning, so it is on its way to Cawayan, Dalaguete, Cebu, Philippines. (Note: that link doesn't belong to us in any way. I have no idea who took the pics or when. It was just the only link I found on the internet that has pics of the village where Ramy's dad was from). That's the whole address. Just a village in a province on an island in the Philippines. No street address whatsoever. We are excited to send it to them and hope it will make their holidays happy.

We slept in yesterday morning, and then I made scrambled eggs for Rebecca and omelettes for Ramy. Then he took Rebecca to visit his dad at the nursing home, while I went out to Brea Mall. Janie and Jack was having their first ever Friends and Family sale, so I had to take advantage of that (my mom was doing the same thing in Nashville). But my real purpose in shopping was to look for interview suits for myself. I totally lucked out in finding several that I liked. I ended up getting a black suit that has a nontraditional cut to the jacket at Nordstrom and a brown suit at Talbots that is also kind of a nontraditional cut. Apparently, I never like normal suits, because I always think I end up looking like a linebacker in them. Plus, that whole lack of proportionality between my waist and hips and legs doesn't help. I'll look for shoes and accessories and such next weekend. I'm just excited that I found suits that I love and that fit perfectly.

We went to the park with Rebecca yesterday afternoon and I spied on two wedding parties taking pictures there. Then we went to Costco and Target and got dinner at Panera Bread and watched tv. We got up early this morning, and Ramy is hard at work on some project in the backyard. I'm trying to pull outgrown stuff out of Rebecca's closet to pack away or to give away. Then hopefully we'll be going to a dinner party tonight somewhere - it may be in Glendale now instead of in Northridge.