Plans for this weekend

This coming weekend, my husband and I were planning to go to Minnesota to visit his family but plans changed. We will be staying home until I am done with my homework. I have a lot of homework and right now, school comes first. If I get all of my homework for next week done tomorrow, we will probably go to Madison on Saturday. I do not want to go all the way to the Minnesota for just one night and then come back. I took this weekend off already so I am just playing catch-up with my homework. I am not necessarily behind on anything; I just don’t want to wait until the very last minute to finish something. 

After I am done with my homework, I will try to clean and organize our apartment. I have been so busy lately that it is harder to try and keep up with my home. My husband is always busy, working two jobs and doing free-lance photography. I will probably go visit David’s grandma because she wants us to go visit her. Sadly, we have been so busy that we have not been able to go visit any of our relatives. In our culture, we are supposed to visit our family more than what we are doing now. I am sure that David’s family understands that we are both very busy people. 

Hopefully grandma will cook us a nice meal! She is always asking us if we are hungry. I am actually closer to David’s grandma than my very own grandma because my grandma lives in California. Overall, I’m excited to see grandma this weekend.

Strange things

Strange things happen to good people! I am a good person but strange things have been happening to me! Yesterday, as I was finishing my homework for my computer classes things were not going well. I felt like I didn't understand anything. I managed to work through it all and then, it happened. As I click to save, it DID let me save. When I was ready to send it in, I couldn't find it anywhere on my computer! That really made me upset because I worked so hard on it. I tried to recover my homework by going through unsaved documents but it still was not there! I had to redo everything and this really upset me. Oh technology!

Then today, as I was going outside to leave for school I used my clicker to open the garage. I did not open! I was so upset for not making it to school because I'm the type of person that likes have good attendance. Because of my luck, I didn't have an extra key to open the garage. The landlord isn't picking up the phone and my poor car is stuck in the garage. I'm stuck at home and I have to figure something out! My husband is at work, so I have no source of transportation other than my car. My day is not going so well.

Favorite Holiday!

My favorite holiday is Christmas! I know that Halloween is coming up soon but that's not the holiday that I'm looking forward to. Every year, I start planning for Christmas at the beginning of October. It is even more appropriate for me because I live in Wisconsin, where you can get snow now! I relate snow to Christmas. Nothing is better than a white Christmas. I have lived in places where there are rarely any white Christmas. I love gifts but that does not matter to me. I just love the whole idea around it. It makes me feel good.

This tree was from Christmas of 2007. It was the first tree that I bought all by myself for my family. I used my paycheck to buy everything on it. The total was around 300 dollars! I had so much fun decorating the tree.  I thought that the golden feathers were so cool so I bought twenty of them! There were approximately 250 ornaments on it and many yards of ribbon on the tree. I would say that I take tree-decorating very serious. I absolutely do not like the shiny aluminum-looking ribbons.

This is me at my sister’s mother-in-law’s house in Tulsa, Oklahoma. At the time, I was living with my sister and brother-in-law. My sister and brother-in-law lived in a small apartment, so they did not put up a tree. We celebrated Christmas at their in-laws. It was extremely exciting because they had so many gifts because the family is big. There is a totally of 12 children.

Here is a picture of Mang and I. She is one of my sister-in-laws. This was Christmas of 2008. I received a few presents from the family because I was away from my family. It was nice of them giving me presents to make me feel included. I received some gift cards, magazine subscriptions, and perfumes. My sister also got me some clothes because she knows me best.

This was our first Christmas together being engaged in 2009. At the time, we were still living with his brother. It was such a beautiful day on Christmas. It was the best Christmas ever but also the most stressful Christmas because I was not used to being away from my family. David’s family made me feel at home.

Last year, my husband and I celebrated our first Christmas living together. Sadly, I think I invested more into my tree than the presents that I gave out. It was my first Christmas not having a traditional Christmas. I had to work, so we celebrated Christmas the night before. I forgot what I bought David but he got me a Playstation game controller. I was not thrilled but had to keep that on the inside. Oh husbands, sometimes they are so bad at picking out gifts.

This year, I hope to be able to buy something nice for my husband. I know that he wants the iPhone 4S. We’ll see if I can make that happen for him!

October 12, 2011

I love autumn! It is one of my favorite seasons! I have been keeping myself busy with school and work. My husband has been doing the same. We're hoping for this season to be a busy season for our photography business. It's so nice to see that my husband is doing something that he enjoys. 

This past weekend, he had a photo shoot Uncle Chou's family. He had a lot of fun with them. I did Kat and Aunt May's makeup. They drove from the Twin Cities to Wausau just to do a shoot with my husband. It was an honor doing their fall portraits.

I have to admit, I was pretty intimidated by Aunt May because she is very particular about certain things. It was a good thing that her makeup turned out nicely. Kat wanted smokey eyes so I just went ahead and did that for her. It is funny how Kat loves makeup now because when I first got married to David (my husband), she didn't even wear any makeup. I guess that's what happens to teens at a certain age or she discovered boys.

 Later on that day, we had a family gathering at David's sister-in-law's house. David's sister-in-law's name is also May. In the Hmong culture, I cannot call her by her name because it is considered disrespectful. Instead, I call her "Puj Hlaug," which is a translated to "old woman." I know that it sounds strange but it is what it is. I would never call her old woman in English.

May and I cooked for Uncle Chou's family. We made delicious spring rolls and many Asian cuisines. I love going over to May's house because she is such a great cook. My brother-in-law, Ailee is also a great cook because he has experience in the restaurant industry. My father-in-law owned two restaurants in Michigan at one point but he does not own them anymore due to his health. Ailee learned his cooking skills from my father-in-law and was a cook for one of the restaurants. Ailee taught May how to cook better.

After dinner, all the women just did our usual gossiping and the men watched football. I don't care about football but apparently that is a big thing in Wisconsin. Never talk badly about the Packers in front of a Packer fan because you never know what might happen to you.

It was nice catching up with Aunt May and May. Aunt May is going back to school to get her Masters so she is also keeping herself busy. David's sister-in-law, May is doing good with her job and juggling her children and dog. We are all busy women.

At the end of the night, Aunt May, Uncle Chou, and the girls all said their goodbyes to us. They did not want to stay another night because they had tickets for the Minnesota Vikings football game, for the next day. The girls did not want to leave because they were having so much fun with David's nieces and Peanut, their family pet. Time is never enough when you are having a good time.

Peanut says Goodbye!