and then my [sister's] life flashed before [her] eyes.

I asked my sister to write out her life flashing before her eyes, and she delivered! You can see this post and other life observations on her blog here. You'll notice that I added a couple extra pictures, and that I picked the ones with my daughter in them. 

The other day, my sister blogged about what she hoped/thought she would see if her life flashed before her eyes, then instructed me to do the same after I commented on it. I'm going to try to do the same now.

- Waiting all day at the hospital for Eiley to be born and then finally getting to hold her.

- My wedding day. I just started to list way too many things from it, so I think I'll put those in another blog.

- That perfect summer day when we went to the beach, rode bikes, got frozen yogurt, and barbecued.
- That random summer night when we tried to pass out sandwiches to homeless people in the Back Bay and got pulled over briefly by a cop because he thought the sandwiches were drug paraphernalia.
- That perfect winter day in Kentucky where we had a snowball fight, drank hot chocolate, watched Faerie Tale theater, and played Scrabble.
- That perfect winter day in Virginia when school was canceled, so Andrew came over for watching HIMYM, kissing, going to the mall, and dinner at the Virginia Beach Oceanfront.
- Andrew and I sitting on the couch at my old apartment and him telling me that he'd had dreams where we were getting married and I was holding our daughter.
- Late night talks with Robyn Boyd (not any specific ones, but there have been so many that I'm sure I'd have a picture of it in my mind).
- Emmy punching me in the stomach when she was 5 and I was 8 because she was mad at Tiffany (this isn't a happy memory, but it's always been so vivid that I'm sure it would come up at the end of my life).
- Experiencing a huge summer storm while camping in Lake Havasu and watching people try to take pictures of the lightning... then watching them realize how it's next to impossible to take pictures of lightning (this was before digital cameras existed).
- Watching one of the counselors and 2 of the little girl campers at Royal Family Kids' Camp dance to "In Your Presence" by Charity Von. 
- I'm sure that I would picture at least one of my fancy birthday dinners with my dad. I think this year will be our 21st year of doing that, so there would be tons of memories to choose from.
- Watching the sunset in Mexico while doing devotions with Andrew.
- Going with Eiley and Emmy to take pictures during Eiley's mini-monthly photo shoots.

- One of those days when Andrew and I go to Busch Gardens and Zaxby's. Those are always wonderful!
- Seeing my dad walk my sister up the aisle and watching Jeff openly weep upon her entrance.
- Vahdan giving me a toast and singing to me on my 28th birthday.
- Going to Haiti with my mom and getting to hold babies at an orphanage there.
- Watching Disneyland fireworks.
- Taking long walks in Newport Beach with various friends.
- Having a HIMYM party on Monday nights at the Canal House and crowding my green couch with a bunch of my favorite people.
- Having a Bachelor/Bachelorette/Bachelor Pad party every Monday with Andrew.
- I'm certain that I would see something random that Emmy had instigated (Scrabble at Downtown Disney, Tabitha's birthday scavenger hunt, various theme parties, etc.).
- The April Fool's Day when my mom almost convinced me that there was an ejector seat in the car or the one where our parents surprised us with a night at the Disneyland Hotel.

That seems to be a lot and I'm sure I wouldn't see all of those things, but it would be great if I did.

[Best of Year One] Three Years Ago Today

[Originally posted: Tuesday, June 7, 2011]

Three years ago today, I woke up on my sister’s plush green couch and watched Dan in Real Life while enjoying donut holes and orange juice. I went to Happy Nails with some of my favorite friends and had a manicure and pedicure. I ate at Rubio’s for lunch – chicken taquitos, chips, a churro, a big Diet Coke. Delicious.

Three years ago today, I relaxed for a few hours in the nursery of my childhood church. I had my hair done and actually liked how it turned out, and I put on the biggest, whitest dress of my life. Various vital women came and went, providing joy and comfort with their brief visits.

Three years ago today, I stood in the back of the church feeling a little bit nervous, clutching Daddy’s arm. Friends gathered around me and prayed for my future. My boss snuck in late and whispered “hello” and I whispered “you’re fired” and we chuckled and I felt less nervous. My best guy friend told me “this is your moment” and smiled at me before opening the doors to the church.

Photo: Christine Lee Smith
www.clsphotography.com

Three years ago today, I walked down the aisle with a smile pasted to my face while the man I love smiled back and cried. A lot. We remembered Jesus and His example of perfect love with an animal cracker and juice communion. We promised forever, and we meant it, and we immediately told the world about our promise on Facebook.

Three years ago today, we threw the best party I’ve ever attended. We had In-n-Out, a photo booth, a jazz band, colorful homemade desserts, and dancing, dancing, dancing. We dressed up a homely courtyard, filling it with strings of light and people we love. And it was all perfect because I was with my husband, who I love even more today than I did three years ago.

Photo: Christine Lee Smith
www.clsphotography.com

Happy anniversary, Jeffrey Michael!

Movie Review Monday #6

Before Emily and I were even dating our current husbands, we planned to prepare for our weddings by watching all our favorite wedding movies. And sure enough, during my engagement, she sent me gifts of wedding movie DVD's and we had some great fun re-watching some of our favorites like My Big Fat Greek Wedding, Fools Rush In, Princess Bride. Man, I must be forgetting tons, cause we had quite a list. Emily - why don't you work up a post of our wedding movies? Oh wait, you're about to deliver a baby. Scratch that. 


Emily's due date is coming up, and we really want Eiley to come early for insurance reasons. So Lobsters, I invite you to join with me in cheering Eiley on to get those contractions started and come quick and smooth before July 1 if at all possible. To cheer her on, I would like to provide a list of some of my favorite baby movies I enjoyed, leading up to my own delivery. 


1) Baby Mama. 

In case you hadn't noticed, I'm a Tina Fey fan. What you may not have known is that I'm even more of an Amy Poehler fan. I ADORE Parks and Rec. Getting these two into a comedy about having babies together is movie genius. That's just all there is. 


2) Juno. 

Ellen Page and Michael Cera are just two adorable people. It doesn't hurt to have Rainn Wilson in there either, "That ain't no Etch A Sketch. This is one doodle that can't be undid, Homeskillet." Witty and endearing with delightful music throughout. "Anyone else but you" is one of my favorite songs, thanks to Juno. 


3) Away we Go. 

I probably mostly watched this because I am a fan of the Office and therefore John Krasinski. But I was delightfully surprised at how clever and insightful it was at capturing the anxieties of building a home for a young expecting couple [a phase of life I'm intimately familiar with right now]. Also, the stroller scene nearly made me wet my pants from laughing so hard. 


4) Life as We Know It. 

While I do not want to advocate for all of their parenting methods - like shoving a baby down when she's about to take her first steps for example - this movie wins as a fun romantic comedy and a touching baby movie all in one - double score. Furthermore, I'm a sucker for movies about women who cook for a living [for example, I love "No Reservations" even though I usually hate Catherine Zeta Jones] and it doesn't hurt that the baby's name is Sofie [my baby's name is Sofia].  


5) Bella

Ok. To be honest, I didn't get to watch this while I was pregnant, but I really enjoyed this film and have never quite heard as much praise for it as I think it deserved. It's more on the dramatic rather than funny end. I found it both thought provoking and endearing. Beautifully done. 


Huh - strange number of films here about adoption, but that's ok. I would urge pregnant women to stay away from movies like Shutter Island. Well done film and all. Complete and total mistake to watch that when I was hormonal and expecting. If you've seen it, you know why. Also Revolutionary Road was another bad decision during pregnancy, and Inception, though one of my favorite movies of all time, gave me intense nightmares during pregnancy. Something about Leonardo DiCaprio - weird. Anyways - I hope you can enjoy some of these in these final days, Pyg [and other pregnant or baby crazed Lobsters]. 


For Jeff - I recommend The Switch

Surprisingly thoughtful and endearing portrayal of a father's relationship with his son. With the stars from FRIENDS and Arrested Development in a movie together, you wouldn't expect something quite as sweet as what comes out. 


Lobsters, can you think of any great baby-themed films I'm forgetting?

Three Years Ago Today

Three years ago today, I woke up on my sister’s plush green couch and watched Dan in Real Life while enjoying donut holes and orange juice. I went to Happy Nails with some of my favorite friends and had a manicure and pedicure. I ate at Rubio’s for lunch – chicken taquitos, chips, a churro, a big Diet Coke. Delicious.

Three years ago today, I relaxed for a few hours in the nursery of my childhood church. I had my hair done and actually liked how it turned out, and I put on the biggest, whitest dress of my life. Various vital women came and went, providing joy and comfort with their brief visits.

Three years ago today, I stood in the back of the church feeling a little bit nervous, clutching Daddy’s arm. Friends gathered around me and prayed for my future. My boss snuck in late and whispered “hello” and I whispered “you’re fired” and we chuckled and I felt less nervous. My best guy friend told me “this is your moment” and smiled at me before opening the doors to the church.

Photo: Christine Lee Smith
www.clsphotography.com

Three years ago today, I walked down the aisle with a smile pasted to my face while the man I love smiled back and cried. A lot. We remembered Jesus and His example of perfect love with an animal cracker and juice communion. We promised forever, and we meant it, and we immediately told the world about our promise on Facebook.

Three years ago today, we threw the best party I’ve ever attended. We had In-n-Out, a photo booth, a jazz band, colorful homemade desserts, and dancing, dancing, dancing. We dressed up a homely courtyard, filling it with strings of light and people we love. And it was all perfect because I was with my husband, who I love even more today than I did three years ago.

Photo: Christine Lee Smith
www.clsphotography.com

Happy anniversary, Jeffrey Michael!

Lobsters, meet Emily. Emily, Lobsters.

Howdy Lobsters! I’m Zoe, nice to meet you. Emily, thank you for that amazing introduction, and also, Holy Shnykies! What was I thinking allowing Emily to introduce me first? How am I supposed to follow that act? Fool of a Took, Zoe! Ugh. Ok. I’ll give it my best shot.

Per point 7 re: my curly hair, I would like to write this post as Goldy Locks. Do you find that too many females you meet are overly dramatic or underly interesting (yes I did just make up that word)? Then Lobsters, meet Emily, she is just right!

Emily is active, and yet, not so athletic as to make me feel miserable about my own un-athleticism. She’s great about finding fun ways to exercise, like line dancing to the Cotton Eyed Joe. 

Cotten Eyed Joe at my wedding
From left to right: me, Emily, Erin 

Emily is cool. She’s always in the know about current films/TV/music, she has a mass store of knowledge of pop-culture-gone-by, and for some reason I really want to mention here that she’s completely addicted to Diet Pepsi. She grew up in the OC, in the house of super cool parents, with an amazing talent for retaining knowledge. These three attributes formed a trifecta of cultural relevance. [side note: This post will list five examples about Emily’s just-right-ness as the first of many odes to one of our favorite pop-authors, Nick Hornby, as featured in High Fidelity.] And yet, she has never seen ANY of the Star Wars films, so whenever I start to feel like I am a grandparent by comparison to her teen savvy, I have little things like my familiarity with Ewoks to comfort myself with.

Yeah, that IS Jimmy Fallon kissing Emily on the cheak

Emily is a not-so-girly girl. This is a picture of our floor mates in college, all amazing women, most of whom we’re still in touch with and love dearly. But note the two of us are cowering in the corner, a bit overwhelmed by the overdose of estrogen. And yet, we’ve enjoyed late-night slumber party talks about boys, she was an amazingly supportive bridesmaid, her own wedding was an historic production, she has fantastic decorating skills, we’ve had overlapping pregnancies (boys can’t do that in case you didn’t know) and somehow she is one of the only girls I feel comfortable having a good squeal with (usually followed by laughing at ourselves for our girliness). 

Armington B309 - woot!

Emily is competitive. I’m sure you know this to be a really obnoxious attribute in some people. And yet, while Emily is intense about her competition, she doesn’t let it get in the way of her relationships. For example, she knows better than to play either ping pong or feusball with me. Ping pong because I could not begin to challenge her enough and feusball because she would get too frustrated when I beat her – best to avoid both all together. When we do play games together, she really gets into it, but she never gets mean. Her competitiveness also helps her to set the bar high – see her introduction to me as an example. She’s really good at a whole lot of things: trivia, singing, dancing, reading out loud, mod-podging, event planning, downing diet pepsi’s, catch phrase, spelling/grammar, writing, making people laugh hysterically, just to name a few. She also encourages me to be better at lots of those things by way of inspiration, and that’s a good kind of person to keep around.

Coolest wedding ever, starring Emily as the bride

Last, but not least: Emily is a straight shooter. Some people don’t have the guts to have a friend like this, and I don’t expect Emily is necessarily like this to everyone she meets, but I believe a wise person keeps a friend around who will be honest and direct. You need a person who tells you when your hair is a wreck; who shuts you down when your blog posts start turning into novels; who tells you that you need to work on being a better listener. And yet, Emily embodies her middle name, Grace. When some people give you the hard truth, you never want to encounter them again. When Emily delivers the truth, sometimes it stings, but I know there’s love in it and that I’d be a fool not to hang onto her forever. That’s why, even though we only lived together for one year, she’s my “Roomy for life.”

Zoe and Emily - not letting go

She’s just the right amount of active. She’s just the right amount of cool. She’s just the right amount of girly. She’s just the right amount of excellent. She’s just the right amount of honest. I’m not letting this gal go. Instead, I’m gonna let you share her with me, because you will all be better for it, Lobsters. You’re welcome.