Aug. 31, 2008: Sedona Turns 2

By SEDONA DING

Allow me to sum up my birthday party in the park a week ago in a single word: cake. (If I could expand on that, I'd add the words "unbelievably yummy," because it was, and "tummy hurts," because it did afterward.) There's no way I could sum up my actual birthday Sunday in a single word, because there simply have to be two words to capture the true essence of this most special day ... ICE CREAM!

See, my parents gobble that junk up left and right, but they've basically deprived me of cake and ice cream for about two years. If you come visit me, feel free to smuggle me a pint of Ben & Jerry's under the table. Anyway, Aug. 31 was spent with A-Gong Toshi and A-Ma Alice in Palm Springs, and there was plenty of food leading up to the ice cream.

Because I now say, "I love you, Maven!" quite regularly, here's a demonstration of that with a photo of my baby sis to kick off this blog entry. She sort of looks only half-Asian sometimes, doesn't she? But then again, one of Uncle Bry's girlfriends a long time ago actually thought Daddy was half-Asian, so who knows. (That Bry girlfriend also thought China was right in the way it treats Taiwan, and Daddy told her off with an intensity that very much surprised Mommy!)

You've probably seen the cuteness-personified video of me fake breastfeeding my beloved stuffed rabbit, Gnow-Gnow. But now I'm expanding to fake breastfeeding my beloved sister! I need to do a lot of real eating to keep up all this fake breastfeeding, you know.

I find it very enjoyable to do things such as sitting this way with my feet placed incredibly neatly before me. I also find it very enjoyable to eat seeds of any sort -- in this case, pumpkin seeds! (I also snacked earlier on a a ton of watermelon cut by A-Ma Alice and a lot of garlic-flavored peas provided by Aunt Lulu for our trip.)

We headed to dinner at Kaiser Grille, and I showed A-Gong Toshi and A-Ma Alice how immediately I have implemented "Cheers!" into my bag of tricks upon seeing them do it at a dinner at Lawry's the other day. There's nothing like a good toast done with a Trader Joe's water bottle filled with milk!

On to the really good stuff ... and as you can see, I am completely transfixed by the arrival of this wonderful mound of beautiful ice cream, placed right in front of me.

I removed my sweater so that I could do this right -- only to be overwhelmed by how close temperature-wise this ice cream is to ice.

I adjusted quickly and began to take bites the size of Antarctica.

I did share a lot of my ice cream, but not enough to take this loopy grin off my face.

We went for a stroll afterward, and I had a good time counting clouds with Daddy. Little did he know that all I was thinking was how much those clouds looked like scoops of vanilla ice cream.

Here's Maven one more time. She's the only one of us in the photo not to have eaten any ice cream at dinner, so you can see why she's the only one with a sad face!