I’m behind, so this is gonna be mostly pix, with just a few of my usual lengthy descriptive paragraphs.

Last Friday, I did my very first outing alone after Allie went to bed (despite the fact that I’m still doing 4:30a wake-ups daily without fail to pump). Rebecca was in town, doing her daily radio show with her co-host Garrett broadcasting from a local-ish Laguna Beach restaurant called The Cottage as a special event, so I drove out to see her and to meet Garrett for the first time. Here they are at The Cottage office during their live broadcast.

Yes, that is THE Rebecca, our favorite clairvoyant! If you’re interested in giving her internet radio show a listen, or feel like calling in for a free mini-reading, she’ll answer questions live on the air! The Garrett & Rebecca Show is on 7:30p-8:30p Pacific time Mondays through Fridays, and you can listen to their podcasts RIGHT NOW for any of their past shows:
http://www.blogtalkradio.com/garrettmillerradio
Now you can see what I was talking about on here about Rebecca. 🙂

So ANYWAY, Rebecca and I basically just hung out and caught up over chocolate mousse cake dessert at the restaurant after their broadcast, and Garrett joined us briefly before skidaddling off to his busy life by the beach. The Cottage Restaurant is awesome, BTW. I’ve seen it driving by but never went in. It used to be an old house, and now serves amazing breakfast, lunch, and dinner. Rebecca and I stayed until after closing and they were so nice about it, still coming by to offer us refreshments and service.

Last Saturday, Edgar & Ruby got married! We had to miss the ceremony because it was far away at 5pm, and no way we could be there and get Allie back in time for bed by 6pm, so we skipped the ceremony, put Allie down like normal, then Jayne came over and they babysat (not much to do but be here and get her out of the house in case of flood or fire) while Mr. W and I went to the reception. They had two photobooths with tons of props, and we had fun with THAT. After all, it was the first time we’d gone out together after Allie’s gone to bed. He’d been out with his friends here and there before, but I hadn’t been out past 6:30p since…Allie’s birth.
Here’s Eddie, Michelle, and us not quite knowing what to do with the props — our ourselves — on our first photobooth session.

Mr. W and I celebrated in style, as you can see.

We soon found that the problem with photobooths at weddings is that people can just come in and crash your photoshoot session. And then the camera bears witness to all the fighting that ensues.

I’m just kidding; Eddie’s always welcome where we are. Wait, that’s too blanket of a statement…
We did attempt to get some normal shots in…but the camera was messed up at the time because someone had turned off the light in the booth (as was explained to us later by the boothmaker, Edgar’s younger brother) so the camera went on totally slow shutter speed, causing the blurring. Oh, well.

The day after that, which was last Sunday, my Canadian cousin Mark being in town for the first time in 16 years (by his calculation, but I thought it was longer) gave cause for a family reunion of the relatives on my dad’s side. This is all us cousins with our kids (those of us who made it to the reunion):

Doesn’t my cousin Diana’s little todder Elle on the top make you want to giggle, or at least wave back? That’s what happens when you tell a little kid, “Elle, look here at the camera! Hi! Elle!” She says “hi” back.
My cousin Jennifer with Allie:

Allie never looks so hairless as when she’s with babies close in age (Jennifer’s daughter Alexandra is 2 months older), and the lack of dark hair makes her look whiter than she looks when she’s alone.

Don’t the 2 grandmas look so happy to be holding their respective granddaughters? Aww.

Last Thursday, the cousins had agreed and planned months in advance to all take the day off, leave our respective tots with their regular daycare situations, and have a child-free day to spend showing cousin Mark around. Mark drove out from Diamond Bar where he had spent the week at my parents’ house and spent Wednesday night at cousin Jennifer’s in Irvine so that we had all day in Orange County. Cousin Diana ended up with a work emergency so she spent the day (that she did have off) putting out fires at work (figuratively); cousin Olivia decided she didn’t want to be in Orange County where we’d made a day packed with plans, so after her attempts to snag Mark away back to Diamond Bar for lunch had been met with avid refusals (my refusal caused me to drop the f-bomb in front of 3-year-old Elle…oops), she settled for after-dinner dessert plans with Mark after he returned to Diamond Bar Thursday night. So it was just Mark, Jennifer, and myself for Cousin Day Thursday and it was A BLAST.
We started in Downtown Disney…


…went to Slater’s 50/50 for lunch so that Mark could do some more of his burger reviews…

(we ordered and split the Slater’s 50/50 burger which has a patty made from half beef, half BACON; the vegetarian burger; and the “peanut butter and jellousy” burger which has for its condiments PEANUT BUTTER AND JELLY…blech)
…intended to hit up our lake for kayaking but ran out of time so we just went straight to Yama Sushi on the lake for omakase, and enjoyed the view of the lake from their patio before sitting down at the sushi bar.

Mark claimed that we were “sizing up” the sailboat on the lake here.

The omakase was amazing and Jen missed half of it cuz she had to run out mid-dinner when she realized she’d missed 15 calls from her husband, who was stuck in traffic on his way to pick up their daughter from daycare and couldn’t get there in time. Life sure has changed. She and I made tentative plans to have her return for sushi and lake activities in the near future with her husband and baby, and Mark vowed to not wait another 16 years before visiting again.

It was sure nice having a social life again, even if for a few days and in bits and pieces. For future reference, I was able to do a full day because I left after nursing Allie as usual in the morning after she woke up, handing her off to Jayne shortly before her nap, then I drove to Jennifer’s, pumped there, then did Downtown Disney and Slater’s, then we went back to Jennifer’s, I pumped again, and we got into our respective cars and drove to the lake, then we all split up from there and I went immediately home to catch Allie right before bedtime and nursed her to bed like normal. Oh yeah — after that post about a month ago when I said she’d stopped falling asleep after a nursing, that only lasted 2 nights and she’s now back to nursing to sleep, which makes life easier on me.