Happy Birthday Sierra Ashley Perez- UPDATE

Today is my beautiful daughter's birthday. We celebrated by enjoying some sushi and going shopping for "cool" clothes. Mom is the wizard, I am the clown and Sierra has the birthday top hat!

Her actual birthday was this morning at 11:00am. Ahh memories of the delivery room and Elvis Presley marathons, the wonders of spinal taps and other drugs. Both my mother and Sierra's " Godmom" were on hand to welcome this fiery sprite into the world. If it wasn't midnight I'd write paragraphs and paragraphs about how terrific I think you are. Happy 13th honey!

A Holiday Tradition

This year I've been privileged to be part of two white elephant gift exchanges. I looked it up on Wikipedia, but beyond how to play the game, I didn't see any origins although truthfully I didn't look very hard. I'm sure it has something to do with the old flea markets which were probably the precursor to garage sales before people had garages. Luckily, the great white elephant elf was very kind to me. A fart book, a cheesy Las Vegas wedding veil and a strange stuffed thing called a "Kookie" named Sir Kooks-a lot, are all in my possession. In case you didn't know, the fun of a white elephant exchange is in stealing other's gifts. Yes indeed, I stole these gems.





I stole the fart book from another non-believer at the annual Atheist Meet up Solstice party. I know what you are thinking. What could I possibly want with a book about farts? Well... lets be honest people. Farts are funny and mine are particularly funny......at least to me.



Devin was the one who actually got the wedding veil from the same Solstice party, but I wore it out of the restaurant. Imagine if you will, a photo of me wearing a cheap white veil with " I love you" in red letters along the hem. I couldn't find it today, otherwise I'd model it for you.


Sir Kooks a lot was the very first gift opened by one of my co-workers at our annual Christmas potluck/gift exchange. It was a long sausage like package and as she began to open one end, we all wondered what it could be. What appeared to be a skunk's tail peeped out of the package! As she pulled it out of its protective gift wrap and Sir-Kooks-a-lot emerged we were still not sure what it was! The recipient seemed less than pleased and no one seemed terribly interested in relieving her of him. Since we did this gift exchange alphabetical by first name I had quite a few gifts to choose from when my turn came. Sir Kooks a lot just spoke to me and I had to steal him! He and I continue to make beautiful music together.

He is very cuddly AND he has a crew! I found them hanging out at "Limited Too" later that day.

Happy Birthday Jaclyn! OMG 13???????

Today is my 2nd daughter's birthday. Well..she's not actually my birth daughter, but I've known her since she was in her mommy's tummy. In fact her mom and I found out at nearly the same time that we were both pregnant. Our families have all been close friends ever since then. Sierra and Jaclyn have been like sisters and she has been on many adventures with us. I can't believe it has been 13 years! This is the first picture of them hanging out together. I think they were 3 months old or so. Her mom Cheryl and I spent a lot of time together in those days. I was a new mom and Jaclyn was her second child so she had experience! I'm so grateful that I had such a wonderful friend in my life to be there through a very trying time for me.

What can I say about Jaclyn? Loving, fun, creative, crazy, wild. Always singing, laughing and LOUD especially when Sierra and her are confined together in a moving car. Arrrrhhhggggggg! There is something about the two of them together that is like alchemy. Explosions, activity, incessant and loud giggling and screaming.

Adventures

Here is Jaclyn experiencing the Grand Canyon with us. Although Jaclyn loves nature, I think she would rather view it from a hotel window. She is not keen on bugs, bees or hiking around. We love you Princess Jaclyn! This was a day trip and on the way home, it was very dark outside and Jaclyn and Sierra were very scared that ET was going to come down and take them away. They were very serious about it too. We tried to explain that ET although not real was a NICE alien in the movie.
We took Jaclyn with us to a cabin up in Greer. I think the best part of this cabin for both of them was sliding down the stairs in the cabin. We fished and did some hiking too. Remember what I said about bugs and bees? Well.... as you can imagine they have lots of those in Greer.

Just Hanging Out

I believe this was in 3rd grade. Sierra had an assignment as school where she was supposed to take pictures of "Flat Sierra" in various places. We were going out to take pictures of Flat Sierra in nature, but first Jaclyn posed with her.
This is one of my favorites. They are painting each other's faces and I think they managed to paint a doll's face and I'm sure the table, their clothes and probably other parts of themselves.

Happy Birthday Jaclyn. You are growing up to be a beautiful young lady. I almost didn't recognize you in this picture!

Happy Holidays

Kwanzaa, Winter Solstice, Channuka, Christmas or simply secular... We at the PezRan clan wish you and yours a wonderful time with family and friends as you celebrate whatever you wish!

Thanksgiving 2008

It's less than two weeks until Christmas and I'm just getting around to posting about Thanksgiving. After all, I have been very busy playing D&D online ( well not lately), but I could have posted it earlier if my alter ego " Valinora" hadn't spent several hours slaying monsters over the Thanksgiving holiday. Its all her fault..really.

On Thanksgiving day we had my mom and Devin's mom, Dee over and I cooked some kind of roast non-turkey beast. My sister Valerie was with us virtually as you see here over Yahoo with video and voice chat. It was so cool to spend a few moments with her virtually. She had her own place at the table!

Thanksgiving Part I

Thanksgiving at Pez Ran clan actually begins the Sunday before Thanksgiving. A Rankin family tradition is to have the holiday dinner then so all the different families can do their own thing on the actual day thus avoiding inevitable family squabbles about which family one is going to spend Thanksgiving day with. This is also the day when we decide who is going to host the family Christmas eve celebration and we draw names for the gift exchange. Devin's mom cooks all the family favorites. One of Sierra's happens to be Dee's famous Turkey noodles and you can forget the berry sherbet PUNCH! This year Christmas eve will be happening at Pez Ran central. Hurrah!

Devin and Shannon smile for the camera

Grandpa Tim and the youngest member of the clan Jordan

Dan and Mikey

Nick ( Beat-Nick?)

Great-Grama Dee, Jordan and Addie

My Talented Friend Alex

I met Alex about 7 years ago. He is just one member of a family that Devin introduced me to soon after he and I started dating. They are just about the nicest and most interesting people you'd ever want to meet and I am glad to call them my friends too!





That's Alex on the left, then Shannon ( known as He-Shannon), Kelley and Jared back in 2004. We spent Thanksgiving with them on Cape Cod. We had a blast!








Now Alex is a teenager! Time flies doesn't it? He has always been very creative. Check out this optical illusion he came up with. Sierra appears as a tiny fairy on Alex's hand.







I really enjoy his blog full of his art and musings. His work is getting even more interesting as he matures. His most recent work called "Isolation" is just GORGEOUS! Way to go Alex! I still have a signed sketch of the air fairy he drew for us when he visited us a few years ago. Hey..maybe that will be worth something some day! Check out "Isolation" and the rest of his work here: Immortal Lands

Protest at Glendale Community College

Recently Devin got wind of the pesky Westboro Baptist Church latest protest plans against The Laramie project, a play about Mathew Shepard, in memory of the 10Th anniversary of his death. In case you are not familiar with the story:

"In October 1998, a 21 year old student at the University of Wyoming was kidnapped, severely beaten and left to die, tied to a fence in the middle of the prairie outside Laramie, Wyoming. His name was Matthew Shepard, and he was the victim of this assault because he was gay."

The protest was set to happen just blocks from here at Glendale Community College. Westboro is the same organization that shows up to funerals of gay service men and woman spewing their "Christ like" hate. We almost went....but didn't. I am so mad at myself because what would the world be like if we all stayed home and didn't get involved and let this kind of crap go on unchallenged? Luckily for all of us, at least 100 like minded people showed up to counter protest. I am grateful others are more brave than I am. Kudos to Hero organization, the Secular Free Thought Society and, our friends from the Atheists Meetup group for showing up while Devin and I sat on our butts playing Dungeons and Dragons. More pictures here if you are interested.

Oh yeah...the fact that we passed the discriminatory law here in Arizona against Gay marriage is disappointing. I thought we were making progress. Sigh....