Happy birthday, Suki Su!

Yesterday was one of my very best friend's birthdays! My darling Sarah turned 29, and we celebrated in style at La Bocca Pizzeria in Tempe. I decided to drive down just for dinner, and it was really fun to surprise her! Her boyfriend Andy got all of her closest friends together for the dinner party and it was just such a fantasic time. Henry came along too of course, and he was such a good baby. I was a bit stressed bringing him, since La Bocca is one of those restaurants with a quieter ambiance at night- candles, low light, and lots of couples on dates...but he was wonderful and only cried for a short time. Other than that he was in heaven being held, and of course seeing his Auntie Suki. There was a ton of good food, and the evening was topped off with a birthday tiramisu! Everyone else went out in Tempe afterward, but my little man and I hopped back on the I-17 and headed up the mountain home to papa. It was such a fabulous night though, and it made me so, so happy to be able to spend Sarah's birthday with her. She's the kindest, most loyal, wonderful friend in the world and I love putting a smile on her face. Happy birthday to you Sar, I love you always!

Here are a few photos from the evening:

Oh, Suki!

This is my sweet Sarah. I post about her all of the time, so if you're a regular reader, most of you probably know her. I wanted to share the sweetest thing that she did for me.

I woke up yesterday morning and she had purchased a domain name for me, and set it all up! I was totally surprised. She is so wonderful, and I am so grateful.

What that means for you, dear readers, is that you can either continue to visit this blog via blogger or other blog-reading site, or you can go straight to...

www.sometimessweet.com !!

So awesome!

So, thank you Suki-Su, I love you. :)

Monday thoughts

Today was a good day at work, despite me waking up ONE HOUR late! Ahh! My alarm went off at 6:15am, and I promptly turned it off in my sleep and went right back to bed. I naturally woke up around 7:15 or so which was not good at all, since today was definitely a hair-washing day...and since I already go until the last possible day with doing that, today was day three and kind of pushing the envelope with inappropriately "dirty" hair. So I whipped out my favorite dry shampoo in a frenzy (read one of my blogs about the product here) and starting trying to attempt to fix the semi-greasy mess. Eventually it was to my liking, I quickly put on some makeup and got dressed, grabbed my packed lunch and a banana/oatmeal packet for breakfast...and headed to work around 7:45. Like anyone, I really hate being late in the morning and having that panicky feeling! I mean, who doesn't? But when I got to work it was a pretty good day. It went by really quickly and I found myself home and napping before I knew it!

On my prep hour, I was researching some love poems for a lesson I'm presenting on Thursday, and I got to thinking about the upcoming holiday. I love Valentine's Day! Hank and I are the type of couple that adores any chance to celebrate our love. Many people say that they "don't need specified date out of the year to do that," and I say, "why not?!" When I was little, my Dad would always have Valentine's gifts waiting for my sister and I when we woke up that morning. I specifically remember heart-shaped boxes of candy, little stuffed animals, and always, always a cute card with a sweet message inside. As I got older, the gifts and cards didn't stop, and it may sound silly, but in my teen years when I didn't have a Valentine, receiving these tokens from my father always made me feel a lot better and really special. I'll never forget the first year I was living in Prescott with Hank, my Dad sent me a card that said I would always be his Valentine, even when I already had one. So sweet. Isn't my Dad adorable? :)

This year, Hank and I will be walking down to dinner at our local, downtown (favorite) Indian restaurant, Taj Mahal. During the day I am planning on making some sweet treats for us to enjoy when we get home. I'm torn between a rasberry pie with heart cut outs, or heart-shaped brownie sandwiches. Hmmm...

Tonight Hank has been doing tons of Math homework (YUCK) and I've been getting things done around the house. I hope all of you had a great start to the week! Stay tuned for Tattoo Tuesday, which will be posting at midnight. :)

I also want to wish one of my best friends, little Miss Suki Su aka Sarah Muller, a very happy birthday at midnight (February 9th). She's the belle of my ball, and truly the sweetest little thing I know. I've written many posts about her- click here and here to visit a couple of them- and I just love her to pieces!

So, happy birthday Suki! I love love love you and I'm so happy you were born! ;)

"Mental Health Day"

I am very happy I took tomorrow off. I consider it a "mental health day," and I will be working on my mental health via shopping all day! I have a huge Christmas list of gifts to buy and I am excited to start checking things off of my list. Then, it's bff night with Suki! We are planning on seeing "Brothers" during one of the earlier showings, and then going to dinner and hanging out all night. I am hoping frozen yogurt is in the plan. Even though we live two hours apart we manage to spend a lot of time together, and I feel very lucky about this. We've been close for a long, long time and have seen each other through just about every season of our lives, which is awesome. When I write about her, I'll go back and forth between calling her Suki and Sarah, and both mean her! It's funny but we both call each other Suki- it's a name that originated a long time ago, during one of our crazy nights, and it's stuck. Suki, Sukisu, Sukisuki...it's all the same. I love her so much and it's so awesome because her and Hank are very close too since we all spend so much time together. I just love her so much and words can't really even begin to express how I appreciate her. Besides Hank and my sister, she is one of the few, few people who know me inside and out...and I love that. She literally knows me better than I know myself most of the time. Sarah is such a great person and I feel lucky to have in her in my life forever. :)

This definitely calls for a little photo journey! I have a million and a half photos of us from so many different occasions so I will just share the first ten or so I pull up.

How funny are these old photos of us? We are maybe 20 here? I am loving my little chubby face! haha




at my first graduation (B.A. in English) from NAU in 2004



And here we are, a little more up to date over the past few years-

Last summer


country dancing!


enjoying a pretty day outdoors


hula hooping at a 4th of July party


enjoying brunch on a Sunday morning


chaperoning one of the high school's Proms with me! Don't we look proper ;)


rollerskating!



this fall






and on Halloween...she was my captain!


So, what are your weekend plans? Are any of you planning to see Brothers? I have been looking forward to it forever, and I am very very excited about it. Here's the trailer in case you haven't heard about it yet.



Have a wonderful Thursday night!

Video from this past weekend- just another reason I love Sarah!

just another reason I love Sarah!, originally uploaded by daniellehampton.

1am at Mama Edda's Pizza place!

What a wonderful Monday!

Hank and I have been getting really slow starts to the day, which I can't complain about, but it's definitely a change for me. I have been really appreciating the fact though, that at this point in our lives, we are able to sleep in together a bit even during the week. I know little pleasure will not last forever, and probably not much longer as life starts to change a bit, so rather than waking up early and racing to the gym, I've been going at night and spending the mornings with my hubby in bed. I really try to not ever take for granted all the time he spends with me. Somehow between finishing up his Bachelor's degree, multiple bands, jobs, etc. he still finds the time to be an amazingly "present" partner. It's insane, and he inspires me everyday to love more, and love better. I'm sure he won't like me writing all of this here but I am proud of him, and I don't care who knows it! Perhaps I should change my blog to sickenlysweet.blogspot, yeah? ;) Ha. Anyway, yesterday was no different than the past few weeks, we slept in until about 9am and it felt so good! It was a weird morning for me for some reason and I just felt a little off, but I tried to shake it off a bit and get going. I went in and got one of my favorite things ever- a peel at my derm's office. I've been getting them for about a year now and I wish I could get one every week but I know that's a little excessive! Haha. So after my peel I went over to Hugo's to meet up with Sarah and Andy, who came to town for the day. Amber Joy met us too, and we had a nice lunch, just talking and having fun. Aftwerwards Amber and I grabbed our puppies from our houses and went downtown for some puppy time before Sar and Andy went home to Phoenix. It was such a beautiful day- a little hot for Prescott but nonetheless beautiful. After our friends left, Amber and I spend the evening "speed-walking" around and having girltalk, then Amber, Hank and I went to see Bruno. I definitely thought it was funny, but also really sad to be reminded of just how horribly predjudiced people can be. I should also add that Amber cheered me up out of my sad mood with some red velvet cupcakes and made cookies for Hank! So sweet. Overall it was a so-so day turned pretty great. :)

Here are some photos from the afternoon-

Laughing Lilly!


Sarah and Andy


Puppy kiss!

My weekend in pictures

This weekend was such a wonderful three days. I headed down to Phoenix to get tattooed on Friday and I was really surprised with how much my thigh didn't really hurt this time, it was almost strange, but I definitely can't complain! We got as much done as we could, but I had plans and it was getting late, so we decided to save the last hour or so for the week after next when I finish my ribs. Not looking forward to that, by the way. So I left Immaculate and I went back to my parents and got ready with my sister, and we headed over to Kelli's house in downtown Tempe, where her and Mike were already hanging out. I absolutely adore Kelli, Lauren and I grew up with her and she's one of the sweetest girls in the world so I was so happy to spend the night out with her and friends. So we hung out at her home for awhile, and once Monique got there we walked down to RA to meet Sarah and say hi to her boyfriend Andy who bartends there. The entire night turned into such a fun night of dancing to really awesomely cheesy music so I was happy of course. What's really ironic is that I ran into the younger siblings of one the girls I wrote about in my post about choices/paths in life. It was so strange, because I hadn't seen either of them in years and years and I had just reminisced a bit about their sister so it was just funny to me...but good to see them for sure. We ended up staying out until about 5am which is not my favorite thing to do whatsoever, but it was so fun and totally worth it. Plus, I finally got to hang out in Sarah's neck of the woods with her! Here are some photos from the night- more at my Flickr.

freshly done, one more session to go, yay!


my sister and me, driving out to Kelli's


Kelli!








Lauren and me, hopefully they will both be done by the end of this month!


Kell and Mike









Saturday Rhonda did my hair (love her) and then I headed back up to Prescott to watch Hank's band play and hang out with Amber. It turned into another crazy late night, but still so fun. We started the night at Coyote Joe's eventually made our way to Sundance's around 11pm to watch HOTW. It was a super fun show as usual. Afterwards Amber and I decided we wanted to dance so we went to one of the ridiculous bars on Whiskey Row and had an insane time dancing to rap music all night. After the bars closed at 2am we went down to Mama Edda's Pizza to meet up with the guys and walk back home to our house, where we all hung out for a couple of hours. Another late night, but super fun.

Hank and I, outside of Sundance's before they played


Amber and me




silly bathroom photos, of course




bit of their set


We decided to take tourist photos at 2am, so here we are on the Courthouse steps. I love Prescott.




This morning Hank and I tried to sleep in, but our room was too hot so we ended up waking up and going to get an early lunch and spend time outside. We did some errands, then ended up cooking a delicious dinner (bbq tofu steaks, quinoa with corn, sweet potatoes) and had root beer floats for dessert. One of my friends posted a Twitter photo of her root beer float and it caused Hank and I to run all the way out to the store to get stuff to make our own! So thanks Bree! Our original plans were to go see Bruno and then go late night bike riding, but Amber had to stay in tonight with her puppy so we pushed the movie until tomorrow night.

Tomorrow should be a wonderful Monday though, Amber Joy and I are riding our bikes and meeting at Cuppers early in the morning, then Sarah is coming back up to Prescott! Overall it was such a wonderful weekend. I got to spend time with some of my very best friends and I feel like my heart is so full right now. What could be better. Stoked on this week, stoked on life!