you're invited!!

{this is Whitney, but I'm too lazy to sign in as not Brad so I'll just pretend that Brad is writing this; then I also don't look super conceited and desperate}

Since I didn't have time to make eleventy billion invitations to my birthday, if you didn't get one and would like to come, you are still invited. If you did/do get one, it will probably be after the fact anyways, making this post very useful.

The front:
{open the lovely black card}
The inside:
Well, I cannot show you the inside because I designed it in Adobe Illustrator and then saved it as a PDF (I have no idea how to turn Illustrator files into JPEGs or GIFs or some other acceptable format - sorry!).

Essentially the inside said something like this:

YOU ARE INVITED TO
THE QUEEN OF HEARTS
BIRTHDAY PARTY
FOR WHITNEY (HORITO) ROYAL
ON THE 29TH OF JULY
FROM 9:30 TO 11:00 PM
CAKE AND GOODIES
WILL BE SERVED

Except it was MUCH cuter.

two sundays ago...

we were in Vegas to say farewell to David Gentry Royal.

He's leaving on a mission to Piura, Peru, and Brad flew down to Vegas for the event.

We took a few pictures (I stole these from Jordan's facebook so sorry that the quality isn't that great)... After Brad and I continued to ruin the photos (sorry Mike!), we posed for some "natural" looking pictures of us all talking.

Which also didn't work out too well.

So in the end, we just over-cheesed it and posed like a catalog.

Man, I'm gonna miss that kid.

7 july 08 - mt rushmore

After waking up at 5:30 am, we drove out to Crazy Horse Monument, then to Mt. Rushmore.
{My family at Mt. Rushmore - wearing red, white, and blue in good old Asian-American tourism spirit}
Tonight we are staying in Keystone, SD.
In the little town, there were those photo studios where you dress up like olden days and they snap your photo for ten times what it's worth. I happen to love those. Unfortunately, I couldn't bear to pay the hefty price (like $45 for three people to take one 8x10) and my dad wouldn't do it since Brad wasn't here so it wasn't really a family photo.
A letter:
Dear Brad,
Please come on vacation with my family so that my dad will buy cooler stuff.
Love, Horito.

PS Brad forgot to also mention that I left him meals. Presents and meals for everyday I'm gone. Man, I'm good. ;)

5th of July = Brad experiences the Miyasaki Family Reunion

we rented a sebring like michael scott


the fam.


brad was disappointed with the lack of "asian people" there. too many white folk like him are marrying in i guess.



a sideways picture of heart-shaped rice!

happy 4th of july!

Brad and I celebrated our 6 month anniversary on the fourth of July!!
We traveled into San Francisco to watch the fireworks over the bay - which was a bust since the fog/smoke made viewing the actual fireworks practically impossible.
And - we ate some of our top tier of cake which was still quite tasty even after much time in the freezer.

Amazing that so much time has gone by, and I'm still not sick of him!!
But, at SEVEN months is when I predicted married people get bored of each other. In that case, I have a paper-making book that we can utilize.

Whitney's Gone....

So I thought I'd jump on here without the wife's knowledge. She left me...for a week...again. We went out to Idaho for her family reunion and only one of us came back to California. That of course was the one who works six days a week to pay for the other to go on frequent vacations. But it was nice to come home to an array of presents, one for each day of the week that she's gone.

test...

marin county fair

Last night, Brad and I went to the Marin County Fair. I LOVE fairs, so I was especially excited. I picked Brad up from work and we headed out. I really wanted to get there in time for the fireworks show at 9:30, but thanks to a REALLY SLOW driving car on the one lane 37, we didn't make it. I saw the last of the fireworks as we were driving into the city.
The GOOD NEWS is that if you arrive at the fair that late,
security/entering is kind of a mess (people leaving after the fireworks, people going back and forth trying to find all their party) that we got in for free! I doubt that they let people in after 10, but we managed to get in. Oh and parking was free too... so we saved about 30 bucks.
Once in the fair, all the exhibits were closed, but all of the fair rides were free, so we rode a ferris wheel then ate some funnel cake and ice cream. We walked around the grounds. I resisted the temptation to play the carnival games. And we had a lovely time.
Carnivals/fairs are the best place to people watch because all different kinds of folk show up and there are some real freaks.

OH!! And on our way out, we saw a total "carnie" (brad's word for people who look like they eat/drink/sleep/live carnivals/fairs - sometimes they're kind of creepy, but they just fit so well). We were walking past a booth that looked like it had some sort of fortune telling computer print outs. The man looked just like Matthew Cuthbert from Anne of Green Gables except his mustache was a little more oiled and shaped and curled. And he had on a carnie hat too. I wanted to have him do my fortune just so I could take my picture with him. But we didn't. And all I can do is post a picture of Matthew Cuthbert and you'll have to imagine the rest.

For eleven dollars (plus gas - so like nine hundred and seventy), it wasn't half bad.

the many faces of brad

ketchup - again.

Last week we venture into San Francisco to visit the lovely Golden Gate Park, which is bigger than Central Park and about 3 miles long.
It looked like a forest in the middle of the city.
Mitch and Jon came with us. So it Jon's "refined Mexican" blanket.



We stumbled upon a meadow of people at a Lifehouse concert.


I successfully faked a dehydration to score a free bottle of water from the medical staff.

hanging out on the blanket.


we got lost on our way back to the car and ended up in a fenced in portion and we had to climb over the fences to get out/back into the regular park.