Bithday Queen 1991: A lookback

I looked through a lot of old pictures when I was working on the doppelganger post. Among the gems, I found this one.

Yep that is me on my 5th b-day, queen of the little green apple preschool in my daisy kingdom dress (made by my mother) and wearing my 5 crown. Honestly, I don't remember that birthday, but I hope that I got to stand on that box barking commands all day like a real queen (or at least what I am sure I thought a real queen would do). However, I suspect the pedestal was just for the photo (disappointing, I know).

Today is my 24th birthday. That picture was taken 19 years ago. Let's take a look back at the highlights from the last year.

• December 2009: I left for Korea 2 days after my 23rd b-day to spend the holidays with Peter.

• February 2010: The Olympics in Vancouver B.C., twice :)
  

• March 2010: I flew back to Korea to spend spring break with Peter.

• April 2010: Tulip festival in Mt. Vernon

• July 2010: Nicole's Party
• August-September 2010: Peter and I went to Hawaii and visited friends/family in Oregon, Washington and Canada while Peter was on month-long leave.

• October 2010: Peter and I celebrate our first wedding anniversary

• December: I finished my fifth quarter of grad school and spent the following week and a half pretending I don't even know what a speech-language pathologist does.
  

You may have noticed most the main events co-starred a certain someone. He is my favorite. But the year had quite a few of my other favorites in it. I am blessed by all the great people in my life.
I could work on this post all day trying to get them all in, but I want to get out and enjoy my birthday. On the agenda for today: bowling, dinner and cake/ice cream with friends and family.

love,
Birthday Queen 2010

Celebrity Tween Doppelganger Week

The Tuesday before Thanksgiving I received the following text message from my brother.

I didn't know you were in a Mary-Kate and Ashley movie in the 90's! Check out the first 5 minutes of "switching goals" on the netflix ;-)

Needless to say, I was intrigued. Immediately, two questions came to mind:
1) Was it a person who looks like 2010-me (possible time travel element) or 1990's-me?
2) Why was Dan watching Switching Goals?

I later learned that my mystery twin matched 1990's me, but I never figured out why he was watching a Mary-Kate and Ashley movie on his day off.

The next day when I went over to his house, he cued up the movie and paused it on this frame.

I nearly died laughing.

In case you didn't know me in the late 90's, this is what I looked like...


Sure her glasses are a little smaller, as mine should have been (cringe), and you have to picture me scowling a little to get the effect, but I would venture to say the likeness is striking. Let's take a closer look.

Man I was a looker. Those sunflower short-alls my mom made me definitely secured my reputation as a fashionista.

I digress.

But seriously, this is the first convincing me-doppelganger (celebrity or otherwise) I have seen. Now if some enthusiastic facebooker invents a "celebrity tween doppelganger week" I am all set.

On a related note, I left the movie running while I worked on this post. Guess who else I spotted...

That's right, the awkward and adorable late-90's-Michael Cera of Juno, Paper Heart and Arrested Development fame.

Hang on a second, did anyone else notice the irony in that my late-90's doppelganger appeared in a movie about twins?!?!?

*Note: I wrote this post over two weeks ago but I held off on posting it until I could find the exemplary photo at my parents house. I am relieved to finally share it!

Kicking it old-world

Lets talk heritage.

My dad's people are swiss. I grew up in the same predominantly swiss community that my dad did. In fact, saying that my dad's people are swiss is probably an understatement, they are very swiss. If you google "swiss cowboy" my dad's picture is one of the top image hits (see image provided by google on the right).

Swiss culture has been woven into my life since day one. The annual swiss parade/picnic, bi-annual swiss singing concerts, alphorns, polka music, yodeling, swiss kids camp and one of my personal favorites, brazelis.

In case you have never had the pleasure of eating one, brazelis are thin, waffle-like cookies that are traditionally flavored with lemon or anise. They are made in special irons that press the dough flat and stamp designs on them. My grandma makes them on holidays, but not exclusively. They taste amazing any time of the year.


As a wedding present, a few of my relatives pitched in and bought me and Peter our very own brazeli iron. Given that there are no remaining suppliers who will make the traditional irons with US plug-ins and the fact that the irons are expensive (even when you look at the figure in euros) this was no easy feat and Peter and I were very thankful. Over Thanksgiving weekend we decided to fire it up and take it for a test-drive.


There are two tricky things about having a brazeli iron with european plugs. First and most obvious, european plugs do not fit in US electrical outlets. Second, brazeli irons run off the kind of electricity ovens and clothing dryers use, not the paltry amount your average wall outlet puts out. Part of the gift included a converter, which solved both problems (hypothetically) but the plug-in situation was designed for US to Euro plugs, not the other way around.

After much debate, a good deal of which involved me talking my dad out of whacking elements off the iron's electrical cable, we settled on this solution.


It takes the one 16-pound converter (the big black box in the picture) plus three adapters to make it work. But it works :) Mom made the dough using an old family recipe and between Willow, Peter and I, we cooked up a whole batch.

And the old-world tradition lives on to another generation.