A Search for Award Flights

• Aug 8, 2025

A Search for Award Flights

Garden of Eden on the Road to Hana (Maui)

Join me as I search for award flights!

Sample Desired Trip: Seattle to Chicago

Background: Let's pretend you only have Chase Ultimate Rewards to work with (think of this as "points currency") because you're a points and miles newbie and have 100K+ transferable points that you earned from opening a Chase Sapphire Preferred card and you don't know what to do with them! 

Goal: To see if you can book an award flight (at the lowest points price possible) by transferring your UR points to one of Chase's transfer partners.

Prerequisites: A chunk of time set aside to sit down and do a bunch of internet searches AND you've signed up for loyalty accounts with ALL THE PARTNERS. Hyatt, United, Virgin Atlantic, British Airways, etc. It's free! This is an important step before you can book with points and miles!

Warning: The approach I am sharing here is the most time consuming way to search for award flights, but it's free. There are websites out there that can do the searches for you, but they require monthly membership fees and they are not perfect. Since time is money, maybe it's worth the cost! 

Today's example is inspired by a last minute trip my friend wants to take in the next couple of weeks, so this method makes sense. But if you are in the planning stages of a bigger trip in the future, perhaps it makes sense to purchase one of these award flight search memberships for a couple of months once you're ready to book and then you can monitor the prices for a little while.

Step 1: Do a one-way search on Google flights with your desired destination and date. 

The purpose of this step is not to book a cash flight but to explore the different itineraries available as well as your options with different airlines. Google shows the top flights based on price and itinerary. In this case, the three best flights are nonstop departing in the early afternoon, arriving in the evening, and cost about $320 for economy. We also have several airlines to choose from.

Step 2: Do the same search directly on airline websites. 

Note: This example will focus on discovering your options when you have a fixed date. If you have more flexibility with dates, then you can use the the airline's search tools to look for the lowest points/miles prices over a period of time, such as one week or an entire month.

In this case, because we're working with Chase UR points, if you book directly with one of the airlines listed in the above screen shot, you are limited to Chase's transfer partners: Southwest and United. Unfortunately, these don't always have the best redemptions. Fear not! You may still be able to book the American, Delta, and Alaska flights using Chase Ultimate Rewards! I will get to that in Step 3.

Let's open a new tab and start with Southwest. I see the 1:10pm flight, which is listed #1 in the Google search screenshot above. It costs 24,500 points. I can already tell that this is a bad redemption/use of points, so I would not book this flight unless I had Southwest miles I needed to get rid of. How do I know it's bad? Because it's only a 1.3 cents-per-point value. ($320 cash price ÷ 24,500 points X 100 = 1.3 cpp) The goal is to redeem your points only when you can get AT LEAST a 2 cpp value. (More thoughts on that later.)

Now, open a new tab and let's check United. (Note: I've heard you shouldn't sign in to your United account when you do this search, so I didn't.) I spot the flight listed #3 in the Google search and it's 32,500 points, which is worse than Southwest, so that won't do. But did you notice that the redeye at 11:45pm is only 15K points? And it's also marked as a "Saver Award"? (More on that in Step 3.) Switching to my Google tab, I scroll down and find that the cash price for that flight is $320 for a Basic Economy fare and $365 for a regular economy fare. Because a United award fare is equivalent to regular economy, that's a 2.4 cpp value! If you don't mind a red-eye flight, this is a great deal!

Step 3: Check airline partners for even better deals.

Remember how I told you you could book that American Airlines flight even though AA is not a Chase transfer partner? (Currently, the only way to book a flight using American Airlines miles is to hold an AA credit card, fly AA and earn points that way, or have a stash of Citi Thank You points.) Well, you may be able to book it through the British Airways website, which IS a Chase transfer partner. That's because BA is in the same airline alliance as Alaska and American. 

I open a new tab, do a search on British Airways, and I see one AA flight available. It's not one of the "top flights" listed on Google flights, but its at least not a redeye! It does cost more points than the redeye with United, but it's still a great deal! Just like the United flight, the cash price for that flight is $320 for a Basic Economy fare and $365 for a regular economy fare, so this flight is exactly a 2 cpp value!

Now, because Qatar Airways uses Avios (the same currency as BA) and is also in the One World Alliance, I open another tab just in case the points price is lower there. This is worth a shot because that's how we saved 16K points on our outbound flight to Maui. After logging in, entering an access code sent to my email, and a quick search, I see that no awards flights are available.

OK, let's get back to the part about the United flight being a "Saver Fare". That means United released those fares to their partners in the Star Alliance. Guess what, Air Canada is also in that alliance AND it's also a Chase transfer partner. So we open another tab, and do a quick search on Air Canada. The redeye with United shows up and also costs 15K points, so there's no points savings there. (Depending on the itinerary, Air Canada sometimes does show a lower points price for United flights, so it's worth a try.) If that flight works for you, it's better to book it directly on United's site.

Next, let's not forget that there is a Delta flight that could work too! Delta is an Amex transfer partner, but it's in the Sky Team alliance with Virgin Atlantic and Flying Blue (KLM and Air France), which are, you guessed it, Chase transfer partners! So we open a new tab, log in to Virgin Atlantic, enter an access code sent to my email, and do a quick search. For Air France, I've read you need to use the mobile app to search domestic award flights because you get an error message on the website. Anyway, my searches yield no results, and the Delta site doesn't indicate "Saver Fares" the way United does, so there's no way to know if the partners sites will have them. You just have to take a chance and do more searches. 

Finally, that Alaska flight was not on the BA site, which means Alaska did not release it to its partners. On the Alaska site, the 8am flight costs $375 or 25K miles, which is 1.5 cpp. You could only book this if you have BILT points or a stash of AS miles.

Step 4: Repeat steps 1-3 for the return flight. 

After a quick search, I check to see the prices for return flights a few days later. I go straight to United and don't bother with all the other sites, especially because BA uses a fixed award chart for these flights, so I already know they are going to be 18K points and not worth it based on the cash prices I am seeing on the Google search. I see a few United flights for 15K points, and the cash price is $274, which is only a 1.8 cpp value. It's not ideal but also not a terrible redemption.

Then I check the prices for the next day and see that that cash price is at $189 for basic economy. The points prices I'm seeing for that date are just so not worth it. At this point, you have a few options:

• One, skip the trip and save the points. 
• Two, if you really want to make the trip happen, don't want to spend cash, don't mind using points (but want to spend the least amount of points possible), and you don't mind a redeye, book the United flights! If you average both legs, it ends up being a 2.1 cpp value. ($639 cash price ÷ 30,000 points X 100 = 2.1 cpp) Even the AA flight booked via BA for the outbound and the United flight for the return flight would be a 1.93 cpp value. Not bad!
• Three, book the outbound flight with points and just pay cash for the cheaper return flight a day later. That's still a savings of $365. Not bad!

Final thoughts: Many people in this points and miles game advise that if you can't get at least a 2 cpp value, you should save your points for a better redemption and book the flight or hotel room with cash instead. But at the end of the day, there are other factors to consider. For example, if I have a stash of Alaska miles and I really want to take the trip AND I really want to keep more cash in my pocket, I'd consider booking the flight that's only a 1.5 cpp.

I hope this is helpful!

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Points and Miles

• May 5, 2025

Points and Miles

Odense

Hello! If you are reading this-- OMG! Thank you! (Hi, Momma! Hi, Sister!) I am figuratively blowing off the 4 years' worth of dust that has accumulated on this blog to share with you some exciting (to me) news. I am now a points and miles person, or more specifically, a person who redeems points and miles to pay for hotels and flights. How do I get these points and miles? Through credit card sign up bonuses. I've been in the "game" since September 2024, and I've got a whole strategy. I am sharing about it here in case any of this appeals to you because it's just too good not to share. If you want more TRAVEL in your life, you could play this game too. (If that's you -- let's chat!)

The impetus

If you know me in IRL, you know that travel on a shoestring budget sustained me in my 20s. In my late teens I was lucky enough to have two sponsored trips abroad (Brazil & Israel), and I was hooked. In my 20s, I studied abroad in Florence, got a nanny gig in the Lake Garda region after graduation, tagged along on Isaiah's internship to Munich, and spent our first two years of marriage living in Switzerland (hence the name of this blog). 

When we moved back to California, our days of travel came to a grinding halt. We had debt to pay off (credit cards and student loans). We wanted to buy a house. We wanted to grow a family. We got lucky enough to have a family! We tried taking a toddler on a trip abroad. We swore we'd never take little kids abroad again. The biggest hindrance in the years since: no money for travel. Then last summer, we had a choice: remodel the bathrooms or take a trip abroad. Somehow I convinced Isaiah to take a trip abroad, so we went to Denmark. The images used to make this post look pretty are from that trip. 

Despite the fact that I lost our passports at one point and we all got COVID, it was still the best trip ever. And when we got back home, all I could think about was how we could go on more trips even though we don't have extra money lying around for more trips like that. The thing is, there is a way to travel without a ton of money, and I started learning about it shortly before we left for Denmark. I made the choice to dive in when we got back.

Look, I am not interested in checking off boxes or growing my list of countries visited. In fact, I would be so happy to travel back to places we've already visited. My main objective is to make more travel happen. Period.

Odense

My previous experiences with miles

Prior to joining the points and miles game, I had only two credit cards that earned miles: Delta Amex and Alaska Airlines Bank of America. At first I got the Delta card in 2019 because I was flying from Seattle to San Diego with Delta at least once a year, and I thought it would be nice to save up for a free flight someday. Then when my sister moved to Montana, one summer we got lucky with a good price for a direct flight with Delta, but the next year we flew with Alaska. Then I got the Alaska card with the same idea to save up for a free flight someday. (What's funny is almost everyone I know in the Seattle area has an Alaska card. It's just what you do here.)

With the Delta card, it took three years to save up enough miles for 4 round trip flights to San Diego. With the Alaska card, I blew the welcome/sign up bonus on two nights at a hotel in San Diego when we were in town for a wedding. Then it took over a year to save up enough miles for me to fly with H and P to Montana to visit my sister and her family. 

The thing is, I am keeping these cards because they still have some value, even if it's just the free checked bag benefit. For a family of 4, that alone pays for the annual fee. Plus, the redemption values on Alaska short haul flights can be really good. I think having a stash of Alaska miles is always a good idea. 

Aarhus

How I got started

In June of 2024, a couple of months before our trip to Denmark, I came across an Instagram account called Brooklyn Family Travelers. It's run by an amazing entrepreneur called Rachel. She's a mom, wife, songwriter, and points and miles expert. I purchased one of her videos that taught the basics of travel on points. I didn't want to apply for a new credit card until I could wrap my head around the bigger picture. After finishing the video, I was hooked. (Here is the link to the Brooklyn Family Travelers website.) I've used her referral links as well as her affiliate links to apply for my credit cards. It's a great way to support her work!

It took a few months until I felt comfortable with the idea of getting into this game, so I didn't apply until September, and my only regret is that I didn't start sooner. I eventually purchased another one of Rachel's videos, and with that one, my understanding of how to strategically use credit cards to earn points solidified.

Copenhagen

My strategy

Before I tell you what I've been up to, I wanted to make something very clear: A lot of people equate credit cards with debt, but for me, I focus on the word credit. The strategy I am about to share works for me because, over the last 15 years, I have made deliberate efforts to improve my credit and to use credit cards responsibly. (And what is "responsibly" for me may be different for you.) I have dealt with credit card debt in the past, and I never want to find myself in that position again. While I have a history of using credit cards to help me in situations in which I did not have the cash, I now keep zero balances on my cards and have them only for the benefits. I feel very fortunate that I now only use cards when I have the cash to pay back the balances, and I recognize that the only reason I can count "opening up credit cards" as one of my hobbies is because I have many advantages in my life that others do not.

A note on credit scores: Last summer, before I applied for my first "transferable points" credit card, my FICO credit score was 850. It is now 838, so yes, my new favorite hobby has affected my credit score, but not in any way that I am concerned about.

Here's what I do:

1. Prioritize credit cards that offer sign-up/welcome bonuses AND feature transferable points.

• Many credit cards offer a large amount of bonus points after you spend a certain amount of money within a specific time frame. Example: Earn 100,000 bonus points when you spend $5,000 in three months.
• I do not spend money on things I don't need just to get the bonus. Instead, I only apply for cards if I am confident our normal, everyday expenses will meet the MSR (Minimum Spend Requirement). If I am confident we can meet the MSR, then I shift ALL my spending to the ONE card that I am working on earning the bonus for. That sometimes means going into my accounts for my bills and changing the payment method. This includes all bills: water, trash, energy, phone, internet, Spotify, other streaming services, car insurance, etc.
• Some banks have co-branded cards, meaning they partner with ONE airline or hotel and you earn miles or points for those brands only (e.g., Delta and Alaska Airlines as mentioned previously), but those banks also have cards that allow you to TRANSFER your points to travel partners. That means you can transfer the points to ANY of their airline or hotel partners. The cards that offer the flexibility to choose from a list of travel partners are the cards I prioritize. 
• While cards with transfer partners are my priority, I am currently working on meeting the MSR to get the bonus for a co-branded card. (See point 2.)

2. Go slowly and pay attention to 5/24.

• Rachel taught me that you have to go slow or you risk getting credit card application denials. 
• I am prioritizing/starting with the cards for Chase bank, and they have a 5/24 rule. Word on the street is that they won't approve you if you have opened more than 5 personal cards (from ANY bank) within 24 months.
• In order to go that slowly with personal cards, I apply for small business cards (as sole proprietor) in between. Many people qualify for small business cards. I sell gently used clothing, shoes, and toys on Poshmark and Facebook BST pages. I enter $200 for my annual business revenue. I am honest about this figure, but I still get approved because the banks take into account my household income and check my personal credit before approval. 
• I like to be working toward the MSR for a bonus as much as possible, so because I need to go slow with Chase (including their business cards), I am currently working on earning the bonus miles I'll get for upgrading my Delta Amex card.
• I hope to soon be working on earning bonus miles for an Alaska biz card I recently applied for.
• Another thing to do while spacing out Chase card apps is to take advantage of the multipliers on the cards I already have. For example, the Chase Sapphire Preferred gets 3X on dining, so if we eat out, I use that card if I am not working toward earning the bonus points on a new card. 

3. Earn and burn. 

• While some people use their points to book business class flights, I haven't figured out how I'd be able to earn enough points to do that, so I'm more of an earn 'em and burn 'em kind of girl. My goal when I started this game last September was to book an awesome family trip ASAP, so as soon as I had enough points to do that, I booked a trip! (See next section.)

CPH Airport

Upcoming family trip and the numbers involved

We are going to Hawai'i this summer for 9 days (10 nights). Total cost in points: 347,000. 

Here are the 4 cards we used to make this possible along with the bonuses we got and the time frame for reaching the MSR.

1. Chase Ink Preferred (Biz Card opened September 2024) 120,000 bonus points after $8,000 in 3 months.
• Approx. 138,000 points earned including bonus plus multipliers on the spend I put on this card. (I also redeemed 8,500 points for 2 nights in Dallas back in March.)
2. Chase Sapphire Preferred (Personal Card opened January 2025) 60,000 bonus points after $4,000 in 3 months. (Update: as of July 2025, the offer is 75K bonus points after $5K spent in 3 months -- more points for more spend.)
• With the bonus + 10K for a referral + the multipliers for the spend I put on this card, the total points earned was approximately 77,000 points.
• This card is the NUMBER ONE card you should have if you are interested in trying out this whole points and miles thing. 
3. Chase Sapphire Preferred (My husband's Personal Card opened March 2025) 60,000 bonus points after $4,000 in 3 months. 
• I do most of the spending in our household, but I convinced Isaiah to get this card too because he does the Costco run and treats himself to coffee and pastries in the morning most weeks.
• He also had a bigger ticket item he had been thinking of buying for a while, so he finally took the plunge, and that helped reach the MSR more quickly.
• He used my referral link, and I got 10k points when he was approved!
• We combined Isaiah's points with mine in order to book the trip (approx. 64,000).
4. Chase Ink Unlimited (Biz Card opened March 2025) 75,000 bonus points after $6,000 in 3 months.
• Note: I used this card to pay about $3,000 to the IRS for taxes owed (fee was about $65)
• With the bonus + 1.5X on the spend I put on this card, the total points earned came to: 84,000.

Note: I also earned 9,000 Amex points from Rakuten shopping portal and transferred the points to British Airways to help pay for the flights.

Points Cost Breakdown:

A. Roundtrip airfare for 4 people: 144,000

• Cash price would be approximately $3,000.
• Redemption value: 2 cents per point.
• I booked each leg separately (one-way flights).
• I transferred Chase UR points to British Airways so I could use their "Avios" currency to book partner flights (with Alaska Airlines).
• For one leg, I transferred the Avios to Qatar Airways. (Plus $18 taxes for all 4 tix.)
• For the other leg, I booked via British Airways. (Plus $22 taxes for all 4 tix.)

B. 7 nights stay at Hyatt Regency: 203,000

• Cash price would be approximately $5,300. 
• Redemption value: 2.6 cents per point.
• I transferred points from Chase to Hyatt. (We paid cash for the other 3 nights of accommodations at a different hotel.)
• Taxes and resort fees included in points price.
• We would never pay that cash price. I include it to show the value of the hotel stay.

Notes:

• We probably would have aimed for spending around $2,000 for 7 nights at a hotel (and that would be if we found something really affordable b/c Hawai'i is really expensive), so if we're thinking savings rather than value, booking this trip with points saved us approximately $5,000.
• If you do the math, you can see that we basically used up ALL our points for this trip and it took about 8 months to earn the amount we needed. 
• Now to start building up the stash for our next dream trip! ;)

Final tips

If all this sounds appealing to you, please reach out to me directly! I can share my referral link for the Chase Sapphire Preferred. If you apply and are approved, I get 10K bonus points! (Then you can use your own referral link to refer your friends and family and earn referral points, too!)

Here is my referral link to the Rakuten shopping portal. If you have an Amex card that earns points, you can link it to Rakuten and earn Membership Rewards points. If you don't have an Amex yet, you can still sign up for the cash back and switch to points back later! The 9K points I earned last quarter from doing my online shopping through the Rakuten portal is what gave us just enough points to book our summer trip, so it's worth it!

Finally, I have TWO gift subscriptions to Rachel's Substack left to share. It will give you access to her posts for one month. Let me know if you'd like one and I will send her your email address.

If you have any questions, please reach out! I am happy to share what I have learned!

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2019 & 2020 in Review

• Feb 21, 2021

2019 & 2020 in Review

Nature mandala we created our first week of remote learning March 2020

The past two years have brought some dark days as well as some memorable moments I want to celebrate. As with my 2017 & 2018 year-in-review posts, I have taken some nice pictures and haven't had a chance to sit down and write separate posts on here, so this post is basically a place to dump all those photos and try to remember what we've been up to the past couple of years.

January 2019

We got passes to the Pacific Science Center for Hunter's birthday December 2018, so we found ourselves in Seattle more often than not. Sometimes we'd just drive to a random park, even on a gray day, just to get out of the house. (Not much has changed there.)

February 2019

This month brought our first ever snow days, like no-school kind of snow days. We enjoyed sledding down our hill for the first time, checking out local restaurants, plus some more time with my kids during mid-winter break. Sunny days gave us an excuse to play at the beach.

March & April 2019

While we explored some more local parks, and I took my students on some cool field trips (stewardship at a local forest plus an overnight to Mt Rainier), we also lost Isaiah's mom on March 18, who had battled cancer for many years. We had planned a family trip to see her during spring break, but instead of canceling, we went anyway so we could spend some time with Isaiah's sister and her family. We went back to the Smithsonian museums and caught the tail end of the cherry blossom festivities.

May & June 2019

Paloma rode a pony for the first time, we explored some more parks, Paloma broke her arm, our dear friends moved away, and we went backpacking as a family for the first time.

July 2019

We spent the 4th of July with our neighbors again (just like in 2018), and it was as lovely as ever. After that, I was determined to continue to have a great summer with the kids so I planned lots of adventures for them. We went to the reptile museum, visited the central library branch down in Seattle, went camping at the Hood Canal, camping at Mt Rainier, and at the end of the month I took the kids to San Diego so they could meet their new baby cousin. Sadly, I also lost my friend to melanoma, a co-worker from my first classroom at our current school.

August & September 2019

Most of August sucked because I had 3 weeks of training and then 1 week of prep for the new school year, but September brought visitors, which always make the days brighter! First, our dear friends came from Munich with their two beautiful daughters. We hadn't seen each other for eight years, and so much had changed! Then, my dearest friend from college brought her husband and two darling daughters from the Bay Area to stay with us for the weekend.

October & November 2019

Paloma celebrated her 4th birthday at a local dance studio and went to Disney on Ice for the first time. We also visited Anacortes for the first time, went trick-or-treating at the town center we can walk to from our house, celebrated Dia de Muertos at the Seattle Center, and my mom came to visit us for Thanksgiving for a few days, which was just too short.

December 2019 & January 2020

Hunter had an awesome ninja-themed party at our house, and we attended a fun family art workshop at the Seattle Art Museum. I made Spitzbuben (Swiss cookies) by myself for the first time (the last time I had made them was assisting a friend in Switzerland), and it became a new tradition for us. We also continued traditions from previous years: decorating a gingerbread house (homemade this time!), each kid picking a new ornament for the tree, and finding treats in our pocket Advent calendar (lots of random things this time: Alter Eco truffles, erasers, poems, rhymes, quotes, riddles, barrettes for Paloma, and scavenger hunts that led to activity books for our upcoming trip as well as mini play silks). This was also the first year that I wrapped all the kids gifts in Sarah's play silks rather than wrapping paper. I haven't bought holiday wrapping paper in years, and I am not sad about it (which is saying a lot because I used to LOVE wrapping presents as a kid). Then, when school let out for winter break, we headed to southern California. My sister-in-law and her family met up with us in the Palm Springs area for Christmas, and then we rang in the new year in San Diego with my side of the family. January also brought some snow days! Not as many as 2019, but some good ones nevertheless.

February 2020

My dear friend Heather came to Seattle for a conference and made some time to see us! It was lovely to take her to "our" beloved Arboretum in Seattle and out for bagels in Bellevue. During mid-winter break I took the kids to an indoor gym class and a couple of play dates. Looking back on the photos on my phone from that month, it's strange to see us out and about in public so carefree right before the world changed forever.

March to June 2020

Well, you know the craziness. We switched to remote learning and found ourselves doing more crafting and bike riding and "practical life" activities like putting together furniture, organizing, spring cleaning, and participating in social media challenges.

July & August 2020

The highlights of July included swimming at the neighbor's house and camping out by the lake for our little friend's 6th birthday (same place we spent the last two 4th of July holidays). More of the same in August, including an early birthday party for Paloma. We also crammed in two camping trips: Third Beach and Mt. Baker. My mom also came for two weeks, and it was glorious.

September to November 2020

Life was insufferable in September because we were all working from home, save for a rare hike to the beach. October brought school in-person for the kids, which was a life changer. We celebrated Paloma's birthday with a small party at home with just the 4 of us and a Zoom call with my mom and sister. We had one family over for an outdoor Halloween party, and it felt so good to socialize and host friends. We also set up a lovely ofrenda for Dia de Muertos. November was pretty uneventful, except for the full-on Turkey dinner we made for just the 4 of us. 

December 2020

The week after Thanksgiving break, the whole school went remote because the Covid numbers in our area were so bad. When we got back to school, we had only 2 weeks left until winter break, the light at the end of the tunnel, which included a little day trip to Leavenworth. I did not have the bandwidth or motivation to a gingerbread house this year or make a big to-do with the kids' Advent calendar like I did in 2019, so I just bought and disassembled some LEGO calendars and shoved the little pouches in each of the pockets and made peace with my lack of motivation. The kids picked out a new ornament for the tree, as in previous years, but this time we did not use our artificial tree. We got a freshly cut tree for the first time in 7 years, and it made me so happy! I also made Spitzbuben (even setting some out for Santa), we watched an obscene amount of TV, including countless Christmas movies (new favorites: Klaus and Christmas Chronicles), and I stuck with my "want/need/wear/read" policy of holiday gifts for the kids (going strong for 7 years). Unfortunately, the day after Christmas we lost a beloved great aunt (Isaiah's Aunt JoAnn). Finally, we had a cheese fondue dinner on NYE with the kids, something we hadn't done since Switzerland, and we are thinking of making it a tradition!

If I could sum up the last two years, I'd say it was filled with some sadness and the loss of some beloved people, but it was also full of lots of love and creativity and so much crafting: Waldorf window stars, paper flower wreaths, embroidery, Shibori indigo dye projects, and more! Here's to more love and creativity and crafting in 2021! 

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Words Paloma's Way Volume 2

• Feb 3, 2019

Words Paloma's Way Volume 2

Making snow angels for the first time!

mar-ball = marble (just like her brother!)

At the doctor for her 3-year check-up...
Dr: What do you like to play?
Paloma: Basketball. (She has probably played with the neighbors only about 2 times in her life -- guess we should do that more often!)
Dr.: When you play basketball, what do you do, dribble or shoot the ball?
Paloma: Dribble.
Dr: What else do you like to play?
Paloma: Playground.
Dr: Do you run around on the playground with your brother?
Paloma: Yes.
Dr: Who runs faster, you or Hunter?
Paloma: Me!

"Mommy, do you want to smell my mouth? It's gonna be good!"

We were at the doctor's office and there was a baby blowing raspberries. We all stopped and adored her. A couple of days later Paloma asked, "Do you remember the baby that was spitting strawberries?"

Her response when she hears about something exciting, "Yahoo!!"

Said at random moments, "Mommy, you know the reason."

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