CoHeirs With Christ

Why I Love Being a Stay-At-Home Mom

2012-01-18T20:42:00.000-08:00

First off, I know that my mom friends who work either part or full-time love what they do, and also that they get to experience a lot of fun moments with their kids too. This blog title & post is not intended in any way to make anyone feel judged or anything! Just wanted to say that up front.

I actually often feel like my job as a Stay-At-Home Mom is rather mundane at times. Almost every day, in fact. At the end of the day, honestly all I can say I've accomplished sometimes is that I've managed to get my family fed at all 3 meals and in bed at a decent hour. Oh, and that no one ended up majorly hurt or wounded. Not very impressive. So I write this blog for myself. To remind myself that I get to witness and experience some pretty cool moments during my days at home.

Not sure tomato soup was the best meal to start
letting my daughter learn to use a spoon...

I can fill Mama's shoes...

Workin' It...

Yeah, I got it...so proud.
(Like the car between her feet that she'll probably trip over next?)

Where does she come up with these things?
Seriously, no one else in this family is so spontaneously...silly!

I absolutely love this.
So sweet to see big brother reading his books to his little sister.
These are the moments that I need to remember.

Football Season

2012-01-17T21:23:00.001-08:00

There are now 2 avid sports fans in my house. I fully expected my son to become a sports spectator, but I didn't expect it would happen at 4 years old. He is very committed to watching his sports. I think it really took off with the World Series last fall, and it has continued into football season. Already he can tell you the names of most all of the teams in the NFL and he remembers stats, like who won which games and what the score was!! His conversations with people start off like this, "Which team is your favorite? Your second favorite? Your third?" And right on down the line until the person he's asking has run out of teams.

I have to admit, I am not exactly overjoyed at this new development. It's not that I mind him being interested in sports (& I should happily add, that at least he likes to play them, too!) It's just that I'm realizing what an intense kid he can be, and when he gets into something, it is all-out. We were at a restaurant last weekend, and as soon as he spotted a TV in the bar area with a basketball game on, all he did the rest of the evening was beg to go in and watch it (this made for a pleasant meal). I want him to have a sense of balance and to know which things are the important things in life. To value people and relationships over sports. It is OK to miss a game. And of course I don't want him to become antisocial as he melts away in front of the TV for hours every weekend. What's a mom to do??? How do we help our boys maintain healthy boundaries around these things they love?

So as I wrestle with all these questions, here is a funny story:

This past Sunday morning, we were all hanging out on our bed, being lazy in waking up and going out to start the day. Suddenly we hear a loud pop. The last time we heard something like that, our oven door had spontaneously combusted, so I quickly went out to investigate. I couldn't find the culprit, so I started on making breakfast. When my son came out, he went to get his football to throw around the house and "make plays" as he does every day. He looked up at me so sadly when he saw his football---it had popped open! The seam down the back was totally busted open and the thing was all flat and deflated. He had tears in his eyes as he told me, "Now I can't play with my football anymore." So sad.

We took these photos right before he said good-bye to his first football.

Thankfully, Papa came home from work tonight with a new junior football in hand.

Oh, the joy.

Our Christmas Tree

2011-12-12T22:34:00.000-08:00

Decorating our Christmas tree is one of my favorite childhood memories, and each year my husband and I debate when to do it, and whether to put up our artificial tree or buy a "live" one. For the first time in many years, I convinced my husband to buy a real tree. I was so looking forward to the lovely pine scent filling our home, but was disappointed in the experience, really. The fresh Christmas tree smell had long worn off of our tree, and it was a lot harder to get up & balanced than our artificial one. Next year, we'll go back to the fake one. By the time we'd picked it out, got it home, into the family room and balanced (somewhat) into the base, it was past our little ones' bedtime. We put the youngest down for bed (next year, my dear) and let our son stay up and help us put all the decorations on. The decorations we put on the tree are the same ones that I put on my tree growing up. Even the little clothespin soldier that I made in preschool is still there. Plus a chain of ribbons that my mom stapled together when I was in utero is in our collection, so each ornament is kind of like going down memory lane for me. Now we are starting to have fun ones that our kids have made, too! Here are some picture of us doing our thing...

Thanksgiving Weekend

2011-12-02T21:01:00.000-08:00

Our Thanksgiving weekend was a whirlwind tour of Southern California this year. We officially stayed in Orange County, but put lots of miles on our car jetting to other places too!

On Thanksgiving Day, we celebrated with our family, that has grown to include lots of cousins who had a blast running all over the house. Our daughter discovered the stairs and spent her whole evening practicing her up-and-down skills. One highlight of the evening was meeting my sis-in-law's boyfriend (soon to be fiancee, we think) and seeing them interact together. She seems quite smitten, and that was fun to see.

As for the food, it was definitely an "East Meets West" Thanksgiving meal. Some of the delicious foods we ate were: shrimp, meatballs, ham, turkey, fried noodles, broccoli & cheese casserole, mashed potatoes, pumpkin muffins, crepes, and of course, rice! It's untraditional, for sure, but I guess for us, it has become a tradition!

Yummy pumpkin muffins!

The family

Carving the bird

Cousins rockin' the stairs

Trying to make the walls stay up!

The day after Christmas we drove down to San Diego where my parents were, to visit them and my two sisters & their families who live there. The highlight there was meeting my new baby niece (& finding out that another new niece/nephew is on the way). The kids had fun with Mi'ma creating "gingerbread houses" out of graham crackers & all sorts of fun decorations.

Yummy!

Our cousins' cool creations!

On Saturday we drove from Orange County up to LA to visit more family, which doesn't sound like a big trip, but it took us as long to get to LA from Anaheim as it did to get home from San Diego Friday night! Traffic was horrible, and our little girl was very unhappy in the car...

On Sunday we got to go to church with our brother & sis-in-law and support them while they dedicated their baby girl to the Lord. It was a special time for them & a privilege for us to be there.

Unfortunately we also met up with a lot of traffic on our drive home Sunday afternoon. Our little girl again, had a difficult time traveling on this trip. Several times I looked at my husband while we were listening to her screaming in the car and asked him, "How did we make it all the way out to Colorado this summer?" Seriously she was totally out of sorts. She'd had a runny nose, and I'd even taken her to the doctor (Grandpa) to check her ears before we left, just to make sure she didn't have an infection, and she got the "all clear" sign. We also kept checking her gums next to her side front teeth, thinking maybe she's finally getting her middle front teeth, but nothing. I was starting to really worry that something was wrong with my baby girl, & she couldn't even tell us about it.

Two days after we got home, we were playing with her on the floor, and her mouth was open & I saw two molars that were cutting through her gums! My little girl doesn't even have her two front teeth, but she is cutting molars?!?!?!? Her tooth acquisition has been the strangest ever! So, maybe that was part of the fussy behavior on the trip? Who knows!

One thing we do know: we are very blessed and happy to have wonderful family on both sides to visit and fellowship with. It may sound like we complain about the driving , but we truly consider it such a privilege to have so many siblings and cousins that we enjoy and want to spend time with. We have so much to give thanks for.

Go Silverbacks!

2011-11-14T23:07:00.000-08:00

I never thought I'd say it, but I got to be a "soccer mom" these past 6 weeks. We signed our 4 & a half year old up for a team through our city's Parks and Recreation, and it was a fun experience for us all. It was a low-key, low-pressure, low-time commitment, perfect for us! The kids showed up for an hour on Saturday morning, and they did a few drills at the beginning, then proceeded with a game of 6 minute periods.

Our son really surprised us with his intensity for the game. Since it was a team of 3 and 4-year olds, our son was definitely at the upper end of the age range, which gave him a bit of an advantage. At the first game we had no idea what to expect, since he often shies away from new experiences and needs some time to get really comfortable in a new context. But our worries disappeared when that first whistle was blown, and he took off, driving the ball down the field and straight into the goal. Clearly, he was comfortable on the field.

As the games went on, our son also became very interested in defending his own goal. There were no goalies officially assigned, so the goals sat unattended much of the time. It was interesting to see how our son took it upon himself to take a full-back/goalie position & try to kick the ball away from his goal. As he played we could tell that he was really thinking about which way the ball needed to go, and we also noticed that he sort of liked to stay away from the pack, either running ahead or staying behind waiting for the ball to get kicked loose from the group.

Here are a few action shots:

Going for the goal!

Fancy footwork

What concentration!

It was a lot of fun though, to get out and watch all the kids. We got to be on the same team with a few friends of ours, so it was a nice social outlet for all of us! On the last day, they had a little awards banquet for the kids where they served them lunch & they got a trophy.

Our proud little guy

Go team!

It was definitely a good experience for us & I'm sure just the first of many sports experiences for our family!

Halloween Happenings

2011-11-03T21:57:00.000-07:00

We had a busy and fun week leading up to Halloween! I've been trying to provide more learning activities for my preschool-deprived son, so this week we learned about spiders. A couple of months ago I read Charlotte's Web to him, so he already knew quite a bit about these creatures. We made a Spider counting book, made a web and acted out a spider trapping bugs with yarn, and we even made a spider pizza!

I'm not scared of spiders!

We visited our favorite pumpkin patch the Saturday before Halloween, and went through the corn maze there. On Sunday we carved our pumpkin into a Jack-O-Lantern. Our son was particular that he wanted it to have triangle eyes this year. He was also quite distressed when 3 days later, it had mold growing out one of those eyes and we had to pitch Mr. O-Lantern.

On Halloween night we made the rounds, to both grandparents' houses, and trick-or-treating around one neighborhood. At 7:30, we were in the car, proud of ourselves for getting everything done and getting home at a decent hour, when our son started having a meltdown in the backseat because we hadn't gone to the Halloween Carnival at our church! (mind you, when we gave him a choice earlier, he insisted that he didn't want to go to the carnival at all, he just wanted to trick-or-treat) So we stopped on the way home (just as the carnival was wrapping up) and he got to play a couple of games, win a few prizes and eat some popcorn. A full night!

Everyone needs a knight in shining armor...I'm not even sure my son knew what a knight was until he saw this costume at Costco & wanted it because of the sword. He designed and made the shield together with his dad.

Quack, quack!

Our daughter also chose her own costume (on the same Costco trip). I was merely trying to show her all the different animals that were on the table, "Oooh, look at the kitty, " "Do you see the doggy?" But she kept grunting and pointing at the duck costume. So I picked it up to show her. She refused to let go of it. Seriously, she screamed her head off whenever I tried to coax it out of her hands. She held onto it all the way through the store, and I eventually came to peace with giving up any other ideas I had for a creative, home-made costume of my choosing, and let my little girl be a duck. She was pretty stinkin' cute, I have to admit.

The Big Apple

2011-10-26T21:15:00.000-07:00

Yep, I did it. I pulled off a surprise weekend away for my hubby! Actually I'm not too sure how much of a surprise it was at the end, as I think he had sort of figured out where we were going. But he was a champ, letting me have my fun and not letting on that he had any hunches. As we were leaving the house early Saturday morning, I told him where we were going. He may not have been totally surprised, but he was definitely excited.

Back in June my cousin told me that her husband was going to be sent by his company to work in NYC for 3 months. His company was putting their family up in an apartment in the middle of Manhattan, and she said that visitors were welcome. From that time on, I knew I just had to try and get us out there during those 3 months. My husband always says that he's never been to the East Coast, and in particular, that he'd like to visit New York someday, so I thought it would be a fun surprise.

Thankfully all the details worked out: my hubby had a couple of vacation days to use, I found a good price on airline tickets, and the biggest detail of all: coordinating with my very gracious parents who were willing to watch our kids for 4 days and 3 nights! Someday we would like to take our kids to New York, but at the ages they are at now, it would've been a lot more work and limited the things we were able to do. So...what did we do?

We arrived on Saturday evening, and bravely figured out how to get from the airport to my cousin's apartment, without taking a taxi. We hopped on a bus and transferred to the Metro, and arrived feeling very savvy. Their place was just a few blocks from the Empire State Building, so that was a handy landmark.

The view outside my cousins' apartment

After arriving, we went out for a late dinner in Koreatown. Mmm! We don't get a lot of Korean food in our town, so that was a treat.

Then we walked off our dinner...we walked up to Times Square, over to Rockafeller Center, Radio City Music Hall, & then to Madison Square Garden. It was fun to also see NBC studios and the Good Morning America building.

On Sunday we slept in (actually we just stayed on our CA time) and went out to Chinatown to have dim sum for brunch.

We were close to the Brooklyn Bridge, which I really wanted to walk on, but we couldn't figure out how to get up onto it (we walked under it a couple of times) and sort of gave up in the interest of time. We instead went back to Times Square, got tickets for a Broadway show, walked through a big vendor's fair & all the way up to Central Park.

We walked back via 5th Avenue, dodging all the shoppers. Did I mention that my cousin has a 9 month old, so we did all this walking pushing a stroller as well? Good times.

Sunday evening we grabbed a quick slice of pizza and went to watch the musical, Rock of Ages, on Broadway. The show was kind of like Mamma Mia, except instead of creating a storyline around Abba songs, it was around a huge medley of 80's hits. The music was a lot of fun, but there were a few scenes that I could've done without. Afterwards, we had a late second dinner (actually just salad, bread, wine & dessert) at Carmine's, which was fun. Just to be able to go out and grab a bite to eat at 11pm (& not be too tired since our bodies thought it was just 8pm) is something we never do. It made me feel so young and spontaneous again.

Monday was our big historical landmark day. We woke up early and took the ferry out to see the Statue of Liberty and Ellis Island. We got to go inside the museum which is in the pedestal underneath the statue and even climb the steps to the top of the pedestal. We were really lucky to get to see it, as they are closing the Statue starting on October 28 for about a year to do remodeling. It was a beautiful day, with hardly a cloud in the sky, so we had great views of the city.

Then we booked it back downtown to pick up our reserved tickets to see the new 9/11 memorial that just opened last month. We were very fortunate to even get tickets to enter, so we really didn't want to miss it. After waiting in a couple long lines and going through security (for like, our third time that day) we got to go in and see the fountains. It was a very serene place and so profound to be there.

We walked completely around both fountains (which are built on top of the exact footprints of the North & South towers) just remembering what happened that day and praying for the families of the victims. All around the memorial there was construction, as they are working on a new World Trade Center building. In 2012, there will be a museum opened there as well, which I think will make a visit to the memorial more complete.

After that, we dodged the protestors on Wall Street and went back to meet up with my cousin & her husband so that we could walk more (!). This time over to the High Line, which is a walkway built on top of an abandoned elevated railway. Supposedly the city put a lot of money into creating and landscaping this walkway, and it was really nice. I would even say relaxing and peaceful to walk there.

We stopped at Chelsea Market and had Thai food for dinner and browsed in some of the shops. Apparently several Food Network shows are filmed there. We walked back, stopping at my new favorite tea place, Argo Tea, then had another spontaneous moment where we decided to visit my cousin's husband's workplace, which is 50 stories high and overlooks the city lights of Manhattan. The view was amazing (& free!). And just because we didn't want the night to end (and because we had walked so much I was ready for dinner #2) my hubby and I opted to go back to K-town for a late night snack. After some soft tofu soup, we were finally ready to turn in for the night.

Tuesday morning we still had a few things to check off on our "list", so we walked up near SoHo and Greenwich Village to get a crepe, and do a little shopping. We also passed Union Square and got a burger at the famed Shake Shack. (We had been told it was superior to In-N-Out, but we were not convinced of this, shhhh!) After grabbing a few souvenirs to bring home to our kids, we headed back to the airport to fly home. We arrived home at 11pm, exhausted and happy to be back.

What a whirlwind! Ahhh, but we wouldn't trade it. It may not have been the most relaxing vacation ever, but it was so exciting! Living in a big city for a few days, staying up late, making spontaneous decisions without worrying about how they will affect our kids, took me back to my younger days. Isn't there an expression, "footloose & fancy-free?" I think that describes how I felt.

14 Months Old

2011-10-01T20:49:00.000-07:00

Since it's October 1st, its official that we have a 14 month old now. (Her birthday is on the 31st, so on months that only have 30 days, I never know whether to count it on the 30th or the 1st...) Either way, it's been WAY too long time since I've done an update on our baby's milestones and progress.

First of all, she started walking 2 months ago. Just 3 days after her first birthday, she totally surprised us by taking those first steps. In fact, I missed them. Our son was the one who exclaimed, "She walked!" At first I didn't believe him, but she proved him right by taking more steps a few minutes later. With our son, he had practiced walking so much, we were just expecting it any day. With this little one, she hadn't practiced much, but just decided to try it out! She still looks like a "drunken sailor" at times, because she loses her balance, stumbles and falls down occasionally.Taken just a few days after those first steps

Helping Papa wash the car

She does love to walk, though, and even more, she loves to climb.

This is another difference between her and Big Brother...she will climb up anything that she can swing her foot up onto. We are continually taking her down from on top of the coffee table, ottoman, and step stool. She is at that stage where it is pretty taxing to keep up with her and keep her out of things. She especially likes to empty out the recycling trash can and play in the toilet! So, basically I've got to keep a hawk-eye on her all day.

Today we were working out in the yard and cleaning up our sandbox area that has been largely neglected all summer. Our son was helping with the hose, to rinse and wash toys off, meanwhile making a lot of mud puddles that our daughter plunged straight into. So of course, we debated, "Do we let her play in the mud, & finish getting our work done?" or "Do we waste a lot of energy trying to keep her out of the water & mud, and consequently don't get our chores finished?"

Guess what we chose?

Our daughter's personality is definitely coming out more and more, and at times it scares us just a little. We love it, but she is SO expressive! She is already saying her first words, and she says them with such gusto and emotion. She knows her mind and voices her opinions. Mostly it's just through a high-pitched scream or grunting, "Ungh, ungh, ungh" and pointing. She says "No" while shaking her head back and forth vigorously. She loves to cuddle, and she has figured out how to give kisses, by pressing her lips on our face and saying, "Mmmmwwwah!" She also says "Da," for Yes (just like big brother did!). And she says "Kikuol, kikuol, kikuol" for tickle (she also makes this sound for a duck quacking).

And she has three teeth. Her first two were the bottom center ones, and the third one to break through was her right incisor (the fang teeth, not the middle ones). We are awaiting the matching left fang any day now. She is incredibly slow to cut teeth.

But this doesn't hold her back on eating...(see last post). She has yet to meet a food she doesn't like, or won't eat. She does have her favorites, but she generally will eat whatever you give her. (Again, a little scary at times!)

And she loves babies. We received 2 new cousins this summer, and our daughter can't get enough of them. She eagerly goes over to Baby Josh's crib every time we visit their house, looking for him. And our other cousin lives out of town, but we received her birth announcement in the mail, and our daughter loves it and carries it all over the house. She grunts and points to it on the fridge until I get it down and give it to her!

Our little girl brings so much joy and love into our family. We love the enthusiasm she has for life. She helps all of us have a better sense of humor and lightens up the tone in what can be a pretty serious family. What surprises she has in store for us, we will see! We are so proud of you and love you so much, precious girl.

A Tall Appetite

2011-09-18T14:15:00.000-07:00

Last week I had the revelation that I really need to be more intentional and structured with activities and outings for our kiddos if I am going to keep my 4 & 1/2 year old from slumping all over the house, asking to watch TV & play on the ipad every day. (Yes, the preschool conversation is ongoing between my husband & I. No final decision has been made yet, but stay posted...) We just all do better when we get out and about each day. So what if my daughter still needs a morning nap?

So we woke up the other day and I announced that we were going to the zoo. It was a good morning. Since we don't have a very big zoo, it is pretty easy to just go for a couple of hours and see most of the animals. Plus, we just got zoo memberships, so I don't feel like I need to stay a long time to make our entrance fee count.

The new experience for my son this day was feeding a giraffe. I went all the way to Africa to feed giraffes, but who knew we could do it right here in town? It's so fun feeding them, they have the longest tongues! I enjoyed watching our big guy bravely walk up to the giraffe and hand him a big leaf. The zoo keeper who was helping him told him some facts about the giraffe, then added that this giraffe really loved to eat, and would eat anything they give him. To that, our son replied, "He's just like my little sister!"

(For those of you who have watched our little girl eat, you know that my son's words were truthfully spoken...)

Road Trip to the Rockies

2011-09-10T21:23:00.000-07:00

We've been home for 5 days now from our inaugural family road trip! My husband and I packed up our kiddos (along with every gadget, toy & snack imaginable) into our car and drove to Colorado to visit some dear friends of ours. We knew that it was a risk...how would our 4 year old, & an even bigger unknown, our one year old, do over 2000 miles in the car? We spent four days driving to get out there, stopping at a couple National Parks that were along the way. Coming home was more of a push, we planned for only two days to cover the same distance.

I am pleased to say that the trip was so rewarding. In many ways. But as far as our kids go, they really were fantastic travelers. Our son was pretty easy to keep entertained (thanks especially to the Wiens family for the DVD player & other car activities). I also purchased ahead of time some small gifts from the dollar bins at various stores and wrapped them up so that he would have little gifts to open before getting back into the car from a stop. He loved that. Especially cool were the glow-in-the-dark bracelets & necklaces that they could wear during the dusk/dark hours. We mostly tried to be checked into a hotel by dark, but that didn't always happen. Our daughter on the other hand, was entertained by all the snacks we kept coming! The Snack Trap came in handy, but for the most part, she was a mess since she had to feed herself while the car was in motion. We also listened to Charlotte's Web on CD as a family.

Somewhere in Utah...

Our first national park was Zion. We only stayed for a couple of hours in the late afternoon, and decided that we need to come back when we have more time to explore. It was beautiful! We did a short hike to Lower Emerald Pool, then got on the shuttle bus going the wrong direction! We'd wanted to ride to the end of the canyon (the whole valley floor is accessible by foot or shuttle bus), but apparently boarded the wrong bus. We noticed we were headed back to the entrance instead. Then we realized it was really an hour later than we'd thought it was (Utah is on Mountain Standard Time)...and decided we probably should just consider it fate & head back without seeing the rest of the canyon. Like I said...next time.

Not much left to Emerald Falls this time of year...

Even our little one hiked part of the trail!

We also stopped at Arches National Park, which was visually so stunning. We could see a lot of it from our car, and got out at the Windows to climb up and take some photos. The sky was so blue and the earth so red. I got a little carried away with my camera, it was just so striking.

We arrived at our friends' home in a beautiful corner of NW Colorado on Friday afternoon, the beginning of the Labor Day weekend. We spent the whole holiday weekend with them, and left early Tuesday morning. It was so good to see our friends in their new home (they've lived there a little over a year now). Even though they are in the Rockies, their town is in a valley, & surrounded by what looks like rolling green hills. Their closest peak is a popular ski resort. It is such an idyllic place, with all the open fields and a river running through the town too! A lot of people come there to ski, but it's a tourist destination year-round.

But enough about the town...we really went to visit our friends! I think the kids would've been happy to just hang around the condo and play together the whole time, but we had to get out and enjoy the outdoors, right? The first day we headed down one of the town's hot springs to go swimming. There were several pools there, all heated to different temperatures by the natural hot springs underground. There were lots of fun features in the pools too, like animals & slides for kids to climb on, a fast, tunnel slide for older kids, & even a climbing wall in one of the pools! We spent several hours relaxing and playing there.

Enjoying the kids' slide

That evening, we went to a Saturday evening church service with them. It was good to worship together with them in their new church home, since church is how we initially all met.

On Sunday we went to a ranch where a stock dog competition was being held (think: the movie Babe). A bunch of border collies had a chance to prove that they could herd a handful of yearling sheep. Definitely not something we see at home!

Baa-Ram-Ewe

The experience was pretty interesting, and the kids got to
pet some animals and make some butter out of cream.

Our daughter was totally mesmerized with any dog she could get near.
It's crazy to me how fascinated she is with them.

Afterwards we went for gelato downtown, at a cute little place where the owners (from Italy) know everyone's name and chat it up with all the customers. Yummy gelato too!

That night we went out to eat at an Italian restaurant where they give each of the kids a bit of dough to shape into whatever shape they want, then back it for them.

Our son really surprised us here, while we were standing in front waiting for a table to be seated at, he wandered over to the bar (all he saw of course, was a big screen TV with a football game on), climbed up into a seat & was chatting it up with the bartender and two other guys about who was playing in the game, who was winning, etc. By the time I caught up with him, the guys (who were totally cool & indulging his conversation) had filled him in on the game and told him they'd send updates to our table. It cracked all of us up, it was definitely not something I expected him to do, especially since he can be so timid in new situations. He is becoming quite a sports-spectator lately.

On our last day, we got everyone fitted up with a bicycle & gear and rode down to the square where the gondola takes people up to the top of the ski mountain. There were some activities to do in the square, but the real treat was the ride up and the view from the top. We ate our lunch up there & played a little in the grass before heading back down. From there, we rode our bikes along the river and went down to a popular wading/tubing spot. It was also close to the spring that the city was named after. It was such a relaxing day & a fun way to end our stay. We had a delicious tamale dinner & tried to get all the kids to bed early, since we all had to wake up to get to school, work, or California. Us adults stayed up a little later to eat dessert & finish a Bollywood flick we'd started earlier. Fun, fun!

These faces don't look worried at all, do they??

All of us together on the deck of the ski lodge

A gondola ride (is it pronounced GON-dol-a, or gon-DOL-a?)

Playing down at the river

The morning we left, our son woke up a couple of hours earlier than planned, with an upset stomach. He actually threw up several times before it was time to actually wake up. We felt so bad for him, but didn't have much choice in needing to get on the road and get driving back. Not the greatest way to say goodbye. It also was raining, so that didn't help either. But let's face it, it is never fun saying goodbye to friends that you care about. We really enjoyed our stay with them and were glad we had the opportunity to go. Thank you so much friends, for the hospitality, good conversation & laughter. We love you guys.

(btw, our son was feeling much better by that afternoon, had started eating again and even went swimming that evening...still not sure what caused it!)

Party in the SouthLAnd

2011-08-15T21:30:00.000-07:00

We spent our daughter's first birthday weekend with my hubby's family, and it was a whirlwind trip of celebrating, visiting with friends & relatives, and of course, eating!

Being from a Chinese family, first birthdays are kind of a big deal. We invited all of our extended family and a handful of friends who live in SoCal to a banquet-style Chinese dinner at Golden Soup Restaurant. We had a private room and about 40 people attended. From our perspective, the evening went very well. The food was good, and it seemed like people were enjoying themselves. We especially liked catching up with people who we haven't seen in awhile & it was some people's first time to meet our daughter! My former roommate, and good friend who lives in Ecuador happened to be in SoCal visiting her mom at the time, so they got to be there too!

My BF (who is also a pastry chef) made the cakes for the occasion. She made a small cake for the birthday girl, and a large one for all the guests. Our little one held up very well, for it being such a late night AND being surrounded by so many new people and lots of cameras flashing at her (especially during the birthday song and cake time). She didn't quite "dig in" to her cake as enthusiastically as the previous party, I think mostly because she was intimidated by the crowd. But slowly, she did warm up to it & eat some.

Singing Happy Birthday

Big Brother "showing" her that the cake is yummy

One of my favorite parts of this party, was the adorable outfit that Koko gave to our daughter to wear on her first birthday. She brought the outfit all the way home from China & even bought her matching shoes to go with it! I loved it, and thought she looked so sweet in it.

Hao Ke Ai!

Proud Papa

So the big party took place on Saturday night, but our little girl's actual birthday was on Sunday. At first we had wanted to have the party on her actual birthdate, but realized that logistically having it on Saturday worked much better (mostly because we needed to drive home on Sunday evening). I was a little disappointed that we wouldn't be doing anything "special" on her actual birthday, but my sister-in-laws took care of that one!

They prepared another feast on Sunday afternoon! This one was just at my in-laws, with my husbands siblings & kids, but it was quite the meal. They had prepared lobster, crab, lamb, meatballs & noodles (long life!). I cracked up because 1o minutes before sitting down to eat, one of our sisters says to the other: "Oh, guess what we forgot to make? We forgot to make any veggies!" This is funny to me because I always tease my hubby about how his family are big-time meat lovers, & I feel like I'm the only one who ever orders a veggie dish whenever we go out to eat. So, ha-ha! My point is proven! But even minus veggies, it was a fantastic meal & I greatly appreciate all of the effort that went into giving us such a special feast.

Have you ever cooked a lobster on your stove???

Chef Wens

The spread...

To wrap up our daughter's birthday, on our long drive home from SoCal, we stopped at Denny's for one final meal. Yep, I'm sort of embarrassed to admit it, but it's true. We rarely ever eat there, but thought that maybe since it was her birthday, we could get something for free...and we were right! A free breakfast slam for us...I mean...for our daughter!

So, to sum the whole birthday experience up...We just want to say thank you to everyone who sent their birthday wishes our way, & who have supported us through our first year with our little miracle girl. Every day we thank God for her & are thrilled that we've gotten to parent her through this first year of life. We look forward to watching her grow and become the girl that God is making her into.

Celebrating

2011-08-09T15:11:00.000-07:00

Finally I have a few moments to sit and write about our little girl's birthday celebration. We actually had two parties for her, one here in town with my side of the family, and one in Southern California, with my hubby's side of the family.

The party here in town was held in my brother & sister-in-law's backyard (they have a large yard and pool for everyone to relax and play in). This was so gracious of them, considering my sis-in-law is going to give birth to their 4th child any day now. My husband & I put all the food together ourselves, which was fun, but also took more time than we anticipated. (btw, my husband rocks in the kitchen, why doesn't he spend more time there???) The menu was: teriyaki drumsticks, pineapple fried-rice, fruit salad and Chinese chicken salad. I also made her a butterfly birthday cake.

It was a pretty warm day to be outside, so the kids went swimming while most of the adults sweat it out under the patio fans. We grilled up dinner and everything went really well. The big moment was when our daughter was presented with her birthday cake and everyone sang Happy Birthday to her.

Here is the blog entry of our son's first birthday (scroll down to the last photo). He wanted absolutely nothing to do with his first birthday cake. Couldn't get him to eat it. However, I had a feeling that things would be different with our little girl...

Yep, she loved it. Our kids have two totally different stomachs. She is pretty enthusiastic about any kind of food. To this day, our son doesn't really care that much about it (although I doubt he would turn down cake now...).

Big brother & cousins were a big help when it came to opening presents. She got some nice things. Most of her toys until now have been gender-neutral ones, handed down from big brother, so it was nice to see her get some girly gifts, like a doll & stroller, and a tea set! (Although it is still a little strange for me to see these things around my house!)

Everyone stayed & visited until dark. After we cleaned up and got ready to go home, it was late & we were exhausted! But it was good to celebrate our daughter's one year of life together with those who have loved and supported us well. Here are a few more photos from the night:

Her butterfly cake: Secret Chocolate Cake w/Cream Cheese Frosting

Big Brother & Cousins enjoying the meal

The party girl herself (pre-cake)

Next post... LA party!

365 Days Ago

2011-07-31T23:11:00.001-07:00

365 days ago we welcomed our little girl into the world. That day was one of the best of my life, and I still get an adrenaline rush whenever I think about birthing her. She was a beautiful, wonderful surprise, and continues to fill our lives with so much joy. God has already healed & restored so much through her life & we pray she will continue to be a blessing to others as she grows up.

Happy Birthday, baby girl. You are very dearly loved.

Kitchen Helpers

2011-07-22T11:05:00.000-07:00

Since I started staying home full-time with my son (4 years ago now!), we eat most of our meals at home. Initially it was all about saving money, but cooking has become something I really enjoy doing and can even be pretty passionate about. I've come a long way in a short time, and I'm glad I have a lifetime ahead of me to continue learning. I currently don't have time to cook the kind of meals I really want to, but I still spend quite a bit of my day in the kitchen. Consequently, so do my kids.

Our son is at a point where he can be very helpful in the kitchen. He loves to bake with me and to do some simple prep-work for dinner too. He puts away the silverware each time the dishwasher gets unloaded and he has been known to wash his dishes too!

Our daughter, however, is a different story. She is at a point where I have to keep very close eyes on her all the time in the kitchen. Her favorite things to do in the kitchen are: get into the pantry, pull things out of the recycling trash, pull down all the dishtowels & scatter plastic leftover containers all over the floor.

But most of all, she loves the dishwasher. She could be playing happily in the other room, but as soon as she hears me open the dishwasher, she's crawling full-speed to get there. She loves to pull herself up on the dishwasher & play with any residual water on the door (she's even been known to try and drink it!). It turns out that she is quite a climber, and when down, the dishwasher door is just the right size for her to practice her climbing skills. I usually promptly move her down if I see her sitting on top of the door, but just once, I had to snap a picture...

Of course, we are hoping that her affinity for the dishwasher will benefit us someday...maybe she will joyfully embrace a future dishwashing chore????

All said, there's nothing that makes me happier than cooking
in the kitchen with my two little ones at my feet or by my side!

Crazy Cousins

2011-07-14T20:20:00.001-07:00

We've been having a lot of fun with our cousins this summer. Here are a few of the things we've done together...

Watched the second Kung Fu Panda movie...

We went to our church's VBS program
(Any coincidence that this was also a Panda theme?)

Had a birthday party for our San Diego cousins who came to visit

Lots of cooling off in the pool!

We've had some unusually cool weather for July (84 degrees!!), so we had to get out and enjoy it. We used our new zoo membership and went to see the animals with our cousins. The kids really enjoyed spotting all the different animals in their habitats. It was our first time watching the bird show...it was pretty cool!

Cousins on the move!

We're Going Camping Now...

2011-06-21T12:50:00.000-07:00

(anyone familiar with the Kids Praise albums with Psalty?)

On Father's Day weekend, we took our DD on her first camping trip. It had actually been a couple of years since we'd gone camping as a family (having bypassed last summer with me 9 months pregnant). But we got right back into the groove of being in nature: cooking on a camp stove, playing (& eating!) the dirt, hiking to beautiful destinations, and of course, sleeping in a tent (or 'not sleeping' might be the more accurate phrase!).

We arrived at our campsite on Friday evening, with just enough daylight to set up our new 4-person tent, the pack-n-play for DD, and our "luxury purchase", an air mattress! Thanks to our friends who watched & took care of our kiddoes so we could get it all done in time for bed. That first night was rough... it was pretty cold and even with our daughter all bundled up in her pack-n-play, she still fussed throughout the night. We, of course, brought her into bed with us to comfort her and keep her warm...the only problem was that our son was also on the mattress with us! At one point in the middle of the night, all 4 of us were wide awake, just looking at each other and figuring out how to get back to sleep.

But the sun finally did come up, and our kids didn't seem to be hindered at all by the lack of sleep. We had a great breakfast and got ready for a hike. We packed a picnic lunch and headed up for Ely Mountain, which promised a great view of the lake and the mountain range around us. It was indeed a beautiful vista, but it was not an easy hike! The tour guide who was supposed to lead us, ended up with the stomach flu, so our small group of 4 adults, 4 kids (under 5) were on our own! The kids actually did an amazing job.

At the trailhead

I was so proud of them, even at the end when it got pretty steep as we scrambled up granite, they kept up a good pace and didn't want to stop.

We ate lunch at the top (well, I don't think we made it to the very top...), took some photos of the scenery, then did the hard work of going downhill. It really was harder going down, as there was a lot of loose gravel and rock, and it required a lot of leg muscle to control the slipping and sliding.

We gave Papa a fishing rod for Father's Day and our son got a smaller, kid's rod as well. Our son could not wait to go out and go fishing. Of course, it only lasted for about 20 minutes, with nothing caught...but our son insists that it was lots of fun anyway. The kids had a blast all afternoon and evening, throwing rocks into the lake, and playing baseball around the campsite.

Our daughter's favorite activity: throwing dirt & eating an occasional handful...

After another sleepless night (only 3 on the mattress this time!) we woke up on Sunday morning to make breakfast and the boys went out with the other families for some horseback riding. Our son has been on a horse before (our grandpa has an old horse, who sometimes gets brought out at kids' birthday parties) but never in an official way, with a saddle and everything!

From what I hear, it was a fun time...I was happily relaxing in the car while our daughter caught up on some zzzzzz's.

Camping with a baby isn't the easiest thing in the world, but all in all we still consider the trip a success. Gradually, the more we get out and do these things with our kids, we believe that it will build in them an appreciation and love for the great outdoors. This is especially obvious as we watched our 4-year old son on this trip. Not long ago, he was the one who was eating dirt and not sleeping through the night while camping. Now he is hiking up mountains, fishing, and having a great ol'time. He slept great through the night (except for being woken up by his sister) and loves camping. So we have hope that our daughter will get there too. But I think once a year is probably a good pace for us for now.

We rounded out our Father's Day weekend by packing up all our gear and heading down the mountain in time to have dinner with my dad. We are so thankful for the wonderful dads in our family.

School's Out!

2011-06-01T16:59:00.000-07:00

So we just wrapped up our "school year" of our preschool at home with our kids. I used Shutterfly to create a yearbook of sorts. Hopefully it will be a nice keepsake for the kids to remember all the things we did to help them learn their letters A-Z! We hope you enjoy it too.

Click here to view this photo book larger

Two Races & A Graduation

2011-05-26T20:35:00.000-07:00

This past weekend just flew by! Probably because we had so many fun things to do...

We woke up early Saturday morning to take our son to his first race! My good friend was coordinating a small fun run as a fund raiser for gang prevention and since there was a quarter-mile kids fun we decided to sign our little guy up. He has been to many of our races, so we thought it was time he got to run in one of his own! He had been practicing running up and down our street and we knew he could finish. I think he was a little nervous as he asked me a couple of times, "But what if I don't win?" We tried to tell him that winning wasn't the important thing, and that we haven't ever won any of our races, but we still have fun.

Coming up to the finish line

The race was held in a neighborhood where the kids basically ran down a couple of streets and back. Our son started off full-speed and was huffing and puffing by the first corner! My hubby ran with him the whole way and helped him to pace himself so he could finish. He was able to keep running the whole way and he got a ribbon at the finish line. It was a perfect first race for him because there were not too many kids, it was pretty low-key and everyone was so encouraging. In fact, he was so into it, that he stood at the finish line during the whole adult's 2-mile race! He cheered and rang a cowbell for everyone that came across the finish line. Who knows if running will be his thing or not, but we are really proud of him for trying.

Later that day, we headed off to our local university to participate in the international students' commencement ceremony. It was a smaller ceremony, held in a concert hall for only the international students and their families & friends. We knew many of the students that were graduating and several more who were attending as well. One of the students who is part of our fellowship group on Friday nights was one of two student speakers. She was so composed and did a fantastic job. Overall, I am just so inspired and encouraged by these students who have moved far away from their families and homes to study here. They are such hard workers and humble too. I was really proud to be there and cheering for so many of them.

I was also really proud of my two kids who made it through the whole ceremony (an hour and a half) without melting down! Our babysitting option didn't really work out, so we decided to just go for it. I think it was a good choice, since most of the students really know us as a family and really enjoy our kids (I think they may have even been more happy to see them, than my husband and me!). It was also a good learning opportunity for our son to be there and to understand what it means to graduate and celebrate their accomplishment. We chose seats that were near the exit doors (just in case...) but it turned out that that was where the students entered and exited. At the end, as all the students left, our son decided to congratulate all the students by sticking out his hand to shake anyone's hand who noticed him. It was hillarious! He actually did know several students, but he was happy to congratulate even those he didn't know.

Congratulations Grads!

We woke up again early on Sunday morning to head off to another race. This one was a half-marathon that my husband and I signed up for as a 2-person relay. I ran the first 6.5 miles and he ran the second 6.6 miles (although we think he actually ran more than that...) It was the inaugural race for this event, and we wanted to check it out. I ran a very slow first half with my brother (who had also signed up to run as a relay) and my hubby ran a very fast half with his friend, for an overall time of 2:10. Again our kids proved themselves to be great spectators!

What an accomplished weekend for us all!

Going Back to Cali...

2011-05-22T20:35:00.001-07:00

We recently had the privilege of visiting with some dear friends of ours who moved a few states away about a year ago. We have really missed them! They have been a part of my life for 12 years now, and we have walked through a lot of life changes together. However one big change that happened since they've moved is having our baby girl & becoming a family of 4. So this was the first time for almost everyone in their family to meet our daughter. (their mom got a quick visit back in January on our girls' weekend).

After our daughter was born, their 3 girls (who are so creative and love to make crafts of all sorts) designed and hand-sewed an adorable stuffed bunny which they mailed to us. It was such a special gift and very fun to our little girl to finally meet the girls who made it for her.

Good buddies

Needless to say, we had a great time visiting and catching up, although the time went by much too fast! We are actually planning to drive out to see them next...which should be interesting as we've never attempted to go further than 5-6 hours in the car with our kiddos!

But it should be worth it to hang out with these fun & crazy folks...

Love you guys!

Mother's Day Reunion

2011-05-12T15:42:00.000-07:00

For Mother's Day this year we made a trip to be with the side of our family that lives in SoCal. We don't usually go out of town for Mother's Day, but this year all 4 of my husband's siblings were in SoCal for about 10 days, so we decided to join them for a 3-day weekend. This was quite a reunion for the family, since we hadn't seen our siblings who live in the Philippines in 2 years! They even have a new son who we got to meet for the first time! My sis-in-law is also home from working overseas in Asia for the past year, so it was good to see her again too.

Between my hubby & his 4 siblings there are now 9 grandchildren. That number may not be too impressive, but consider this: the oldest is 8 years old. The rest are 4 years old and under. Imagine: 8 kids (6 of them boys) under the age of 5 running around under the same roof together for 3 days! (Actually the three youngest can't really run yet, but you get the picture.) It was still pretty crazy. But for the most part, it was crazy in a good way. Obviously all the cousins don't get to see each other that often, so we have to seize these opportunities to make memories together.

Look at all these kids!

Another highlight was getting to meet the family's second granddaughter. Sa-Pe & Sa-Mm had their first baby 2 weeks before Mother's Day. Yay! We are so excited that there is another girl in the family so our daughter will have a buddy amongst all those boys to hang out with.

On Saturday, we went to a park the first night and had a photographer friend take some photos of everyone. It was pretty hillarious to try and get everyone to look the same way at the same time, but I think we did get some cute shots. (they're all over this post!)

On Mother's Day we went to church together and in the afternoon, my sis-in-law treated all the ladies out to foot reflexology/massage and dinner at Cheesecake Factory. The guys watched all the kiddos for us. This was a really late night for us & the kids. It was so nice & relaxing though!

We stayed through until Monday evening. The highlight on Monday was going to another park with all the kids. The weather was perfect. We laid out a couple of blankets, and someone brought a baseball bat & balls. The boys all played baseball then climbed on the play structures, while a few of us adults stayed with the babies on the blankets & chatted.

The trip home was also pretty amazing. After 3 days of playing with cousins and not getting much sleep, our kids were wiped out! After one hour in the car, they were sleeping soundly and did not wake up until we got home many hours later. And then we pretty much just put them in their beds where they kept sleeping. My husband and I were reflecting how nice it was to just have conversation together that was uninterrupted while we drove home. We can't really remember the last time we had so much quiet in the car. We even wondered what we used to talk about during all of those long car trips before we had kids. Who knows? Something really important I'm sure.

The weekend went by much too fast, and I wish we could've had more time to spend with our family down south. We decided that next time, we will all have to go to the Philippines to visit our relatives there!

A special moment with A-Ma

Gong-Gong loves to hold his granddaughter

All the boys

I love my aunties!

Easter Events

2011-04-28T16:30:00.000-07:00

Easter is probably the most important holiday of the year for our family, in that who we are as followers of Christ is built upon our faith that He died for us & lives again. But like Christmas, it's a holiday that has been reduced by our consumer culture to something much less meaningful. It's always a challenge for me to try and extract meaning for my son in the midst of all the holiday symbols that seem to be in every store window or grocery aisle. Here is one thing that we did as a family to help us focus on Jesus (& I would love to hear what things your family does to keep perspective as well!).

This year I took a suggestion from Noel Piper's book, Treasuring God in our Traditions (which has wonderful ideas for throughout the year) and my son and I made an Easter mountain out of dough. He kneaded it and formed it into a mountain (which didn't rise as much as I'd anticipated...will have to work on that next year!) and we put a cross at the top and formed a cave on the side (for Jesus' tomb).

On Good Friday we acted out the Biblical account of the crucifixion (as much as a 4 year old can understand of it anyway) and put Jesus in the tomb. On Easter morning, Jesus' body was gone, the tomb was empty! It was a great way to start Easter day. We followed it up by worshiping at church, where Mama got to sing in an Easter choir. It really added to my experience of worship, having practiced the songs ahead of time (and letting them run through my head all weekend) and singing in front and seeing everyone worshiping together. It has been a long time since I've sang in church and I'd missed it.

After church we headed off for the family gathering...it was a beautiful day and all the kids had a fun time. There was a short Easter egg hunt and a lot of running around and playing together. My camera run out of battery power, but I bummed a few good shots off my mom. Enjoy!

Our Stay-cation

2011-04-21T22:38:00.000-07:00

So a month ago we were supposed to join our international student friends on a weekend conference at Catalina Island. However the morning before we were set to leave, 3 out of the 4 of us woke up with scratchy throats and runny noses, so we decided...maybe next year. We were really sad to cancel out on this fun event in a gorgeous location. My hubby had already taken Friday afternoon off of work, so we decided to declare the weekend a "stay-cation." In case you've never heard of this term before, it actually does exist (at least on wikipedia...)

We turned off our cell phones, and took advantage of the fact that people already thought we were out of town. Since I also decided to take a break from cooking for the weekend (just like if I'd been out of town...) we instead got some take-out fine dining to have at home...

...and no stay-cation would be complete without hanging out by a heated pool either! (Yes, we actually heated the water for our little swimmer)

And our son got to open and assemble a remote control car with his Papa that has been waiting in his closet for just such a special occasion

It also happened to be the same weekend as the annual MCC sale, so while we weren't feeling well enough to hang out and socialize there all day, it is a bit of a tradition for us to go to the pancake breakfast... so we went, ate, and returned home to veg out on the couch.

All said, it wasn't that we did anything very exciting at home, but it was actually a gift to just have a weekend that we didn't expect ourselves to get anything done. We didn't have anywhere we HAD to be, no chores, no work projects, and did I mention, no expectations? We did a lot of resting and lying around (we were sick, after all), but I think God knew that was exactly what we needed. We enjoyed each other and our home. Why is it that we have to get sick sometimes before we slow down? Here's to our next stay-cation, hopefully one we can declare while we're healthy!

Bonding Time

2011-04-01T20:06:00.000-07:00

Last week my brother and his wife celebrated their 10 year anniversary and decided to go on a trip overseas to celebrate, and left their kiddos behind. They have 3 kids plus one in utero, so they totally deserved a kid-free vacation. We offered to watch their 2 boys, ages 6 & 4 for 5 days and 4 nights while they were gone.

Overall, it went really well. Our kids LOVED having their cousins here 24 hours a day. The boys crashed on the floor in our son's room at night, which was a lot of fun for them all. My son loved having buddies to play with during the day (I liked it too, since he was so preoccupied with them, I actually got more work done around the house & even caught a couple of naps!). It was an interesting experiment to "try out" being a family of 6...I even got to drive the mini-van! Even though the experiment went well, I'm not sure my husband and I are ready for 2 extra kids for the long-term (although my husband was really cute playing with all the boys!).

We appreciated this time to get to know our nephews better. They are both really sweet boys, and are sensitive in many ways. They totally doted on our daughter, which I thought was so cute. They easily adjusted to the rules & expectations in our home, and brought a lot of laughter & fun. We sadly gave them back to their parents at the airport, and as we rode home as a family of 4 again, I turned around in the backseat to see my son fighting to hold back his tears. I told him it was okay to feel sad and to miss his cousins. Then the floodgates opened, & he started sobbing. He said, "It's different without them." Yes, it is. Good thing that they live in the same town we do and we can visit them anytime we want!

Here are a few photos of our time together. I think the boys would say that the highlights were: playing Legos together, drawing on the dry-erase board, going bowling for the first time, eating at Chick-Fil-A, movie night at home w/snacks and making pudding in a ziploc bag which they got to throw around.

Studying the lane, setting up the shot

A natural!

Dance party with "Rock Monster" (from Veggie Tales)

Throwing the pudding around

We love all of you "stinky faces"!

Our 4 Year Old

2011-03-21T16:48:00.000-07:00

Yay for cousins!

I actually have a few free minutes this afternoon to blog, so I thought I'd finally update our blog with our latest birthday celebration...our son turned 4! It's so hard to believe that we have a 4 year old. The years have really gone by quickly. I have appreciated every day that I've spent with him (even the hard ones) and am grateful that God has entrusted us with this talented and thoughtful child of His. I've learned so much through the experience of raising him, and although he constantly keeps me on my toes (and my knees!) I am blessed every day by him.

We had a simple celebration at home this year, with several family members coming over for pizza and cake. We have lots of little ones in our family now, so all the cousins enjoyed playing in the backyard together. By now, our son really understands what a birthday party is all about and that he is the center of attention. (Consequently, he's learning to "be a ham" for the crowd too!) One of my best friends who has made his birthday cake every year of his life, was unable to travel to our city this year, so I got to take on that responsibility myself. I was a little anxious, because my son had it in his head that he would have a Lightning McQueen birthday cake. So I quickly browsed the Internet, bought some cake supplies at WalMart, and was ready to start. Having never worked with fondant before, I was expecting a long night in the kitchen. Surprisingly, the fondant was very easy to work with (especially since I bought the pre-made kind!) and the cake came together rather quickly. This is the website I primarily used as my guide, and here's the result:

It had many imperfections in it, but when my son woke up on his birthday morning and saw his cake, his face lit up with delight. He loved it, and that was all that mattered.

Here are a few more photos of our birthday boy's big day:

Happy birthday, son. We are so proud of you.

Family Vacation

2011-03-07T11:15:00.001-08:00

We just returned from a wonderful week of vacation in the OC. We love visiting this area, not just because it is right by the ocean, or because the weather is perfect, or because there are so many fun outdoor activities for families to do, but because I spent 8 years of my young adult life living in the area and it's also where my husband & I first met each other! This past week, I was reflecting on how a lot of me "becoming my own person" happened in OC. Many important friendships and growth happened during those years. I haven't lived there for over 10 years now, but when I visit favorite old "haunts" it is a little surreal, especially having my two kids with me. All that to say that being in OC, is more than just a vacation place to me.

Anyway, we are really fortunate to have a fantastic place to stay and this is the second time we've been able to stay there with kids. Our last week-long vacation was in Hawaii, sans kids, so my hubby and I had to keep reminding ourselves that vacationing with kids is NOT the same. Good, but not the same. Especially at Disneyland, we had to keep looking at each other and saying (as we passed on OUR favorite Disneyland rides) "This trip is NOT for us, this trip is NOT for us..." We were pretty lucky though, as we did have some friends (who have annual passes to D-land) join us in the Magic Kingdom and help us manage our kids and keep non-riders company. Without them, the day would've been a LOT less fun for all of us! (& we wouldn't have been able to go on Space Mountain at all...) Thanks Tita, Matthew & Scott Michael.

Our kids were fantastic travelers in the car and adjusted really well to their sleeping accommodations (they shared a room!). We have some dear friends and family in the area, so it was special to get to share part of our vacation with them. We also got to host a baby shower for my brother & sister in-law while we were there and see most of my husband's extended family. It was a full week!

So, just to share our highlights, I think I have to break it down by family member:
Papa's highlights: the family baby shower, relaxing mornings, Disneyland, and playing at the beach

Mama's highlights: not menu planning or cooking for the week, dessert out with my former roommate, jogging on the beach, watching our kids enjoying the water & going on Space Mountain with my hubby

Our son's highlights: Disneyland (especially Astro Blasters, Autopia & the Nemo submarine rides---he was NOT a fan of the roller coasters we talked him into going on), building sand castles, swimming in the pool and jacuzzi at our hotel, operating the elevator by himself, his new "light-up sword," eating peanut butter Puffins every morning, running into the waves and sleeping in a big bed by himself!

Our baby girl's highlights: splashing in the pool, It's A Small World, being held in the Bjorn by Cousin Scott, exploring the world around her by rolling everywhere and putting anything she can reach into her mouth!

Here are some more photos of our trip:

Missing vacation already!

Basketball & Bath Beauties

2011-02-24T15:28:00.000-08:00

So our family has spent most of February sick with some kind of virus, allergy with a skin infection now thrown in. It's not exactly what I want to photo-document. Although my husband did take a few shots of our sick baby looking quite pathetic:

In between the yuckies, we have had some fun. We've been taking advantage of the warmer weather and working in the yard, planting seeds for this summer's vegetable garden, and continuing with our pre-school playtimes with our neighbors.

Our son is starting to memorize some sight words and it's fun to hear him pointing out words that he sees as we're driving around town on signs or in other places. Our daughter is really developing socially and now that she can sit up and interact with the world, we can set her down almost anywhere with a few toys and she is happy. She loves to be around people and her little smile just makes me want to put everything aside and just grin at her for awhile. In the evenings, we've been turning on music and having family dance time. She gets so excited, flapping her arms and bouncing up and down. She also has this really cute way of twirling her wrists around when she wants to be picked up.

One evening my parents came over and my dad got excited about shooting the basketball around with our son. He got out our tools and lowered our basketball hoop to a toddler-friendly height. We found an adult-sized ball was too heavy for our son to shoot, so he practiced with a somewhat flat soccer ball. (he now has his own youth-sized basketball). At first he was so excited to go out and shoot hoops, but he gets discouraged easily when he misses a few shots. We'll see how long the novelty lasts! Basketball is the sport my husband most likes to play, so I hope that this will be an activity that they can enjoy together. (unfortunately, basketball is the sport Mama least likes to watch, but if my son gets into it, that might change...)

Here are a few shots:

After all that playing, you gotta have a good bath! Fortunately the tub is a happy place for our kids to be...

A Sister's Wedding

2011-02-08T13:40:00.000-08:00

Two weekends ago, we attended a wedding for an old college friend of mine. We were roommates during our senior year and for some time after we graduated. She was a close friend, a sensitive & humble person who loves to laugh. I have so many fun memories together with her.
(In our young and crazy days...)

Attending this ceremony was very significant to me because I hadn't seen this friend in over 10 years. We've written letters to correspond with each other over the years, and I've spoken with her on the phone one time. This is because my friend is a Sister, as in a cloistered nun. After we graduated from college, she began discerning the religious life and ended up choosing to enter an order that was just beginning here in the States. The sisters in this order are cloistered, because their vocation is prayer. They live at a convent (I'm not sure if that is the PC name for it...) up in the foothills and among many other things, they run a retreat center there. Someday I'd love to make it up there to have some solitude myself!

The "wedding" we attended was her Solemn Profession of Faith, or the final vows that she made to live a life of chastity and poverty to Christ. She, along with 8 other nuns made these vows. In the eyes of the Catholic church, they are now "espoused to Christ." It takes many years to reach this commitment level. My friend has been in for 10 years. Not being from a Catholic background, I found the 3 hour-long Mass very interesting, even with sections of it being spoken in Latin. It actually was similar to a secular wedding ceremony in many ways. I was really humbled and touched to see how my friend's commitment and devotion are still going strong. We all had our doubts when she was first beginning this lifestyle, but I'm glad to see that she is happy in the choice that she made. Even with all the time that's passed with limited contact, it was easy to talk to her. I can see that she is still the same person. She still likes to laugh and have fun.

We weren't supposed to take any photos during the ceremony, but here are a couple from the reception afterwards:

Congratulations, Sister Mary Stephen!

6 Months Old

2011-02-01T23:14:00.001-08:00

How time flies! We can hardly believe that our little girl is already half a year old! Her latest tricks are: lots of babbling and cooing, rolling across the room to get where she wants to go, sitting up on her own (for at least a few seconds before she topples over), & eating rice, sweet potatoes, avocados, squash & pears. She has eagerly taken to eating and we think she will be outeating her big brother before too long!

Other things she does: she has already traveled all over the state. She's played at the beach and in the snow. She hangs out with international students every Friday & is very patient with being passed around to everyone. She loves to be around people and is very happy as long as there are people around, or even better, people holding her. Thankfully she is a pretty good sleeper. She usually takes two good naps each day, and sleeps for about 10-11 hours at night. I think we may finally be over the hump of waking up for feedings during the night (maybe...for now at least). She lights up whenever her big brother is around, and she actively grabs for any object that is within reach, then brings it to her mouth. She has no teeth yet, and no signs of any coming soon. This is fine with me, since I think toothless grins are SO cute!

Needless to say, this little pun'kin brings so much joy & love to our family. We love her SO much and are so thankful that God has entrusted her to us. We want to fully enjoy each day, because they are moving fast.

Happy Birthday Papa!

2011-01-15T12:12:00.000-08:00

Happy Birthday to the man who provides for and supports our family in so many important ways. We are so thankful for you! You are silly and fun when it's playtime. Serious and thoughtful when it's time to reflect and make a plan. You are always ready to lend a hand, helping with dishes, laundry, and taking care of the kids. You are loyal and sensitive, putting others' needs before your own. And you never complain. What an amazing role model you provide to me and the kids. We love you SO much and hope that you have a great day and a fantastic year being 35 (ha-now I told everyone how old you are!).

Blog Slacker

2011-01-14T22:16:00.000-08:00

Yep, that's me. With the arrival of our daughter, it seems like I should be blogging more, because we have this adorable baby who is changing every week. However...I'm still trying to figure out the rhythm of life with two children, and when it comes down to it, spending my time with them takes priority over blogging. I'm amazed that some days I don't even get to checking my email, much less looking at blogs. Someday I think I will get back into posting more regularly, but that day isn't here yet!

For now, I will quickly catch up on the past month. Since Christmas, we have been out of town as a family twice, and my little girl and I have traveled three times away from home! Playing so much on the weekend makes for lots of catching up to do during the week. It has been fun though...

Christmas Weekend:
We spent Christmas with my husband's side of the family, which is always busy with a house-full of kids! We weren't able to stay very long this year, but we still got to share some special moments and make new memories. On Christmas Eve the older kids baked a birthday cake for Jesus, went to church as a family (where we watched the whole nativity story in Mandarin) and stayed up late opening presents with the whole family (minus our overseas siblings & cousins...we missed you!). Christmas morning was restful & the kids opened stocking stuffers. It was a beautiful & warm sunny day, so my hubby and I went out for a Christmas morning run! (Gotta love the holidays in Southern California.) And no trip down south would be complete without a meal at New Capital Seafood (if you have eaten at this restaurant before, you will probably appreciate the comments made on this website!) Lots of food, family and fun. I appreciate how gracious and hospitable my husband's family always is with us: making room for us in their home, taking such good care of us, and loving on our kids.

New Year's Weekend:
We were invited to hang out with some friend for the weekend at their cabin in the mountains. It was a fun time, even though we spent a lot of time playing indoors since it snowed pretty much the whole time we were there. The kids did get out for a few episodes of snow play: sledding, building a snowman, snow football and my son's favorite snow activity: eating the snow.

The kids made these fun paper bag puppets!

Our car really is under there! The guys did a great job shoveling the driveway and getting us all out of there on Sunday morning. It was slow-going but everyone made it down the hill safely!

Girls' Weekend in San Francisco:
The next weekend, my girlfriend who lives in Colorado (& who I miss dearly!) flew out for the weekend and another girlfriend and I drove up to meet her. It was a fun time to play in the city, without any real agenda, except eating!! We ate our way from neighborhood to neighborhood. My friend already did a great job blogging about it here.

My daughter & I enjoyed food at the Embarcadero farmer's market: Korean tacos!
Pausing for a moment on a busy corner in Chinatown

My daughter was a pretty good lil' traveler, especially since she was hauled all over the city of San Francisco for 2 days, not even returning to the hotel for a nap! She slept on the go, in the Bjorn, the stroller & during Mass! (Long story: my friends actually sat through a whole Mass service--which we had not intended to be at, we had just stopped into the church for a warm place to sit down and use the bathroom--when suddenly, people started coming in...meanwhile I had sat down to feed my daughter, who was so exhausted that she promptly fell asleep...) I was also surprised at how well she slept in the hotel room while us three older girls stayed up and chatted away into the night. Hopefully I'll get to make many more memories with my daughter as she gets older in this City by the Bay.

So, 3 different parts of the state in 3 weekends. Not bad for a family with a newborn! I'm glad that we've had a couple of weeks of down time at home though...

K is for King

2010-12-23T22:06:00.000-08:00

Again, what a whirlind these past few weeks have been. We've spent a lot of time doing Christmas-related things: parties & gift exchanges, family dinners, going to see Christmas lights (even when the weather wasn't permitting!), shopping, baking and a Christmas performance at church. Sometimes I wonder if doing all of these things adds to or takes away from my personal celebration of Christmas. For me, it is in quietness and stillness that I am able to meditate and reflect on the deeper significance of the season. While I am still hopeful for some of my own personal quiet time, here are a couple of things we did to help our son focus during Advent: our eager waiting for Christ's arrival.

Our Advent Calendar:
Here is my attempt to create an advent calendar that correlates with a book that I've enjoyed reading with my son at Christmastime. Each day has a scripture and describes a different aspect of Jesus or the story of His birth.

I bought 24 little jars and found/created 24 various odds and ends to put in them for my son to open each day. I put magnets on the back of each jar (which never got spray-painted the way I'd intended, maybe next year) and arranged them so nicely on our refrigerator in time for December 1st.
By the time we woke up on the 1st, most of them had fallen off the refrigerator (looks like I also need stronger magnets next year) so we rearranged them all on a cookie sheet and kept them on a counter top. It has been really fun to watch our son wake up each morning and excitedly grab the jar for the day and notify me that it's time to read the Advent book. Since I tied string to each object to make them into "ornaments" we hang each object on a small "Advent tree."
Our son is really excited about Christmas only being ___ days away and I know he wants to peek into the 24th jar, which is, of course a miniature baby Jesus. I hope the anticipation that this is creating is a feeling that will help him someday understand how the earth waited, and is waiting again for Jesus.

Our Preschool Playdates:
The last letter that my neighbor and I presented to our kids before we took a break for the holidays was the Letter K. My neighbor did such a great job of creating "K" experiences for the kids. They made Kettle Corn, sorted keys, made a keychain and decorated king's crowns.

At the end of our "preschool" time, she organized a very simple play where the kids put on their crowns to be the "kings" that brought gifts to the Baby Jesus. (Guess who got played the part of the baby?) The kids wanted to do it over and over again. And my daughter (who I thought would NOT enjoy being stuck in the "manger") totally reveled in the attention they gave her. She was so happy! It was very cute.

O come let us adore Him, Christ our newborn King.

Giving Thanks

2010-12-03T16:46:00.000-08:00

As I sit here in disbelief that it is already December, reflecting on our last month, I realize how many things we have to give thanks for.

Our health:

My husband and I finished the half-marathon again this year. The date of the race was perfect, in that my pregnancy nicely wedged in between last year's race and this year's one, so I actually could participate both years! Once again I am so grateful for the ability to run and challenge my body in this way. And it WAS definitely a challenge this year, as I only had 8 weeks to train. It is reflected in my time, but I wasn't running for a time this year, just to celebrate my health and get back into exercising again. I am also thankful for my amazing husband who continues to support me and "run the race" with me.

Our friends and neighbors:

My son is enjoying his "preschool playdates" with our neighbors. They recently spent some time at the zoo after learning about the letter G & giraffes. He's also enjoying gymnastics class on Wednesdays, and we both enjoy our lunch dates with our friends after class. We are blessed to have wonderful, fun friends in our lives who bring us much joy & iron-sharpening!

Our food:

Since we've recently joined a CSA (Community Supported Agriculture), I've been learning how to cook more locally and seasonally. It does take more effort in menu-planning and recipe-hunting to use all of the produce we pick up on Saturday mornings, but so far, I am enjoying it. I've never cooked with things like turnips, kale or radicchio before, but for the time being, I am having fun learning. (I hope my family agrees!) Here is a really yummy curried chicken with butternut squash, baby bok choy and pomegranate seeds. I'm grateful to live in a place where we have such access to lots of farms and produce.

Another thing that I'm learning to do with food that I never really enjoyed before is baking. But I love to eat baked goods and have them on-hand, so it really is a good thing for me to learn. Can you believe that I'd never made a pie totally from scratch until this Thanksgiving? My good friend, Jamie, offered to teach me how, so I took her up on it and together we made an apple pie from scratch! She documented it on her blog here. It was yummy, fun, & not as hard as I thought it would be. Who knows what I'll attempt next?

Our children:

This one is obvious, but I have to mention it. There was a time not so long ago, that we weren't sure if we'd be able to have any children at all, and even more recently, if we'd ever be able to have a second child. So we feel doubly blessed when we look at our two beautiful, healthy children. They bring us joy every day and we hope that they will always treasure each other.

Our faith:

This is something that I always come back to. No matter what has happened or where life's road has taken me, something draws me back to my loving Lord. I don't always feel like I have a strong faith and I don't even always feel close to God. But as I look back over my life there is a testimony of God's presence which I can't deny. Somehow I believe He has me in His grip and I cannot be moved. So I am grateful for this. In fact, I think I would feel so lost in life without it.

Last weekend we had the privilege to dedicate ourselves and our daughter to the Lord in front of our church family. This happened to include several members of our own biological families as well. I like that our church approaches it as a dedication of the parents too, not just the children. I like that the whole church is asked if they will, as our community, help us in raising our children to know God and follow His ways. It is a lot less intimidating knowing that we have many people together with us in this! We are humbled at the opportunity that God has given us to raise these precious kids & again, are grateful that He's entrusted us with them.

A note about the outfit: the dress that our daughter wore for her dedication has now been passed down through 3 generations. My mom wore it at her christening over 60 years ago, I wore it at my newborn baptism (which is what was practiced at the church my parents attended at the time) and now our daughter has worn it too. I wasn't sure how I felt about her wearing that bonnet, but it was a gift from her grandma, and it can be converted to a handkerchief to be carried on her wedding day. I'm not sure if my daughter will want to carry a hankie on her wedding day, or if she will even be sentimental like that, but I decided to give her the opportunity, just in case she is.

Our 3 Month Old

2010-11-06T14:22:00.000-07:00

We now have a 3 month old and a 3 year old in our house. Some of our 3 month old's new tricks include: cooing and squawking, rolling from her back up onto her side (but not all the way over to her tummy yet!), sleeping 9-10 hours at night, sleeping in her own room & crib, sucking on her hand, grabbing at toys overhead, and watching her big brother with wide eyes and lots of curiosity! She is taking in everything and is a really happy and content baby.

Her 3 month old birthday happened to be Halloween, so we had to dress her up a little:

But the real fun came later that evening when we dressed up in our Halloween costumes.

For three years now, we have tried to coordinate our costumes to include everyone in our family. The first year we were beekeepers, "keeping" our little bee:

The next year we were TV personas, Zoboomafoo & the Kratt brothers

Can you guess what we were this year? Here's a clue:

With a banana, goes Curious George & The Man With the Yellow Hat

My husband's costume was definitely my favorite part of this ensemble. The best part is that he was totally into making his costume. He even went out on his lunch break from work to find a shirt and to buy dye and spray paint. He actually dyed a pair of own his pants to make this outfit! (The only contribution I made to the costume was making his tie.) It makes me smile just seeing how he wanted to get into it with the kids. Unfortunately, since there is no Woman in the Yellow Hat, Mama was left out of the costume this year. Oh well! The important thing was that we all had a fun evening celebrating with friends and family.

Fire Station Fun

2010-11-02T16:41:00.000-07:00

Yes, I'm behind in my posting...here is the beginning of the "catching you up" posts from the month of October. (I can't believe it's November already!)

My neighbor and I took our kids to the fire station that is in our neighborhood a couple of weeks ago. It was our first field trip to go along with our home "preschool" activities. I'd never been to a fire station before, and I was SO happy with the experience. First of all, the firemen were SO friendly and accommodating. They spent an hour and a half with us, showing us everything in the fire station and then letting the kids experience it all (minus a real fire or emergency, thankfully!). I learned a ton about what firemen do, and how understaffed they currently are. It really opened up my eyes about how we need to support them, because when an emergency strikes, they are the ones we count on to be there. And, can you believe they said that cars don't even move over to the right side of the road when they drive their engine to respond to a call! Come on, people!

Anyway, we got some cute photos of the kids doing everything: sitting in the driver's seat of the engine, turning on the lights themselves, watching the fireman dress up in his full fire suit & mask, they even brought the hoses out and let the kids hold it to spray water out! The kids had a great time and my son keeps asking when we can go back. I'm glad that he is able to have positive experiences like this with the people in our community.

Beach Weekend

2010-10-21T20:40:00.000-07:00

Finally! Our family was able to get away for a mini-vacation. With our daughter's birth in the middle of summer, we pretty much weren't able to go anywhere all summer, either right before or after she was born. Plus we had to use hubby's vacation days when our daughter arrived, so we don't have time for a long getaway. But, God is good, and we were able to have a 3 day weekend together at the coast. Yeay! We really needed to spend some time away from our regular routines and chores to just hang out together as a family. It is good to play together. We sort of "threw the rules" out the window for a few days, didn't worry about what we ate & let our son watch TV in the am, so we could sleep in longer!

The only bummer was that the first day was cloudy and gray, and the second day it rained pretty much most of the day. We stayed at a beautiful home, due to the graciousness of our relatives who own it, which made it nice even when we had to stay indoors. Fortunately the third day was absolutely gorgeous!

Our son loved the beach. He was SO excited about building sand castles with us, finding shells, and getting his feet buried in the sand! He actually cried in the car on the way home when it sunk in that we were not going to be staying at the beach anymore. Our daughter, of course, had no clue where she was, but when you're 2 months old, every day is a fun, new adventure!

Here are a few photos from the weekend (with more on the sidebar):

What We're Up To

2010-10-08T15:38:00.000-07:00

We are having a busy fall so far...here's an overview of life lately.

Gymnastics!
Our son is taking his first gymnastics/tumbling class and loving it! I was nervous about committing to a getting to a class knowing that I'd have a newborn in tow, but the time works well & so far it is a great chance to get out of the house. Since we have friends in the same class, we usually end up having a lunch date afterwards too! Here our son is receiving a ribbon for passing his first group of skills.

Birthday parties! I haven't had the chance to take photos of all of them, but it seems like a lot of people are celebrating lately. Here are some pictures from a cooking birthday party, hosted at our local Young Chefs Academy. Our son was the only boy there, but it didn't seem to bother him at all. He got lots of attention from the birthday girl's older sister who helped him out.

Fairs! We've been to two of them in the past week. I love this time of year, getting to see all of the local produce and the animals raised by 4-H kids. And, of course, eating junky fair food is fun too!

Home Preschool! My neighbor has a 3 year old girl, and we decided to start doing a very informal preschool playdate with our kids for a couple of hours, once a week. To give us some kind of focus we decided to feature a "Letter of the Day," starting with "A" and so forth... We're alternating houses and planning the activities. So far, they are enjoying it.

Enjoying their Banana Bread

The days are definitely full. In addition to all these older kid activities, we are still adjusting to having a newborn again. We are really blessed that she is a pretty easy baby. She naps on the go and is a good eater too. We are also very grateful that she is usually sleeping through the night now! We're trying to savor each moment and enjoy the different phases that our children are in, but as you can imagine the days are flying by for us. I'm beginning to see why everyone always says that kids grow up so fast.

Smiley Faces

2010-09-25T15:00:00.000-07:00

So you know what this post has to be about, right? While our daughter has been bringing a smile to our faces for the past 8 weeks, it's only been the last week and a half that she's been working on her own smile. It's been tricky to capture it on film, because apparently the camera is a strange and scary thing which usually produces a furrowed brow or bug-eyes when it comes out).

After some effort, finally here are a few good smile shots. It helps that she adores her brother and for some reason, gives him the best smiles (even though he attacks her half of the time!). Go figure. It actually is amazing to see the connection that these siblings already seem to have with each other. And the more she grows, the more she seems to resemble him. (I'll do another post comparing baby photos later.)

While our little girl is napping, our son has been helping me in the kitchen. We made a pizza for dinner the other night, and do you know what? It's smiling too!

Hi Mom!

2010-09-16T15:36:00.000-07:00

Doesn't this photo just make you wonder what kinds of shenanigans these two are going to get into in the years to come?

Family Time at the Cabin

2010-09-07T09:40:00.000-07:00

We spent Labor Day weekend up at our family cabin with some of our extended family. It was the first time we've been out of town all summer, and I was SO excited about that! After waiting for the baby to be born, and to be old enough to travel, we finally got out of the house! Not to mention getting a break from the hot summer weather...

Our immediate family shared one room, which actually went pretty smoothly. We were able to do our middle-of-the-night feedings without our son waking up. Then, when our kids DID wake up, we had early morning babysitters (aka grandparents) so we could sleep in--heaven!

We also met some cabin neighbors, of particular interest is another 3 year old boy, with the same name as our son. They made fast friends and had fun throwing pinecones, rocks, playing in the "muddy river," building dams, and digging in the dirt. Our cousins from San Diego were there also, who are always fun to play with.
Playing in the muddy river with our new friends

Here are some more photos of our Labor Day weekend, & our 5 week old's first trip to the cabin!

Chillin on the deck

J's first rowing experience...he wouldn't hand the oar over, had to do it himself!

Ever the rock collector, our son could spend hours chucking rocks into the water

Ready for more adventures!

Our Big Brother

2010-08-25T20:26:00.000-07:00

Many people have asked how our son is doing with the transition from being an only child for almost three and a half years to a big brother. It's been interesting to watch, but both my husband and I have to say that we are very proud of the maturity that he's shown.

That first week was a bit rocky. My husband was home from work all week and playing both Mom & Dad roles to our son. Our son was pretty resistant and testing all of the familiar routines. I was SO nervous for my husband to go back to work the next week, but it actually helped things at home. Our son is definitely a creature of habit and routine, and going back to our "normal" routines with Mom at home taking care of him has been good. For one thing, he had developed a nervous tick of blinking his eyes uncontrollably and that has mostly subsided by now.

Another thing that touches our hearts is how much he really adores his sister. The other night our family was driving somewhere and we heard our son in the back seat next to his sister, singing a song that he made up for her. It was so sweet. He also has to introduce her to everyone who comes over, saying her first, middle and last name. He loves to give her kisses and to try and soothe her when she cries. He often tells us he loves her and thanks God for her when he prays.

Before our daughter was born, we bought several small gifts for our son, wrapped them up, and put them in a basket, which we call, "the Big Brother Basket." As our son is a good helper (getting us diapers, wipes or any other thing I can't reach while I'm nursing) and shows good "Big Brother" behavior, he gets to choose a gift. So far it's been a positive thing and the gifts are mostly all activities that we can do together with him at home (where he has been stuck a lot lately). I'm really proud of the the skills he's developed to take care of himself more (getting his breakfast, picking out his own clothes & getting dressed). He helps out a lot in the kitchen too!

Here are a few photos of our big brother:

Cooking inspired by the book, "If You Give A Cat A Cupcake"

Big Brother Gift of the Day: BUBBBLES!

Being a big brother is tiring work! (We actually caught him sleeping like this the other night)

First Days at Home

2010-08-14T10:32:00.000-07:00

Wow--what happened to the past two weeks? They are a blur of breastfeeding, rocking, swaddling, breastfeeding, doctors appointments, sleepless nights, daytime naps, crying (from both children), and more breastfeeding! Oh yeah, and lots of holding & just gazing at our little girl. What is it about a sleeping newborn, that even though you are completely exhausted, just watching them gives you such an adrenaline rush?

Our daughter has caught back up to her birth weight, plus 5 ounces at her 2 week check-up yesterday. This has been such a confidence booster for Mama, knowing that I'm doing something right in feeding her and that nursing is going so much more smoothly than it did with my first child. Hooray!

My husband had one week off of work, and now he's back in the saddle of going to work again. As much as I was dreading being "on my own" with the kids, it's actually been good for me to start building my skill set for managing two kiddoes. I put "on my own" in quotations because I truly am not alone. We are so grateful for our dear friends and family who have helped us out a lot these past two weeks. They have been bringing us meals, taking my son for playdates & even to the zoo, coming to hold the baby so I can sleep, and all the fun visits from friends and family. Not to mention the explosion of pink, purple & all things girly that have been their way into our home

Besides my own lack of sleep, our son is probably having the hardest time adjusting. He is doing pretty well, and he absolutely adores his sister, but is acting out in other ways, particularly towards Papa. He is fighting us on things that are completely routine (ie bedtime and mealtime) and it's tiring! Please continue to pray for him to adjust and for us to have patience, wisdom and grace in dealing with him.

Here are a few more photos from our last couple of weeks:

Our awesome neighbors who greeted us as soon as we got home from the hospital

More friends coming to visit

Proud Grammy
Sa-Pe & Sa-Mm (Chinese for Uncle & Auntie) Came from SoCal to visit

I'm so blessed!

She's Here!

2010-08-02T18:30:00.001-07:00

Now isn't this a much nicer photo than my cankles???

We greeted our daughter into the world on Saturday, July 31 at 12:17pm, after a very quick and drug-free delivery. We are so thankful to God for His provision in this, especially in light of my past medical history. We are so blessed to be a family of 4 now.

We think she looks a lot like her big brother did when he was born, except she has a bit more hair...

See you later, hospital, I'm on my way home!

Ode to My Ankles

2010-07-24T20:16:00.000-07:00

It's been a few weeks since I've seen you
I miss the curves and the shape of your bones
For each day the swelling's increasing
You've left me with "cankles" alone

I hope you'll be back shortly
I miss running around in the sun
But the reward that is coming is worth it
In losing you, I gain a little one.

Welcome Home

2010-07-12T20:07:00.000-07:00

No, this entry isn't about the arrival of a new child to our home, but the arrival of my brother and his family, who recently moved here from Kansas. My brother took a job here in town, and we are so excited to finally live in the same town with their family. They have 3 children: 2 boys ages 5 & 4, and a little girl who's 14 mos. old.

So what better way to welcome them back than inviting them out to mini-golf with us on a blazing hot summer evening? It was actually the first chance that my husband had to see them, even though they've been here for 2 weeks already! We had really low expectations on the golfing part, but the boys were actually quite persistent and kept trying their best on each hole. I was proud of them!

Watch out, Tiger!

Isn't my niece adorable??

Happy Birthday America!

2010-07-08T13:38:00.000-07:00

For 4th of July this year we broke away from a tradition of hosting a swim party/BBQ at my parents' home, which is close to a stadium that has a fireworks presentation that we watch afterwards. This year our neighborhood organized a block party, and we really wanted to support that effort. We've had some opportunities to get to know our neighbors, but are excited about developing a stronger sense of community here.

There was a great turnout for the block party. I have to admit, it was really nice to just walk out my door and have a party be on my street, without any effort on my part! A few neighbors had bounce house/waterslides in front of their homes and everyone brought out food to share. Our next-door neighbor organized a band that played rock & roll for us, and another neighbor made little patriotic streamers for the younger kids to wave in a short parade down the street. We had a lot of fun!

The watermelon, jicama & blueberry salad I made

Papa grilled up some yummy drumsticks!

The cookies were also a big hit

Trying the "big kid" slide (right before landing on his bum!)

This one was definitely more his speed

Marching in the parade

Our son's first sparkler experience

There were tons of fireworks that everyone brought out to do in the street...great for the lungs! Our son (like all boys, of any age...) was very interested in them, wasn't afraid, and did a great job following firework safety rules! He stayed up until almost 10pm, and even then had to be persuaded to come inside. He's already asking when it will be 4th of July again.

More Nesting Creations

2010-07-03T10:22:00.000-07:00

I've been wanting to make some new hooded towels for my son & nephews for several months now. Our son is still using the baby hooded towels that we got at his baby shower, and now that he's 3 years old, I thought it was time for an upgrade!

I bought the materials ages ago, but lacked the opportunity to make them. Part of it was that I've never made them before, and although I'd been told how easy they are, and looked up several sets of directions online, I still wasn't quite sure how to proceed. Since all the materials have been stored in the new baby's room, I took advantage of my nesting instincts to clear them out and finally MAKE THEM!!!

I'm not a great seamstress, and it takes me a long time to wing my way through these kinds of projects. But I did finish 4 towels: 2 are frogs and the other 2 are sharks. I think if I ever make these again, I will opt for a much simpler version, not adding all the animal details. My husband (& I) will tell you how happy he is that they are finished and that I can put away the sewing machine for a LONG time! It sort of consumed my evenings (not to mention how swollen my feet got from sitting and sewing).

Anyway, I'm not entirely pleased with them, but I did learn a lot in the process. I accidently sewed one of the shark fins onto the inside the hood (!) and the other shark my husband affectionately referred to as a blue parrot (!) I think I like the frog best.

So one more thing off my checklist (Yeay!). Now on to more important tasks, like packing my hospital bag and buying things like diapers.

Still Sassy at 32 Weeks

2010-06-24T16:43:00.000-07:00

Some of you have asked...so here I am.
(this photo was actually taken two weeks ago, I'm now at 34 weeks)

Only Child...

2010-06-21T16:44:00.000-07:00

Another thing that I am trying to do before this new baby comes is to really enjoy and embrace the time I have left with our son being the only child. So far he is very excited and genuinely happy about "the baby in Mama's tummy." He kisses my tummy every morning when he wakes up and prays for the baby when he goes to sleep at night. All in all he is very understanding of the things I can't do for him right now because of my physical limitations. He is even already bringing items to me without being asked when he sees that it is difficult for me to reach down, etc. I hope that his enthusiasm and love continues even when he starts to get the reality of life with a newborn.

Even though we can't really go on any big trips, we are finding lots of fun things to do near home. Here are some photos from the things we've been up to in the last few weeks:

Going to a minor league baseball game in our town

Speaking of baseball (or should I say softball...) my husband joined our church's softball team for the first time. He played every Monday night for a couple of months, and then had a tournament at the end (which they won! Go team!) It was fun to go out and watch him play, and also to see our son get a little more excited about the sport. Here he is at home, practicing.

We are so blessed to have a great Mom's group through our church that plans fun activities for moms (& dads) and kids to do throughout the year. Our latest outing to was to an endangered cat haven, up in the foothills. It was so interesting, we got to get up close to all sorts of exotic cats that have been born and raised in captivity. The center is really involved with conservation and education too, so we learned a lot and felt good about supporting them too.
Ivan the cheetah
All the kiddos!

Another activity that our son has been enjoying lately is riding his new 2-wheel "big boy" bike. We gave it to him last month as a reward for some big boy behavior he was demonstrating. He was so excited to receive it (he'd been admiring it in the store for months) and we were pretty proud to watch him jump up on it and and take off. He was ready for it, and has quickly gotten used to having more speed than his tricycle allowed him. Of course, his bike has training wheels on it & it may be awhile before they come off. But I will say that our evening walks around the block have definitely become much faster with him on his new wheels...

And not to overlook the simple joys of life... just filling up our wading pool in the backyard is proving to be a very entertaining activity for our son. He is loving splashing in the water, bringing his bath toys in to throw around and sliding all around. Very relaxing for mom to sit back and watch too. As you can imagine, my tummy is slowing me down quite a bit these days and I treasure any chance I have to sit and rest.

Do you think a new baby brother or sister is going to slow this kid down at all???

Nesting

2010-06-10T10:20:00.001-07:00

Coming down the home stretch of this pregnancy, I've got a million little "to-dos" that I want to get done before the baby comes. Some say it is the nesting instinct, but my husband would insist that he's just got an over-achieving wife. Who knows if any of these things really NEEDS to get done before the baby is born (ie, organizing and cleaning out the closets??) but having a deadline just invites me to fill the time with all sorts of tasks to be completed (like pressure washing our house--of course!).

Anyway, last weekend my husband gave me the gift of a whole afternoon and evening to myself so that I could work on one project that is truly for the baby. I'd been wanting to re-cover the glider/rocker that became very well-used over the last 3 years. I purchased the fabric a couple of months ago, and just hadn't had that good chunk of time to get it done.

Here is what the rocker looked like before:

And before I went to bed on Saturday evening, this is what it looked like:

We chose blue & white fabric, not because we're having a boy (we actually don't know what the gender is yet--our choice) but because it generally matches a few different rooms in our house. It feels so good to have this project finished, and to anticipate rocking our new baby in this "new" chair.

Memorial Day Weekend

2010-06-06T21:30:00.001-07:00

OK, so this post is one week late. In case you haven't already seen the photos and read about on the Mack family website, here are a few photos and a description of our fun Memorial Day weekend in the snow...yes, Memorial Day in the SNOW!

We headed up Saturday morning to our family cabin with some friends and to our pleasant surprise, the roads had finally been cleared! Instead of the 1 mile snow hike that we were anticipating, we drove almost up to our cabin driveway. Hooray!

We spent the long weekend relaxing on the deck, eating yummy food, watching the kids play "orphanage" in the secret room, going for short hikes, and visiting the lakeside to watch birds and throw rocks to our hearts' content. And, on one picnic hike, we even got to enjoy a little bit of sledding.

It was a relaxing and fun weekend, building good memories and sharing with friends. The only downside of the weekend...the Land of the Lost movie...did we really need to watch THAT?!?!?

Cherry Follow-Up

2010-06-02T21:41:00.000-07:00

In case any of you were wondering what we ended up doing with all our cherries, here's a brief update, and a few suggestions for any cherries you might have laying around your kitchen!

Besides eating many of them fresh out of the bucket and giving a few bags away. we invested in a cherry pitter and went to town. I really like this pitter because you can pit 4 cherries at a time, and it's so easy that even our 3 year old can do it independently. It also catches all the pits, so clean up is easy!

Most of the pitted cherries went into the freezer, and the rest went into a Cherry Crisp, adapted from Four Fruit Crisp on pg. 153 Simply In Season (which by the way has recently become my favorite cookbook).

Yummy!

I also discovered tonight that one of my favorite food blogs, Simply Recipes, has several cherry recipes (Savory Cherry Compote, Cherry Frozen Yogurt, & Cherry Clafouti) that I hope to try soon!

Cherry Picking

2010-05-22T14:05:00.000-07:00

This morning we had a chance to visit a small family farm with some cherry trees, our first family cherry picking experience. It is such a great activity for kids, our son loved being able to collect and hoard the cherries in his own container. He actually was such a trooper and lasted almost an hour! Now we have lots of cherries to try and figure out something to do with! Any ideas??

Little Swimmer

2010-05-20T17:51:00.001-07:00

This week was our son's last swimming class. We started back in March at an indoor pool facility, and at first I totally regretted signing him up for it. He cried the entire 30 minutes of the first lesson (as I'm sitting there thinking...we paid for this???). The next class he cried for about 10 minutes. It was frustrating to me because he is not a kid who has ever been afraid of the water before. He loves being in the water whenever we've been with him in a pool. So I'm not sure what the meltdowns were about, but thankfully, by the 5th week he was able to get into the pool and go to his instructor only a little clinging to my leg.

It was fun to see him actually enjoying the class and to see his skills improving. He passed one swimming level & got a medal & ribbon after 7 weeks. And he was only one skill short of passing the next level this week when class ended. So I feel good about the experience and am looking forward to a summer of fun in the pool together.

Here are a few photos I took this week (with my new camera!)

Sea World & Coronado

2010-05-09T15:22:00.000-07:00

Now that we've been home a full week, I guess I'd better finish telling the story and posting photos from our trip...

After Legoland, we went to stay with my sis & her family in San Diego. Even after a full day of playing at Legoland, our son & his cousin still managed to stay up late talking away after we tucked them in bed. I guess it was pretty exciting getting to share a room (and a bunkbed!) for the first time. It was really nice to have relatives to stay with and be in a nice home, though. The kids were able to play a lot together and entertain themselves most of the time.

Friday morning we headed out for Sea World. Previous to this trip, my son and I had visited the library and checked out lots of books on sea animals, so he would be prepared for what he would be seeing there (yes, the teacher in me still comes out at times!). He was very excited to see the dolphins, but unfortunately the dolphin show was closed for construction. We still saw a couple of dolphins though, and lots of other sea animals. Our son especially enjoyed the shark exhibit, feeding the seals and touching the bat rays. Papa and Mama liked the Wild Arctic exhibit, which houses beluga whales and polar bears. The shows were fun too! Here are some photos of our "fishy faces"...

That evening everyone went right to sleep!

On Saturday we spent most of the day at Coronado Island on the beach. We had fun playing in the sand and water, even though we forgot the sand toys!

The weather was gorgeous, and it was very relaxing. We went to lunch at a Greek restaurant, and spent time just watching boats in the harbor (and eating ice cream too!). Tio Greg bought a kite for the kids to fly, which ended up being a huge hit with our son. The wind was perfect and he was able to run and fly it by himself.

Later that night, we went over to my other sister's apartment, which was fun since she just got married and we'd never been to her new place. The newlyweds put on a great dinner, using all of the new kitchen and dining things that they got for their wedding.

We left Sunday morning after church and started the long journey home. Truthfully, though, our son does travel really well. It helped that he napped for a couple of hours and that we had lots of VeggieTales music, Color Wonder pages, and books on CD to keep him entertained.

We were really thankful for the chance to getaway one last time as a family of 3. It is hard to imagine that we will have two kids on our next family vacation. I will always treasure and remember this trip as a special time we got to spend with our son before he becomes a big brother.

Legoland

2010-05-06T18:43:00.001-07:00

So we spent last Thursday at Legoland, and it was a fun place to be! We'd heard mixed reviews about the theme park, but we weren't disappointed. I don't think you can compare it to Disneyland (really? What can compare to Disney?), although for the price, you might be tempted to. Legoland is really more geared for younger kids, I think the interest level might top off near 10 years old. The height limit for most of the rides is low enough so that our 3 year old could ride most of the rides, which was nice. It was also nice going on a weekday, not during the summer, because lines were shorter. Waiting much longer for the rides might have felt more frustrating.

We also wondered if our son would be interested in the Lego theme, since he's really too young to be into Legos yet. There were some neat Lego creation stations, but there were so many other things to do, we didn't feel like we missed out.

Our Legoland highlights:
Bob the Builder 4D show
Our son driving his own car
The boat rides
The Fire Truck family relay race
The Fireman Show
The Dragon roller coaster (our son's favorite)
Tasty and healthy food choices
Other things to do besides just rides

Lowlights:
Expensive
Most rides would only allow for 2 riders (one adult, one child), so it is suited more for families of even numbers.

Here are some of our favorite photos:

Vacation All I Ever Wanted...

2010-05-04T21:00:00.000-07:00

We decided to take a mini-family vacation to San Diego last weekend. I call it a mini-vacation, because it was just a 4 day trip and most of you should know by now that we tend to enjoy vacations that are longer and much further away (out of state or country preferably!) We're trying to save my husband's precious few vacation hours for when the baby arrives, so it had to be a shorter trip. But not to complain, San Diego is a worthy vacation destination and we had a great time.

Since this was our son's last family vacation in which he is the only child to take care of, we tried to make it a special one for him (even though he probably won't remember it, aside from photos). We went to Legoland the first day, Sea World the second day, and spent the third day on Coronado Island at the beach and hanging out.

On top of all that excitement, we stayed with one of my younger sisters (both live in SD) who has two daughters that my son loved playing with. He actually bunked with his older cousin, which was interesting since he's never shared a room before. They stayed up late talking the first night, but by the second and third nights, they were way too tired to do anything but sleep! It was fun for us to see how well the cousins played together, and to have them entertain each other so the adults could relax too!

However the first night we were in transit to San Diego and ended up staying in a hotel. This is probably one of my favorite memories of the trip, because our son was SO excited about sleeping in a hotel room. We got in late, and he didn't get tucked into bed until after 10pm. But before he fell asleep, as he lay in his enormous queen-sized bed in the dark he shared these thoughts with us:

"I've never lived in a hotel room before." "This is great." "This is a great hotel room." "This is nice." "This is a really cute little town."

We were totally holding in our laughter. He was so serious. We arrived in the dark, so all he knew of "the town" was the hotel lobby, elevator and our room. I guess he is easy to impress! He woke up at 5am the next morning, ready to go, but fortunately my husband was able to convince him to go back to sleep until 7am.

More details on Legoland and Sea World later...

Celebrating

2010-04-19T21:52:00.000-07:00

My women's Bible study has just finished a study on the book of Esther. The end of the book describes in detail the origins and celebration of the Jewish holiday of Purim. As I listened to our speaker, I realized that I actually have a difficult time celebrating. I don't mean organizing or throwing a party or celebratory event. I mean really letting go in my heart and abandoning to celebration. Probably I have been this way my whole life, a little too serious or uptight to "let loose." Even my husband had a hard time pinpointing occasions where I've been able to just enjoy celebrating, free from any other worries or cares. I am much better at being needy, & having all sorts of problems to bring as I faint before the Lord.

I would like to grow in this area, being able to celebrate more freely. I don't think this means that I have to act crazy or in ways that are totally out of my character, but what would it look like for me to celebrate something great that God has done in my life? Without holding onto my fears that something is waiting just beyond the bend that I won't be able to handle? I'd love to hear your ideas on the subject of celebrating, so feel free to share a comment, or better yet, let's get together and have lunch or dessert and talk about it!

We did get a couple of opportunities to practice celebrating this past week. We had our 6th wedding anniversary last Saturday. We celebrated by getting a babysitter to come to our house, feed our son dinner and put him to bed, while we tried something new--birdwatching! (RT & TScoop aren't you proud??) We went on a Bird Walk at the River Center which was actually quite relaxing and fun to stop and be still enough to listen and look at the creatures that are around us all the time.

After that, we headed out for a nice dinner at a crowded steakhouse. (at least the chocolate lava cake was fantastic!)

Another number six to celebrate, is that I'm now 6 months pregnant (at least I think I can safely say that...counting weeks and months gets a little confusing to me!) I am 25 weeks along, and starting to feel my belly getting in the way of many simple manuvers (tying my shoes, bending over to pick up the endless things that my son leaves laying around, etc.) Truthfully I feel so huge compared to when I was 6 mos. pregnant with our son. I do enjoy feeling all the movement that is going on in there though! Here is a photo of me & our growing little one:

How do you celebrate?

Springtime

2010-04-13T20:16:00.000-07:00

Since I've been slacking a little on my blog posts, I thought I'd just post various photos of what our family has been up to this spring. Besides my sister's wedding, obviously Easter was another celebration this spring. We attended an Easter Eggstravaganza in the park held by our church. It was fun because this was the 3rd year in a row that we've attended and I can see such a difference in what our son enjoys & how he enjoys it each year. This is (sadly) the first year that he fully understands the concept that there is chocolate within each of those foil-wrapped eggs, that he gets to eat after he finds them!

We also had a fun time dyeing eggs at home, then having an egg hunt at Grammy's on Easter Day.

Besides that, we've been spending a lot of time in our backyard, trying to make it a place that we will all like to hang out during the hot summer months, when I will be too big and fat to want to go anywhere else! We recently acquired a hand-me-down plastic play structure that is now in our backyard. We hope our son will enjoy many hours acting out scenarios on it as a pirate ship, spaceship, clubhouse, etc.

We also acquired a beautiful fountain that we've decided to put in our backyard, under the windows of our dining area, so we can hear it when the windows are open. It has a bit of an Asian feel to it, so we also decided to create a bit of a "zen" type garden to go around it (work still in progress...)

And then there's the vegetable garden. I broke down and spent $20 at Home Depot purchasing plants, because my seeds seem to be taking SO long, and none of the tomato seeds are doing well. I'm really bummed about that, because I was most looking forward to the heirloom black cherry tomatoes that I can't find in stores! Oh well, store-bought plants will have to do. In the midst of rain downpours earlier this week, we were still able to get all our soil mixed and into the boxes. We got the plants planted and I transferred the first cucumber & squash seeds that I started indoors.

Our son has been quite the "helper" (as you can see) and he proudly planted all the bean seeds himself. Yeay Spring!

Bearing the Ring

2010-03-28T14:29:00.000-07:00

Well, sort of. Yesterday was our youngest sister's wedding, and our son had the privilege of being the ringbearer for the occasion. We practiced a lot & he was very excited about wearing his tuxedo and about the M&Ms he would get after he walked down the aisle. However we were not prepared for the creative way that our son dealt with the pressure of bearing the ring(pillow).

Here he is:

Thank goodness for his cousin, the flowergirl who helped him make it all the way down the aisle! We couldn't believe that he kept his face covered the whole way down, but everyone else thought it was great! I guess it goes to show that when you are 3 years old and wearing a tuxedo, you can pretty much do whatever you want and people would love it.

Sprouting Up

2010-03-25T16:21:00.000-07:00

After browsing my heirloom seed catalog all winter, I finally made some choices and two weeks ago I planted my first vegetable seeds in little peat moss pots. They are like my little babies, I rotate them between different rooms of my house, trying to give them the most heat and light at different times of the day & night. It's crazy, I know, but the thought of harvesting these black cherry tomatoes, yellow pear tomatoes, brandywine tomatoes, Italian red peppers and Taiwanese eggplant all summer just motivates me to do whatever I can to help these little seeds grow.

I'm pretty excited that I have at least two sprouts coming up from each "crop" that I started. The tomatoes have been the fastest to take off, but the peppers and eggplant are moving along too. I have many more seeds to start, but I think the rest can be sown right into the ground in a couple more weeks, when our soil warms up.

But in the meantime, we are busy getting our garden boxes into place. In the fall I started an experimental Square Foot Garden box. I'd been reading about the Square Foot gardening method, and was interested in seeing if it would really work for me, so I tried a 2x4 box. And despite the fact that I put it in a horrible location that received almost no sunlight all fall & winter, it still worked! I'd recommend anyone who wants to get started gardening to check out this method. It makes good use of space, requires little weeding and makes the whole process seem a lot less intimidating.

Anyway, here are the four garden boxes my husband (& son!) built last weekend. I'm expanding from just one 2x4 box, to two 2x4 sq. ft. boxes, and two 4x3 ones. That makes a total of 40 square feet! I hope I'm not being too ambitious, but so far I'm having fun planning and dreaming of summer veggies...

Corned Beef & Cabbage

2010-03-18T15:11:00.000-07:00

Last night I made corned beef, cabbage and potatoes for dinner. I've never prepared an St. Patrick's Day meal, but saw the recipe and thought, why not? I do have some Irish heritage (or so I'm told by my dad). I have no idea what makes corned beef "corned", and I'm sure that it is not the healthiest meal around, (salty AND fatty) but it tasted pretty good! My son LOVED it.

Here is the recipe, just in case any of you feel like trying it for the next Irish event you're invited to. The recipe lists 2 ways to do the beef and the cabbage, I followed the baking method for the beef (very easy!) and the sautee method for the cabbage (also easy). Mmmmm!

Building Birthday Memories

2010-03-14T15:50:00.000-07:00

Yesterday was our son's 3rd birthday. In previous years we just celebrated at home with immediate family. But this year we decided that since he is a little older, actually understands what a birthday party is, and has his own friends to invite, that we could step it up a bit and invite some friends over for a themed party. The theme? Construction work zone!

We were a little worried the night before the party, because our son had been sick pretty much all week, and couldn't even finish a sentence without coughing through it. We knew he didn't feel well, and wondered if he would even enjoy the party. To top it off, it started pouring rain too.

But in the answer to many prayers, we woke up Saturday morning, the sun was shining and our son was feeling better than he had in days. He woke up at 6:30am and didn't stop all day.

We are so thankful, not just to be able to have the party, but to be able to celebrate with friends who have grown to mean so much to us, and to our son. All of the kids were so well behaved and fully participated in all the activities. It was so fun to watch!

Most of all we are grateful to God for giving us 3 years with this wonderful kid. Our son is growing in so many ways, and we are privileged to watch him develop and become the boy that God has created him to be. We look forward to all of the joys, accomplishments and challenges of the year to come. Happy 3rd birthday, son.
Tita made me a toolbox birthday cake!

Building a birdhouse

Painting the "house" that Papa built out of boxes.

Digging into dessert!

One Year Ago

2010-02-26T15:02:00.000-08:00

Most of you are aware of the journey that our family went through from Fall 2008- Spring 2009. If not, I'll just briefly summarize that I had a molar pregnancy which developed into a form of placental cancer that spread to my lungs. It required two surgeries and 5 months of chemotherapy to get rid of it. Though the cancer is a highly treatable one, and the chemo I took wasn't as intense as many other brave cancer fighters face, it was still a very scary and difficult time for us.

So to all of you who stood by our sides and lifted us up in your prayers during that time, I just want to shout out and ask you to celebrate with us that I have been cancer-free for exactly one year today (well, hard to know exactly when that last cell disappeared...). But one year ago today, I received that first, long-awaited negative blood test. HOORAY!!

And, if that isn't enough of a reason to celebrate...I'll give you one more...

...I'd like to introduce to you to our second child. This baby is growing steadily, sustained in my healthy placenta for about 109 days now. We are completely overwhelmed by the grace of God in so preciously giving another child to us. It still feels scary to me to announce this and post it on our blog, but slowly it is sinking in that there is great reason to celebrate and I don't want to miss out on the joy of it all because I am too scared.

So, if you've seen me lately and wondered if I've been eating too many Twinkies and stopped working out altogether...there is another reason for the belly bulge. August 2nd is our due date. Please continue to pray for the health and safety of this pregnancy, and that we would be able to walk in faith, not fear, of what the future holds.

My Garden Helper

2010-02-18T16:50:00.000-08:00

This week has brought much needed sunshine to my soul. I've been stuck under a bit of a cloud for the past several weeks. I mean this literally and also figuratively. We have had an incredibly rainy January & February (so far) and lots of cloudy, gray days. I think I must have Seasonal Affect Disorder to some extent, because when I don't see the sun much, everything in my world seems to be a little less satisfying. Part of this may also have to do with the fact that this wet and cold weather has brought a lot of unwanted germs, colds and allergies into our household. Between all 3 of us, I think we've had 5-6 colds, one sinus infection and a brand new inhaler for my son. All of our moods have been affected, and I think I've been one crabby mom.

But back to the garden. This week, praise God, we've had sunshine and nice temperatures, so that we can spend time outside. I actually think I can feel the germs drying up in the sunlight. Our yard, which has been horribly neglected, was calling my name today. (Somehow all the weeds LOVE the rain and cold weather).

As I sat next to my son in the yard this afternoon, pulling weeds, I was just amazed at how blessed we are. I have a healthy, happy child, and a warm, comfortable home. I felt such awe, as I just sat, discussing roots and how plants grow with my almost-3 year old. Awe that he is so happy and content to hang out with me (pulling weeds!) and amazed that he understands so much, and is able to carry on such meaningful conversation with me. He's actually become very effective at pulling weeds, getting the roots and everything! I'm thankful all over again that God has allowed me to be a mom, and even one that gets to stay at home each day and soak in the beauty of His creation. I definitely don't do this enough.

I was so moved, I had to snap a couple of photos of my industrious little helper.

What concentration!

Happy Birthday in the Snow

2010-01-18T20:27:00.001-08:00

To celebrate my husband's birthday this year, we had a small family celebration on Friday evening. Then on Saturday morning, we headed up to our family's cabin for a weekend in the snow with our good friends. Usually our families go camping together in the summer, but since they're moving to Colorado in May, we decided that we needed to have a winter adventure instead this year.

It was quite an adventure, indeed! We arrived on a sunny, clear Saturday afternoon and left on Monday in the middle of a snowstorm! The cabin is only accessible by snowmobile in the winter (as the roads aren't cleared), so we made part of our return journey on snowmobiles, then got into our cars that had 8 inches of snow on them. Our hubbies had the chains ready to go and we slowly made our way down the mountain. Seriously these guys earned their stripes today. We drove through snow, hail, sleet, rain, fog, and even thunder and lightning on our way home. And this is only a 65 mile journey! Unfortunately our car didn't fare so well. We lost the driver's side windshield wiper (very inconvenient) and one of our tire cables as well. But my husband is such a calm and collected person, he handled it with so much grace & strength.

Besides the challenging journey home, the time we spent up at the cabin was so relaxing and fun! The kids all loved being in the snow. Saturday, of course, was a beautiful day to play out in the snow. On Sunday, we trekked out in our snowshoes and made our own sled runs. The older kids in particular really enjoyed the sledding while the two youngest ones were mostly preoccupied with eating the snow. Riding the snowmobiles was also a highlight for the kids (and adults!).

The best part for me was coming in from being wet and cold to a nice warm cabin, and getting into comfy clothes to eat a warm meal and have a cup of tea! I really enjoyed the time we had to just relax, visit and play games together (especially after the kids were all in bed!).

Here are some photos from our snow weekend:

This is what the deck looked like when we left this morning.

My son face-plants into the snow for a snack.

Wee! Sledding with Papa is fun!

Getting the hang of the snowshoes...

We made it! King of the mountain!

Happy Birthday to my wonderful husband and an amazing father.

Need an Auto Mechanic?

2010-01-13T13:04:00.001-08:00

(I swear this was not a posed shot)

Our New Year's Weekend

2010-01-05T21:47:00.000-08:00

Where do I start? We had a crazy, busy New Year's weekend, full of friends and family in Southern California. The holidays tend to bring everyone from all over the globe to the greater LA area, so of course we had to meet up with people that we only see once every 2-3 years!

Such as Moni, my Ecuadorian friend & former roommate

In addition, we got to visit a couple of cool places while we were in town. Like...
...The Tournament of Roses Parade in Pasadena!

We had a great opportunity to tag along with Tita Tiff & her family to the Rose Parade. It was the first time for anyone in our family to go. Tiff & her family attend a church that happens to be right on Colorado Blvd, and they let their congregants (& friends) come on over, set up chairs, tables, bring food, etc. and watch the parade. So we had seats that we neither had to pay $50-60 for nor had to camp out all night in the cold for. We did have to wake up a little earlier than normal, to get to my friends' house, where we walked about 20 min. to get to her church by 8am. From there all we had to do was drink tea, eat snacks and watch the show unfold. For those of you who have never been, it truly is a different experience being there in person. You can smell the flowers on the float, and really appreciate the grandness of it all. The crowds & energy just aren't captured on TV. We really enjoyed the morning. Tiff and her family are involved with Scouting and she had worked on the Scout float which won a National Trophy & looked great! We were so proud to cheer with her!

And of course, no trip to my in-laws would be complete without lots of good Chinese food. After the parade, we all went out to eat dim sum & noodles (good luck for the New Year, you know). I think I seriously gained 5 pounds over the weekend!

We visited Universal Studios Citywalk later on that day, and met up with two of my husband's best friends from his childhood. It was fun to see them, and they totally doted on our son (which he of course, ate right up!) Our son had his first arcade experience there too!

On Jan. 2, we went to the Noah's Ark exhibit at the Skirball Cultural Center. It was really neat! The animals are all made out of recycled materials, and it was designed with kids in mind!
It's totally hands-on, they can touch everything, and there are so many places to crawl in and out of, and adorable animals hanging in and off of everywhere. The crawlways were definitely NOT made for adult sizes (as I found out the hard way), but our son loved it!

I would recommend this to any families who happen to be in the LA area and are looking for something fun to do.

That evening we got another chance to visit with "old" friends (not that we're old, we've just known each other a long time!). Another former roommate of mine (did you know that I had at least 16 different roommates before I got married?) hosted us at her apt and fed us Peruvian food. We met children of dear friends who we'd only seen in pictures before (and they're all toddlers now!) It was fun to watch the kids all tear the place apart!

Whew! Sunday evening we arrived back at home. Thankfully this week we've been taking it slow, resting and recuperating from our crazy new year celebration. Happy 2010 everyone! Gong Xi Fa Cai!

Happy Holidays

2009-12-28T19:57:00.001-08:00

So I think I set a new record for how many days/weeks I've neglected this blog. Upon arriving home from Hawaii on Dec. 4, my world quickly became a whirlwind of Christmas preparations and festivities. I'm only now beginning to surface, only to turn around and leave town this Thursday for New Year's weekend. But here's a quick recap of the highlights of this month:

Our son (in red) performing in his first Christmas program at church (I think he managed to clap a few times with the group). But he did stay on stage the whole time...

Lots of family dinners and get-togethers, we really spread these out over the whole month!

Giving homemade gifts to family & friends: jam, jelly, baklava, & superhero capes

Decorating our tree, making a birthday cake for Jesus and celebrating His birth with our son.

Thank You God for sending Jesus to us. You knew how much we needed Him.

Last Day???

2009-12-03T22:11:00.001-08:00

Before I finish out our travel journal today, I wanted to address the issue of why our adorable toddler is nowhere to be found in any of the photos (in case any of you were wondering...).

Well, it's not because we didn't want him in any of the photos, it's because he's not here. My parents graciously agreed to take care of him while we went on this trip. This is a big deal for all of us, as they've never had him this long before, and we've never been separated from him for more than 2 nights. We owe a debt of gratitude to them for all the wonderful care he's receiving while we're gone. (Let's face it: he's having a great time with them, getting lots of attention and spoiled rotten!) But seriously, it wasn't a decision we made lightly to go on this trip without our son. We know that we would've had a fantastic time with him here as well. But it has been such a gift to our marriage to have this time together, just the two of us, away from the huge responsibility of parenting. Uninterrupted conversations, no nap or bedtime schedules to follow, and time to just play together in God's beauty. As you can tell, we've enjoyed it. But, I'm also really excited to get to see my son tomorrow night. So THANK YOU, Grammy & Popo!!!

And on to our last day in Kaua'i...

We spent a lazy, leisurely morning around the resort. We just didn't want to rush anything but just enjoy each moment. Today's agenda held nothing particular to do, except some souvenir shopping, so around 11am we headed over to the Kalapaki Beach Hut for an early lunch--teriyaki burgers!

Then we drove around and did a little shopping, and on the way to return our snorkel gear, decided to drive down a road that led to a place called Kipu Falls. Kipu Falls is one of these local "secrets", that our very cool guidebook (much to the locals' chagrin, I'm sure) reveals. It did feel kind of adventurous to be winding along this unmarked path, through someone's sugarcane field towards the waterfall. Of course, it wasn't that secretive when we arrived, since there were several other tourists there too!

But the cool thing about Kipu Falls is that the falls drop into a very deep pool, and lots of people go swimming there. There is even a ladder bolted into the side of one of the cliffs that you can climb up to a long rope swing in a tree. After 10 minutes of watching other people jump in and swing out, my husband decided that he'd like to try too. (I was a dutiful wife and watched/took photos). It actually looked like a lot of fun, but I didn't have a swimsuit, and am a bit of a wimp for cold water.

Here's the video footage of my husband's first try on the rope swing:
(you can forward the clip through the first 30 seconds)

With all courage and valor behind us, we hiked back to the car, drove down to Po'ipu, shopped a little, ate some local sorbetto and then headed back to Lihu'e for dinner. We ate a Kaua'i Pasta (thanks again, Julie, for a great recommendation). The wait for our food was a little long, but the food was definitely worth it. I'm not sure I can describe what I ate, but here's a try: raviolis stuffed with chicken, sun-dried tomato & gorgonzola cheese. This was topped with a warm spinach salad, with tomatoes, and balsalmic vinegarette-soaked croutons. This was all drizzled with a basil blanc buerre sauce. I may have left something out, but wow, it was good! My husband was also equally thrilled with his linguine and clams, and his coconut shrimp bisque. A great final dinner!

So, now we're sitting here in our hotel room. I am obviously procrastinating from the great task of **sigh** packing. (But I have to journal all of this tonight, right?) I'd better go and help my husband, our flight leaves in the morning. Maybe we'll have time for one more stroll along the beach before we turn in for the night. We're leaving with fond memories, but I have the feeling that we'll be back to Kaua'i again someday.

Beautiful Kaua'i

2009-12-02T22:55:00.000-08:00

Today we woke up early (actually set the alarm for 7am), ate breakfast and hit the road to drive up to the North Shore. We heard that the surf was low (bad for surfers, but good for snorkeling) and there was not a cloud in the sky. A beautiful day for hiking the Na Pali coast and swimming & snorkeling at the beach. After an hour & a half drive, we reached the end of the road (literally, there is no road through the Na Pali coast, it can only be crossed by foot). We strapped on our hiking boots and took off.

The Kalalau Trail covers 11 miles, but most people only trek out the first 2 miles to the Hanakapi'ai Beach and then head back. Anything past that point requires a permit and a lot more time and energy than we had to give. (Someday it would be so cool to pack the trail, and camp along the way, but that day was not today!) The trail was not too bad (we are, after all, experienced hikers!) but it was pretty muddy and slippery in places. The hardest part was remembering to look up and enjoy the views, because I was so focused on looking at the ground to find my footing.

The views were amazing. The trail is all along the edge of these cliffs that just rise up out of the ocean. The water is that beautiful teal-blue color and you can see straight through it to the ocean floor. It was a great hike! We ate our PB&J sandwiches on Hanakapi'ai Beach, but swimming was strongly discouraged there because of the current being dangerous. So we hiked back and went to Ke'e beach, which was at the trailhead.

Unfortunately, the waves were a little higher by the time we got to the beach, and the lifeguard kept yelling at people to not get too far out with snorkeling. The water was fairly choppy, and while we did get to see some cool fish along the reef there, it wasn't the most profitable snorkeling experience. After hiking 4 miles however, I was more than content to just lay on the sand like a beached whale. Aahhh...

Later in the afternoon, we drove back to our hotel, with not a lot of time to spare, as we had reservations at the famous Beach House restaurant. The dinner was actually a gift to us from my husband's boss, which was so nice. We got a table with an ocean view, and we got to watch the sun sink down into the Pacific. (How romantic!) And the food was just as good as the view. Mmmm! We totally took advantage of the local fresh fish. We had ceviche (in citrus & passion fruit juices) for our appetizer, and for dinner my husband had the Black Truffle-crusted monchong & grilled tiger prawns. I ate the macadamia nut crusted mahi-mahi. My fish was served with a citrus aka-miso buerre blanc, and it was SO good! I actually found their recipe on food network here. Maybe someday I'll try it at home! (not that it will be anywhere near as tasty...)

After dinner we sat outside the restaurant, watched the waves come in and just chatted. It was a wonderful evening. Actually, it was the perfect ending to a beautiful day.

The View From Above

2009-12-02T22:54:00.000-08:00

Yesterday morning was more laid-back in that we actually hung out around our resort for most of the day. The weather was gorgeous so we went for a run down the harbor next to our hotel. After that we went swimming and relaxed by the pool. It was very nice to just stay put and not have somewhere to go.

At 1pm, we did have an appointment to keep, however. With a helicopter. When discussing which activities we would be doing on the island and realizing that money would be a limiting factor, I asked my husband if he could only pick one major excursion, what it would be. Without hesitating, he replied, “A helicopter ride.” Truthfully, my husband doesn’t ask for much, so when I saw how much he wanted to do this, we made the decision.

We went with the company, Blue Hawaiian, and we weren’t disappointed at all. I was a little nervous about getting motion sick, but our pilot was great (and I’m sure it helped that the weather was pretty clear) and it was a smooth flight. We got to sit in the front and take in all of the fantastic views. (our hotel from the air)

Remember how I said that when we looked over Waimea Canyon, I wanted to be a bird? Well, this is about as close as I think I could get (besides hang-gliding, perhaps). It was amazing to descend down into the deep valleys, and see “hidden” waterfalls, accessible only by foot or air.We flew along the Na Pali coast (also only accessible by foot, air or water), which was breathtaking. Our pilot even got us into the crater of Mt. Wai’ale’ale, which used to be the volcano that created this island. The top of Wai’ale’ale is reputed to be the wettest place on earth, 428 inches of rain per year. The whole helicopter ride was just unforgettable. I wonder how difficult it is to learn how to drive one of those??

After we got our land legs back, we treated ourselves to some ice cream treats and did a little shopping. For dinner, we decided to try out a little saimin restaurant. Saimin is a local dish, basically a noodle soup which local Chinese say comes from Japan, and local Japanese say comes from China. Who knows? But since we like both Chinese & Japanese noodles, we figured we couldn’t go wrong. It was cheap, hot food, with a lot of local atmosphere. Unfortunately, we weren’t overly impressed. The broth was too salty and it didn’t have enough veggies (in my opinion). After dinner, we walked around Kmart, which was the only place we could find open to walk around. They had a decent Hawaiian souvenir section and some Hawaiian children’s books I enjoyed looking at.

And there passes another day in Kaua’i… the week is going by fast!

Waimea Canyon & A Lu'au

2009-11-30T23:28:00.001-08:00

(disclaimer to any readers: lots of travel details. I wrote this more for my benefit of not forgetting than to communicate with you. Hope it's not too boring!)

Today we drove out to the western side of the island, where Waimea Canyon is located. We got a later start than we’d wanted and we knew we’d have to head back in time to make our lu’au at 5pm, so our time there was limited. This meant we wouldn’t get to do any real hiking in the canyon, which was too bad, but fortunately we could drive all along the ridge and still see some amazing views.

Waimea Canyon is on the side of Kaua’I that receives less rainfall (apparently the mountain in the middle of the island “takes” all the rain before it gets there) which we felt, with no clouds, bright sun, and dry & windy air. We took the road ten miles up and stopped at several lookout points. The main lookout point had great views of the canyon & Waipo’o Falls. As we gazed over the canyon that was carved out of layers of hardened lava by rivers, all I could think was that I wished I was a bird, so I could fly over and through such beauty. It is called the “Grand Canyon of the Pacific”, and I can see why. It does bear some resemblance, although it’s nowhere near as large as the one in Arizona.The red, clay-like dirt is so striking against all of the other colors in the canyon.

We followed the road all the way to the end (20 miles in & over 2,500’ high) to the Pu’u o Kila lookout. This vantage point allowed us to see down the other side of the ridge, to the north side of the island, which was the beautiful Kalalau Valley and the Na Pali coastline. It was gorgeous. We ate our picnic lunch up there, then had to turn around and head home.

Not without stopping at Jo-Jo’s shaved ice stand, though! This establishment was recommended in our guide book, and since we haven’t had authentic Hawaiian shaved ice yet, we were obligated to check it out. Mmmm. My husband had the banana split flavored shaved ice, and I had the tropical Shaved Ice. At home, shaved ice is simply ice with syrup over it. Here they put a scoop of ice cream on the bottom, and sometimes put extra things up on top too.

We had a quick turnaround at our hotel, to change clothes and we were off again to the Smith’s Tropical Paradise for our lu’au experience. Yes, it was completely tourist-y, but something we had to do. We spent the first 45 min. just walking around the grounds, which includes some amazing gardens, fruit trees, and even a Polynesian & a Filipino village (!) Then we watched the Imu ceremony, where they unearth the pig that’s been cooking in the ground all day. After that we sat down to eat our dinner, which was a huge buffet of classic island fare. Teriyaki beef, chicken adobo, lomi-lomi salmon w/poi, shredded kalua pig, macaroni salad, Hawaiian sweet potato (taro), and Chinese fried rice.

During dinner we were entertained by some traditional Hawaiian music, and there was even a hula dancer teaching kids to do the hukilau hula dance. After dinner we went to the outdoor theater for the “real show.” The program included an hour & 15 min. of cultural dancing representing the people of Hawaii. There was even a “volcano” that erupted and the fire goddess, Pe’le, threw a big fireball out of it! It was definitely an entertaining show, but my husband and I are a little skeptical about how authentic many of the dances were.

We fell into bed as soon as we got home. All in all, this was a very fun-filled day!

Visiting the South Shore

2009-11-29T20:44:00.000-08:00

Here we are, coming to the end of Day 2 in Kaua'i. We are beat. Strange to feel tired when we slept in and are supposed to be on vacation, "relaxing." It's only 6:30pm Hawaii time, and I think we'll be staying in our room for the rest of the night.

After breakfast in our room & a morning workout in the fitness room, we headed out for the South Shore, which is supposed to be the sunniest place on Kaua'i. I guess it was a good thing we went there, because it was raining everywhere else today. Our main goal for the day was: snorkeling!

Before arriving at the snorkel destination (Po'ipu Beach), we took a detour by the Spouting Horn. This is a blowhole, where the waves go under a lava shelf, and water spouts out of this hole, making kind of a hollow moaning sound. For those of you who have been to La Bufadora near Ensenada, Mexico, this is a similar phenomena (although La Bufadora is about 10 times a big as what we saw today).

After that excitement, we rented some snorkel gear for the week and hit the beach. Unfortunately, it was pretty cloudy and windy at the beach, and the last thing I wanted to do was to get into the water! My husband bravely went in first (I wanted to make sure there were enough fish to make it worth my effort), and I eventually followed. There were lots of tropical fish, and it's always so cool to get in there with them and swim around. They came right up to us (hoping for fish food, I'm sure). After 30 mins, we decided to get out--we were cold! All those notions of warm, tropical Hawaiian waters were not realized today! Brrrrr! We huddled up on our mats & towels to get warm. Then we watched a Hawaiian Monk Seal literally hop (waddle?) up out of the water and lay down on the sand about 200 feet from where we were laying. I guess they like to sunbathe on Po'ipu Beach too!

When we finally couldn't take the goosebumps anymore, we changed clothes and went for my second goal of the day: eating a Puka Dog. Our friend Julie was the first to mention this place to us, and since then we've heard it reviewed by others (Anthony Bourdain, of the Travel channel, even visited this place!). Imagine a polish sausage wrapped in a hawaiian sweet bread roll, then injected with garlic lemon sauce, your choice of fruit relish and your choice of mustard. (We chose the mango relish and the lilikoi mustard.) It sounds kind of stomach-turning but it really was good!

Needing to walk the Puka Dog off, we drove up to Old Koloa Town, the major port of entry to Kaua'i in the 1800's and the birthplace of the sugar industry in Hawai'i. The town has carefully preserved many of the historical buildings, and they are used today (mostly as tourist shops). It had a lot of charm, and we enjoyed walking around. There was also a nice monument built to honor all of the ethnic groups who contributed to the sugar industry, many of them Asian immigrants.

'Nuff said! I'm going to go lay down and relax!!!

Aloha From Kaua'i

2009-11-28T23:50:00.000-08:00

So we've been here a little over 24 hours, and just so I don't forget things, I thought I'd start my blogging now. We spent most of today sleeping, taking care of necessities (like buying groceries and snorkel gear) and driving around the towns of Lihu'e & Kapa'a & getting acquainted with the lay of the land (and our cool blue rental car).

We also squeezed in a stop to a couple of "drive up" waterfalls: Wailua and 'Opaeka'a Falls. They were beautiful waterfalls, but the views would've been even more amazing if we could've gotten closer to them. Supposedly there is a trail that locals take to the bottom of Wailua Falls, but since the government has a huge fence with lots of signs saying "Danger, Do Not Pass," we chickened out and just shot photos from the roadside view.

Our hotel is on Kalapaki Beach and the view from our room is of a small bay. Here it is:
We like it here. It's very comfortable and centrally located. It's kind of a long walk from our room to the parking lot, but the way that we're eating, we can use the exercise...

Speaking of eating, probably the highlight of the day for me was breakfast. We went to the Tip Top Cafe, which is a lesser-known to tourist spot. Mostly locals (it seemed) were eating there, which is always exciting to me. Many people were speaking Tagalog there, so my husband was feeling right at home. There is such ethnic diversity here, and we find ourselves trying to figure out what ethnicities people are, but giving up because we can't tell. The culture seems to be an interesting fusion of different Pacific Island, Asian, and European traditions. Here's an example: for breakfast, we ate oxtail soup and banana pancakes with homemade guava-pineapple jam. Really. It was all delicious.

For dinner, we experienced a little more consistency at a Japanese restaurant and ate sushi rolls and nabeyaki (seafood noodle soup) Mmmmmm!

So you can see what I'm most excited about on this trip: the food. Of course it didn't help that we watched Julie and Julia on the plane on the way over here. That got me all pumped on both food and blogging. Sorry. I'll try to write about other things tomorrow.

Fall in Napa

2009-11-23T15:02:00.001-08:00

It's taken me awhile to get to this post, but I wanted to share some photos from my latest getaway, up to Napa with my two of my longest and dearest friends. Since we all live far away from each other, we make it a point to pick one weekend out of the year to get together, sans husband and children. It's great! I always look forward to this time of being with friends who I've shared so much history with (one goes all the way back to preschool with me, and the other to elementary school). They have been with me through thick and thin, and I appreciate them SO much.

Wine country was absolutely beautiful the weekend we were there. We stayed in Calistoga, and the vineyards were like a sea of gold. The trees were also brilliant shades of yellow and red. I actually went for an early morning run through the vineyards and felt like I was in a movie or something, so picturesque!

We enjoyed wine tasting at a couple of vineyards, the first being Chateau Montelena (of the famous "Judgement of Paris" wine competition depicted in the movie, Bottle Shock). Truthfully there are so many wineries in this area, it is overwhelming to try and pick which one to go to. And we aren't the biggest wine connoisseurs to begin with, so we just took a couple of recommendations. The grounds at Chateau Montelena were beautiful, so we ate our picnic lunch there, after we finished our wine tasting. The wine was good, but a little out of our price range (one of the wines we tasted was a $135 bottle!), so we didn't buy any there. We spent a couple of hours just eating, chatting and enjoying the scenery.

Later we went to Rombauer, which also had beautiful grounds. We ended up buying a bottle of Zinfandel there, and drank it later that evening in our hotel room with dark chocolate cake and ice cream! We also treated ourselves to a nice dinner at the Calistoga Inn, which I would highly recommend. hmmm... what else did we do? We all forgot our swimsuits so we didn't get to take advantage of the mineral water pool at our hotel. And we bypassed on the famous Calistoga mud baths as well. That was OK, because the good food, fall colors, and fellowship with good friends was enough to make it an unforgettable weekend.

Victory!

2009-11-09T19:51:00.001-08:00

Thank you God, family and friends! I'm so grateful and thankful to have had a good race yesterday. My hubby, my dad & I all finished together, with a strong push over the finish line. We had so many people cheering us on and celebrating with us. To Him be the glory!