Parties and Celebrations-Part 3

We had dinner at Red Robin on the day of Lauryn's birthday with some friends.

Then she had her real party with friends and family at Build-A-Bear. We postponed her party until September so my parents could be a part of it. It was the first time we were able to celebrate her birthday with her PoPo and GongGong. We're so glad we waited!

PoPo and GongGong even got to see cousin Riley.

Whew! That was a lot of parties!

Parties and Celebrations-Part 2

Family friend's wedding at a winery in Napa. Gorgeous! It was hotter than Africa that day. Yo was the maid of honor.Piper's 4th Birthday at Pump It Up. Really cool CupCakes.

Marissa's 7th Arts & Crafts Birthday

John's birthday was at Buca di Beppo's in Palo Alto. It's definitely a good place to go with a lot of people. Sorry I didn't really have a chance to catch any pictures at dinner, but afterwards some of us got ice cream around the corner.

Parties and Celebrations-Part 1

I thought it more logical to lump all the birthday parties and celebrations together but there are too many.

First was Ashlyn's 6th Birthday at the ice-rink.

Father's Day

Day Camp's Closing Ceremony

Lauryn is holding up the poster of Woman in the story of Creation.

Daniel and Nathan's 1st Birthday Swim Party

John and my 8th wedding anniversary dinner at Crustacean. Yummy crab and garlic noodles! Then followed up the next day by dinner at Thanh Long with pretty much the same meal. Spicy eggplant was the best! And my favorite was the salt and pepper calamari. Oh my! I could eat that for days!

Our anniversary celebration with the kids at Benihana.

My cousin Christine's 30th Birthday. Lauryn and her cousins did a puppet show.

Catch-Up Post Part 2 - On to the Fall

Then, the next thing you know, the girls started back to school! My little one too! I cried so hard the day I dropped my Sydney off at preschool. Teacher Kathy hugged me and told me I'll be fine and so will Sydney. She was right. Now I LOVE my 4 hours of freedom every morning! It's BLISS!
We didn't have anything close to the fires in LA, but there was a day we had some big fire and the sun looked like this at 8AM.
In September, my parents came down to visit for 2 weeks. They're thinking about moving down from Seattle next year when my mom can retire. If her health holds up, she might work another year, so we'll wait and see if we have automatically free babysitting by this time next year.In mid October, Lauryn's tooth started wriggling. You can see the adult tooth already growing in behind the loose tooth. Very shark-ish. This past Sunday, 11/12, after eating a really hard ham and cheese sandwich from Baguette at Stanford, her tooth came out (well, with a little tug from her dad). And she promptly placed it under her pillow and the tooth fairy dutifully obliged that night with a nice $5 bill - cuz (s)he probably didn't have anything smaller. How many more teeth do kids have to lose?? I'm going to be out a lot of cash this year.

Catch-Up Post - Summer

I guess it takes an old friend in New York to IM and ask why haven't you blogged in 5 months and what is going on with your family in order for me to get myself into the mindset of blogging. It's been so long since the last post that I just need to do a catch-up so I don't feel so bad. I basically missed the whole summer and pretty much most of the fall. Yikes!

So hang on folks! This will be a bumpy ride!

Lauryn finished Kindergarten and had an end-of-the-year BBQ at the park by our house. That's the one really nice thing about your neighborhood school....it's just so darn close!

Lauryn didn't get to rest for long. The very next Monday, she started going to Daycamp at our church. John got a little nostalgic thinking about when he directed Daycamp many, many, many moons ago. We enjoyed the USS Hornet Aircraft carrier field trip. Besides arts and crafts, and 1 day of woodworking, Lauryn also took the hair-styling workshop and came home one day with this:
Our Fourth of July BBQ was a lot of fun b/c John got a Wii. Lauryn got really good at the boxing game. Her little arms just go, go, go! Here's Auntie Jen bowling. It's always a crowd pleaser. And weird thing was that John didn't even have to wait in line or go really early. He just walked into Toys 'R Us one day and they had it!

Here are the girls enjoying the swing (one pushing, one riding) at our annual church picnic.

We had our TLC Charities garage sale in August. It's a non-profit my auntie Rose started to help underprivileged kids and single moms. So thanks to everyone who donated items for the sale! We had a GREAT turnout. People came non-stop all day long! Lauryn had a lemonade stand. (The lemonade wasn't very appealing at 9AM, so we got her some bagels to give away as a "bonus" and then sales soared!)We went to the County Fair this year and saw Hi-5 live! That was a blast! Even for most of the adults! They had 2 new people we didn't know, but the songs were the same.On hot days during the summer, the girls really enjoyed this little hopscotch sprayer.

This year's cherry crop

Each year we get 1, maybe 2 cherries from our cherry tree. Here's the prized cherry from this year.

Our cherry trees were near death due to neglect during our remodel, but once we moved back home I have been trying to save them. And after the second year back we started getting fruit again....although definitely not in abundance.

So throughout the spring Lauryn and I would go outside and check on our cherry. We were very careful not to bump the tree in case we knocked it off before it was ripe. Lauryn was soooo waiting for the day she could pick the cherry....which was coming soon after this picture was taken.

Well, the cherry got picked inadvertently by our visiting friend's daughter and Lauryn was so sad. But I carefully cut the lone cherry into 6 tiny slices to share with our friends, and we all savored the fruit of our labor.

AHHHHHHHH!!!!!!!

That's all I have to say about that.

Budding Actresses?

Uh, not likely.

At the end of the school year, Lauryn's teacher asked me if Lauryn would be interested in helping out her friends who were shooting a promotional video for APA Five which is a nonprofit organization for Asian Pacific Americans. At first she said no, but then changed her mind. Ashlyn happened to be over on the day of the taping, so they decided to do it together.

All they had to do was to repeat a couple of short phrases, but boy they sounded like they were in sunday school saying their memory verse....stiff as a board. But they had each other. =)

Christine and I told them not to feel bad if they couldn't use any of the footage they shot, and that we wouldn't be offended.

Art & Wine Festival

We always enjoy the annual Art and Wine Festival in Foster City. The weather always seems to be perfect all weekend. And this year I wised up and bought tickets early for half price instead of getting gouged at the fair.

This was Sydney's favorite ride. It's this swing that goes around in circles. She cried every time it was over.

Lauryn's favorite ride turned out the be this one that makes you feel like you're flying.

Another fun one was the "Jumbo" ride.

Alas, the Dinosaur roller coaster that we liked from last year seemed to be on it's last legs. The poor operator had to push the first car over the hump in order for it to clear it. If he didn't push hard enough, it would slide backwards down the coaster. And no one could sit in the first car (which is the best seat) cuz then he wouldn't be able to push it to start. And he'd have to push it each time it came around to the big hump. That poor man was sweating so much!

We all piled into the train with our friends and took up the whole ride.

Aside from the rides, we won a free guest pass to our local PJCC, a lip balm, a frisbee, and got some free vitamins and sample lip glosses.

But the best part was the roasted corn on the cob dipped in butter. YUM!