dinosaur!

Yesterday, while waiting for class to begin Rhys and I sat in the car going over ABCs. After a while he got bored and picked up a notebook and pen and began to write these very heartfelt Rs. They are the most amazing Rs (and I'm not just saying so because I'm his mom) with these crazy long legs. I had him finish off with an h, y, and s, before he turned the page to make more long legged Rs. The last R he made came out backwards, and just as I was wondering if he knew this he immediately began turning the R into a dinosaur! I was trully blown away. He completed the drawing with the inclusion of a butt. He giggled as he drew it and laughingly told me, "Mommy, look... a butt!"

Dinner Tonight

Tonight, the kids were getting hungry and I was not in the mood to cook. At a loss, I thought I'd take another stab at Heather's cooking without a recipe!

Rhys making a suggestion of his own!

I took some Italian sausages freed them from their casing, sauteed with chopped carrots and celery until vegetables were cooked through, tossed them ontop of linguine and doused with a mix of soy sauce, and sesame oil. All in all a very quick and simple meal and as an added plus the kids at it up!

What Came in the Post Today?

Ta da! Here's the Save the Dates I designed for cousin Katey & Jeb.
We got ours today.

Love, love, love

Don't you just love this picture of my nephew and niece?

moving things around

On the suggestion of the Design Diva I've repositioned the dining table. Caro I think it might be a bit tight once the buffet cabinets eventually go in. What do you think?

Tooth No. 4 or is it No. 6?

Another baby tooth bites the dust. Boy the tooth fairy's purse is getting lighter at $10 a pop (the rate of inflation)! Henry's latest tooth finally fell out early this morning right before the bell rang as he was walking to class. We've been waiting all weekend for it to drop! He very proudly showed me his ever increasing gaps when I picked him up from school today.


Meanwhile on the other side of the room...

Farmstand

Last night Mary, Caroline and I went out to dinner at Farmstand in honor of Mary's belated birthday. It was a beautiful but stormy night and the place was packed! It's a lovely little place and we even got a photo with the chef. He was very warm and jovial. It turns out that the producers of Hells Kitchen had been in to discuss with them filming on premises. Its easy to see why they would want to film here. The place is very inviting and the food is an amazing mix of Italian, Mediterranean, Russian, Moroccan, and Spanish. Needless to add it was a mind boggling experience!


We capped the night off with more conversation at Caroline's house. There as the storm raged on and off outside we began to scare each other with stories of the supernatural, of ghosts and alien beings disguised as angels (jk!).


Shhh! Here's a photo of sweet Lil fast asleep. Good night.

Yes, It's True

I've been very neglectful of the blog in the last week or so. It being January it's been soul searching time. A time to reflect on resolutions and new goals. (But more on that later...)

Over the weekend when not working on projects we managed to give the boys a haircut (ok Kenny gave them their haircuts while I took snaps), and went on another daytrip to the Science Museum and explored Little Tokyo.

Here are our little mountain climbers!




Last week Henry had his Reconciliation. It went off very well, almost without a hitch. When he returned to his seat the first thing he said was "It wasn't so bad!"



Katey and Jeb's Save the Dates are out of my hands and on their way up to Northern California. They should hopefully arrive safely on Thursday. I was really careful in packaging even throwing in a nice (gasp) plastic bag in case they get wet with all the mini showers that we're experiencing this week.

A is for apples!

foodie

I've been enjoying Heather's posts a lot, and was inspired by her latest entry on preparing foods without a recipe. So... this morning I had a little time and some potatoes I wanted to finish up and decided to do something I learned a while back from Martha Stewart. I washed and cut the potatoes in half lengthwise, patted with some olive oil and a smattering of salt and white pepper. Cooked at 450 for 50 minutes. When they were done the tops were toasty brown and looked really tasty. I then decided to make a roasted potato salad with a curry mayo dressing.

Once cooled I cut the potatoes into cubes leaving the skins on for texture and added color. Mixing up the mayo with the curry I didn't even measure I just tasted for flavor and made sure to use only enough mayo to cover the potatoes. The mayo combined with just the curry powder itself didn't give it enough umph, so I added a little spoonful of dijon mustard. That seemed to do the trick. I then mixed the cubed roasted potatoes with the dressing. It was good, but I once I took a few bites I immediately imagined how good it would taste with inclusion of chicken and bits of apples and grapes. I'll need to try it again with aforementioned ingredients!

Abigail has a Birthday Party

Sunday morning. Still in bed. I'm thinking of the day ahead and getting a little anxious. I need to squeeze in a couple of projects; one by Tues., and the other by the end of the week. I'm really excited because one of them is a save the date for Katey and Jeb. I'm really pleased with the way it's turning out and hope to post images of it once it's been mailed. Then it'll be onto the bridal shower invite and wedding invitation!


Yesterday, we spent much of the day at my cousin Abigail's birthday party. She turned 2. It was really fun to watch her, it's honestly the first time I've seen her so happy and animated. She was really excited and smiled so much! Andrew, Henry, Eva, Ethan, Rhys and Abigail had a joyous time jumping about the bouncer, so much so that they only left it to quickly stuff some food in their mouths and for cake and pinata.


Ben and Jamie arrived with Dominic and Alyssa just in time for cake. They were a bit late because they were coming from another birthday party. Another that was also postponed a week due to the storms last weekend.


We had a wonderful time catching up with everyone, especially my not so young cousins. Victoria brought her camera and showed me the rest of her spectacular snaps that didn't make it onto her flickr page. Jacqueline had some funny stories of the trip, alas she didn't bring her camera so wasn't able to view her shots.

My Uncle Christopher held an impromptu slide show of their trip on my Uncle Ray's jumbo-tron flat screen. This prompted My Aunt Louise and Aunt Alison's stories of how busy the Louis Vuitton store in Hong Kong was everyday. There were lines akin to the Soviet era images of people lining up for bread, but in this case it was people from the mainland lining up for luxury goods. Apparantly these people were procuring the LV brand for resale back to the nouveau riche Chinese who have so much money to burn these days. This brought up the Murakami exhibit and how we should try to catch it together before it closes on Feb. 11.


I talked to Brian for a bit about his cushy (jk) government job in the engineering dept of city works for LA County. They are in charge of building and maintaining public roadways and bridges. He also gets Fridays off three day weekends -every weekend! Lucky. Not bad for having just graduated last year (USC). Eric is still on vacation from Berkeley, I think he heads back at the end of the month. Philip is in Santa Barbara, he's an engineer in the Air Force and will be home next week, he also graduated last year (UCLA, my alma mater). It's awesome hanging out with my way too cool cousins.

Photo from Today

Tooth No. 3

Last night after dinner Henry's tooth fell out. It's the third one that has fallen out the old fashioned way, and the fifth if you are counting the two the oral surgeon extracted. He's been lucky in the sense that so far he has not gone around with noticable gaps in his mouth. This morning he woke up and found his tooth still out on the dining table. Oops!

happy!

Rip away the tears
Drink a hope for happy years
-What would you say?

Back to the Grind

Today was the first day back to school after the holiday break. I was a bit apprehensive about getting back into the swing of things especially since we've all indulged in the luxury of sleeping in! The night before we tried our best to tuck the boys in by 9p, but they would have none of it. We heard them giggling up in Henry's bunk well past the allotted time, luckily half an hour later all was quiet.

I woke up at 6a to the calming sound of waves crashing on the shore (thank you Ben & Jamie for our present last year of a fantastic clock that made beautiful nature sounds). Okay so I didn't get out of bed right away... I let myself think about it for about 10 minutes before I went to get the boys. Henry proved a little easier to get up and about. Rhys would not budge, he continued to sleep in until 7a. Amazingly we just fell back into our routine, I got both to school on time!


Many of you may have heard that we in So. Ca. spent a soggy weekend dealing with three storms. In Monday's aftermath we were blessed with this beautiful vista. Happy Monday!


PS You might have seen these posters all over town. I think they are hilarious and I can't wait until Friday, or most probably Saturday since I'll have to catch it online.

On New Year's Day

We lallygagged in the morning determined to make the day momentous, but too tired and lazy to get out the door.


I yearned to see the ocean so we slowly and then ferociously got ready for our adventure. We ended up taking PCH up to Malibu, making our destination the Malibu Colony Mart, as we drove up Rhys pointed excitedly out the window yelling at Henry to "see the ocean!" Henry then began a short explanation that this was the Pacific Ocean, as opposed to all the other oceans out there in our wide world.


The kids were thrilled to play in the playground that's set in the center of the complex. It was very windy, so windy that the sand kept swirling up and hitting all those unfortunate enough to be in the way.


They found a bunch of kids their age to play with, it was such a joy to see them running around with their new friends.


We eventually made our way down to the beach and took a bunch of pictures. On the way home I was fortunate enough to capture a splendid pink sunset!


It was such a beautiful day. I couldn't think of a more magical way to start the New Year.

2008

Growing up I don't remember doing much on New Years Eve. I've always put it down to being Chinese, we have our own New Year's celebration that does not solely revolve around drinking and partying into the wee hours. Last night we were invited to a New Year Eve's party hosted by Eric with whom Kenny worked with at King of the Hill, and were very excited to attend.


The party was in Silverlake and since the freeways were light we made it there in no time. The only problem was there was a severe scarcity of street parking, so Kenny dropped me and Henry off at the house while he along with a napping Rhys hunted for a space. It was freezing cold so we were ecstatic to see that there were a few outdoor fires burning throughout the grounds. We almost immediately bumped into Derick, his girlfriend Amanda and Ryan. I had a lovely time talking to Christine and her husband Neil mostly about kids; pre and post.


It was quite the treat to see and catch up with everyone. It sounds like most of the crew have enough work to last into March, so here's hoping that the strike ends well before then! HAPPY NEW YEAR!