March Tahoe Trip with Friends

The first weekend in March five families converged at Northstar -- us, the Pao/Lins, the Yangs, the Yaus, and the Yungs. The Pao/Lins stayed with us at the Hyatt. The Yaus and the Yangs shared a Ski Trail condo off the Village Run. And the Yungs with Joyce's mom in tow stayed in another condo.

Maile came down with a fever and spent most of the day Saturday watching TV. Rich took Zoe and Hannah out skiing while Al took Zachary out. And I took Beck out with a hula hoop in tow. In line for one of the lifts, I ran into Rich's cousin, Aimee. On our way down I saw the small magic carpet by the Ritz Carlton. We had already passed it when I noticed it, so we had to walk uphill a little on skis to get to it. It's a great little magic carpet because hardly anyone uses it and it's on a part of the run where there are not a lot of people. Our first run off that magic carpet I felt Beck finally got the wedge.

When we returned back to the Hyatt, most of the group was gathered on the top of the ski-in slope of the Hyatt.

That evening we had everyone over for dinner. It was fun and definitely lively with all the kids. Here's everyone's favorite Auntie playing a slap game with the kids.

That night Maile had a night terror that I think was brought on by all the TV watching, in particular Spongebob Squarepants. I have never been a fan of Spongebob. It might be fun, but I can't get passed the drawing style.

Before we headed home, Beck showed Hansel some of his ski moves, and the kids got in some more play time in the snow.

Below are a couple of photos from Sunday morning.

Kinect Dance Central

Maile and Beck don't play Kinect Dance Central that much. I think because beyond Poker Face's easy dance the dances are still too hard for them, but Mathis seems to like that game. I think it's the music. Below are some photos from the beginning of March of Mathis busting some moves and a couple with Beck.

I had a clearer pic like the above but I love the expression here more.

2/26 GNO and Leilani's Baby Sprinkle

We had a Girls' Night Out planned for 2/26. Since Leilani did not want a full-blown shower for baby #3, we used the occasion as an opportunity to celebrate her impending babydom. Margie hooked us up with the chef's table at 5A5 (http://www.5a5stk.com/). It's a super swanky steakhouse lounge started by Steve Chen (SF's Asian Social King, my words not his), and in which Margie has a small piece of the action (the restaurant not Steve).

To get there most of us met up at Margie's place in San Mateo, and then I drove us up in the swagger wagon. We thought it'd be funny to drive up to the door in the minivan and valet, but we went with a primo street parking only a half block away.

We let Margie to the ordering. Even though it's a steakhouse, I had plenty to enjoy. I especially remember the hamachi shooters. Admittedly, I was a little nervous about shooting it and gagging, but everything made it down.

For the baby sprinkle part, Vicki made some super cute bunny cake pops. Yes, made. She made enough for everyone's kids. I was tempted to eat Mathis' but I settled on a bite. And Lei got a couple of presents or I should say the baby did.

It was great to get out and to see everyone, esp Ann, whom I hadn't seen since her baby shower in late July for her twin girls.

Here's a photo of the kids eating the cake pops the next day.

February Tahoe Trip

Maile's school gets the Thursday and Friday before Presidents' Day off. So we booked our Northstar timeshare for that Wed and Thurs night. We left around 3p and got there in 4.5 hrs even with snowfall and a stop at the Safeway in Truckee. Hansel, having grown up in Iowa, can handle driving in the snow better than I. Although, he did fishtail a little a couple of times.

Hyatt needed to use our unit for part of a party of nine, so they bumped us up to a 3-bedroom, which has two master suites. We tried to convince a couple of people to play hooky from work and stay with us, but no takers. So the extra bedroom suite went to waste.

It snowed a lot while we were there as you can see in the below photos.

The kids helped the ski valet clean off the snow on the fire pit and chairs.

They then showed off the fruits of their labor.

Thursday night we watched a movie at the Hyatt's theater room. The kids picked Open Season. Even though we had stayed at the Hyatt a handful of times already, this was our first time using the room. It was a nice treat.

 Before leaving Friday, Hansel and the big kids got in a good soak.

Lunar New Year Celebrations

While my mom and brother were in town, Beck's school had their Annual Lunar New Year Event. It includes class performances, silent auction, live auction, and a buffet lunch. This year I found out that we could get non-lunch tickets, which was a nice discovery. Last year the buffet took a while as is usually the case with buffets. Without going through that, we could get home at a reasonable time for Mathis to nap.

They had the silent auction items set up outside the hall. We bid on a week's worth of hot lunches and rock-climbing lessons for 3 kids. Hansel went back out close to the silent auction end time to check on the rock-climbing bids. He ended up raising our bid but still under the estimated value (we are cheap contributors). We ended up winning the lessons. Almost 3 months later, and we still haven't set up the lessons.

Even though it's the year of the rabbit, Beck's class did the story of the mouse bride, which is a Chinese Zodiac story, for their performance. The room parents made the cool visors and veils for the kids. 

Maile's class, as well as the other Mandarin-Immersion classes, performed for a school assembly. Maile's school has combined-grade classes, so Maile's class is made of up Kindergarteners and 1st graders. The Kindergarteners sat at the foot of the stage and sang (softly) while the 1st-graders danced with ribbons. I took Beck with me to watch before dropping him off at school.

The Kings Visit

My mom and brother were here during their Lunar New Year break. My mom came a week or so before Ed. We always eat well when she is here. All the kids love Ed because he really gets down and plays with them. Below are some photos from their visit.

In the first photo, Ed is holding up Mathis while Maile is grabbing the bottom of Ed's leg.

 

 

Random January Photos

First, a couple more photos from the January Tahoe trip.

Below is a family photo we took early in the month. Looks like all of us except for Hansel are watching the TV not the camera.

Before Christmas Maile only had shoes with velcro, a buckle, or slip on. So, she never needed to learn how to tie her shoes. But during Christmas break in DC, GrandMama bought Maile some light-up shoes with laces. So, below is a photo of Hansel teaching Maile how to tie a bow.

 During the month we watched a stick sculpture go up in front of the Palo Alto Art Center. We went to visit it a couple of times when it was almost done. Not only is it a cool-looking sculpture, but you can go in and out of it.

Tahoe in January

For the last weekend in January, we planned a trip to Tahoe with 3 other families -- the Lins, the Shens, and the Yaus. We ended up booking a house in Kings Beach about a 10 min drive to Tahoe. The house had 4 bedrooms and 4 full bathrooms, having a bathroom for each family was nice. We took the bunk room, which had two sets of twin-over-full bunk beds. There was also enough air mattresses to go around that noone had to sleep on the actual floor or on a couch.

The house was a two-story, so there was a flight of stairs that the kids, especially the boys, couldn't get enough of. Although in the below photo, there are more girls.

Saturday morning it took a while for people to get gear and tickets and head over to the Highlands gondola since the main gondola already had a long line. So we didn't all get on the mountain until mid-morning. Hansel and I with Mathis in tow tried to show Beck some moves on a little incline by the Snowboard school while Maile skied with Al, Hannah, and Zachary. We were on the mountain less than an hour when we figured we needed to head back down to get our car from 2-hr parking.

All of us except Al, Stew, Hannah, and Maile headed back to the house for lunch and naps. Al ran into a friend who was now a ski instructor and got in a few runs with him and some helpful tips. For dinner we had pasta and pizza, and the kids helped make cookies for dessert.

We had brought some loops that is meant to be used with a loom, but I didn't realize the box did not include the loom. Maile and Hannah had strung all the loops together, and Hansel helped string the loops across the bunk room. We told the kids to pretend they were lasers and to not touch them or an alarm would go off.

There was also lots of movie watching and iPad/iPhone playing with some trains mixed in.

Sunday morning the Yaus, Hansel, and Maile headed out first. They had planned to return to pack up the cars and leave from the house. But after Leilani had a driving scare, they figured it would be easier if those that were still at the house just put the Yaus stuff, which was already packed, in our van and meet them at Northstar. Doing that and the minimal cleaning that was required actually took the rest of us a while. The clean-up stuff made me appreciate our timeshare, where we don't have to clean anything (can we say spoiled?).

MLK Brunch

I'd been trying for a while to have my old dinner group over for brunch. I thought it would be a long shot, but I suggested MLK Day. Everyone actually had it off. But Lara wasn't going to be able to make it since she was hanging out with her parents for her mom's birthday. I made baked butter pecan french toast with blueberry syrup and an egg dish that uses pie crust and chopped up some fruit.

Winnie brought Sabrina with her hand all bandaged up because of a nail clipper incident. You can kind of see part of the bandage in the below pic.

It was great to see everyone. Hopefully, it'll be easier to plan our next get together.

Mathis' 2nd Birthday Party

For Mathis' 2nd birthday we didn't want to do anything big, but I did want to do something, esp. since we did something for Maile and Beck for their 2nd birthdays. I didn't want him to later ask why he didn't have a birthday party when Maile and Beck did.

Even though his birthday was on a Saturday, we wouldn't be able to have a get together then because Hansel was going to be out of town for a marathon. He originally had registered for the Napa Valley marathon on 3/6 but later realized it was the same weekend we booked the Hyatt at Northstar. So, he was able to have his registration for that marathon credited toward the Rock-N-Roll marathon in Phoenix on 1/16. He was going to get back Sunday afternoon after running the marathon that morning. So we decided to have Mathis' birthday party that evening.

We invited two of my cousins' families, Vicki/Stew, Rich/Caroline, and Al/Leilani. We kept it simple -- pizza and nuggets, green salad, baby carrots, fruit salad, and, of course, cupcakes! Partly out of health consciousness but mostly out of laziness, I only frosted half.

In the below photos I asked the kids to say, "Pizza!"

Check out Mathis' Dumb and Dumber haircut, courtesy of his nanny.

Mathis knew exactly what to do when we all sang Happy Birthday. He blew out the candles at the end of the song.

The kids had a great time especially the boys. Some of them could not tear themselves away from Beck's Thomas Logging Adventure toy from Christmas.

Princess Tea

Over a year ago Leilani, Vanessa, and I with our girls met up for tea. Figuring it was long overdue, I set up a tea play date on 1/9 at our house. Vanessa and Mia hadn't yet been to our house.

Hansel took the boys to the Hiller Aviation Museum while we girls enjoyed our tea. I made cranberry orange mini muffins (one of my go-to recipes), fruit salad, and nut-free, egg-free, and milk-free tea sandwiches. We already had a variety of tea but I specifically bought some caffeine-free fruit teas for the girls. They all tried the peach, but didn't care for it even with honey. No real surprise. It's still tea.

I was a little worried about Mia being a little left out since Maile and Hannah are such good friends. I even reminded Maile ahead of time to include Mia. But I had nothing to worry about. The girls got a long great and all played and hung out together.

Alexander's 5th Birthday Party

Beck was invited to one of his classmates birthday party at Pump It Up Jr on 1/8. The Evite said siblings were welcome, but I thought it might be kind of obnoxious to bring all 3 kids, so I just brought the boys.

There were a lot of kids. Mathis got nearly trampled twice -- one of the times by an adult. They both still had a good time.

Mathis made himself quite comfortable next to Beck for snacks and cake.

Later a bunch of kids started climbing on the birthday chair and Beck joined in.

Christmas at Home and Maile's Birthday

We had ordered Santa's gift for the kids while we were in DC. We knew they would be unwrapped sitting on our front porch in Amazon boxes. I figured even if we got home late the kids were going to want to see if Santa had come while we were gone and left them presents. So I gave Hansel the dimensions of the products, and he bought gift bags while we were in DC. I put the bags in my backpack. We were then going to let the kids watch TV in the car while I raced inside the house, unpacked the boxes, and put the items in the gift bags.

Well, the items in their packaging were too big for the gift bags. So, I taped the boxes back up and just labeled them to the kids from Santa. When we brought the kids into the house, I pointed out the gifts under the tree from Santa and said they would get to open them in the morning.

Before the kids woke in the morning, we also had to wrap the rest of our gifts to them. So the next day was our family Christmas. The kids didn't seem to think it was weird that their gifts from Santa were in shipping boxes. I think I said something about them being too big to wrap. From Santa, Beck got a take-n-play Thomas toy since he had the trains that go with them but no track. Yes, Thomas trains come in three different models that fit three different tracks. Total racket. Maile got an old fashioned-looking Snow Cone machine that Tabitha has. And Mathis, got a pillow pet since Maile and Beck got ones and he didn't.

That day was also Maile's actual birthday. We had talked to her a month before about having her big birthday celebration on her half birthday (instead of around her birthday) and she was okay with it. So for her actual birthday Maile wanted to go to the Jungle, the same place we went for her actual birthday the year before.

Afterward we took her to ToysRUs to pick out a couple of birthday toys courtesy of GrandMama. We budgeted $40-50 for these gifts. We talked about her picking out a Littlest Pet Shop center to go with the LPS pets she got for Christmas from her cousins. She immediately gravitated to this LPS Rescue Center. I pointed out that if she picked that one it would be the only thing she could get, but that if she got a cheaper center she'd have enough money to get another toy. I was a little surprised when she said she'd get the cheaper center. It ended up being a good thing deal-wise because ToysRUs was having a buy 2-get-1-free sale on various toys, including LPS. And on top of that, if you spent over $25 on one LPS item, you got a set of triplet pets for free. So Maile ended up with 4 different LPS toys for around $50. LPS overload but what a deal!

I didn't realize until the next morning that Maile didn't get any birthday candles on her birthday, so the next morning I made her some birthday pancakes.