Jim & Li's Family Room

Man has it really been 4 years since Grace started daycare? It surely felt like not long ago when I remember Grace was still crying over dropoff in the morning. How has she grown up since then! Now she's already set for public school!

We miss her days at Primrose. Her teachers, friends from all kinds of national and cultural backgrounds. Hopefully these pictures captures some of those memories...

Chinese New Years usually are challenges to Chinese overseas. We watch in the TV how everybody back in China are celebrating, yet over here there's no such atmosphere. We still have work to go to, and when the day falls on a week day, it's harder to even get people together.

So the best one can do is cook some traditional Chinese food, have as many family or friends over, and eat a nice dinner. We are lucky to be living close to uncle's family. Plus we have some close friends that are always in for such parties. Usually for such parties there are 2 things you can count on: good food, and a taped CCTV Chinese New Year performance.

Some random shots during Christmas. Grace was just starting to ride 2-wheel bikes. She has become ever more sporty. By now she already mastered her scooter. It didn't take long for her to learn to balance on the bike, about 2 days. She and Leon from across the street grew into these sports together, giving each other support and, well, peer pressure.

Liu Qi's family were staying with us. They have two lovely kids, Michael and Nina. The 4 of them had a great time. We often take a walk around the lake, on scooters, bikes, strollers and by foot. Michael was always being a big brother, letting the little sisters have their way all the time.

As usual the theme for Epcot is high-tech. So it's appropriate that it's the only disney part where park patrols ride Segways. It was the first time I saw those slick two-wheel scooters up close. Pretty slick indeed. Grace and Daniel got to meet a whole bunch of characters all at once. They were excited despite the looong wait. We couldn't ride Space Mountain. But Grace liked Soar!, a new ride that makes you hang-glide.

I always thought MGM was the coolest park, relatively speaking, of them all. I think I'm attracted by all the nice professionally produced shows (I'm not a fan of roller-coaster rides anymore due to sever motion sickness). I first thought that this would not be as interesting to the little ones. But to our surprise the visit turned out to be a big hit for them, because of that little flashy Corvette called "Lightening McQuin". It's the biggest star of all disney characters at the time. Just listen to the rock music that's being played as McQuin rolls down the boulevard. He and Mater attracted the biggest crowd. Too bad though that neither of them could sign. But hey we want the kids to believe they are as real as can be, so it wouldn't be appropriate if all of a sudden they had arms or some driver pops out from the window right?

I and Li are surely no strangers here. We must have come at least 3 times before. But Grace and Daniel are both psyched about visiting it. Grace in particular has been looking forward to meet all the princesses. Daniel didn't care too much about anything except that he felt this must be a cool place if his sister is going all crazy about it. It was a fun day. What's funny is that after all the cool shows and rides, the favorite for both of them was the tea party ride. Surely little kids have different perspectives.

The first stop at Disney was for Grace's princess makeover at the Bibbidi Bobbidi Botique in Downtown Disney. Like all little girls Grace loves all things princesses. We thought this would make it a special day for her. The make up was great. The only regret was that we didn't bring along her princess dress and shoes. But she's totally thrilled.

Supposedly the high-light of the Florida trip, for me and Daniel anyways, was watching the space shuttle launch. Atlantis was scheduled to blast off on Thursday. However the mission was delayed because of trouble with a fuel sensor. We ended up spending 2 days at the space center, one day for picking up the ticket (because I bought it late there's not enough time to have it shipped via UPS), and another day for the launch. I even missed the IMAX shows on both days because of bad planning. I can only hope one day Daniel would remember this trip where he hugged an "astronaut" in space suit.

On our trip to Orlando, FL, we stopped by Charleston to spend a night so we don't have to drive 11 hours straight. The kids would make sure that won't happen. We started off late and didn't leave the house until about 1 O'Clock. So by the time we got there it was already dark and dinner time. Luckily Li found a nice hotel in the downtown area right off the fashion district. So right around the corner we found a good Mediterranean restaurant. We found good food and have a great time. The next morning we made a brief visit to the harbor before moving on.

Although we don't participate in Halloween activities, we do enjoy the parade at the day care. This is the first year both Grace and Daniel are in the same parade. We bought Grace a nice-looking princess dress. Daniel had the Garfield jacket that Yeye and Nainai brought him from China. They looked adorable. We didn't get them to pose together so there's not a good picture for the cover. But this particular one with two girls standing by the pumpkins seemed the right one for the occasion.

This is a late post to the Thanksgiving dinner. Since most of our friends don't have relatives in the US, we thought it would be nice to host the dinner at our house and invite over friends. We have done this for the last 3 years. I would roast a turkey. Li would prepare some Chinese dish and drink and wine. Guest are asked to bring along a dish or two. We've always had a good time. For the turkey I looked up the most popular recipe on google. I think it turned out must better than previous 2 years.

Oct. 20th sounds very early to many people for fall foliage. Many quotes theories about how drought makes leaf colors appear dull and burnt out. But nonetheless we accepted invitation from our neighbour and their friends for a short trip to the smoky mountains, thinking that we'd just do it so the kids can play together and have a good time.

And all of us would be generously awarded with breath-taking views and colors so vivid and fresh, that we wished we had booked more nights at the resort. In fact along the stretch of Blue Ridge Parkway between Ashvill and Cherokee, its south end, there were so much color that we saw many prefessional photographers flocked in to snap some of the best shots of the year, us included ;-)

Professional shots or not, I think these pictures are nice-looking. Enjoy!

For the very first time Daniel got to show off his Chinese traditional costums at school's anual parade. This has been the event when we dress up Grace in pretty Chinese dresses like Qi Pao, or Feng Xian Zhuang. Now it's finally time for Daniel. The problem was, we totally forgot to plan for this so there was no such costum for him! After some scrambling around, including borrowing from Leon and asking "Dry Dad" to bring one from China, we finally got hold of a set of A Ge Zhuang, the kind that was typical of royal family princelings during Qing dynasty.

It worked out pretty well. Although a bit saggy on him, it fit his chubby look perfectly ;-) I bet Yeye Nainai and Waigong Waipuo will be laughing at these pictures!

This was the 2nd air show in NC this year. This time it was in the Pope Air Force Base. This is a much bigger base than Seymour Johnson, which I believe has only F-15 squadrons. Pope has many more kinds of aircrafts. All of the airplanes on display were based there (hence "open house"). Because it was such a big base, civilian cars are not allowed inside. We could only take shuttles in and out, which took forever because of the lone lines. That's why we missed the F-15 and F/A-18 demos on both days. Will have to try again next year. I don't believe F-22 were flying this time.

Thunderbirds performance was equally impressive as the Blue Angels. But for some reason it lacks a little punch, maybe due to the smaller form-factor of the F-16's compared to the F/A-18's. I remember the Blue Angels were pulling higher G's with tighter turns, but I could be just biased toward bigger aircrafts.

Hey little scooter riders! Are you really riding it like a big kid or just making poses for the camera? Show me some moves!

Oh you need the helmet already, does that mean you can ride fast? What's up with the 3 wheels? I thought scooters only have 2 wheels? How old are you again? Just 2.5? Ok, then, you can have the 3-wheel one ;-)