Hills of Hayward

This past weekend, we drove down to Los Angeles to visit Mandy, Will and Andy. We only took Anders since it would be a bit too much to take both Anders and Arden for such a long road trip. Mandy is my high school classmate and we just realized that this year is the 20th anniversary since we knew each other. Can’t believe that the time we knew each other can be counted by decades now. Harrison was also amazed that it’s also almost a decade for our friendship with Andy.

This was a nice and relaxing trip. We started driving down highway 101 around 8:30 AM passing by Santa Barbara. We looked up Yelp for some tacos at Lilly’s Taco and walked on the wharf. Anders had so much fun running around and looking at the ocean and boats while I was so scared that he would fall over the fences into the water.

We arrived San Gabriel at Mandy and Will’s place around 8 PM and had a nice late Shanghai dinner. Since Anders was too tired, we skipped the “must” stop, pearl milk tea.

Mandy and Will got their PhD last year and both worked at USC now. We explored at the neighborhood on our own since Friday was still a working day. Andy could not escape from his work either. We went to Huntington Library and were just amazed. It was a very nice and well maintained park. Poor little Anders walked so much since we didn’t bring his stroller from the car. He also got his first boo boo at the Chinese Garden in Huntington Library. Too bad that we missed out the English Tea Room inside the Rose Garden since there was no seat available. The food looked delicious and cute.

The following two days were combined with a lot of eating, drinking (pearl milk tea), and board games. We walked around The Grove and Farmers Market on Saturday and also enjoyed Will’s home-made popcorn chicken. It was just like what you can buy in the store. Very yummy and tasty and you must have the pearl milk tea to go with it. We went back to one of my favorite restaurant, 老夫子 and also tried out a couple new ones like The Open Door and 印地安. Harrison and I missed Japan and Taiwan…

Yup! And many rounds of board games. Harrison got us into this German board game called Catan and has introduced this game to our friends and relatives. No one does not fall in love with it so far.

Anders was pretty behaved on the road and only fussed a couple times. It boosted our confidence for the next road trip. Maybe we will be able to take Arden along then.

Harrison got a new nickname, Caveman. He absolutely loved his polarized sunglasses. You know how harsh the sun is in Southern California. He did not even remember that he was wearing it while taking pictures and going inside the house since it just made his eyes feel very comfortable. He was yelling that the camera was broken since all of a sudden he could not see the screen after he turn the camera 90 degrees (remeber?! the sunglass is polarized). He cannot go out without putting on his sunglasses so we all laughed at him calling him the Caveman.

Oh yeah! Anders also had a big surprising jump on his “language” skills. He started being able to speak many two to three words together during this trip.

Our front lawn has been steadily been dug up by what seem to be gophers. Initially, it was only a single hole in the ground, and over a year and a half, the entire front lawn has become home to 20-30 gopher holes. Admittedly, I have let this problem fester for far too long.

After purchasing a set of gophinator traps, I set out to find a gopher highway to place my traps on.  The first day, my traps remained empty, but on the second, I caught my prey.  When I figured out that I actually caught something, I was so ecstatic I jumped up and shouted for Christine.  She later told me that she thought something horrible happened to me.

So far, no new holes have been created in the last week.  Could just a single gopher wreck my yard?  The evidence increasingly seems like that this is the case.  What amazingly productive (and ugly) animals.

Arden is now 3 months old. She was such an “angel baby” – just eating and sleeping. She was so well behaved that I didn’t even know what to write during the first two months other than “Gosh! She’s such a cutie! She knew Mommy was busy so she would just stay on her best behavior.” She started smiling and talking when she was two months old. She kept smiling at you even when the bottle was in her mouth.

When she was two months old, she weighted 14 lbs and 3 oz at 93% percentile and was 23 1/2 inches tall at 75% percentile. Yup, a big baby. Anders’ growth percentile dropped when he turned 6 months old so we’ll see how Arden’s doing at then. We were all joking that Arden will protect her brother at school in the future.

However, Arden started showing her temper these days. She cried so hard and it even scared our nanny. She requires attention and does not want to stay in her crib anymore. She loves to be in the car seat and stay on the dinning table. Why on the dinning table? Because Anders always want to pull her legs.

More pictures will be posted soon.

As you can probably tell by the increased number of photos, summer is here.  Christine and I are also enjoying using the used Canon G9 we bought ourselves.  It is no SLR, but it sure is fun and convenient to use.

Today, we started off with brunch in Oakland by Lake Merritt.  We had a good meal of eggs benedict and eggs escapade at Lynn and Lu’s Escapade.  Ander’s refused all of our food, but enjoyed his banana.  His loss.  We noticed a lively and energetic farmer’s market down the street.

After some quick shopping in Oakland Chinatown, we wound up at the Sand Sculpture Contest in Alameda.  At almost every sand sculpture we stopped at, Anders was excitedly pointing, and wanted to add his own sand to the completed works.  On the drive home, the little guy passed out in back of the car.

Anders made a park buddy.  Her name is Maury, and we went to her little birthday get-together at the park with two dozen cupcakes.  I know.  Such a parent thing to do.  I am beginning to think we will become very adept at making cupcakes for all the children’s events.