Hills of Hayward

Christine’s childhood friend Mandy came to visit us this Thanksgiving weekend. As usual, we went had two entire Peking Ducks in Palo Alto for Thanksgiving dinner with Anders.

The next day we went hiking in Mount Tamalpais to work off some of what we ate. We hiked for maybe 5 miles while taking in the amazing panoramic views of the sunset as we gazed south towards San Francisco. Click for larger versions of the pictures.

It was pretty exciting as we raced back to the car as the sun faded into the horizon.  The last fifteen minutes of our hike back was in total darkness, except for the bright full moon above us that illuminated the path.

We then headed into the city by checking out the Christmas Trees at Union Square. It was the Macy’s tree versus Nieman Marcus… Nieman Marcus wins by TKO.

The night ended with a 3D Imax Beowulf movie. We rated it two thumbs up!

Little Anders is now one month old, and I’m finally out of the traditional Chinese one-month-long recovery period and can do anything without restrictions. No one except Chinese moms who have been through that would understand how it feels - to eat the same thing without salt for a full month; no TV; no computer; no books. All you do is to lie in the bed, feed the baby and rest.

I wasn’t such a well-behaved mom to follow everything. I surfed on the internet, worked on SnapTint and watched TV from the side when my Mom paid all her attention to the show. I would not go through everything so smoothly without my Mom’s help and company, though she nagged at me everyday. Thanks, Mom.

The first thing I did after this special month was to go to have a pearl milk tea. Yummy! We had hot-pot dinner for the 1-month celebration on the night my Mom was going back to Taiwan. It was sad that this special journey with Mom has come to an ed since Dad has been waiting for Mom’s returning long enough.

Now Anders is one-month old and weighted 9 lb 11 oz at his one-month well check. He poops and burps a lot that we call him poop-poop head. This little poop head is changing everyday and getting cuter and cuter. He has a strong neck and started raising and turning his head left and right when he was only 2-week old.

Click on the image below to play the slideshow I made with my MacBook.

Many of you have been asking for photos, so I threw this montage together last night. Enjoy.

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The hummingbirds were buzzing around the flowers in bloom.

Do you recognize any of the flowers? Embarrassed to have them bloom every year without knowing what they are. Please comment if you recognize any.

When I was young, my parents often took me and my sister and our relatives to Skyline Drive in the Shenandoah National Park to view the fall foliage. Skyline Drive is a narrow road that winds on the top of the mountain range from Virginia all the way to North Carolina. I remember brilliant fall colors of red, orange, and yellow. Now that I am older, I wanted to take Christine to travel with me to see the splendor. We also stopped by Luray Caverns, the most dramatic of underground caverns on the east coast.

This trip I have been experimenting with a Sony GPS device that tracks and records my location and altitude every 10 seconds. With this device, I am able to geocode our photos and mark them with an exact location. Using the Flickr website, I am able to share the exact location of my photos taken in a map. Click on the numbers to see which photos correspond with each location.