Thanksgiving 2006

A smooth drive up north to see the family...


Playing lots with cousin Lily...


Jumping around in the awesome trampoline with Kim, Lily and Teddy...


Playing cards...


Sammy eating cheetos instead of turkey...


... And waving goodbye to the grandparents and Chu-Chee.

Aquarium of the Pacific

Yum, sushi...


Here stingray, stingray...


Slippery, slimy, I mean nice stingray...


Daddy, this is cool, and educational too!


Let's see if I can get all wet before Daddy catches me...


Yippee, let's do it all over again!

Christmas at Disneyland

We met up with Mari, Rob and Yumi at Disneyland, on Mari's birthday last week. We decided to go on the Small World, Sam was mesmerized and distracted from the get-go, he loved the ride with the holiday decor.


Mari and Rob can sure spin fast on the teacups, the photo is quite dark but can you make out Mari's flying hair?


This was the Christmas card that could have been, if only Sam could let go of his security sippy cup.


Anna forms a letter "A" with her body.


A cute father-son shot near the Small World. Quite an attachment between them these days.

What I didn't miss...

Last week I had a release day (preparation day for lessons while a substitute takes over the class) and took my break early to hurry over to Anna's school for her Thanksgiving breakfast. Unfortunately I missed the pre-breakfast performance of songs, but seeing the kids during their recess made up for it.


These are happy kids at Anna's school.


I love how Anna's school celebrates these important holidays and makes time for fun stuff, like dressing up as pilgrims and Indians (Anna shed her costume, perhaps trying to look a little cool, hee hee...)


During release days it gives the teachers some time to eat a decent lunch, we went to a Korean marketplace where they have tasty food. Meghan and Tho are holding the kim chee fried rice. Yum!

Mari's Birthday

On Sunday we celebrated Mari's birthday a little early, her and Rob came over and we had an udon lunch prepared by Mama. It was a fine day so we hammed it up for some photos outside.


Check out Mari and Rob's blog here for some incredibly funny photoshop pictures and a nice birthday recap.


Mari was surprised with two cakes, a homemade butter cake made by Yumi and a Cold Stone Creamery ice cream cake.


Anna and Mari with the cakes... I think I interchange their names every so often becasue these are two youngsters as you can see!


Ok, this photo was taken by Rob with his fancy phone, amazing shot, great quality, isn't it? Another fun/funny day.

Veteran's Day Parade

On Friday, Anna's school had a Veteran's Day parade. Students invited veterans they knew and those men and women had a place of honor as the younger kids marched around the school grounds while the older kids cheered them on.


Some kids were quite nervous and taken aback by all the commotion and change of schedule... it was cute seeing them with their homemade instruments.


All in all, it was a joyous parade.

Autumn Beach Day

It was quite warm on Sunday, and Anna declared it to be "Snowbear's Birthday", and Snowbear wanted cookies, and a trip to the beach, so he (we) got his wishes granted. Surprisingly, Snowbear stayed at home while we went to the beach.
Ok, now who else could pull off 3 patterns of pink?


Sam stayed on the towel for a little while, unsure of ground surface other than concrete...


Until he dashed into the water, fell down, shed his shirt, and had to wear mommy's extra shirt for sun protection.


This seagull was attempting to grab cheetos from Anna and was antagonizing her. She had lots of fun chasing it back and forth from our snacks on the towel to the water's edge. Fun fall day.

Micah's Birthday Party

Micah had a Blue's Clues themed birthday party, and this was a super-clever birthday cake! His mom Jill grabbed up all the "blue" donuts at the donut shop that day!


Jill adjusted a kid's costume to dress up as Blue, what a big hit!


Sam was not so amused.


Next time I'll get a good photo of the actual birthday kid! Sam thought it was his special day, we did have lots of fun!

IKEA & Mile Square

On Saturday morning we started out at IKEA for their cheap yet tasty breakfast. Sam couldn't help but admire himself at this display...


Sam's at that age where he (we) can put himself in strange situations and passerbys might think it's cute. IKEA has the cutest safari stuffed animals right now and we bought Sam the kangaroo he's holding above.


Afterwards we went to Mile Square Park, what a nice surprise, the area around the large pond has been cleaned-up and there are nice paths and bridges where we strolled around. Our kids sure like their drinks...


And Sammy sure loves the swings. Note when his head has a little tilt it accentuates the Charlie Brown look.
P.S. He got haircut #2. What do you think?

Costume Changes

I asked Anna the other week what she wanted to dress up as during the Fall Festival at church, she replied, "I won't know until that day." Fortunately she has a number of princess costumes to choose from, although one year her and daddy made a quick trip to Costco the day of for the pink poodle costume. This year, she started as Belle...


Yumi and Sam was really excited to see Anna in her costume, although Sam never did dress up in his duck outfit...


The Fall Festival was fun, but super busy as kids grades K-12 and families participated in carnival-type events. Later, Anna changed her outfit and we went to get some treats from neighbors, Anna was shy to go up to doors as this was her first experience doing so. We went to around 10 houses, some were super decked-out like this one.


We bumped into our neighbors Alara and Jake (there's actually a super-nice guy under that mask!).