February holidays

Halfway through February already and it's been a busy few weeks!

Last weekend we celebrated Chinese New Year. We experimented with making loh bak go and savory tong yuen and I have to say this is one time that our cooking efforts did not result in lip-smacking goodness. We likened the tong yuen to eating phlegm - it wasn't the chewy mochi consistency that it should be. And the loh bak go, while tasty, didn't set to the right firmness either. It was unfortunate because I have such fond memories of both dishes as a kid. My grandmother used to make vats and vats of loh bak go and it was so good freshly steamed and drizzled with soy sauce. And the tong yuen that she (and now my Uncle Albert) makes is a filling, yummy, warming bowl of soup each winter. Oh well, we'll try again next time!

Yesterday was Valentine's day and the girls have been hard at work on making their valentine's for their friends! Like last year, we decided to do home made valentine's again. Evie made Grammie's tollhouse cookies while Nora made confetti bookmarks. The kitchen was a disaster when they were done, but I think the end products turned out pretty good!

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Japan trip

We got back from Japan about a week ago and we're still talking about what a great trip it was! Japan has never been super high on my places to visit but for a lot of reasons (I've never been, it's clean, it's safe, it's different) we took the plunge and booked it as our summer vacation this year. It helped that our friends, the Wongs, went last year, raved about it and loved it so much they were going again and we were able to coordinate so that some of our trip overlapped with theirs. It helped even more that the yen is at a 10-year low (maybe all time low?) against the dollar, which, aside from airfare, made everything quite affordable. Look how low the yen is! We lucked out that it kept falling after we booked our tix in Dec. Since this was our first big overseas trip since COVID and with kids (or, lets face it, SINCE kids), I dove into prepping for our trip - including trying to keep up my Duolingo streak of learning Japanese for at least a few minutes everyd

Family time

I had to do a quick trip to LA towards the end of July to say goodbye to my Uncle Pang, who passed away a few weeks earlier. I have fond memories of fun cousin time at his house in Palos Verdes and Uncle Pang taking us to the beach when we were younger. I remember how he delighted in making us kids squeal with laughter by pretending the car ride was a rolleroaster - we'd take sharp turns and all of us kids would slide to one side of his Volvo station wagon or he'd slow the car down to a roll and we'd all chant that we couldn't let the car stop and it would inch slowly forward at a stoplight. Although it was a sad reason to get together, I think he would be happy to know that the weekend was also a wonderful get together with family. Because it was fairly last minute, none of the kids flew over which meant us "adult cousins" were able to have long talks and linger over food. Kin and Meredith were able to host a summertime bbq at their house and we had a nice t

Glasses

Nora got glasses! Now all of us in the family are four-eyes, haha. Her prescription is low but she was super excited about getting these. When she is older and hates glasses, I'll have to remind her how happy she was to get these!

Simpsons in Seattle

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