Browse Category: family

Santa’s Scary

When I was a little kid I used to be scared of the Disney characters at Disneyland. I was also scared of Santa. I remember when my mom would ask if I wanted to take a picture with Santa I would answer with an immediate “NO!”. Can you blame me?! Imagine being no taller than 3 feet and having to sit on the lap of a big hairy man dressed in all red? Well, I relived those moments today through Cole’s eyes. We parked the stroller, got in line with everyone else, and waited our turn. Cole was in a pretty good mood and didn’t react to the big red man seated before him. But when it came time to actually sit on the dude’s lap, he sorta freaked out. He took one close look at his big white beard and wanted out! Marie just wanted one photo of him with Santa but I think I ended up with 4 shots of him crying and then finally one of him looking semi-calm. Poor Taku-chan…maybe we’ll try Disneyland next year.

…

By the way, Marie took me to a Japanese/Asian tapas place in Costa Mesa tonight. It’s called “Oki Doki” and was very tasty. We had the spinach/mushroom salad, albacore salad, kim chee rice soup, blackened cod, and shrimp fried rice. Yum.

…

Check it out:
Oki Doki
3033 S. Bristol St. #O
(SW corner at Paularino)
Costa Mesa, CA
714-540-2066

Belated Turkey Day

Jes and I went to the Buena Park house today to prepare this year’s Turkey Dinner. Due to work schedules and all, we postponed our turkey eating to today. The extended family came including Jes’ uncle, aunties, cousins, and grandmother. The turkey roasted all afternoon as Jes serenaded it with his version of the “Fat Turkey” song. He also kept muttering to himself, “the best turkey ever”. It appeared that our chef was especially cheerful today. Meanwhile, Jes’ mom prepared a slew of Chinese food to accompany the traditional American fare including her yummy sticky rice stuffing. Of course we had too much food and were so full afterwards. Everyone left that night with baggies of leftovers and about 3 pounds of food in their stomachs.

Let’s go shopping!

Since Marie is spending Christmas in New York this year, I thought I’d drop off their presents early. Well, it mostly because I got Cole a really cool toy and I was excited to play with it myself. Now that he’s able to sit up on his own, this is a really fun way to work on his motor skills too (haha – I’m still thinking like a therapist). Anyway, it’s pretty neat with lots of lights and music. The dinosaur even says “Rowr” when the ball falls through his mouth. Very cute.
Last night, I hung out with Marie and Cole again (second night in a row). This time we went on our usual shopping trip. This time it was to my favorite store, Target. This trip was fun since it was the first time Cole was able to sit in the shopping cart seat like a big boy. He was so excited and seemed to have a pretty good time. He’s up higher and isn’t strapped in as tightly as he usually is in a stoller. I think the best part was that Marie was able to shop around without having to worry about him too much and we didn’t need to push a shopping cart AND stroller. We even met this strange man who apparently LOVES children and spent a good five minutes making Cole laugh by making faces and funny sounds. It was rather awkward for me and Marie but Cole seemed to get a kick out of his antics.

playing games

I went out for sushi with Marie and Cole last night. Cole sat in the highchair for the first time and had a great time. He was perfectly happy shredding paper napkins and watching us eat. Well, tonight was a little different. Marie and I went to The Spectrum to walk around and decided to have dinner at The Cheesecake Factory. Well, he wasn’t liking the highchair so much this time so we ended up having to take turns eating and entertaining the little guy. It’s so funny how manipulative he can be at 8 months. I saw him cry, get picked up, and smile instantly. These babies pick these things up fast. It’s like he knows that adults don’t like crying in restaurants or something. Marie’s got a tough job.
…
By the way, check this out. I was doing some random search for Koa’s breeder and stumbled upon this site. Koa’s whole family is registered so I started a little page for him today. Click here to see his homepage. It’s just like Friendster for dogs…so funny.

New Plane, Better Trip

In planning for our Thailand trip, I did some research on our flight, our seat assignments, etc. First of all, they changed our 20-hour flight with one stop in Japan to a 16-hour non-stop flight!! Excellent. Secondly, Thai Airways upgraded their fleet of planes to the Airbus A340-500. I didn’t really know what that meant for us but after doing a little more research I found out that it’s awesome! Of course their “Royal Silk Class” will be sleeping on flat-reclining seats and Premium Economy will have slightly more legroom. But in ECONOMY, we’ll have in-seat personal entertainment featuring on-demand movies, video games, and music. It’s like JetBlue! I also read that each seat will have a PC Power connection to keep your laptop charged the whole way! Woohoo!! We are ghetto-ing-it-up in style!! Brother, Daddy, Jes…if you’re reading this, I think you need to get up out of your seat right now and do a happy dance. Ready? 1-2-3…go!
Ok, time for the daily recap. I essentially had a half-day of work today since our usual afternoon Staff Meeting was cancelled. Yippee! So, I made a date with Marie and Cole. We went out for lunch. We went shopping at IKEA. We even went to Mitsuwa Marketplace! Fun times for us all…even for Taku-chan. He was in a good mood all afternoon and didn’t cry or fuss until the very end as we drove back to my house. Phew!

catching up

Marie and Cole came over yesterday to have lunch and just hang out. Marie and I got to catch up and I helped watch the little dude so she could relax a bit. By the way, little “Taku-chan” is getting big and moving a lot. He can sit up and rock back and forth on all fours. That gave me a good opportunity to play with my camera a bit. It’s fun trying to capture the expressions and quick movements that this little kid makes.

Later in the evening, I met up with my old pals from PTN. Four out of the five of us have already left PTN and we’re all living in Orange County now. It was fun to see them again and we got to chat about what we’ve been up to lately and where we’re headed next.