bonnie & jason

Whew… what a trip!

We got back late last night from our family reunion of sorts in Vegas centered around my parents’ place. Growing up, we used to do this many times a year with my mom’s side of the family in Pennsylvania. Of course, it’s a little different now with my cousin Anna with a family of four (plus their au pair, Linda… who speaks six languages BTW!!!), my brother and his wife Jen, and my party of five. Nowadays, we’re spread across the country with ever increasing demands on our time and resources so I was happy to see everyone make it together. Also, my grandmother isn’t getting any younger and frankly, her memory isn’t what it used to be so I hope we can continue to get together at least once a year and spend as much time with her as possible.

Anyway, we spent time doing varying things from buffet to shopping to watching football to the “traditional” Christmas hot pot meal. And of course, with three young kids of my own plus Anna’s two, we all had our hands full most of the time. All in all, a very nice trip. Although we will likely not be making that drive again any time soon. Of the 1200 miles roundtrip (~25 hours), about 1000 of them were uneventful. But the remaining 200 were painful enough that we may be scared of driving any farther than the San Francisco Bay Area for quite some time.

Anyway… without further ado, here are a bunch of pictures that I took over the week:

Ashley and my grandma got along just fine. As a matter of fact, Ashley fell asleep in her arms for like 2 hours! (The stuffed pineapple was a big hit too.)

Amanda also was a big fan of her great-grandmother.

And they were both fans of the center of this tall swivel chair:

We re-celebrated Alissa’s birthday while we were there with a little cupcake:

Ashley didn’t take long to explore the entire house.

BTW, she’s standing on her own quite reliably now (if not happily in this particular instance).

Amanda can stand as well and has surpassed Ashley in outright crawling speed. Here she is getting ready to take in some calories to fuel that speed.

Mmm… lip smackin’ good bananas. Ashley’s calories are not for speed but rather for her thighs.

Babes with their newest toy.

Amanda in laundry with a rare “good” smile.

… and with Ashley.

Alissa and Chloe putting sprinkles on cookies:

Ashley and Amanda tucked in their car seats at the Green Valley Ranch district shopping area.

This does not bode well.

With grandma.

and with cousin Katherine (whom I remember being an infant herself…)

Stopped at the Mad Greek on the way home to feed and change and eat. Ashley is here hanging out waiting for Alissa to come back from a pee break.

Here are a few pictures from Christian’s camera:

Alissa’s 3rd birthday party

We had a small party for Alissa’s 3rd birthday party this weekend. As typical, it was a random array of food. I tried to make Matzo ball soup (from scratch) for the first time. (Everyone seemed to like it… except the Matzo balls were a little dense. Maybe because it was whole wheat Matzo meal.) Then we had little kid food like fries, chicken nuggets, sliders, and onion rings. And of course, a few random Chinese takeout dishes.

It was Hello Kitty themed which Alissa really liked. And everyone was very generous with their gifts. We’re going to have to start requesting smaller gifts… no where to keep all this stuff!

Girls… lots of girls

We went to the Huey’s new house today to help with some pictures and took a few with all 6 girls just for fun. Here’s one of them:

Apparently, the Huey’s smile. The Wang’s do not.

Santa and three little elves

No line at the mall! And we got a fairly decent picture considering there were three personalities to wrangle. Ashley looked better in some earlier shots but ended up just lounging. Amanda was fine in the beginning but got a bit anxious resulting in the semi-teary expression. Alissa was pretty good. She was shy and didn’t want to tell Santa what she wanted for Christmas, but she managed to keep her hands in her lap and light up one of her fake smiles for this particular shot.