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:

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.

Happy Wangsgiving

We hosted a small gathering of folks for Thanksgiving this year. Bonnie made a “fruit turkey”, a cranberry mold, salad, and layered jello. I made garlic mashed potatoes (Alton Brown recipe), wild rice stuffing (made up based on what I remember from a recipe from 2 years ago), a 16 lb turkey (Alton Brown influenced), and giblet gravy. And of course, all our guests brought even more food. Ham, korean short ribs, meatballs and sausages, apple pie, cookies, sweet potatoes, dim sum, creamed corn, 7 layer brownies, cake, potato salad, mango pudding, and probably a few things I’ve already digested and forgotten. It was an obscene amount of food for the number of mouths available.

Needless to say, everyone stuffed their faces but barely made a dent in all the food. So everyone also did a good job taking lots of leftovers home.

Turkey turned out pretty well. I brined it for a day before roasting. And I also used the techniques Alton Brown recommends in order to keep the breasts moist while still making sure the thighs cook through.

Here’s Bonnie’s “turkey.”

Halloween party at Tommy and Phyllis’

We went to Tommy and Phyllis’ beautiful new house for a Halloween party. They had great decorations, food, and provided a safe and enthusiastic neighborhood full of houses to go trick or treating.

Here’s a picture with the grandparents before we left.

Amanda fell asleep during the trick or treat walk:

Phyliss’ salad with carmelized “brains”:

And her eye-meatball sandwiches:

Plus stromboli (can’t remember what the scary name was):

She also made a really good french onion soup and had punch and dip. That plus all the desserts everyone brought made for quite the feast. We brought a pumpkin cake that I forgot to take a picture of. I did a bad job with the frosting so it wasn’t all that pretty anyway. It did have a Hoho stem that was pretty funny though… till Terry broke it off and ate it.

I’ll have to get some pictures from the other folks who were there. I’m getting worse at photographing everything… need another set of hands to take pictures while holding babies.

More scans of old pictures

My parents are in town visiting and brought some old pictures with them that haven’t seen the light of day in I don’t know how long. Here are some of the more interesting ones:

Mike probably around 9 months or so is my guess. Probably at his chubbiest!

Mike around 14 or so? Probably the skinniest he’s ever been.

My dad and his buddies in college around 1958. Can you tell which is him?

My mom’s college graduation photo:

Mom after moving to the US around 1968:

Me around 4 or 5:

Me almost 2? Look like a girl, huh?

Trip back east

Our annual pilgrimage back east almost didn’t happen this year. First, we weren’t sure we wanted to schlep everyone cross country to begin with. Second, with Amanda being susceptible to viruses, and the whole swine flu thing, traveling seemed a bit risky. And finally, after we had made arrangements to go after all, Alissa ended up with a fever the night before we were scheduled to leave. In the end, we decided that the trip wasn’t going to get any easier, Amanda would be fine and they do have doctors in New Jersey anyway, and Alissa’s fever broke before we had to leave for the airport so off we went.

All in all, it was a great trip. For the first half of the trip, the plan was to stay with Vin, Denise, Henry, and Gunther. While we were there, Jenny visited with her daughter Maddie. Last time we were in town, Jenny was just a few days short of giving birth, Denise was pregnant with Henry, and we just had Alissa. So lunch was a pretty straight forward affair with all the adults and just one baby. How things have changed! Here’s a pic with the babies and most of the adults.

And here’s me with all the babies:

And Henry having his way with Ashley:

Good times.

Part two of the trip was to attend Mary’s wedding. We hadn’t seen Mary in a while and were excited to witness her happy day and to meet her now husband. This is the first trip where I didn’t bring my big camera gear but here are a few pics I took with our point and shoot:

From the wedding, we were supposed to go stay with my cousin Anna but Aidan was just getting over the flu and we didn’t want to risk the kids getting sick so we ended up staying with Geoff and Asha that night. They were very gracious hosts especially considering the last minute situation and the fact that it’s no small feat to accommodate all five of us. Kiran and Alissa got along fine even though he’s a little bit older.

The next day, we went to the Pepsi headquarter’s sculpture garden.

Then it was back to the Chao residence for the remainder of our stay (after a short visit with my cousin… poor Aidan was sequestered 100 feet away). Henry was happy to see us again. More specifically, he was happy to see Ashley and her feet.

That Henry is a character:

So all in all, even though it was a very demanding trip both physically and emotionally, it was well worth it to spend time with the friends and family we don’t get to see very often. Will we do it again next year. Hmm… we’ll see. I should have taken a picture of us trying to wrangle the two infant seats, two strollers, one car seat, three pieces of luggage, and of course, the three kids. Thankfully, we got help from random strangers on both the flight out and the flight back. On the flight out, the person sitting next to Bonnie was a mom to three kids, two of whom were twins. So she was both sympathetic and also took a stint holding Amanda for a while. On the way back, a nice man helped us with our luggage out to baggage claim. He was also a parent of twins. Anyway, like I said, we’ll see.

Amanda and Ashley’s Red Egg and Ginger Party

Two years ago, we hosted a couple hundred people at the Moonstar in San Francisco for Alissa’s red egg and ginger party. This time around, we ended up with mostly the same crowd at the Daly City Moonstar since the San Francisco one closed down (I think.) Also, the Daly City one is newer and nicer, probably a little closer to us in driving time, and parking is much easier.

We did Kit Kat bars along side bubbles for the kids and twin lady bug magnets for every family instead of the Trades Joe’s chocolate bars this time around. (Happy to offer these up for sale similar to how we did the ones for Alissa for those of you who are interested.)

My mom was able to make it out this time.

These are the four pictures we used in a big frame.

Otherwise, we feel very lucky that so many of our friends and family were able to make it out. Too bad it’s impossible to spend as much time as we would like with everyone, but hopefully, we’ll be able to see folks a little more often now that the twins are a little bit older.

I’d write more, but we’re all pretty pooped out. Here’s the rest of the pictures: http://flickr.com/gp/jasonwang/106988

Gorgeous day for an Easter Egg hunt

Hottest day of the year so far was spent in Brisbane with a bunch of little rug rats running around for Easter eggs. The Chan’s needed an excuse to host a mah jong party since Uncle Henry, Aunt Lillian, Vanessa, Dylan, and Avery were in town for a visit and we could not have had a nicer day for it. A bunch of pictures below. Here is the entire album.

Here’s Alissa with her fancy dress and hair do ready to par-tay:

Practicing her kung fu moves in case someone tries to take one of her eggs:

Getting some seat time while daddy jump starts his car since it hasn’t been driven in so long:

Prepping for the hot sun:

Mmm… eggs:
/>

Eww… eggs:

Eggs? Who cares?

“Don’t touch my eggs!”

Megan, totally prepared to dominate the hunt:

Dylan and his basket of optimism:

Megan has spotted another one:

Alissa is just a hair taller than the basket:

Forget the eggs, Abigail wants to slide:

“Yes, my eyes really are that big.”

“I got the chocolate, you can have the egg.”

Good to be home again

Now that we’ve been home for a few days, things are getting back to “normal.” Amanda is still eating well on her own and our pediatrician was happy with her weight gain at our last appointment. Assuming everything continues on track, he’ll take the tube out at our next appointment on Tuesday. I’m trying to make up for lost time in the photos department, so here are a few.

We’re all sick

Alissa got sick a number of days ago and proceeded to get the twins and Bonnie sick. I thought I had caught it and summarily kicked it away a few days ago, but I’m a little sniffly now too. The lack of sleep and a bit of a stressful week at work probably didn’t do me any favors in that regard.

Despite the plague, stress, sleep deprivation, and other “life stuff” going on, I figure it was time to post to the blog. I told myself that I would not be any less prolific with the arrival of the twins, but now I realize that was an unrealistic expectation. At least in the short term, while they are feeding every three hours 24 hours a day, it seems that my camera and my computer will have a bit of a respite.

That being said, I do have a few pictures to share today. As many of you with kids know, when the house is quiet for more than a few minutes at a time, you can be sure that nothing good is happening. Well, this afternoon, after one of said quiet times, I went hunting for Alissa, the #1 trouble maker and discovered this:

She had gotten into Bonnie’s purse and helped herself to some Burt’s Bee’s lip something or other. I guess she was feeling a bit chapped.