bonnie & jason

2010 Photo/Video Montage

Another year, another video. For you hardcore blog fans, you’ll watch all nine minutes of the video and love every second. For everyone else, I apologize for the long boring video.

2011 01 03 2010 montage from Jason Wang on Vimeo.

Alissa’s fourth birthday

We did Alissa’s fourth birthday party with her friends from school at the Daly City Party Playhouse this year and did a small dinner thing at home as well. Hard to believe she’s four already. Four more years and she’ll be eight and I’ll be 40!?

Walk around Stowe Lake

My cousin Jen came to visit for a few days this past week for a little R&R. One small part of her trip was a short walk around Stowe Lake where we took a few pictures.

For some reason, Amanda felt like putting her hands in her pockets.

Blast from the past – video from our wedding reception

I’ve been trying to do some cleaning of all the electronic data we have across multiple external and internal hard drives recently and rediscovered the video that we showed during our wedding reception. For those of you who were at the wedding (and weren’t totally wasted) you might remember bits and pieces. The most interesting thing to me is to look at the baby pictures of us and compare them to Ashley, Amanda, and Alissa. Definitely some similarities in certain pictures. It’s kind of a long video, but hopefully you’ll enjoy it. At the very least, there will be several pictures that you can make fun of us about. I certainly have some doozies in there.

2005 07 30 video showed at our wedding from Jason Wang on Vimeo.

Celebrating Benita’s birthday at the beach

We went to Santa Cruz for Benita’s birthday. Spent some time at the beach and did some BBQ. Here are a few pics and a short video:

2010 09 04 Santa Cruz Beach from Jason Wang on Vimeo.

Saw a seal pretty close up:

WongWangChiang clan

Dirty, dirty baby:

Babies like roasted corn on the cob:

And Alissa likes chips:

Bonnie made the dolphin and surfboard out of fondant.

Happy 5th Year Anniversary to Us

Today is our fifth anniversary. I figure if we can get through the rigors of being newlyweds, moving in together, getting one kid out of the terrible-twos (although still not out of the terrible-threes), and getting twins to nearly 18 months without killing each other (us, not them… although now that I think about it, them too) in the first five years of marriage, the next 50 years should be a piece of cake. (I reserve the right to revise this sentiment in the teenage years.)

To mark the occasion, here’s an annotated three-picture collage that Bonnie put together:

Sorry for the lapse superfans…

We’ve been a bit MIA lately. With the normal craziness of the kiddies plus the added craziness of new job stuff, I’ve been a bit negligent the last few weeks. However, the lack of actual posts just means this will be one mega post. So, without further ado…

I got the iphone 4 since I had to give back my work blackberry and my new job doesn’t provide a phone, but does give a stipend. Woot! Timing was perfect and I was able to get one the second day they were available by just hitting up the Apple store in the mall first thing in the morning. Just had to wait about 20 minutes. Here’s the first photo I took with the front facing camera:

Not too much all that groundbreaking otherwise, although I did recently get to try out the facetime feature with Christian as he just got one himself. Kids seemed to enjoy it:

For those of you who may have forgotten over the long lapse, I still have lots of kids:

It’s been a while since we did some family photos so we tried to do some this past weekend. I noticed some new landscaping along the Great Highway that I thought might make a decent backdrop that was easy to access. Amanda, however, weren’t very cooperative.

Ashley, however, seemed to enjoy swinging her legs while sitting on the bench.

Alissa also Ashley actually took a few cute ones together:

Amanda eventually warmed up enough to at least walk around and pick up some sticks anyway:

Anyway, after that mostly failed attempt, we ended up just going home and doing naps/feeding. They were in a better mood later in the day so we did a couple quick ones in the backyard with the tripod. As you can see, I was not planning on being in any pictures myself.

While we were back there, I took some random pics while the kiddies played in the sand.

We also went to dinner this weekend to celebrate Bonnie’s mom’s birthday. After dinner, we came back to our place for some dessert. Hard to get everyone looking, but this one isn’t bad.

Finally, a few pictures from today.
Apparently, Ashley watched TV like this for about half an hour. No idea why.

Amanda felt it was interesting enough to blog about however:

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.”