bonnie & jason

Anna and Andy’s wedding

Wedding = date night and yesterday, we went to Andy and Anna’s wedding at Viansa winery in Sonoma (just down the road from Sears Point, sorry, Infineon raceway). It was a beautiful day and a beautiful venue with lots of good food and drink that started with a unique poignant ceremony and ended with heartfelt and choked up speeches.

Here are some pictures:

Jackie’s Red Egg & Ginger party

Yes, I know, you’re tired of hearing about all these kid parties. Sorry, it’s just the stage of life we’re in at the moment. First it was pool parties and ski trips. Then it was bachelor parties and weddings. And now it’s baby parties. I think we’re beyond the peak of these things at this point, but still far from the end of them given baby showers and red egg & ginger parties turn into birthday parties, graduations, and so on.

Anyway, this past weekend we went to Jacqueline’s party. I hate to admit that I’m less diligent about taking pictures these days but it’s the truth. I did manage to snap a few though.
She totally looks like Kathy:

Ryan got his fill of junk food just like Alissa:

Whom he wasn’t interested in taking a picture with:

Even with the mom’s:

And now with Kathy, Aidan, and Jackie in the mix:

Aidan’s pizza party

Aidan had a Thomas the Train bday party today:

Jacqueline is cuter and cuter every time we see her:

The girls were pretty well behaved:

Even after we got home:

Bea’s first birthday Bea-B-Q

Our friends Ravi and Jen had a shin dig at their new place this weekend to celebrate Bea’s birthday. We could only make it to the last hour or so but were glad to make it out to see Bea (who is looking more like Ravi it seems) along with their sweet new backyard. Maybe someday we’ll be able to turn our jungle into something as nice as theirs. Anywho, as is typical with these kinds of parties, lots of cute babies were around so I took the liberty of taking some snaps. Here are some of my favorites:

Birthday girl:

Bea chowing down on a wooden star:

Bea giving me her, “This is MY house… don’t you tell me to smile… I’ll smile when I’m good and ready!” look.

One of mine:

Another one of mine with Erika:

“Yea, he’s my dad. I’m not exactly jumping up and down but he makes a decent BBQ pork.”

“Mom, on the other hand, is finger licking good.”

“Yes, I do have big eyes.”

“Whatchoo lookin’ at?”

From rags to riches

Rags… (shingled half of the shed Sunday… hopefully finish the whole thing this weekend.)

… to riches

We visited Jef, Xiao Yi, and Gavin this weekend at their beautiful new place in Burlingame. Xiao Yi made a fantastic dinner as always. Beef noodle soup and onion pancakes. Very Taiwanese. And very tasty. Afterwards, we went for a short walk.

Alissa is getting faster and faster.

And she likes to push rather than ride in her stroller.

(I had to make her walk in the grass because the road was too steep and she would certainly have face planted on the way down.)

Gavin is so much bigger than last time we saw him.

And finally, here’s a random pic of Amanda.

Welcome Jacqueline!

Congrats to Eric and Kathy on the birth of their daughter!

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

The Olthofs visit

Our friends Bryan, Sijen, and their son, Lincoln, came down for a visit this past weekend. It’s been forever since we’ve seen them so it was nice to spend some good quality time together, even though last time we saw them, there were zero kids around whereas now there are four! A lot can change in a couple years…

Anyway, just a few pics from the weekend.

Lincoln is 7 months old but already about the same height as Alissa and just a few pounds lighter. That’s the difference between 100th percentile boy and a 3rd percentile girl.

Damn, that’s a lot of kids!

This is Sijen’s sister, Sybil, and Lincoln:

Alissa’s second birthday party

We just had a small group over for Alissa’s birthday party this year. Bonnie made a request for chicken cacciatore and a Panormous Pizza Hut Pizza. So I got up early and threw all the cacciatore stuff in the slow cooker for four hours and picked up a not quite ginormous panormous pizza after picking up the cake.

Here’s my attempt at making the pizza look bigger than it actually was:

Here’s Alissa enjoying my chicken cacciatore:

The Elmo and Big Bird cake from Lucky: