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:

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.

Alissa’s glamorous shades. We went to Tiburon this afternoon with Jeff and Xiao-Yi. After sitting on a bench overlooking the bay eating dim sum,

we headed over to the Windsor Winery tasting room and tried to not get drunk. They actually had a bucket of toys that kept Alissa busy as well.

Afterwards, we went to the Gelato place on the corner where Alissa modeled Xiao-Yi’s sunglasses.

She also “wore”a chocolate gelato goatee.

Alissa is still a bit small to enjoy all the rides. And getting her to walk or stay in the stroller was also a bit of a challenge. But we had a good time on the carousel and train and will no doubt be back again once Alissa gets older.

At first, Alissa didn’t want to sit down in the sand. I’m not sure if she just likes to squat or if she didn’t want to get dirty.

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As you can see, she got over that pretty quickly:

She also decided to play Baby Godzilla and trampled down our sand city:

And to think we had thought about getting her a sandbox for the backyard. Why bother when there’s a whole beach a short walk away?!

The beach was actually quite crowded today with the weather being so nice. I just managed to get close crops or find the right angles to keep most of the crowds out of the pictures. (All images taken with Canon 70-200 2.8 IS.)

Alissa and Bonnie also spent some time with Vivian. Here they are in Central Park playing with the water:

After working up an appetite, they stopped for some snacks:

Alissa loved this jam apparently. Don’t report us to child services for feeding our baby what amounts to straight sugar.

Alissa also enjoyed her first pickle which we got from the Carnegie Deli along with a pastrami sandwich about the size of her head:

Then, for the weekend, we ended up at Vin’s place for the annual “Wang’s come to the East Coast BBQ.” Here’s Alissa having her first Oreo cookie sans frosting:

She also had a great time playing with Gunther all weekend:

He basically tolerated her while she tried to ride, stand on, pull on, and pet him constantly.
Alissa also got a chance to try out her big hat at the park down the street:

The only thing I forgot to do is take a group picture of all the folks that were able to make it to the BBQ. Too many people to catch up with in too little time. Oh well, hopefully we can make it back again next year. By then, all conversations will revolve around kids as Vin and Denise will have a little Chao, Kiran and Priya will be inconceivably bigger, Alissa will be even more of a pain in the butt, Ellen and Mike may be able to make it with Natalie and their newborn, and Jenny and Eric will have a little one as well. Damn… talk about population growth!

Rest of the pics here.

Deeann, queen of the soy/ginger chicken/steak.

Said soy/ginger chicken. Looks good, doesn’t it? We also had ribs, burgers, sausages, corn, two fruit salads, potato salad, smores, rice crispy treats, and a bunch of different drinks.

Alissa and Megan have similar “backpacks.” Alissa has the monkey, Megan has the doggie. If you didn’t notice, the “tails” act as leashes. I prefer to call them “safety restraints.”

Girl Power!

Kissing cousins. Alissa likes to kiss everyone, especially kids, these days. It’s to the point now when we’re out in public and there are other little kids around, we have to pull her back. She also likes to hug and pet kids’ heads. Hopefully this phase will pass quickly.

Alissa may be turning into a bit of a ham.

Alissa managed to get the monkey off her back. (HAH!)

And apparently, this signaled that she was the dominant toddler and ready to feed Megan to which Megan apparently agreed?! These have to be the funniest pictures I’ve ever taken… it was even funnier in person. Especially with Vicki’s commentary that Megan won’t let her or Tony feed her.

The now dethroned dominant toddler literally up in arms with the new regime. She took her aggression out on the adult empire later in the afternoon with what can only be described as Lollapapoopa.

Tony can throw a Frisbee really well. Hitting a tennis ball is more of a developing skill.

Look at that extension!

Karate chop!

Such balance and grace! (And mega-cool awesome sunglasses that exude sex appeal.)

It’s all about the follow through.

More good follow through.

Less good follow through.

Good times, good times.

P.S. For anyone interested, these were all taken with a 20D and 100mm 2.8 macro lens.

I have to say, I didn’t have high expectations as most web sites make the place seem better than it actually is. However, in this case, the web site was underselling the property. First of all, the place was huge! No “wide angle lens” tricks here. The bedrooms, bathrooms, living rooms, even the hallways were humongous. Second, the house was very new and all the furniture, decorations, etc. were still fresh without any of that “rental house” feel that sometimes happens over time. Third, everything was very high end. From the bathroom fixtures to the light switches, it was clear that this house was built to luxury standards. Finally, everything was very clean and well stocked. We didn’t have to go scrounging for bathroom tissue or bring our own towels. All in all, we were very happy with the accommodations, especially given that the price wasn’t bad as we were at the tail end of the off-season.

I’ll put up a more detailed trip summary later this weekend as it’s kinda late now. For the time being, here are a few pictures that I liked: (Edit: Added new pictures and commentary below. Also, here’s the link to the full album.)

Alissa loved the stairs. I guess they were a novelty as we don’t have any at home that she can use. So she spent the better part of most days going up and down, up and down. She did enough so that she can actually go down the stairs forwards while hugging the wall. She’s not super reliable at this technique though so someone had to be there to catch her in case she fell. But between the grandparents, aunts, uncles, cousins, Alissa got pretty much her fill of things.

We spent one of the days at the San Diego Zoo. It was a super hot day but worth the trip. Here’s a picture of the baby panda. He was just hanging out in this tree. Didn’t look all that comfy to me, but he seemed to enjoy it. If you look at the pictures in the whole album, you’ll also notice that he enjoyed showing the crowd his dirty, fuzzy butt.

Here’s Aidan at the petting zoo. I love the hat. I think he had just as much fun playing in the dirt as with the animals.

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Christian and Chloe on the deck at the house. The sun was nice and low so I got warm, even light. And Chloe obliged with a big smile!

Bonnie and Alissa on the Carousel at the zoo. Alissa didn’t really know what to make of it until the second time we rode it.

Papa, Mama, and baby monkey. Literally hanging around looking at the people looking at them.

Lions and tigers and bears (two kinds) oh my!

At the San Diego Wildlife Park, the animals had much more room to run about. It was cool to see the different species occupying the same large space.

Alissa’s first dippin’ dots. Only $4.50.

Can’t have a good day as a kid without swings!

Alissa was pretty well behaved for the most part. She really liked the escalators and people movers in the airport. Here she is during one of the rare sitting still moments:

It gave way to people watching pretty quickly:

Otherwise, she enjoyed most of the “vacation” not that she has anything to vacation from. Regardless, as you can see, she found Vegas most relaxing:

When not lounging about, she spent some time at the local park. As she does while at home, she enjoyed the slide and tube tunnel.

And of course, she enjoyed being spoiled by the grandparents probably just as much as they enjoyed spoiling her.

However, I think she would agree that there’s no place like home, especially when there’s a froggy towel to be wrapped up in after a nice long bath.

First off, we ended up driving since plane tickets around the holidays were so expensive. The Pilot only ended up getting about 20 mpg so we probably spent one plane ticket’s worth on gas. Here are some shot of Alissa in her new car seat, ready for her longest drive ever:

PEACE OUT!

Mmm… elephant

Alissa was actually amazingly well behaved throughout the drive. She slept through most of it and only complained if the sun was in her eyes and towards the end of the trip when we were all itching to get out and stretch our legs. It probably would have been even easier except we ran into a lot of holiday traffic when we merged with the Socal holiday travelers on I-15. All in all, with four stops for breakfast, lunch, milk, dinner, it took us 13 hours. A long day, but overall, not a bad drive.

Once we got there, we were afraid Alissa wasn’t going to sleep since she had napped so much during the drive. Fortunately, that was not the case as can be seen here:

The next few days were spent walking around some new shopping areas, eating, playing Wii, opening presents… typical family time stuff.

Alissa loves her new bundle-me and hat

But it messes up her hair

Hanging out with great-grandma

The tree Anna had mailed to grandma!

Playing with grandpa

Massive bedhead

Christmas morning presents

For some reason, Alissa loves the wind in her face

Xmas display at the Bellagio

Alissa “playing” Wii

Mmm… hotpot

The drive home was easier than the drive in since there was much less traffic. However, it did have one dramatic section around Edwards AFB where we had to drive through a sandstorm! As we approached, it just looked like a dusty cloud, but once we got closer, we could clearly see a it was much much more.

Here’s a video of the ordeal:

Driving through sandstorm from Jason Wang on Vimeo.

All in all, a pretty good trip despite having the Pilot sand blasted. (It seems to be ok…) We probably won’t be doing this drive all that often since flights to Vegas are usually pretty cheap. But it’s good to know that Alissa is capable of tolerating such a long drive.