Praise God that we are now back home.

We had lunch with the family at Todai today. Afterwards, we decided to swing by church to see how is everyone doing and if we can help in anyway. When we got there, the Toms said that they are heading home already and that scripps ranch is also safe to go. We confirmed after we got back to Janet's mom's house that that is the case.

So our home is pretty much untouched other than soot everywhere. The hose that I left out in the front yard trapped piles of soot which will need to be washed off. It's awesome to be back home and actually a little weird knowing that we could have lost all of it.

We don't know yet if anyone from our church has lost their home. (Earlier report that our Cantonese Pastor may have lost his home turned out to not be the case as his house turned out to be the only one standing. What a miracle!)

Just want to let you all know that we are all doing okay from the fire. It's pretty crazy down here. At around 2 PM we got the order from the SDPD for a mandatory evacuation. So we packed both of our cars and drove down to Janet's Mom's house and that's where we are. The sky is clear down here and the air quality is much better

The girls are doing okay. More exciting then anything for them. Sarah is enjoying being out of the house and spending time with Maykay. Her only complaint was that she didn't get to watch Disney Channel as we have been watching the news constantly. Catherine is also having fun crawling everywhere.

Needless to say, no work for me today and looks like for tomorrow too. Sarah's school is also closed tomorrow and Wednesday.

Anyhow. Appreciate all your prayers.

As most of you already know, Janet's Grandma passed away on 8/30 at the age of 85. Though she was getting weak physically in her last days on earth, her spiritual strength was like a giant. We look forward to seeing her again in eternity.

Sarah also started her first day of her 2-year Kindergarten program. Her birthday is in October so instead of having her being the youngest one in her class, we decided to let her have 2 years of kindergarten. It's not a "Chinese" thing to do but we believe in the long run, it will be better for her.

3 nights ago, our neighborhood had a planned power outage from 10 PM to the next morning. The moon was also not out so it was a good opportunity for me to try some star trail photos.
I did a couple of them each one is around 15 - 30 minutes. The results were "okay". I had to play around with different apertures. Hopefully I will have more opportunites to try it again soon. While waiting, I pulled up a lawn chair and admired the beautiful starry sky. I even had my old star books with me and looked up a couple of constellations.

Today, Catherine started to crawl up the stairs. We've never seen her do that before.

Something new everyday. =)

Today is Catherine's Happy Birthday! Her party is not until this Saturday so today was just like any other Wednesday. Catherine actually went to bed pretty early. After dinner, watched Baby Einstein and off to her crib, not even a fuss. I guess she was really tired.

Did get a chance to play Grand Tourismo with Sarah though which was pretty funny. She wanted to pick Elina's Rav4 as her car but it's not available. Then she saw the late model MR2 with the top down and she picked that one because she said that's fufu's car. Haha, so cute. Of course, we didn't really race as she can barely remember which button is the gas paddle so we ended up just crashing our cars into each other. She loved that. It was pretty weird crashing a MR2 into a Aston Martin Vanquish again and again. Ouch!!!

We did more preparation for Catherine's party. Janet was doing all the party favor bags and I did the magnets. I love how the magnets turned out. Unfortunately we ran out of the magnet supply. Pray that we would be able to get some more tomorrow.

I will continue on with the vacation blog some other day. Do check my flickr though as I may just put all the photos there.

So Last weekend we went on vacation with the Lys to San Francisco. Kind of a spur of the moment thing. I hope to do a couple of entries here showing pictures we took on our trip.

We left on Thursday early morning, first stop was Gilroy to do some outlet shopping. Janet got a set of matching dresses for Sarah and Catherine which was cool. Went to look for a piggy bank for Sarah at the Sanrio store but didn't really find one that we liked. Tax was more expansive there so we didn't really go broke there.

Next we went to this Japanese Garden in San Jose. Never been there before and it was quite interesting. Saw lots of Koi in the pond which was pretty neat. They also had this dead end bridge that was rather strange
There were plenty of picture opportunities
But not every one likes to have their pictures taken
We spend the next 2 days in San Francisco. We were so hoping to visit the Golden Gate Park Museum but they were either under renovation or moving to a different location. I forgot which. That was a big disappointment. So instead we went to yet another (though much nicer) Japanese Garden.
We got in for free which was quite nice. I've been to Japanese Garden in Japan many time and I have to say this one is very very authentic. Even the ticket booth looks almost identical to the ones I've seen in Japan.
Okay, gotta end this for now as it is close to 1 am. Please stay tune for more.

Sorry it has been ages since the last update.  Just came back from our joint family vacation with Peter and Elina's family so I should be doing a longer entry soon.

There was nothing going on much for a while just the daily routine so there were no updates.

I was thinking that I should just do at least once a week as a weekly photo blog, what do you guys think?  If you guys don't mind, I would try to do more random entries.

Last week was Vacation Bible School (VBS) at my church. Sarah enrolled in it for the 2nd time (I was corrected by Janet). With each new thing that Sarah and Catherine do, we feel a little bit older. I guess that's the way of life. Btw, Catherine has been crawling since Independence Day, that's her way of celebrating Freedom.

With VBS, our whole family got a new schedule. Every morning, Janet, Sarah and Catherine tried (very hard) to be at church by 8:40. By the end of the week, they finally did it. Part of the problem with them not able to get make it on time is because of me. I really need to start to get to bed earlier and get up earlier. Something you can all pray for me about.

On the last day, they had the Carnival where they set up little games in the basketball court for all the kids. Sarah was some what tentative at first but soon narrowed down to 2 that she liked the most:

Fishing,

and tossing ping pong balls into floating bowls

At the end, she used all of her tickets! I was amazed as last year she didn't want to do any of the games. I guess 1 year is a long time. =) Other than games, they also had

Face (or arm as Sarah preferred) painting
And balloon animals (which Catherine loved to play with and bite on)
I like this photo of Sarah, she looks like she is really enjoying herself.

After the Carnival, it was time for the Evening Program where the kids sang.

and watched others sang (Sarah with her Sunday School Teacher).

During the rehearsal, I was told that Sarah was pretty shy and didn't do any of the hand motions. But that night, she let it all out and everyone was commenting how cute she was. She had so much fun.

I was pleasantly surprised today when I checked out my flickr account that someone has bought me a year subscription of the pro account!! Wow, how cool is that! If you are the one, please let me know so I can properly thank you. Now I can create more sets (and even collections) and most importantly, I don't have to keep on deleting old photos just so that I stay under the 200 max limit of the free account!

Another surprise is that I found out one of my photo got published in the 3rd edition of the Schmap Atlanta Travel Guide! Here is the photo.

Check out the web page with the photo here. When you get there, under the center column, click on "High Museum of Art" and then on the right column, browse through the pictures on the top and you should be able to find it.

This photo was taken at the High Museum during our trip to visit Mike and Reiko in 2005. I don't get any money from it being published but am just happy to see someone like it enough to use it on their web site.

Finally, the last surprise is that we had a sighting of the Monster Grape. You may want to cover the eyes of small children or at least sit down for this one....here it is.


No, we didn't eat it but trust us, it is real. No Photoshop here.

This past Saturday we went to Boomers with Terry and the Wongs. It was the first time for Sarah. I think Sarah is really getting braver now in trying new things as before she was even afraid to do miniature golf but she had so much fun this time. I am also glad to report that our toilet is finally fixed. I've been wanting to fix it as I've been seeing/hearing water constantly leaking from the tank to the bowl. When our water bill doubled last month, I decided I needed to fix this fast. I ended up removing the whole tank to change the valve as I found out it's been crack. This is the 2nd time I had to do this! (Last time was the seal between the bowl and the tank was miss-seated. I got water leaking onto the floor!) Both times were due to poor workmanship of the plumber that Shea hired. GRRRRRR!

Well, also this week, we bought a Wii off of Terry (she is the official Hui Wii retailer as she has already sold 3!) and we've been playing with it everyday!! It's really good exercise for us who never exercise. In fact, Janet and I play with it a lot more than Sarah though we all enjoy it. Sarah is surprisingly good at bowling and starting to get better at tennis. Email me your Wii code if you have a Wii so we can send you Wii mail. =) And if you have any recommendation on games, let me know. So far, we are only playing with the one that comes bundled with the Wii.

Lastly, today is my birthday. I am officially 36 now. Took today off from work. Went to buy a Princess bicycle for Sarah and had lunch at Panera. Still need to put the bike together. In fact, I should do that now before Sarah wakes up. Thank you for reading. =)

Continuing from where we left off.

After that merry-go-round ride, Sarah just loved it so much that she took time to reflect on her experience

Next, 1/2 of our group went home and we headed to the Kiddyland in the middle of the race track where Sarah rode a space ship, pilot her own boat, sat in a tea cup, drove a semi,
flew a fighter

and rode a train with Jordan.
all the while Catherine was there watching her sister.

Well, that pretty much does it. All that just on Friday. We were all so tired from that day and Janet got a pretty good tan too.

I will be uploading some more artsy pictures from the fair on my flickr account (some are there already) so check them out if you like. =) On Saturday, we went to the zoo (we got these free passes from Jack radio at the fair which was awesome). I will see if I will do an entry for that. Please leave a comment so I will know at least someone is reading this. =)

We had a very busy *long* weekend.

We started with the Friday at the DEL MAR FAIR!! We had a huge group, with the Wongs in town from Monterey, the Lys (- Peter), Terry, Mom, Matt, Jordan visiting from Toronto, and Gigi visiting from Hong Kong. Gigi rode with us in the Janet-mobile and we parked at the Horse Park dirt lot like we do every year.

The ride to the park was quite fun. We rode on the top deck of a topless (!) bus.

Once we got there, we headed to the farm animal exhibit

where they pretty much had a contest for every type of farm animal...

even little bunny rabbits.
We fulfilled our annual allowance of deep fried everything for lunch including the popular Australian Battered Potatoes, Calamari, Hot-Dog-On-A-Stick and ice cream for the kids.

After our tummies were full, it was time to have some . . .

And here is Sarah enjoying her favorite ride.
I am going to end this entry now cause it's past 1 am already and I am so tired.

One more picture of Catherine being such a good girl in her stroller for most of the day.

(to be continued)

Yup. You've found us! This is our attempt to keep you all posted on what's going on with us. Please drop by often and say hello. We would love to hear from you. =)

On Father's Day we spent the afternoon at Janet's aunt, Esther's, for a BBQ

Here is Sarah with a funny face.

Catherine was very good at staying in her saucer most of the time.It was good to see the boys. Sarah had fun playing with them.

I believe here, James was defending Noah's gymnastic skills

such as this

or like this

it was a lively party, more so than this picture shows

the kids had so much fun playing hide-and-seek

These were all taken with my new Sigma 30 1.4 after having to send it to Sigma to have them adjust the AF. (It was front focusing.) I am pretty happy with it now.

The adults had fun too. But I took mostly pictures of kids as they are always a lot more interesting.