Winnie's Staggette

I can't believe it's actually happening next week. Winnie is getting married to YJ! Um, sorry, I don't know what YJ stands for. I can't pronounce his real name so I can't spell it either. Nevertheless, we had a huge party bash for my older sister last night to celebrate final days of being single. Thanks Lisa and Carmen for all the arrangements!

I am typing this with a super, duper hangover... thanks to my wonderful jello shots, 2 jugs of long island ice tea, a whole bottle of vodka and... the game called "I haven't" which made us open one last bottle of red wine. I think that bottle of wine did it. I can still taste the wine in my mouth...yuck.

See Wiener? We love you so much (meanwhile pounding headache beating me in the head). The things that happened last night will remain in my blurry mind. (what? I fell down the stairs???) I can't remember anything.

I will post up awesome pics when I get them.

Julia - 1 years old! (video)

Julia turned 1 years old today. We went to see the doctor today for Julia's checkup and she got her shots. These are her stats:

weight - 8.26kg, 18lbs 3oz (20%)
head - 44cm (30%)
length - 76cm (75%)

Julia hasn't gained as much weight as I'd hoped. I was thinking Julia may be 19 or even 20 pounds but we weren't even close to that. Sigh. I'll have to keep on feeding her every 2 hours, just so that she can remain growing at her 20% weight line. I remember Jasmine was a light weight at 1 years old as well. I guess the girls have Daddy genes (long and thin). Good thing Julia has some Mommy genes - small head. Jasmine has Daddy genes - big head.

We held an early birthday party for Julia, the week before her birthday. We invited some friends to Thunderbird community center to have lunch and then play at the private gym. Everyone ate a buffet lunch and then we did a fast demo of Julia picking her future profession (she's a future engineer), and then we ate cake. The gym had a bouncy castle, basketball court, ride on toys, castle made of foam blocks, slide... it was fun to have the entire gym all for our party, so the kids could play with anything they wanted.

There are 3 videos from Julia's birthday party: choosing profession, cut cake, playing in gym.

Julia - sleepy signal (video)

I was bathing Julia the other night and she was super sleepy. She started wiggling her bum back and forth, and back and forth. She's done this a few times before so I knew what it meant... it means that Julia is really sleepy. This totally brings back memories of when Jasmine was an infant and she'd also do this wiggle bum thing when she was sleepy too. Check these videos out. One is Julia wiggling her bum and the other video is Jasmine wiggling her bum:

Both Kids - Sick Again

Chinese New  year!  It creeped up on us this year, especially after the vacation.  Oops, forgot to take a family pic! Oh well, we did get Jules in her cute outfit.

Unfortunately, both the kids are sick again. Jasmine seems to have picked up a bug from her first day of preschool and is now coughing with a runny nose. Her asthma is back and she needs her medication every 4 hours with nebulizer. Julia has caught the cold as well and every time she sneezes, she can blow snot across the room. I can forsee a tough 2 weeks ahead...

Kiddies - please stop getting sick!!!

First Day of School - Jasmine

Today is Jasmine's official first day of preschool at the Killarney Preschool. She was really excited about it and had her clothes on, her backpack all ready to go even before we were supposed to leave. Here are a couple of pics of her with her huge smile. She's a big girl now.

Breast Pump - Broken

I never would have thought that this could happen. My breastpump broke today. The suction just isn't working properly, even though the pump is still pumping. I opened up the faceplate area (where the tubes go into) and saw that there is a whole in the diaphram area which I assume is the problem.

I'll have to call Medela to see what can be done about this. Just hoping that they can repair it, rather than having to buy a new pump. I guess timing-wise, it's not so bad since I am leaning towards quitting pumping anyways. Julia will be 1 years old in a few weeks.

Hawaii Day 10 - Last Day, Richard's Birthday and Kailua Beach (video)

Today is the final day in Hawaii; we'll be boarding our plane back to Vancouver tonight. Because our flight is at 9pm, we have an entire day to enjoy. The owner of the house rental was nice enough to allow us to check out as late as we wanted. To take advantage of this, we wanted to head to a beach close by and then come back to shower, clean up, do laundry and pack up.

We decided to go to Kailua beach, a 5-minute drive from the rental house. To our surprise, this beach was the nicest one we went to on our entire vacation. This beach had a parking lot, nice sandy beach area, not crowded, washrooms and showers and natural shade so you didn't need to bring an umbrella.

Both Julia and Jasmine loved being in the water and playing in the sand. Jasmine almost fell over from a strong wave pushing her! In this video, you can hear Jasmine reciting a poem from one of her favorite books: Out and About.

Note - it is Richard's birthday today so I had to be extra nice to him (not that I'm not nice to him usually). We will celebrate his birthday again once we get back to Vancouver.


Our flight home was a red-eye flight leaving at 9pm and arriving at 5am. When we boarded the plane, we were happy to find out that the middle seat between Richard and me was left empty (so now we have more space). Julia did fall asleep on the plane ride home and we were able to put her down in the empty seat when there was no turbulence (when there is turbulence, I had to carry her in my arms). The below pic was taken at 4am:

Hawaii Day 9 - North Shore beaches and Dole Plantation

Today is the last full day we have in Hawaii (we leave back to Vancouver tomorrow). As a final day, I packed in alot of things to see, a drive into the North shore to see all the different beaaches, a nut factory and a pinapply plant.

On our drive through the North Shore, we passed by the Chinaman's hat (a rock that looks like a China man's hat, thus the name). We also passed by the Macadamia nut factory (well known company that packages those yummy nuts with chocolate. We bought several boxes home with us to share with family.

Chinaman's Hat, Macadamia Nut factory

While driving, I noticed there were several small shops located on the side of the road called shrimp trucks. And most of them had line ups beside them so I got curious and wanted to try some. We stopped at Romy's shrimp truck and bought 1 pound of fresh prawns for $16. The box contained 7 large prawns steamed fresh with garlic and butter. Yummmm. It was a nice treat although there wasn't enough to go around. Next time we'll have to try some of the other shrimps/prawn dishes.


I've heard alot about the North shore beaches, that if we had time we should definitely check them out. Most of the beaches were for surfers, due to the strong waves. These were the beaches we passed by:

Sunset beach - lots of waves with sandy beach, good for surfing
Pupukea beach - lots of rocks, had a circular structure near the shallow end so it is good for snorkeling
Laniakea beach - also called turtle beach (we drove by and didn't stop)
Waimea beach - calmer flat beach.

Jasmine had been looking forward to playing in the sand and water today, and was finally able to take a dip at Waimea beach.

The last stop of the day was the Dole Pinapple Plantation Tour. We got there just in time to get onto the last tour, via a 20 minute train ride. It was pretty neat. The kids loved being on the train and looking at the plants. It was pretty informative (although I don't remember much of it now).