Aberdeen Mall

Each month, there is a Pro D day and the girls don't have school.  I took a day off today to have a girl's day out.  We went out for sushi lunch, and then headed out to Ikea to look for a duvet cover.  For some reason, we've got gazillions of sheets and pillow cases but not enough duvet covers.  Anyways, I dropped off the kids at the kiddieland area so they can run around in the ball pit while I did some shopping.  (I've got my eye on this new leather dining chairs...)

When it was time to get them (45 minutes later), poor Julia had hurt her foot and was limping.  The original plan was to go ice skating after but with an injured foot, that wasn't an option.  So we ended up at Aberdeen Mall, checked out the Halloween decorations and enjoyed the musical water show.

Meika's Bday - Baby #4?

We went to Meika's house today to celebrate her bday.  There was lots of food, balloon twisting, face painting, pumping music and blinking lights.  Coolz.  We even met a new baby cousin cousin who dressed as Superman.  Babies are so funny.  Whenever he was out, he would fall asleep and whenever he was in the room, he'd wake up to come out.  I guess he just didn't want to miss out on the fun.

The kids had a fabulous time.  Muimui wanted her face painted as a cat and sat in line for 30 minutes!  She's got such patience.  PS - this is what I'd look like with baby #4...haha, yeah right.

Victoria Thanksgiving

Is it Thanksgiving already?  For some reason, it feels like we were in Victoria just a few weeks ago.  We celebrated this long weekend in Victoria, at the Lin's household.  Thanks for hosting W and Y!  We reserved the ferry coming home already but didn't reserve going to Victoria and it was all fine.  Wasn't busy at all.  The kiddies had fun playing in the playground area and eating their buns in the cafeteria area.  

We stayed 2 nights this time since we arrived late at night, we basically put the kids to bed right away.  Yay!  The joys of parenthood; we are happy when the kids are in bed.  The next morning, we went out for dimsum with PoPo, Gong Gong, Lin Family and Yee Yee and Go Go.  We also visited Great Po Po to say hello.

Thanksgiving dinner was awesome.  Because of food allergies, we decided to make foods that were free of dairy, egg, soy, gluten and nuts.  So everything was made from scratch!  So healthy.  And everything tasted fantastic.  Since we were cooking in the kitchen starting at 3pm, we started filling up the beer mugs and wine glasses then too.  By dinner time, we were all having ALOT of fun.  Hee Hee.  

We caught the 12pm ferry home on Monday.  Thank goodness we have a reservation.  By 11:30am, there was already a 2-sailing wait.  I guess the weekend tired everyone out because the 2 younger kiddies fell asleep during the car ride home.  What a fabulous weekend.  Can't wait to get together again.

Inspiration Pass - Space Center, UBC Anthropology and Ice Skating (video)

We are very fortunate that the Vancouver Public library offers the Inspiration pass.  This pass lets you visit several local attractions over a 2-week period, for free!  The last time we got this pass, was about 1.5 years ago.  

This time, we decided to visit the UBC Museum of Anthropology, HR MacMillan Space Centre, swimming and ice skating.  The girls couldn't get into ice skating lessons this term (full) so they were so happy when they got to go skating again.  Look at them go (above video)!

We really couldn't spend too much time at the Museum of Anthropology with the 3 kids hanging around.  They weren't allowed to touch anything so that made it especially difficult.  Too bad.  There was actually really interesting stuff to see.   The Space center was interesting too and there were some hands on activities that the kids could play with.  Daidai spent most of his time at the lego table.  

Sierra BBQ

We went to Rich's companies' summer BBQ today.  It was originally scheduled for the end of the summer, but that just happened to be the day we had the blasting rain/wind storm.  So they changed the date to today.  And guess what?  It was a major rain-dumping day today too!  Oh well.  The weather is always a gamble.

We had a nice intimate lunch with some co-workers. Everyone had to bring something so we brought springrolls.  Gourmet Costco springrolls.  There was a cooking contest but who has time for that?  So obviously we didn't qualify.  

The kids had a great time looking at all the spiders on the picnic tables and chasing the run-away balloons.  Thanks Sierra!

104th Birthday!

We had our annual huge LEUNG family dinner this weekend, to celebrate our Grandma's 104th birthday.  104!  Wow.  The difference in age between Daidai and his great Grandma is 102!  Amazing.  And she still seems to be in good health.  Hoping some of her great genes will trickle down to me.  

Gong Gong, Yee Ma, Yee Jerng and cousin K came over to visit earlier in the day and then we went to the dinner bash at night.  It was nice to see the extended family and chat with everyone. We had 6 tables this year.  

The next morning, we went to the cemetery to "bai" Grandpa Leung (the kid's great Grandpa whom they've never met before).  The pic below shows half of the cousins who made it there that morning.  A tight photo squeeze.  Looking forward to next year.

  

Boing Boing Zebra (video)

Silly kiddies.  They really enjoy bouncing on this zebra toy.

The 2 younger ones were fighting to ride on it.  Muimui is pretty much at the top of the weight limit so she'll be so sad when we tell her she can't bounce on it anymore.

Who Chopped Down the Tree? (video)

It was a super windy weekend.  There was hail, there was wind, there was rain, there were trees knocked over.  Just a few houses down from ours, a tree blew over so we had to go check it out.

Good thing it wasn't the huge tree right next to our house that fell over.  I had visions of a tree trunk slammed in between our kitchen and living room, with the roof wide open.  Not a good sight!