Meet Our New Nephew

Here are the aforementioned pictures of our new newphew, adopted from Taiwan by D's brother and his wife. His name is Shaun and he's almost six months old.


Flying in the air!


D's getting practice :)

A Weekend Without D

This past weekend D went up North to visit his family, including our new nephew! (Pictures to come). I didn't feel comfortable flying in my condition so I stayed at home. It felt kind of weird not having my "other half" around, even for a couple of days. I slept in the middle of the bed instead of "my side". I arrived at church a few minutes early, instead of 15 minutes early, as D usually insists that we do. I kind of had a lot of errands to run, so I wasn't exactly bored, but I just felt a little empty inside--hard to explain. Now that I tend to take my time with D for granted, it's hard to imagine how we made it through our long distance relationship in the past.

Off Season

In my off-season I haven't been working out very hard. However, I am working out. I have been alternating running and swimming. This alternating has worked out really well.

I have been running 4 miles on the treadmill with a 0.5 incline and the last 2 times I have been running it in under 40 minutes. This is my fastest 4 miles on the treadmill so I am happy about that; however I would like to get faster to help with my 2007 half-marathon pace.

Today I swam 200x4 freestyle and 200x1 with a kickboard. I swam the total 1,000 meters in under 27 minutes. I don't really care about my time in swimming, but I would like to keep my heart rate up.

Also I have been improving my eating since I need to watch my cholesterol. I have eaten oatmeal almost every day for the past 1.5 weeks. Also I have eaten turkey tofu sandwich, turkey tofu spaghetti, chinese chicken salad, & healthy choice for dinner this week. For lunch it has been sandwiches; the best one being Lee's Sandwiches (Chicken).

Keilah Joy L.

When L & I were trying to pick out names for our baby, we wanted to find a name in the Bible; preferably the Old Testament. The Old Testament is rich in history and has cool names i.e. e.g. Meshach, Shadrach & Abed-nego. Biblical girls names, I believe, are harder to find than boys. However we found a town in present day Israel whose name was Keilah.

Keilah was a town in the lowlands of the tribe of Judah which was made famous by its story in 1 Samuel 23. David (before he was King David) rescued Keilah from the attack of the Philistines. King David was of the tribe of Judah & eventually rules over all 12 tribes. The town is west of the Dead Sea.

When I type in Joy in biblegateway.com, there are 242 results. However, one verse pops into my mind when I think of the word joy. It is in Galatians 5:22-23. "But the fruit of the Spirit is love, joy, peace, patience, kindness, goodness, faithfulness, gentleness and self-control. Against such things there is no law."

A Relaxing Weekend

Yesterday we had a visitor on our balcony. Granted, a visiting cat doesn't seem that out of the ordinary, but we were surprised since our condo is on the second floor. I guess he/she climbed up a nearby tree and took a flying leap. This same cat climbed our stairs a couple of weeks ago and dashed through our front door which D had momentarily left ajar.

I love this season weather-wise. We had a brief spat of rain on Friday night, perfect for reading in bed. Saturday the air was brisk and D and I watched college football. (I'm getting sucked in, I tell you. It's much more interesting now that Cal is actually decent!) In the afternoon we hung out at Barnes & Noble in the Tustin Marketplace and met up with a group of people to celebrate E.Y.'s birthday at Buca. D was able to have his fave--chicken marsala.

Today at church I found out that my friend was in the hospital, going into labor. I'm excited for her and her husband, but at the same time it is kind of scary to think that will be us in a couple of months.

Nesting Mode

Last week I started a new part-time work schedule. I am also now working from home! With my new-found free time, I have been trying to get our place in order. There haven't been any overnight miracles, but things are slowly getting organized. I also went to my first "MnM's" (Mom's group) meeting at WPC and the first topic was organization--how appropo!

I have also been able to cook a little bit more, although I still want to expand my weeknight repertoire. Today I tried to make banana chocolate chip muffins, but our oven kept on setting off the smoke alarm. I guess I need to clean our oven, as the muffins themselves were not burnt. Argh.

All of a sudden, I feel like there isn't much time to get ready for the baby. When I was working full time, I was kind of putting it off until October, since I knew I would have more time then. Now that October is here, I can't believe I only have a couple of months left to prepare. One good thing is that I've been able to do more reading on the whole parenting topic. There really are a lot of theories out there. Discernment will be key!

Nursery Decor

I ordered these wall decals for the baby's room a while back, but they finally arrived in the mail today. They are pretty neat because they are removable so you can re-stick them if need be. The colors turned out a little brighter than they appeared on the website, but I think it looks cheerful. Hopefully baby likes them!

Houston's

Last Saturday D and I went to Houston's to celebrate my birthday. Actually, it was a joint celebration since we used the gift certificate my parents gave to D for his birthday. Neither of us had been before, although we have been to Bandera and Rutherford Grill, which are part of the same restaurant "family". All of the restaurants have a dark, swanky ambience. We went to the Houston's in Irvine.

The Houston's hamburger was on the list of "Hamburgers You Must Eat Before You Die", so that's what D ordered:


D: The waitress said I could get it as rare as I wanted since it is prime beef. I selected med-well and it had a little pink to it. It was really good. It was not over-seasoned so you could taste the high-quality meat flavor. The chese was sharp and the lettuce & tomato fresh. The bun was seasame and was just the right size and density.

After doing some internet research, I decided to order the prime rib French dip sandwich:

It looks kind of gross in this picture, but it was actually very good! Plus, I need to get more iron in my diet, so I didn't feel too bad :) The horseradish sauce on the side is a must!

We were too full for dessert.