Napa Recap II

On Monday we went to a couple of wineries, including Beaulieu Vineyard. D was able to pick out a couple of bottles for people at work. For lunch we ate at Auberge du Soleil in nearby Rutherford. It was quite fancy, which we figured out in the very beginning, when they "forced" us to valet park. k was thankfully pretty well-behaved and had fun making the waiters laugh. She also managed to keep all of her food down.



The menu was pretty complicated. The descriptions of the desserts were difficult to decipher so D had the waiter translate. One of the desserts that piqued my interest was something with Douglas Fir streusel. They actually boil the pine needles and use the essence, or something like that. That didn't appeal to me, and no one could decide, so I opted for one of the simplest desserts on the menu: apple tart with caramel sauce. Isn't it pretty?



The restaurant has a nice view of the valley.


I thought this statute in the garden was amusing.

Afterward we strolled through Yountville. We checked out the outside of The French Laundry, which is considered the #1 restaurant in the U.S. Considering it costs $240 per person, this is the closest we will ever get to experiencing it:



Too bad Bouchon Bakery, which is down the street and also owned by Thomas Keller, was closed for Christmas Eve by the time we got there.

Napa Recap I

On Saturday we drove up to Napa to visit D's family. As previously mentioned, k caught a stomach bug, probably from me, and was throwing up in the car. She went through at least three outfits, and her new carseat was put to the test. It took about eight hours, but we finally made it. Of course, the highlights seem to revolve around food.

For dinner we ate at Compadres Rio Grille. D waffled about ordering the guacamole appetizer, but everyone was glad that he did. k seemed to be doing OK, but threw up at the end of our meal. Luckily, D was quick with the napkin, and it wasn't too bad.


The next day we drove to Elk Grove to meet up with Janelle. We attended service at RRNC and ate lunch at Mikuni, along with one of Janelle's friends from Dallas. Thank you to Janelle's dad, who treated! We had heard rave reviews about Mikuni from D's family and it lived up to the hype.


The stylish interior.


k met Auntie J for the first time.

It took us over two hours to return to Napa because of the traffic. We ate dinner with D's parents at Fume. I liked this place a lot. It is cozy and the food is well-executed and "fresh". Case in point: the tangerine dressing on our house salad...tasty! Too bad I wasn't that hungry considering I was still full from lunch.

Looks Like We Made It*

We hope everyone had a Merry Christmas. We just returned from a trip to Northern and Central California to visit relatives. It was full of adventure, including k turning our Mazda 5 into a barf-mobile. She is better now, though, and we are safe at home, so we are thankful. Details to come...



*Reference to Barry Manilow's song, which we sang along to in the car.

Happy Birthday k!

What a difference a year makes:

From this...


...to this


I can't believe that one year ago I was in the hospital about to give birth. I won't go into anything too deep here, but D and I are so thankful to have k in our lives. We look forward to witnessing her develop in the coming year.

More Party Pics

Here's k's snowman cake that I decorated:


After singing Happy Birthday, D helped k blow out the candle, which was placed in the snowman's nasal cavity.


Snowman Massacre


k had more fun squishing the cake than eating it.

Party Time!

Since k's birthday is right around Christmas, it will always be difficult to try to plan her birthday parties/activities. However, we knew we had to do something for her first birthday! We decided to go with a snowman theme. My parents were gracious enough to host the party since our place would not have comfortably accomodated the thirty or so guests.

I had D take k for a walk right before the party so she would fall alseep and be well-rested. Sure enough, it worked:


There was cookie decorating and a cookie swap. Note to self: force people to take more cookies home so we don't end up with so many left-overs! I tried to make a "miniature foods" theme, so we had mini cakes, ice cream cones, sandwiches, veggies, chicken, etc. We even had a "mini bar" with toddler-friendly foods: cheerios, puffs, rice crackers, apple juice etc. Unfortunately, we do not have pictures to share :(

I will post more later...too much to do, and flickr is being difficult tonight.

Uncle K

For those of you who don't know, k has an Uncle K. A couple of weekends ago we (along with a lot of other peeps) helped him and my sister move to their new house in Irvine. As a "thank you" they had us all over last weekend. Uncle K made some delicious chili and there was "pick your carb": rice, rolls, cornbread and spaghetti. (I had a little of all of them, thank you very much!)


It's that banana box again!


Pushing k is good exercise


Crawling through tunnels is one of k's favorite activities.

Catching Up

Recently, I haven't had a chance to post as much as I would like.


I forgot to say that for Black Friday we went to Ikea for their free breakfast. We ended up getting two free breakfasts (on the right) and buying one 99 cent breakfast (on the left). It wasn't too crowded, and I was able to buy my new desk for 11.23% off! I would definitely go there again next year.

Here's a video from Thanksgiving. I'm still working on the videos of k walking, so hopefully they'll be up soon.

This video really isn't too exciting...it's mainly k eating turkey. Watch for her "squinty smiles" in the very beginning, though. Very cute.

In other news, k's bangs are definitely growing out:

Busy!

Well, the holiday season is upon us, and already it feels really busy. On Saturday morning I went to a Women's Christmas brunch at WPC and we were reminded that the focus should be on the birth of Jesus.

From Wednesday until today we were all staying at my parents' house because our condo was being fumigated. It kind of felt like a mini vacation since our meals/dishes were taken care of and we were sleeping in a different bed. However, now our place is a mess (food in bags, laundry to be done, etc.) I guess the vacation is over!

We still have some shopping to do, but I'm hoping to get most of it done on the internet this week. I need to get the remainder of my Christmas cards out this week, too. Also, I am trying to plan k's 1st birthday party in a couple of weeks. On top of all of this, my work hours have temporarily increased to 40 a week, so things are a bit overwhelming.

On another note, Armed Services Bowl...here we come! Haha. D has been so disgusted with how Cal has been playing, he said he would never watch another game. We'll see about that.

Giving Thanks

Before heading over to my parents' house this morning, we watched the Charlie Brown Thanksgiving special.

I was also excited to hear that my beloved HK had her own balloon at the Macy's Thanksgiving Parade:


The target time for Thanksgiving dinner was 3 p.m. After cooking up a storm, my mom managed to have the food ready not too much later than that. We had two turkeys (at my request, for leftovers), and ham, plus all of the usual sides: sweet potatoes, mashed potatoes, green beans, creamed corn, rolls, cranberry jello/sauce, stuffing, salad and rice. I volunteered to provide dessert, so I made a pumpkin pie with gingersnap crust and pumpkin ice cream. I also bought a huge apple pie from Costco. It weighed over five pounds!



k and SaSa


Hey, that's not a banana!

11 Months

Happy 11 month birthday, k! We are excited to be able to celebrate your first Thanksgiving with you tomorrow.

If we received a $1...

...for every time someone made a comment about k's hair, we'd be rich! Sometimes they say something directly to us. Other times we just hear them say something under their breath to the people they are with. "Look at that hair!", "You have crazy hair", or "My kid used to have hair like that" are all things we've heard. Whatever people say, k's hair makes people smile, so that's cool.



On an unrelated note, D and I tried Pinkberry for the first time at Bella Terra. It was not as tart as Fiore. The cashier upsold us to a medium with three toppings (we were planning on medium with one topping, but it's only 20 cents more for three). We chose mangoes, granola and blackberries. They were a bit stingy with the blackberries--maybe it's better to get something smaller, like blueberries. Anyway, it was just under $5, so it was not cheap, but it was a nice treat for us to share.

Pinkberry: Not something I would wait in a long line for or risk getting a parking ticket for, but it is good!

JDRF

D, k and I all participated in a 5k walk for juvenile diabetes on Sunday morning. D signed up through his work, which was a major sponsor of the fundraiser. It was a pretty big event, with plenty of free food (which is always good in our book). Thank you for those who sponsored D!

The walk itself went through the campus of UCI. We were at the very front, at the starting line. We finished in about 48 minutes--not bad. I was glad we were at the front though, because there was a major back-up of people behind us. They were barely walking! Plus, we were able to get in line for the food earlier. :)


k started to get antsy right before the race started. She calmed down once we started moving, though, and eventually fell asleep.


Someone, who will remain nameless, dislikes wearing socks, and didn't even wear socks for the walk!


Look at that traffic jam!


Headed towards the finish line.


k had a Mazda shirt too, but it was way too big. She wore her Reebok track suit instead. She really stood out in the team photo.

Shops @ Rossmoor

On Saturday afternoon, we went to the Grand Opening for the Shops at Rossmoor. If there's free food involved, you'll probably find us there. It wasn't anything too exciting, though, just waters, sodas, popcorn, 1/2 croissants (from Peet's), cornbread (from Marie Callendar's) and cotton candy, which we didn't have. We did receive some free tote bags--nice! There was also a youth orchestra and a magician/balloon animals guy.


I guess I'll stop by at Ann Taylor Loft once in a while, but I'm not sure about the other "anchor stores": Chico's and Coldwater Creek. I don't think I'm the target demographic for those stores yet. We'll probably try out Mel's when it opens (in the old Parasol building).


k likes to feed us food.

Big Island Recap--Last Day!

We've come to our last day. Hopefully you've enjoyed our journey along with us. We packed up everything and D's parents made us omelets.

We decided to stop at one last beach: Kukio. It is on the way to the airport. There were some nice houses with amazing views. I guess Michael Dell and Charles Schwab have homes there.

I was determined to get a good Christmas card photo on this trip. Here's one that was almost picked:


I'm not sure what k is pointing to.


FINALLY, k smiles in a picture. Maybe she was getting homesick and knew today was our last day.


I found it amusing that there was a live band playing at Kona Airport. I guess they wanted to spread the aloha spirit.


On our plane back we sat across from the same couple we were next to on the way there. They said k was the best-behaved baby they've seen on a plane. Not sure if that was really true, but it was nice of them to say.

We had to wait a long time for our luggage back at John Wayne. My mom told me to take a picture of this security guard on his Segway.

Big Island Recap Day 7

On our last full day on the Big Island, we wanted to take it easy. D was anxious to get some more snorkeling in. In the morning we went to "A Bay", in Waikoloa. The snorkeling was better than Hapuna. I wasn't planning to go in, but D convinced me.

Our next stop was the Black Sand Beach in Mauna Lani. D and his dad snorkeled. Again, I wasn't planning to go in. They came back saying it was amazingly clear and that it was like an aquarium, so of course, I had to go. This time I actually used the snorkel instead of the snorkel board. The fish were so pretty!


We ate lunch at Brown's Beach House at the Fairmont Orchid. We arrived before it opened, and it still took us a while to be seated. Turns out that the staff was busy switching out all of the chairs and setting up brand new place settings. Our hostess informed us that we were the very first customers to use their new chairs/settings. She took our picture and told us to e-mail it to the manager. I'm not sure if D's dad actually did this, but here's some of my pictures:

As you can see, it is right on the water. I bet it would be really nice at night. (They were all booked for dinner).


The lunch menu had an Asian bent. Here's my kurobota pork yaki soba:


We all shared the mud pie.


In addition, the waitress gave us an ice cream dessert for free since k was "3 or under".

Pretty fancy for a little kid. We ate it for k, of course.

We worked it off with more snorkeling at the Orchid. This turned out to be our favorite because we saw sea turtles! One of them was following me, and I was kind of scared. D's mom said she's been surrounded by multiple turtles before while snorkeling, and I can see how that would be scary. Too bad I couldn't get a picture, but we'll always remember our encounter.

Meanwhile, k had more fun on the beach. We kept slathering her with sunscreen so she wouldn't burn.


Our final dinner was at the Kamuela Provision Company in the Hilton Waikoloa. It was too windy to sit outside, but D captured the lovely sunset that we were able to see through the open windows:


I had a seafood pasta that was exceptional--there was a lobster tail, among other delicacies. There was another family at a table nearby with a 10.5 month old daughter. We ended up sitting a couple rows behind them on our plane back to OC!