Irvine Railroad & Doner G

On Sunday afternoon we went to Irvine Regional Park’s birthday celebration and rode the train for $2 each (usually $5 each).  There was quite a crowd.

The ride was not very long, but there was a nice little narration that talked about some points of interest.  I do not think it would have been worth $20, but $8 was an ok value.

We ate a picnic lunch and then looked for a good place for the kids to ride bikes.  Not really seeing any, we decided to stop at the playground.  k and n kept themselves busy for a looong time, pumping by themselves.  This was the first time that n kept himself going for such a good period, so it was cause for celebration.

For dinner, we tried a new place called Doner G, which serves Turkish and Mediterranean food.

We ordered a beef plate and chicken pita.  We used a coupon from the Irvine Crossroads Shopping Center website for a free side of hummus.  Everything tasted really good, even though the kids were skeptical when we said we were eating Mediterranean food.  D nods his head when he likes his food, and there was a lot of head nodding during this meal.  The people eating there seemed to be a lot of different ethnicities.  The service was friendly and fast.  I feel like there are so many restaurants to try, but we get in a rut of relying on a few places that are close by and cheap.  It was nice to try something new. 

Sochi Winter Olympics

This was my attempt at having the kids help decorate for the Winter Olympics.  I was never able to pull together a Russian feast, but we did have a “sleepover” to watch the Opening Ceremony.  It seems like there has been a lot of disappointment for the U.S. this year.  There hasn’t been too many *wow* moments so far.  However, it has been a lot of fun watching the games with the kids.  For some reason, both of the kids really wanted to watch curling.  We finally watched some tonight, and it was quite entertaining.  They also enjoy the biathlon (the shooting part).  D has been teaching them to root against Russia and Germany—haha.  We do like the 15 year old Russian figure skater though—when she spins, it is jaw-dropping.   

Iron Chef: Spinach (& Smoked Salmon)

Our church has been partnering with a program called CVS which brings Japanese university students to the United States.  On Saturday night, they hosted an Iron Chef competition, so we decided to check it out.  As indicated by the title, the ingredient to be featured was spinach.  Smoked salmon also seemed to play a role in the majority of the dishes…including the dessert!  The dishes were supposed to be inspired by Genesis.  The pasta was supposed to represent the serpent.  The smoked salmon represented the heart. 

This dessert was quite “interesting”: avocado with spinach, smoked salmon, raisins, pomegranate seeds, honey and black pepper. 

There was also a talent show portion, which featured singers, dancers, and a basketball spinner.  This was one of the talented dancers.  The students were quite eager to talk to us.  We shared our stories about our visit to Japan and we told them how we liked Mr. Donut.   

We decided to stop by McDonald’s on the way home.  D had been wanting to try the limited edition Shamrock Shake.

However, the machine was having issues…we had stir it up at home.  #shamrockshakefail (but the kids loved it, of course).

V Day 2014

These are the valentines that k passed out to her classmates.

n’s speech teacher gave him a cute card:

One of k’s friends gave her this card based on “Frozen”*:

*I can’t believe how many girls seem to love this movie.  I was thinking of taking k and n to see it, but now that it is only about a month until it comes out on DVD, it seems more prudent to just wait and buy it since the cost would be the same. 

I didn’t want n to be left out of the Valentine card festivities, so I bought him a pack of Batman cards with erasers to hand out to friends at a Valentine party we went to with my moms’ group.  He wanted to do it all himself, and he did.  He looked so industrious.

These are the sandwiches we brought to the party:

 

One of D’s co-workers handed out these Valentine packages.  She’s Japanese—can you tell? 

It was nice that Valentine’s day was on a Friday.  It felt more relaxed.  D made dinner—salmon, asparagus and rice.  Soo good!  We decided that this will be our traditional Valentine’s dinner from now on.

Heart brownie ice cream sundaes for dessert:

Ramblings: Girl Scout Cookies, Yogurtland & Babies

Girl Scout cookie season is upon us.  It is about half way through, and k has already surpassed her sales from last year.  Currently she is at about 325 boxes, and I don’t expect her to go much higher.  Like last year, we pushed hard the first couple of weeks and quickly tapered off.  k’s confidence in asking people if they would like to buy cookies has definitely improved from last year, but there is still plenty of room for growth.   

I revamped our troop’s cookie booth poster, and it looks much cuter this year, if I do say so myself.

This is what our living room looked like on cookie delivery day.  I really should have ordered more in the beginning so I wouldn’t have to bug our cookie mom so much about re-stocking.  Lesson learned for next year.

k handed out bulletins at church as part of Scout Sunday

We participated in National Frozen Yogurt Day at Yogurtland.  This is one of the few times when I allow the kids to load up on toppings, since they are free, so it is a real treat.

Recently, k and n have been really enjoying playing with their “babies”, which is a collection of about 7 or 8 dolls.  I enjoy seeing how they use their imaginations in interacting with the babies. 

This was a scene I found at the breakfast table the other day.  They named the babies in front Boy Champion (aka Little Boy Blue) and Girl Champion (aka Sara, presumably named after their Auntie).

Watching the ‘Eaters

Last Saturday we went to a UCI women’s basketball game against Cal Poly SLO.  The Girl Scouts were giving away free tickets, so I thought going might inspire k’s basketball game.  Unfortunately, UCI lost (we don’t seem to have luck with cheering the home team).  By the way, I can’t believe the Cal team we watched lose to UCLA won a game against the number one team in the nation less than a week later!

We came in right during the National Anthem, but we were still able to sit in the second row (I guess that is why they were giving away tickets!)  We even made it onto the jumbo tron, which was quite exciting, as I always thought that would be fun.

They had some fun giveaways during the game, including t-shirts, whole pizzas and In-N-Out cards that floated from the ceiling in mini hot air balloons.  However, we were only able to snag some mini Nestle Crunch bars, which the kids were quite pleased with:

Afterwards, we celebrated Chinese New Year by eating orange chicken and chow fun. 

The Media Niche Saga, Part II

I am happy to report that we have made another major improvement regarding our ill-placed media niche.  I first blogged about our “problem” back in 2009.  We have since gone through some changes, including getting rid of cable, buying an antenna, buying a converter so our Series 2 Tivo could work with digital over the air signals, and replacing our Tivo after it died with a Tivo Premiere, which negated the need for the converter. 

This was our recent setup, which was certainly not ideal.  TV shoved into the corner, ugly antenna hanging over the fireplace, and wire dangling between the tv and Tivo because I was too lazy to fish it through the wall (which I now realize is not even safe, after my dad showed me some internet articles). 

A few weeks ago, my mom mentioned that my dad was thinking of buying a new television and giving their old (very nice) one to us.  Only problem was that there was no way it would fit in our media niche.  They thought maybe we could wall off the media niche and hang the television.  I brought it up to D, thinking there was no way he would go for it.  Surprisingly, he was open to it, so we called a guy that hung our neighbor’s television.  We decided to add a partial fake wall, so that the media niche would be even on top and bottom, and the tv would fit on the wall above the fireplace.   

Here is our “fake” wall mid-construction.  It is about four inches deep.

A hole was made so the wires could go through.

It’s up!  We will have to put up some shelving to fully utilize the space.  I guess that will be part three of this ongoing saga.  Hopefully it will not take us another four years!