Some mornings my grouchy husband on his way home from work will stop at the local coffee shop, JJ Beans, for a hot drink and he will also bring me a chai tea latte. He is not a man of many words, and most of what he says is grouchy, but when I see this drink on the counter, I hear in my head him saying “I love you”, “you are such a good wife”, “thank you for taking such good care of my kids”, and at least ten other terms of endearment every wife wants to hear from their husband. Can you believe this small, small, small gesture of thoughtfulness can say so much? I have everything to make this drink at home, but I would rather wait for him to bring me one.
JJ Beans…if you are telling him to bring this home for me…don’t tell me! I like thinking my grouchy husband is thinking of me.
Talk soon, Chrissy
A little while ago we made a trip out to Queens to visit our good friends, Anne and her daughter, Avery. We always look forward to visiting with these girls because I get to chat and catch up with Anne, who I consider a sister, and Mimi can play with Avery. Moysee (one of Isabella’s 10 nick names) doesn’t have a friend to visit with yet so we are hopeful Anne will have a second baby soon!
Now that Avery and Mimi are getting older, they can play so much better with each other. They have all of the same interests, cooking, babies, play doh…it’s a match made in heaven. Anne transformed some baby blankets to baby carriers so these girls could really be mommies to their babies.
Anne and her husband, Michael, are doing a full renovation on a home they bought at the end of last year. It is almost finished. Just the kitchen and a top to bottom cleaning are pretty much left to do. I am so excited for them and cannot wait for them to move in. Like most renovations, it’s been a headache, but I tell Anne it’s all worth it and she will forget all about it once she is living in her new home.
Olivia is the closest to Jeremy Lin in age, she’s 3.5, he’s 24…only 20.5 years apart. She is a true princess, even with her strawberry mustache and messy hair.
Moy Moy (妹妹）is a princess in training. She is currently learning to control her drool.
We celebrated with a dinner at Delight 28 in Chinatown. This is Po’s favorite restaurant.
Everyone was in good spirits for the birthday celebrations. This is a great family photo, everyone is smiling…even Gung!
Dinner was of course too much delicious food. There isn’t much chatting when the food arrives at the table, everyone is too busy eating. We ate lobster, Ging Do Pi Gwut (peking pork chop), fish, chicken, mayonnaise shrimp, and long life noodles.
The fish was especially tasty that evening.
This is one of the first photos. Besides the glare on the right, not too bad, we thought we were close to “the picture”. For the first 10 pictures we could not get Moy Moy (Isabella) to turn her head. We could not see what she was looking at. It must have been something only her baby eyes could see.
We could only get Mimi to take the picture if we let her watch her YouTube videos on my iPhone. This is what we looked like in between photos when Jeff was setting up the camera timer. Of course Moy Moy is looking at the camera now!
This was our runner-up photo. Mimi’s smile was just terrible, but I was desperate. It had been about an hour and everyone was getting restless.
I finally gave up on having the Christmas tree in the picture. The glare was just annoying. I grabbed a Christmas wreath from the wall and held it in my hand and we sat on the couch for the picture. This picture isn’t bad but I thought we looked too serious.
This was our picture! It’s not perfect. The girls hands are blurry. I sometimes feel like there is no shutter speed fast enough to catch them still. Luckily I was able to hide most of the blurriness with wording on the card.
Then we went inside…Yikes!
Nhi has been a good friend of ours for many years. Before getting married, kids, etc, we were hanging out with Nhi and Frank in Queens, getting drunk, and ordering grilled pork chop. Times are much (much) different now. On Oct 2, Nhi had a baby girl, Nancy. She is such a cutie and he is such a proud daddy. We went to her One-month party at Tao in NYC.
Isabella and Nancy will be good friends. They are less then two months apart. Isabella is already checking her new friend out.
Welcome Baby Nancy. Congratulations Nhi and Ben!
Mimi is one of the only people who can put a smile on Jeff’s face on his birthday.
She loves to get kisses from her daddy.
Olivia sat at a table next to Diego, across from Charles, and diagonal from Mia. Charles’ mom, Joanna, came to the party so it was nice to meet her.
Mia is currently Mimi’s favorite friend. It use to be Melissa, now it’s Mia, in a couple weeks it will probably be someone else.
I had Bet take pictures of Mimi’s art around the classroom.
I (heart) my Mimi!
Our Thanksgiving celebration started out in Long Island at Melissa’s (Jeff’s sister) future sister-in-law, Katie’s, house. Katie and her husband (Joe) have two wonderful kids, Kira and Joey. Though they have only met Mimi once, they embraced her immediately and played with her like she lived down the block.
This was one of the first toys the kids played with. Not the most non-violent…but super fun.
Mimi doesn’t have toys like this at home so she was excited to give it a try.
Mimi loved this guitar. She is obsessed with this YouTube video of a little boy playing a ukulele and wants to learn how to play one also.
We ate Thanksgiving dinner at Aunt Martha and Uncle Davy’s house in Long Island. It can be a hard trip out to the Island on holidays because of traffic. It’s suppose to be a 45 minute trip that took us two hours. Good things the girls slept the whole way.
Matty with the baby. He really likes to hold her and talk to her. He will be a good dad.
Group shot. Why are Bet and James so close?
May and my mom. My mom is in the middle of making green bean casserole. The can she is holding is Campbell’s mushroom soup.
Aunt Alice with the baby. Look at those chubby cheeks (on the baby)!
Kimbie and the baby. Moy Moy’s (little sister in Chinese) hair is looking crazy.
My mom and the baby. My mom is the best mom. Not only to me, but to my kids. She is someone I am most thankful for.
It’s always fun to play games on Thanksgiving. Can you guess who is under the table?
Mimi and Artie!
Mimi loves to be a silly goose.
She cracks everyone up. Funny stories and laughing are always a big part of Thanksgiving.
Here is what is left of the turkey…only white meat. We are a true Chinese family.
The day after Thanksgiving, my mom cooked a Thanksgiving dinner for her side of the family. Kimbie and Mimi are making crusts for the pies for dessert.
Gung (maternal grandfather in Chinese) doesn’t leave home much anymore except when my mom invites him to her house. He use to cook all the time for us but hasn’t in a long time. He came out of retirement and chopped the lobster. This was so great to watch. I just learned how to chop a lobster and was going to do one, but decided not to embarrass myself in front of Gung.
His chopping is so precise. It comes from cooking and being a head chef for many years. In China he cooked for a very wealthy family. When he came to America, he was a head chef of one of the top restaurants in Chinatown.
Some of the courses for dinner.
And of course we have to have lobster on Thanksgiving. Would you expect anything less from a Chinese family?
We ate like kings and we drank like kings. It started out with Ruinart.
Then moved to 2004 Cristal.
And ended with 2003 Mouton Rothschild. This bottle is valued at over $900. It was delicious.
We also celebrated Jennie’s birthday because it was just a couple days away. She was turning 25 and felt old…Ha!
We call this Mimi’s skeleton smile. This is one of our hello kitty candles we use for all our birthday cakes. Happy Birthday Jennie!