More fun with Colin and Cameron sharing food

Eating is fun and yummy!

A visit to Uncle Tim and Auntie Sumin

My brother ans his new fiancee are starting to amass their own collection of stuffed animals. Katie and Cameron enjoyed visitng them with all a few weeks ago. Katie's hugging a panda named Muph who sports his own T-short, shorts, and multicolored socks (same size as Cameron's these days). 

Firefighter Katie

When Katie goes up, aside from being a mommy, she's going to be a firefighter, a ballerina, an astronaut and a doctor. Hurrah, we say: it's about time for some free health care! 

Look, mom: I've found some pumpkins!

Cameron's been to more pumpkin patches than me, and he's not even 18 months yet. Ah, the promise (and peril) of being the little sibling! But he takes it all in stride. Here he is wandering through the patch. 

Digging up hidden treasure

Ryan and Erin came over last weekend, and all of the kids had a great time in the backyard. Here they are digging for hidden treasure. Or maybe burying it to be found sometime later, I can't remember which. :-) 

Sit still please!

Despite having a digital camera -- meaning, the opportunity to take a hundred shots in search of the one worth posting -- I still wasn't quite able to get all three kids looking at the camera and wearing more or less natural expressions. Oh well, maybe when they're a little older. :-)

Speaking of which, Katie has declared that when she is a mommy, she is going to have two kids named Amber and Maya. We asked her who the daddy was going to be, and she said, "Colin, of course!" We told her that wouldn't work, so she said that she would pick some other boy.

Later she said, "I'm going to have one boy and one girl" so we suggested that she choose a boy name and a girl name. Her latest name pair: Maya and Soren, named after Rob and Jen's restaurant going alter egos (and a pair of our stuffed animals). 

Dove's Campaign for Real Beauty

Like most other 3-year olds, Katie is unselfconscious about looks. She'll dress up in her favorite princess outfit, and when we ask her if she feels pretty, she'll say "yes". (Of course, we tell her that God wants her to be pretty on the inside too.)

Sadly, t won't be long, I'm sure, before she loses her innocence about looks. Our culture is obsessed with looks. Dove (yup, the soap compnay) is running an interesting countercultural campaign called the Dove Self Esteem Fund to encourage girls to maintain a 3-year old's innocence around looking good and feeling pretty. (How long before we need a similar campaign for boys too?)

As part of a campaign, the Dove folks filmed a behind-the-scene movie showing how a typical print ad featuring a female model is made (well, in this case, it's actually a billboard). It's illuminating to say the least -- especially the Photoshop editing which follows the "let's make up our model's face and hair" segment. Check it out. And remind your daughters (and sons) that they are beautiful both inside and out because God made them in His image.

OK, not sure what's going on here...

...but Colin gives us his alert look of the day. 

Katie enjoyed posing with the stone dragon guardians outside the headquarters of the aforementioned Chinese school. 

Colin and the dragon

Colin's Chinese astrological sign is the dragon, and he does seem to enjoy dragon images. Here he is outside of the headquarters of the Chinatown organization that lobbied for repeal of many of the anti-Chinese immigration laws (I can't remember the name of the organization, alas). Today, the organization stays active by teaching Cantonese to many of Chinatown's children. 

Frank's High School Reunion

Here are a dozen or so of my classmates from my graduating class at Taipei American School. Given that we had fewer than 100 graduating seniors, this is over 10% of the class, which is pretty decent turnout given that TAS is almost 6,500 miles away from San Francisco (to calculate your own distances between two cities, click here).

It was fun to see everyone, and hats off to the hardworking Cheng sisters who organized the entire reunion (thanks, Patty, Jean, and Lynn!). Based on the admittedly small sample size, it would seem that most people's major personality traits are just about fixed by the time high school ends: friendly people are still friendly and chatty people are still chatty after almost two decades. :-) 

Am umbrella drink -- in Chinatown?

The kids enjoyed their first umbrella drinks -- strangely enough, at a restaurant in Chinatown. We had just finished a walking tour of Chinatown and stopped for lunch afterwards at the Chinatown Restaurant.

The restaurant is a tourist trip, so avoid it. It has some old black-and-white photos of historical interest on the stairs leading to the 2nd floor eating area. But you can see all the photos without paying for the mediocre, overpriced food.

But at least the kids enjoyed their umbrella drinks.