Christmas Letter Goes Here

Hi, everyone! Here is where our little Christmas update is going to go once we write it. Rest assured, it won't be filled with news of our incredibly brilliantly accomplished children or photos of our immaculately clean home or cute stories of our world travels. But perhaps you'll feel caught up and mildly entertained anyway! Here's hoping ;)

Oh, and if you have a few minutes while you're waiting for the good stuff, consider backing up your computer. See recent posts below for some how-tos and whys...

(Just FYI, this is Fedora, who rarely contributes content--if you're not feeling sufficiently amused, apologies, and please check back, when our real update is posted by our actual blogger.)

Bowling

We've had the kids in our church summer camp. They gave the kids a day off today, so this feels like our first real day of summer vacation. We enjoyed it by... (wait for it)... taking the kids bowling.

We thought by going first thing in the morning would help us avoid the crowds. So wrong. We barely got a lane even though we got there maybe 20 minutes after the alleys opened up. About half the lanes were occupied by what looked like a senior citizen's competitive bowling league.

Everyone in the family bowled. Let me just say that our two games took over two hours since it takes a while when the ball is about a third of certain bowlers' body weight. When you are rolling the ball at 1.5 mph, it takesa a long time to get to the pins... :-)

But everyone had a good time -- and Colin even broke 100.

All in all, not a bad way to start off a 4th of July weekend. Bowling does feel somehow quintessentially American.

Lake Tahoe

Our friends Brad and Christine kindly hosted us at their parents' place in Tahoe. The kids had such a good time in the snow that Colin declared this morning that he was moving to Tahoe -- or Alaska -- when he grew up. And Cameron had his first experience trying to taste the falling snow.

We got to see a lot of snow. Mostly we spent the days having snowball fights, sledding, and trying to build snowmen. We had planned to take skiing lessons with the kids, but it was snowing too hard for that.

Given that the drives up and back were challenging, the relaxed pace of cabin life was the perfect counterbalance.

So: thanks to Brad and Christine and all the other families who made this the first ski week vacation where we actually saw snow.

Next year, we'll have to try and get everyone in the group picture. Though I have to say, it was enough of a challenge getting the partial picture above. :-)

More pics at Picasa Web Albums.

Day trips

We took a few day trips during the holiday shutdown, including an overnight run to Monterey. Of course, we stopped by the Monterey Bay Aquarium to marvel at the sea creatures living in our oceans. Thanks to David and Lucille Packard for making the aquarium a reality!

We walked a bunch that day (probably 5 miles altogether), and the kids were champs. To reward them, we stopped by a nearby candy shop. And here he is, the proverbial kid in a candy store:

Sushi!

To celebrate Fedora's birthday, we ordered up the gigantic Joy Sushi Special. Would you believe this is their medium-sized sushi combination? Now I'm totally curious to see their large, which they call the Joy Sushi Cruise Ship. Maybe it features multiple decks?

Here are the hardworking sushi chefs assembling our boat. It took them about 45 minutes to finish, which seemed a little long. But we were in no hurry, so we enjoyed catching up with Tim and Sumin.



I hope this will be the first of many "shots I couldn't get with my point-and-shoot camera", as I was probably 30-40 feet away in a poorly lit environment when I snapped this shot from the 2nd floor balcony.

Yup, that means I finally broke down and got a DSLR (Christmas present to myself!). In retrospect, I think I paid roughly the same for my shiny new Nikon D90 (sans lens) as I paid for my first Olympus point-and-shoot years ago. Ah, the relentless march of progress!

I was on the fence between a Canon and a Nikon for the longest time, but finally decided I could get outstanding results with both cameras. Then I found a good deal on a twice-used 18-200mm Nikon zoom lens on Craigslist, so I concluded that God wanted me to get the Nikon. :-)

Christmas tree

We put the Christmas tree up right after Christmas. One of our light strands died, so we replaced it with a strand of almost too-bright LED lights.

That's the relentless march of technology for you: brighter lights using less power.

Here in the picture, we got this set of one-eared cats from a McDonalds in Taiwan a few years ago. I think they're from some comic series that's on TV in Asia.

Wow: 40 years!

We were privileged to celebrate a momentous milestone with Fedora's dad this weekend. He's celebrating -- count them -- forty years of ministry with the 29th Avenue Baptist Church in San Francisco.

In our twitchy, Twitter-y culture, people have a hard time doing anything for forty weeks continuously, much less forty years. Hats off to Reverend Chin for a lifetime of steadfast and sacrificial ministry on behalf of our God.

See more pictures on Smugmug.

Under the chairs

We were warming up to take an extended family pictures for Thanksgiving, and the kids decided that under the chair was more fun than on the chairs.  :-)

 

You can see the more rest of the shoot on my dad's Picasa Web Album.

Happy Thanksgiving

For a few years running now, we've enjoyed a vegetarian Thanksigiving dinner at a Chinese restaurant in the city called Ming's Diner. They serve surprisingly realistic (looking and tasting) renditions of mu-shu pork, walnut prawns, and even steamed fish with ginger.

Colin gave it a half thumb up, though that did not prevent him from eating at least half a dozen of a fried meat-substitute appetizer. Katye gave it two thumbs up, as did Cameron. Cameron insisted on using his mu shu wrapper as a hat and hand towel, though.

All in all, it was a good time, and we're thankful for the Tings who invited us.

 

 See more pics on Smugmug.

Tim and Sumin's local reception

Tim and Sumin held a local reception for friends & family who couldn't make it out to Korea. With the prospect of good food to be eaten, we of course went to both.

Click here for pictures of the good eats at ABC Seafood.

First jazz concert

I'd always wanted to go to Yoshi's, and we delighted to find out that they offered matinee concerts with family-friendly pricing (the kids' tickets were something like $5!) -- and were hosting Jane Monheit, one of my favorite jazz singers.

The venue was fabulous -- very intimate, great acoustics, easy parking, decent food served discretely before and during the concert. It was also a beautiful day in Oakland, and Jack London Square was hosting a farmer's market. (We've been trying to buy most of our fruits and vegetables from our local farmer's market.)

The kids had a great time especially since they have been going through a big Yoshi phase (he's one of the characters in the Mario universe of Nintendo games), though I'm sure they wished the concert was just a few minutes shorter (it only ran for an hour and 15 minutes or so as it was). On the flip side, this was the first meal where we had sushi and french fries (the latter were especially well done -- a crispy mix of Russet and sweet potatoes).

A visit with my grandparents

My grandfather is pushing 100 and mostly stays at home now. But he's still well enough to see his great grandchildren once in a while. Here we are with both my grandparents. Not sure what Cameron finds so fascinating about Katye at this moment. :-)

Build a Bear

We took the kids to the Build-a-Bear franchise yesterday. We've been stockpiling gift certificates from various birthdays and it was time to build our bears. Since the kids have plenty of animal friends already, we had them select a friend to donate in order to build a new one. Colin opted out since he couldn't decide on an animal friend to cull from the herd.

So Katye and Cameron got their new friends selected, stuffed, dressed, and tagged. Did you know they stick a barcode inside each stuffed animal so they can retrieve the tag in case it gets lost? OK, so it's not an RFID tag -- but still plenty high tech for a stuffed animal!

Here, Colin poses with the bear he won at Legoland last year.

I imagine this will be one of the last years we can get all three kids to pose for a picture with their bears. 

Teddy Bear Museum

Believe it or not, the tiny island of Jeju features an enormous teddy bear museum. Needless to say, the kids thoroughly enjoyed it. Surprisingly, we managed to emerge with no new animal friends.

Tim and Sumin's wedding

It was a beautiful ceremony on a gorgeous resort called The Shilla on Jeju Island.

To accommodate the day trip crowd flying in from the main Korean peninsula, they also timed everything down to the second: pictures at 1:15 pm, the ceremony at 3 pm, a cocktail reception at 3:45, dinner by 4:30 or so, and the whole shooting match done by 6:30 pm or so.

At our wedding, you wouldn't even have seen your first appetizer! Given that part Cameron was running a bit of a fever and never adjusted to local Korea time, we were very thankful for the precision wedding.

More pics here (or just click the blog post title).

All dressed up and ready to party

We're flying to Korea to celebrate my brother's wedding next week.

• Not surprising: Katie loves playing dress up in her traditional Korean hanbok.
• Somewhat surprising: Cameron didn't seem to mind playing dress up also. He looks so adorable in that tux of his, and maybe even he realizes it.
  

Breakfast at home

Our first photo post from a Mac: not as straightforward to add photos since iPhoto doesn't have out of the box integration with Picasa (rumor has it there's a Mac version of Picasa coming later this year, which might be nice).

Still, since iPhoto browsing is built into the upload menu, finding the photo was much easier than on a Windows machine, a task which I had come to dread (find the photo in Picasa, memorize the filename, navigate to it using the "Open" dialog...).

Also, iPhoto's editing tools allowed me to tame the overexposed portions of the picture above a little better than Picasa. It was a little harder to use, but I like the control.

Anyway, we enjoyed a quiet weekend at home. I love it when we have time to make breakfast and have fun with it -- like arranging your sausages in a smiley-face pattern. :-)

Why hello, dancing Hello Kitty

Erin and Katye celebrated their 4th and 5th birthdays yesterday with a big princess-themed bash. A surprisingly large Hello Kitty also made an appearance. Thanks to everyone who was able to join us!

Everyone had a great time with the princess (Aurora, I think), the food, cake, the bounce house, and the company.

But it was so windy that the entire bounce house would move a foot or two during the violent gusts, which caused one party-goer to declare that the "party" (that's what she called the bounce house) was "terrible".

My brother with the president elect

So here's my brother with the President Elect of Taiwan, Ma Ying Jeou.

At the time, Mr. Ma was just the mayor of Taipei doing a goodwill tour of the Bay Area. He was actually exhorting Taiwanese alumni of local schools like Berkeley and Stanford to return to Taiwan and presumably serve the motherland.

And now he's going to be the president and my brother has a celebrity photograph.

On the way home from the park