Moments in My Life

It was our first time there. We were a party of 6 including a 4 yr old boy. It was not too crowded in there. The reason I am writing about this because I want to rant out our experience there. When our bill came, it showed that two items that we ordered the lunch portion but was charged dinner. The rest of the items were OK. We asked the waitress about the charges and she explained that we ordered ‘LARGE’.

In the menu, they clearly wrote down ‘lunch’ or ‘dinner’ portion and NOT ‘small’ or large’ portion. So when asked which one we are ordered, of course we said ‘lunch’. And because in the restaurant, it has 3 big screen TVs running all sport channels and the crowd was a bit noisy, thus I don’t blame the waitress not to hear us right. But if you use your common sense … it should be lunch and not LARGE. Well, we barely finished the portion, I had some sides that I didn’t finish. And what the waitress did was say … “I see you finished the food, so i guess it is fine.” We definitely not goin back here again. Too bad because I really like their sweet curry potato fries.

I got creative and made Pad See Eew for lunch today. This is a stir-fried flat rice noodle Thai dish. I love this dish a lot and this has been my dish to order whenever I visit a Thai restaurant. But now I know how to make it at home, I don’t have to always order this dish when I go out. It is quite easy to make.

The main ingredient you need is the rice noodle, bean sprout, eggs and the SWEET SOY SAUCE.

Main ingredients:
One pack of rice noodle
Bean sprout (as much as you like)
Sweet soy sauce
2 Eggs

For mix-in I have:
Broccoli
Spam (you can replace this with chicken/pork/beef/seafood)

Instructions:
1. Heat up wok.
2. Drizzle some vegetable oil.
3. Crack egg/s into hot oil.
4. Add meat to stir-fry (skip this step if you are not adding meat).
5. Add broccoli.
6. Add rice noodle when broccoli is half cooked.
7. Drizzle the sweet soy sauce while stir frying the rice noodle. Add as much to your taste.
8. Add salt (if needed).
9. Last step is to add the bean sprout.
10. Stir fry all them ingredients together until well mixed and the bean sprout is at the level of your likeness.

Waking up to a grey raining morning was a surprise to me on Monday. What even more surprising to me was it almost continuously rained for three days. And today (Wednesday) was the worst. It rained so heavily this morning for non stop. Finally it is now stopped and the sun is shining and drying up the groud. But I do see grey clouds nearing my neighborhood. Wonder if there will be another rainy afternoon today?

I was shocked and stunt when I saw a little snake (may be about 2 feet in length) sliding away from inside my garage towards the opened door. Today is a hot day, and I was unpacking a box of mugs in the garage. And I was going in and out the house and garage a few times.

Then on the last trip out, I saw its tail moving fast away. It probably heard the sound that I was coming. I hope it went out because when I saw it, it was sliding away underneath my car, so I didn’t see where it went.

Since that incident, everytime I go into the garage I tried to make loud stepping noise to scare anything away. We have the laundry and drinking water filter in the garage thus we go in there a few times a day.

I’ve decided to let Brandon to continue his swim lesson with Mr. Pete. We skipped one week and then started the 5-days program on Monday. Mr. Pete’s is trying to teach him stronger kicks in the water and also to hold his breath longer while inside. This 5-days program, 10 minutes a day cost $190.

I know that now Brandon can swim to the side and hold his breath in the water. But will I want to continue paying $190 for 5-days program with him? I don’t know. Honestly, $190 weekly is kinda high. Even higher than pre-school free. If I let him do 2 weeks a month, it would be $380 a month. I will have to give a deep thought about it.

Although I really want him to learn swimming and get better at this, but $380/month may be too high for pay at this time. As we are approaching the winter months, may be I will do two more 5-days program with Mr. Pete and then we will stop till the beginning of next year summer.

This is something we do on the 3rd weekend of the month. We visit the OC Model Engineers Train at Fairview Park, Costa Mesa for the free train ride. They open the train ride to public from 10am to 3pm on Saturday and Sunday (3rd weekend of the month). To avoid long lines, we usually go early in the morning.

Today, we left home at 9:45am and arrived at the station around 10am. I remembered to take my DSLR with me this time. We waited for 15 minutes to get on the miniature train. We went around the park twice on different routes, once over the bridge and once under. It was a little chilly this morning but lucky for my son, he had his jacket on.

While waiting in line for the train ride.

A family picture before the start of the train ride.

One of the many engines in the park.

The caboose.

Today was the open house for Hub’s company.  The company had skipped open house for last year.  This year, they offered it for free to immediate family members only.  The crowd was much smaller than before.

Prior years, any relatives or friends of the employee can attend as long as the employee purchase the tickets for them.  The ticket price was $3 in 2008.  During those years, the company had full lunch catering service and hired a carnival for the kids.  This year, since it’s free, only hotdog and chips were served and ice-cream for dessert.  There were a few bouncers for the kids and a slide.  It wasn’t as fun as prior years and the hotdog was not typical good either. 

But this time, we got to see Hubby’s office on the 4th floor.  Before he was transferred to this department (which was a year ago), he was working in another secured building which is not accessible to non-employee. 

Before we went home to Irvine, we stopped by my IL’s place for about an hour.  On the way home, we got BOGO free Jamba Juice.  That ends our Saturday 9/18/10.

After so many years that I used Tulip Theme, I thought it’s time to update the layout and the theme. 

I would to thank Ramblingmoo for her help to provide me with a wonderful website EZwpthemes for blog template search.  It was really difficult to find something I like when I was looking through on WordPress’s Template Website, but at EZwpthemes, I like almost all of them.  Finally, I decided to pick this one – Bubbly for my blog.  I edited the header by adding a personal touch to it – our family picture.

So, how do you like this new look of my blog?  Well, I think anything new is good.  Any fresh and clean look is great to upkeep the blog.  Thank for dropping by and will post more about our new lives in the neighborhood of Irvine.

My son is swimming after 9 days!!   At least now that if he falls into the water, he will be able to swim to the side and climb out from the pool.

I’ve tried different group, semi-private and private swim lessons for him and none of them worked. For the past two weeks, we’ve attended Mr. Pete’s program for 10 days, Mon-Fri, 10 minutes a day. Mr. Pete guarantees kids over 3 whom joined and completed his program will be able to swim. We skipped Labor’s Day because it was holiday, so the total classes we had was 9. But after only 9 lessons, my son is able to swim to the side get himself from the pool. Isn’t that amazing??

If you are interested, you can check out Mr. Pete’s website at swim2pete.com.

Thank you for all your well wishes.

A quick update - his condition got better over the weekend and his appetite was back, like a usual self.  But I noticed since then, he doesn’t drink as much water as he does before.  Anyway … I am glad that he got better and was able to return to school on Monday 8/30.

Another quick update – he has started an intensive swim lesson since past Monday.  This is a 10 days 2 weeks 10 minutes a day program by Mr. Pete  at swim2pete dot com.  Mr. Pete guarantees the kids can swim after his program.  I was skeptical but I tried many classes for him but none work.  With Mr. Pete’s guarantee, I enrolled him.  And guess what?  Brandon is able to float, kick, paddle and swim to the side of the pool after 4 days of lesson.  Amazing result, I think.