Moments in My Life

We are at Taipei airport now.  We just came out from EVA Air lounge because I felt it is too crowded inside.  I rather stay outside which has more space area and less people.  And we have a long couch to ourselves, and Brandon was able to lie down on his back for a little bit.  He was complaining that he couldn’t sleep sitting up during our flight from LAX to TPE.  Although he slept but it wasn’t for too long. 

Our flight is at 940am, which is about an hour plus from now.  We’ll be heading to the boarding room in 30 minutes.  I have a bit of a headache because I didn’t sleep too well on the flight and because of my non-stop questioning from my son.  My head is spinning sometimes. 

Oh ya, we had a lot to eat and drink while inside the lounge.  We do not have more rooms for our special meals later.

Our trip is coming up soon.  We will be flying on Eva Air.  This has been my regular airline to fly with when I travel to Malaysia.  I have accumulated enough miles for an upgrade from Taipei to KL from economy to Premium Laurel Class (Business Class).  It requires 15,000 miles for an upgrade.  Even Brandon had enough miles after his last flight to KL, he has a little bit over 15K miles on his account.  So both of us will be flying in style from TPE to KL, which has a flight time of 4 hours 45 minutes.  We were given a choice to pick our own meal online before the flight and I hope they are good.

We will be having these as our main course:

Panfried Salmon Fillet Toped with Light Curry Cream Sauce
Accompaniment:
• Our deep-sea salmon is rich in healthy oils like the Omega-3 fatty acids DHA and EPA served with light curry sauce. Let you engohighly nutritious meal that is as good for you as it tastes.

Din Tai Fung Stewed Beef Shank with Noodle Soup
Accompaniment:
• Stir Fried Preserved Vegetable

Are the pictures making you hungry? They sure did to me. My stomach was growling as I was typing this and posting the pictures up.

In about a week, we (Brandon and I) will be flying again.  We will be celebrating Chinese New Year in Malaysia this year.  It will be Brandon’s first CNY with style.  Why I said so?  Because CNY here in Los Angeles is nothing compared to the CNY in Malaysia.  Although the CNY back there changed so much ever since I was growing up.  Each year, there are less and less festive, but it will be much better than here.

We do celebrate CNY here.  We have dinner at my IL’s place on the eve.  They live just 2 houses away, so we don’t really have to drive at all.  We just walk over.  Then on the 1st day of CNY, if it falls on a weekend, then my Hubby will join us to visit my IL’s relative locally.  We will vist 3 families - FIL’s older brother (2-bakfu), MIL’s 2nd brother (2-kaufu) and 4th brother (4-kaufu) and usually we are done with them in 1.5 hour.  And that’s it. 

So I hope that we will have a better and more colorful CNY in Malaysia.  The last time I was there for CNY was 2005.  It was different, may be because my mother was not around anymore.  But we did have a lot of fun at the reunion dinner that year at my uncle’s new home in TTDI Hill.  Looking forward for the trip.   

A section of our front yard fence had a wood wagon wheel on it.  But it was breaking apart under our bright and strong sun in Southern California.  It doesn’t look good if we plan to sell our home in the next few months.  So I called up several fence companies to get estimates. 

The first company whom came out told me the whole fence has to be replaced because the bottom part was rusty, no point in replacing just the few vertical metal.  He suggested to do the new fence in wood since it will be more economical that way.  He said his charge is $250 to replace the fence with cedar wood.

The second company I called didn’t show up at the schedule appointment and we rescheduled for the next day.  So the third company, Gonzales Iron Work (from Gardena 310-538-5593) came out and looked at the fence.  He said to replaced the whole fence plus labor would be $295.  But I had to wait till the second company give me the quote before I decide.

When the second company came out the next day, he looked at the fence and asked me how much the other companies had quoted to replace it, I told him $280.  And he was laughing at me.  He said if I found that cheap, I should let the other company do the job.  Because he said he knows ‘no one’ will replace that fence for such a low price.  I told him, “Yes, there is!”  He said for him to do the job, he will charge $600-$700.  He left.  I immediately called Gonzales Iron Work and gave them the job.  It was Friday afternoon.  I asked them how many days they need to do the job, the owner said a few days (may be 3-4).  The owner came out on Friday evening to let my Hubby sign the contract and said he would stop by on Saturday morning to remove the fence to use as template.  The owner didn’t even ask for deposit for the job.  

 The next morning around 9am, they were already here removing the fence.  That’s timely!  I told Brandon that the fence would be back up there around Wednesday.  He likes to see people working so I was hoping that he will get to see them putting the fence up. 

On Sunday morning we went to Camarillo Outlet mall and came back around 1pm.  And guess what?  When we turned into our street, Hubby said to me that the new fence was up already.  I was surprised!  But it was there, painted too to match our existing fence color.  Although the color is a bit off but close enough.  That’s really fast work and the quality is good too.

I will definitely recommend Gonzales Iron Work from Gardena to anyone that needs to get a new fence.  It is people like this that I love to do business with.  Work done on timely manner.

I forgot to take a picture of the old fence but I managed to go out this morning to take the picture of the new fence.

I am becoming insane more and more everyday.  All because of my son.  Everything I tell him to do, his answer is, “No!”  Then he kept repeatingly asking the same ‘why’ questions over and over again.  I told him the answers gazillion times, he still asks me.  *pulling hair* 

And the worst is whenever I sense that he needs to go to the bathroom, he always says, “NO!”  But I always bring him to the toilet and he would be so rush and sometimes wet his pant before I pull down his pants.  Why can’t you just tell me that you need to go to the bathroom???  And he has been wetting his bed quite frequently now at night.  At least once a week. 

Brandon: Mommy help me take this toy outside.

Mommy: OK OK.

Brandon: Ehh ehh … Mommy don’t touch my toys!!!!

OK, how do you want me to move your toy outside if you don’t let me touch your toys?! O_o

Hello 2010!  Now that I am saying ‘Hello to 2010′, 2011 won’t be too far away from today.  LOL! 

After a long week of lazying around the house and doing very little, now I am back to the weekly schedule and chores around the house.  As Chinese New Year is approaching, a lot of cleaning and organizing has to be done around the house again.  This time, I will pack away some stuff that I don’t use anymore.  Who knows, we may be moving away and selling our home.  Have to make the house looks nice and presentable if we are planning to sell it, so have to store away all the junks. 

Hubby had made reservation at The Lawry’s Steakhouse and presented the dinner for two to me on Christmas morning. Surprisingly to me, he even arranged the babysitting service with my SIL for that evening without me knowing it. He said that it would be a nice way to celebrate our 10th year wedding anniversary. He likes prime rib. I do too but I didn’t want to over eat. I heard they have different cut of prime rib (24oz, 16oz) and saw some pictures of the dish and side dishes at Yelp. The food was supposely good but the pictures don’t look too appertizing to me, especially the side dishes. That’s the reason I suggested to Hubby to cancel the reservation. Of course, he was disappointed. But yet we still made the night out to a nearby Japanese Yakitori Restaurant - Shin Sen Gumi (Torrance).

We arrived at 5:30pm, it was just a 5 minute drive from our home. But the place was not opened yet. So we drove around and came back at 6pm and it was almost filled with customers. We asked to be seated by the bar. We were given an order list, and we checked what we wanted. We picked all those non-regular stuff which we don’t eat at home. Hubby also ordered a plate of yellowtail sashimi.

The chefs are very friendly indeed. Two of them were busy yakitori-ing (grilling) the customers’ orders behind the bar (see picture below). The hot green tea we ordered was great idea with the raining weather outside. We were really warm. I even took out my jacket. This place is small and it was full very soon after we were seated.

Everything was very good. Unexpectedly, I was very full after the meal. I was actually quite done with my meal when they served the 4th or 5th stick. But Hubby had ordered so much and amazingly we finished everything.

Now are you ready to see what we had (without Brandon with us)??

Here goes …

We were all done by the time it was 7pm and we got back to my IL’s place around 7:15pm to pick up Brandon. He was good, and playing with his Lego toys my SIL got him for Christmas. So total time we left him there with my IL was 1 hour 45 mins. We may try it for longer the next time.

Another year came and went by just like that.  Time passing by faster when you are having fun.  Is that true?  May be half half.  I think it went by fast because we are so busy everyday with nice things and not so nice things as well.  When you have a child and a husband, you will be busy (especially if you don’t get outside help). 

What did I accomplished in 2009? Nothing much but there are a few things that I wanted to jot down which I did in 2009.

1. Traveled to Maui for the first time in Jan 09.
2. My son turned 3 year-old in Mar 09 and he started pre-school towards the end of the month.
3. SIL met someone special from eHarmony in Apr 09 and at this time, they are still together.
4. Family Cruise from Vancouver to Whittier on Island Princess in May 09.
5. Visted my dad and sister in Australia for the very first time since they moved there (end of May to Jun 09).
6. Met Grace and her family for the first time in Jun 09.
7. Organized a beach picnic for a few families from Mommy & Me Classes in July 09.
8. Traveled again and this time back to Malaysia to visit my aunty and brother, Aug 09.
9. Son went back to pre-school end of Sep 09 (Fall term).
10. Went to Legoland for the first time in Oct 09.
11. Quiet Christmas at home Dec 09. Usually we would have been in Las Vegas.
12. Last but not least, on Dec 31st 2009, this day will be our 10th year Wedding Anniversary.

HAPPY ANNIVERSARY and I love you. Thank you for being with me during the ups and downs. Thank you for taking care of Brandon so that I can have a nice and peaceful night out with the other Mommies. Thank you for the holidays we had during the year. Thanks for planning the romantic steak house dinner for two as my Christmas gift, which I suggested to be postponed because I do not want to over-eat during this holiday season. Thank you for everything. LOVE YOU!

Mommy: Brandon, don’t ‘kacau‘ (disturb) Mommy lar. Go play with your own toys.

Brandon: Mommy, ‘ngor mo‘ (I don’t have) toys.

Mommy: What? You got so many toys lar. See here, this one, nah, this another one nah. *showing him all his toys*

But I could see he wasn’t interested in those.

We set out his toys in the bins on a shelf. We have books, trains & train tracks, big & small cars & all kind of vehicles, helicopters, animals, buildings, blocks, tools, xylophone, doctor kit and a few more others. I didn’t think about it until a friend enlightened me, “… may be he is bored with his toys?”

Actually, I didn’t think about that. Because a child can be creative and play with the same type of toys for very long. But not my boy. Then I thought about some older toys in a toy chest which I put away because they were no longer in his age range. This morning, I opened it up and asked him to play with them. He had fun with them, but he still played with a few of his favorites. I can see he is getting bored with them already as he has been asking me to clean up the toys back into the toy chest. Oh well … it worked for almost half a day.

Here is a picture of him playing with the old toys in his bedroom.