Yang Family Reunion 2013

We got back from Lake Tahoe yesterday - site of the first real Yang Family Reunion in at least 20 years or so. There were probably 70 people there and it was great to see, and in some cases meet, all of the siblings of my grandmother on my mom's side and their families, as well as my cousins on my mom's side.  Ev and I are definitely the old folks of our generation, since our mom is the oldest sibling, as well as my grandma.

Look at my grandma getting air with the cousins. This was definitely the 'young cousins' idea.. I thought I was going to throw my back out after the first jump. haha! Ev is second from left, I am third from right.

Cousins, minus Hubert who is too busy with his residency.

Our family came a little early to Tahoe and rented a cabin, which the owner ended up double booking by mistake and therefore put us up in a lakefront condo to compensate. So we ended up paying something like $150 a night for a $395/night pad!

The calm before the storm...

The view during the crazy thunderstorm

There was no shortage of young people to entertain the kids. Somehow the 20-somethings were really into playing with the kids..no complaints here. 

Cousins Jason & Jonathan ("Jackson & Johnson" per leelee)

Cousin Laura on the Choo Choo Train

Kids loved the pool. Woohoo!

Puops is loved by all, just not at this particular moment.

Matching reunion t-shirts we wore the entire weekend, plus nametags.

This little cutie, sittin' on a log...

Exhausted but happy after a weekend of fun!

Cryin'

I been cryin'...

Buddies

A couple more photos from the weekend...

Cuties

Looks like I have a Bump-It in my hair

Olin's Vocab & Ev's visit

Olin's vocab has exploded (I use that word loosely)! He's not reciting poetry, but he's really upped his game. Ev reports that he says "Blue Blue" and "Bluey" and that he's a real friend to the animals (Blue). He also loves Didi and walked around the house today calling out "Didi" after they had left. Real sad. He says "Mama" and "Baba" but still hasn't really found anything to call Leelee.  He still says thank you well, and absolutely loves singing and dancing to the beat. Mal provided some Chipmunk songs for him this weekend and he seemed to thoroughly enjoy them.

He loves this book "Brown Bear" and actually knows about 75% of the animals. On the last page, we will ask him to point to the teacher, or the blue horse, or the yellow duck, and he does it correctly!

Ev and Jeff's fam just left this morning and it was sad to see them go. Even though their weekend was packed with reunion-related events it's always nice to have them in town and have some kid entertainment for our young tikes. Even Blue behaved! ha! Mal and Didi were very pleasant to watch. Mal is some kind of anomaly. I brought a random container of green vegetables that Dae's mom had prepared a couple of days ago and had the kids eat their 'dinner' out of my trunk at the park. In return, I promised them Maui's Apple frozen yogurt. Well Mal ate that dinner with no complaints, spoonful after spoonful, and said she enjoyed it. She actually ate that way all weekend, no complaints, ate everything on her plate and asked for more. It was seriously a dream...my kids don't do that :)

We also had some funny dialogue in the car yesterday. I told Leelee he couldn't have too many snacks because he has some sugar bugs in his teeth. Didi said 'he has sugar bugs'? I said yes, he has two...and the following conversation ensued:

Mal: Well, I only had one sugar bug.
Didi: And I only had 7 sugar bugs.
Leelee: Wow, you had a lot of sugar bugs!

Yes, Didi had a lot of sugar bugs. But at least his mom is not a dentist plus, he 'only' had 7. haha!

Nothing like Korean vegetables for dinner in the trunk of my Volvo. All fairness to Leelee and Olin - they ate like champs, too.

Didi passed out in the 3rd row on the way to the park. He missed out on the greens but conveniently woke up just in time for Maui's Apple frozen yogurt.

Beverages.

Flat Tire Thursday

I got a flat tire this morning due to this enormous nail in my tire.

Les Schwab saved my buns - I called Dae since I don't really know my way around a flat tire and he said Les Schwab comes out to your car and puts the spare on. I called them and 15 minutes later they showed up at my house and changed out my tire to the spare. I then went in to the shop and they patched up my tire and put it back on. All free! The price was certainly right!

Ugly spare

I took the kids to the carwash (one of their favorite activities) and they were really entertained watching the cars being washed for the first 45 minutes. I pulled out the iPad for the last 30 minutes since the car wash took quite a while (I got a semi-detail and I am in heaven with the new clean car! It was such a mess!)

Ev, Jeff and fam are in town staying with us for her 20 year reunion. So far we've hit Granny's (now OCB) and the kids ran through the sprinklers. Fun times!

Girls' Weekend, and LL's got Cavities

I took x-rays on Leelee today and he has two cavities. I am so disappointed in myself! I thought I was doing such a good job, flossing those suckers since day one. But who was I fooling - my dental history has been so littered with cavities that I don't know why I would have expected any less with my kids, even with what I felt was exemplary oral hygiene. haha!

The proof's in the x-rays:

#I has distal decay (middle upper tooth, small shadow on right side).  I wish my new App showed me how to place arrows on the pictures.

As does #B (right upper tooth, left side shadow). He's also got a small incipiency (cavity forming) on #S on the lower, but I am going to fluoride the heck out of it. I will hope for the best.

On a much happier note, dental girls and I met for our annual, or more than annual, girls' weekend in Bellingham. It was good times. We stayed at Terra's and did a lot of activities (ballet class, paddleboarding, hike) and had good food and wine. It's fun to get done up since there are so few occasions for it at home, and I know my kids certainly do not acknowledge when I do my hair and make-up!

Instagrammed and labeled!

Consonants

The things Leelee says crack me up endlessly:

1) "Mom, I was freaking at you because you weren't listening." (freaking? He knows how to use that?)

2) "Mom, wait...this is the truth. At night, I have two options: I can stay in bed with baby in our room or I can come to your room"

3) "Mom, I promise" (he says this all the time)

4) All on his own, he spelled out Halmoni and Haraboji. He sounded it out phonetically and I was very impressed, even though his phonetics weren't exactly accurate and he left out a few key vowels...

Wrap-up

To wrap up New York City, it was a great trip as always. It's definitely one of our favorite places to visit, and one of these days we'll get around to taking the kids!

This is the group of people we went to Switzerland with (some of Dae's friends from college).  Lots of them live in NYC so we met up in Koreatown for dinner our last night there.

We never made it to Dominique Ansel and the cronuts (croissant + donut). Word is the line is 3 hours, and we already were planning on waiting 3 hours for Book of Mormon so we're holding off on cronuts until they are no longer a fad and therefore no line.

Also, our second night there we ate at Gramercy Tavern. I've wanted to eat there for a couple of years and it was quite delicious!

So, we arrived home on Sunday and the boys were alive and well. We drove over to Target to get them a wading pool:

I don't know if baby had to take a poo or what, but after wading for about 10 minutes, he got out and just stood outside the pool and whined for a good 10 minutes before I escorted him inside and changed him into dry clothes. He seemed happy. These boys of ours had better get a little more amphibious!

Dae discovered this new App that lets us put captions (above) on our photos. So you'll be seeing a lot of that, in addition to my Instagram addiction!

Lastly, Leelee really loves saying "Mom, are you happy at me?". He's very interested in knowing when I am happy, and not happy with him. But he always says "at me" rather than "with me". When he's all excited he will say "Mom, I am really, really, really, really happy at you!"

New York, Day 2+

We've been very busy! A breakdown:

1)

Citibikes! We got it to work! We biked our tails off yesterday. We biked off and on from 8am-3pm and came home completely exhausted. We decided biking is the way to go in NYC. It's a little crazy since New York cabdrivers are pretty aggressive, but it's so much faster than walking and a little easier than the subway, plus it's good exercise. There were a few glitches because some of the stations ran out of bikes or were too full so we couldn't return ours, but they were minor and we were able to find nearby stations with no problem. So I'd say we're sold. Especially at $9.95 per day unlimited rides. 

2) 

Katz's Delicatessen - site of When Harry Met Sally's "I'll have what she's having" scene. There was a really long line outside and it was total madness inside. Their pastrami was good but I personally don't think it's worth $17!

3) 

Baohaus:  hole-in-the-wall Taiwanese street food. Their menu is hilarious - I had the "Uncle Jessie Bao" and Dae had the "House Bao" and "Chairman Bao". It was the least expensive meal we have had in NYC thus far at a cool $20. 

4) 

Today Show! We biked over yesterday. If you squint very hard it's John Mayer singing below the black overhanging mic.

5) 

Book of Mormon! We finally got in! We waited in line from 10:40am - 1:00pm for standing room tickets at $27 apiece. Out of 28 tickets available, we were number 26 and 27. Phew! The show was hilarious and raunchy and totally un-PC.  I hate standing (anywhere) but I was able to stand through 2 1/2 hours so that means it was a good show :)