Don't remember the last time . . .

Amy had a cold! Migraines and stomach aches yes, but never a cold! This dreadful cold of hers sucks, but still did not ruin Christmas! Amy's uncle, his wife and their son came is still here from Norway. It was a complete Christmas this year, minus grandpa and grandma. We are trying to rest up before the big trip to New Zealand. Poor Scooby, we'll miss him so much when we're gone. Now that he's all potty trained to go outside of the house, he's the easiest puppy in the world and lot's of fun. Here's a picture of our youngest cousins, Wilson (2 yrs) & Daniel (1 yrs):

We need to start packing in a couple of days. It will be the first time we're roughing it for so long! We are staying in a sleeper van for most of the trip and only a few nights at a farmstay & B&B. It will be quite a new experience to be in a sleeper van. It will give us more flexibility to move around as we choose, but it won't be as luxurious of course. Soooo excited! More updates on this later.

Parallel 33

So the night before my grandfather's funeral, we attended Allen's Christmas dinner at Parallel 33. It was an intimate and quaint restaurant featuring fusion food that shares the same 33rd parallel across the globe. So we're talking about India, China, Japan, Lebanon, Morocco, etc. Can I say that I had the best mouth-watering scallops there for my main course and a delicious fried calamari appetizer. The scallops were big and cooked to perfection accompanied by lentils and sweet potato. I highly recommend this place, located in Mission Hills for anyone willing to spend $90 for a dinner for two. That will give you a main course and one appetizer.

Every year, his boss likes to take a company photo and use it to make Christmas cards that go to all their clients which consists of major hospitals around San Diego and surrounding area. We're talking about Sharp, UCSD, Palomar, etc. so we went to a nearby hotel and borrowed the Christmas tree background for the picture. I cropped them out of this one, but here's just us two.

Grandpa is with grandma in heaven

A year and 1 month ago we said goodbye to my grandmother and now we said goodbye to my grandfather who returned home to the Lord last week (November 28, 2007). During the Thanksgiving weekend I went to visit my grandfather at the hospital twice. The first time, he was still joking around and spoke some English words that my aunt taught him the night before. He was still strong and tried to get out of bed and was a little confused and scared since he didn't really understand what the nurses were doing. He couldn't communicate with them so he thought they were hurting him. He passed away two days after he left the hospital and went to hospice care. My mom and aunt were by his side as he was passing away. I am so grateful to have gone to see him during Thanksgiving. Today was his memorial service and it hit me harder than I thought. It didn't feel real that I just saw him a few days before he passed away and the very next time I saw him was today and he looked different. He is with my grandmother now and they are both in heaven. Their physical bodies lay at El Camino Memorial Park next to each other. It makes me think that no matter how many friends, family or people you have to rely on here on Earth and no matter how dependent or independent you are, everyone must leave the Earth at different times and you must travel it alone until you join again in heaven with God.

Bear face

Scooby is such a bear face. We lucked out and got the best behaved dog in the world. This is how he often sleeps. He can sleep for hours and then play with all his might when he gets up. Look at the picture of him when he was weeks old verses 3.5 months.

2 Thanksgiving dinners later

We got a brand new puppy from Camlinh and Roy! Meet Scooby Tran. He is 3 months old, born on 8/21/07. We named him Scooby because he was hiding behind the couch when he got home and was shaking from fright. He is really cute. Enjoy some pictures . . . Good morning!

His bed . . .


Meeting his sister, Poipu

Concerts

Two concerts in one week is a little too much compared to our usual, lazy tv weeks. We went to a Jazz concert (Brian Shaw) on Wednesday night. Supposedly he's an up and coming jazz singer that appeared on the Ellen DeGeneres Show and voted artist of the year from yahoo or something. His voice was not bad. We didn't like the venue though (4th & B). Tonight we are going to another concert thanks to our friend, Steve who bought it for us as an early Christmas gift. We will be going to see Kelly Clarkson. We had bought tickets to her concert the last time she was scheduled to perform in San Diego, but with all that drama with her new record, they cancelled it and we got a refund. I'm kind of glad since last time it was going to be held at the Sport's Arena and this time it's at the Civic Theater. Much better venue! Let's see if we will be the oldest people there tonight!

San Jose

After 2 years of living in San Jose, Gilbert (Amy's sister) will be moving there for a job as a flight planner for a subsidiary of Boeing. It's a great opportunity, but takes him far away -- again. I supposed it's not as bad as when he interned in the east coast this past summer. San Jose is just a 1-hr flight away and he will have 3 to 4 day weekends every week, but working 12-hour shifts. What a nice schedule! He starts his job January 2nd, 2008 and there's a lot to take care of at the moment with him looking for a place to live and figuring out how to transport everything up there. Oh--he gets a pretty generous amount of relocation money so that will help pad his bank account a little bit.

Haha

So, you probably figured out by now that my haircut was a fake. It was a wig. Sorry to disappoint you. It was great for Halloween.

New hair style

They said this particular hair stylist was very popular in Taiwan before relocating to the U.S. so I decided to give him a try. $35. I gave him the go ahead to give me a cut that was suitable for my face. Amy wants me to get another cut to fix it. What do YOU think?

First picture after coming home from getting the cut:


Sitting around wondering if this was a good idea afterall . . .

Happy Hallooooweeen

Jolene and I. Jolene went to UC Riverside with me. We went to UCR the same years and lived in the same dorms our first year. 10 years later (now) we work together! Very strange.

Getty Museum

We went to LA to visit Allen's sister for a couple of days. We went to see the Getty Museum the last day were were there. The other days were spent playing board games: Monopoly, but using a credit card! No paper money. It was very interesting. We also played Cities and Knights. The Getty Museum was pretty nice. The art rooms reminded us of the museums in Italy.

Pinkberry

A new craze in LA is the love for pinkberry. It's a frozen yogurt place that features low calorie yogurt dessert that is low fat and does not use milk. There are long lines to get one of these $5 cups. We have to admit that we are addicted to it. We got two before we left LA. It's very light tasting and goes down really quick! You get to choose 3 fruit toppings. Take a look . . .

Evacuations cont'd

Well, we were evacuated. I received a reverse 911 call last night that we needed to evacuate our home. There were neighbors zipping by with their cars as we were packing the rest of our things. After a couple of hours, they lifted the mandatory evacuation in our area and just put us on standby. The winds shifted and I guess and the fires was no longer heading our way. Phew. We returned home and was able to sleep in our own bed last night.

Over 1,000 homes were lost to the fires so far and over 300,000 homes were evacuated. I can't imagine those who are just stranded at Qualcomm stadium waiting for news if their homes are still standing. We are so grateful that the fires didn't come our way.

UCSD is closed through Wednesday so we get some time to relax at home and avoid breathing the soot filled air. I suppose this will be a good time to clean the house :(

Evacuations

We may be evacuated from our home. We're supposedly in the "mandatory evacuation area," but we're still sitting tight until they come into our neighborhood to tell us. There's actually a lot of homes on our street that are packing up their cars and getting out. We've packed up our things and we are ready to go any minute. This is so surreal.

Fires

Almost 4 years ago to the date, we had huge fires in San Diego and now it's happening again. There are 8 fires going on in San Diego and parts of communities such as Rancho Bernardo, Poway, San Marcos, and Penasquitos are being evacuated. Ramona is completely evacuated. Both of our boss' homes have already been evacuated. UCSD is closed again and we are just waiting home for news on evacuations. The sun and the sky is orange from the fires. They advise us to stay home and stay off the freeways.

We arrived home from LA last night and there was a fire up in Malibu and there are high Santa Ana winds blowing. As we were driving down, the poor air quality was visibly seen. We got home and had to clean the ashes off the dresser and carpet since we had our windows open. This is crazy! I can't believe this is happening again. I'm watching the news and homes burning from the fires as we speak. More later.

Genius Work

We were going through Bird Crazy and saw these bird playgrounds sitting outside. They cost anywhere between $100 - $350 and after taking a look at it, hubby attempted to make one for Poipu. It's pretty darn good! You can see her enjoying herself on it so she agrees!

My best birthday flowers from Nicole. They look so cheery and makes me smile when I look at them. Never seen such beautiful flowers! Our birthday and Christmas presents to ourselves this year is our trip to New Zealand in the heart of their summer. We are finalizing all our reservations for car rental/camper van, B&B's and entertainment. Oh how fun! We will also be spending one day in Fiji. 2.5 more months to go! Can't wait . . .

Best seat in the house

Kenny G decided to give me front row viewing at his concert although I had back row seats. Everyone around us was jealous that he made his eye contact with me throughout his song. Haha. See for yourself.

Here's another shot

I didn't want to snap too many pictures of him since the guy was in reaching distance of me. It would be quite rude to have so many flashes in front of his face.

And then backstage after the concert, Kenny G's awesome percussionist insisted he get a picture with me, taken by the drummer. I felt a little retarded since most people backstage was invited by the band (relatives and friends) and I didn't know any of them. The percussionist asked me straight out "hey, who are you?" Then he said, "come here and let's get a picture together at least!" Too funny.

Breeds

So for my (Amy's) birthday, I was contemplating getting a puppy. My hubby made me look at the Humane Society and I saw two puppies that are possibilities. I really like golden retreivers, but they may be a bit big for our house. There was one I saw from the humane society that looked like a possibility.

He's a a Lab/Corgi mix:

Pros about this one is that he is active (hubby likes that) and can run with you. Labs have great personalities just like golden retreivers. The mix with Corgi makes him super smart and trainable. Cons is that he might get pretty big. Yikes.

Or should I get my dream puppy? What I've been yearning for is a Shih-poo. They're the perfect size and very cuddly. They're super cute, especially one that looks like this:

Is this something worth paying the extra $500 for? Shih-poos are around $800 and there are NO Shih-poo puppies at the humane society! This will definitely be an indoor dog and he's portable because of its size. I also like the teacup yorkie. For a little dog, they're not yappy and super cute!

It's a very difficult decision considering we love to travel and we are so busy. Will we have time for the dog? Does that mean we have to forego our trip to Honduras this Christmas and opt for a smaller trip due to the financial investment in a puppy?

Daniel-inspired vegetarian diet

We finally attended bible study for the first time with The Rock Church. It's held only 10 minutes from our house so it's fairly convenient and they are right on time. We were 5 mintues late and was the last to arrive. Asian time is out I guess. . . We studied from the book of Daniel. Prior to bible study, we had to read over the first chapter of Daniel and it inspired us to go on vegetarian diet for one week. If you read Daniel chapter 1, you'll know what we mean. The group was a little older than what we hoped for, but they are extremely nice. So now we are not sure if we should stay there or find a group a tad younger. We were quite impressed with how they really kept their time. The started exactly on time and ended exactly on time.

Gilbert has gotten us involved in his ping pong tournaments. It's pretty well organized with around 100 or more players. You get paired with people in your skill level and move up or down depending on if you win or lose the games. There are some serious competitors there!

Rock on

Our church, The Rock, moved to a new location in Pt. Loma and it's so decked out! Miles McPherson is standing center stage in the pictures below preaching his message as he does every week for around 6 services. We are joining a small group (bible study) in a couple of weeks in Mira Mesa so we are pretty excited about that. We are also starting to read the bible every day. Amy started with Genesis and Allen started by randomly opening the bible and start reading wherever it opens up to.

Weekend of arm workouts

Two body boarding/surfing beach days and 1 rock/wall climbing adventure later, our arms feel like spaghetti.

Not so pleasant surprise

So Allen was changing the oil on Amy's Honda and guess what he saw under her car?

A dead rat stuck in a little hole! Digusting!

Encounter

Allen believes in this supreme being, but was always skeptical of Christians. He always says that he needs proof that there is a God. He wants God to appear and just tell him that He's real. So last night Amy realized that he had gotten up to use the restroom at 2AM and she woke up to notice him standing next to the bed. This was the conversation:

Allen: Were you holding me or put the blanket over me just now?
Amy: No, why?
Allen: Did you pray for me last night?
Amy: Actually I did! Why, what's going on?
Allen: God came to me and spoke to me just now
Amy: Huh?!! (a little scared now)

Allen is overwhelmed to tears. He said that God came to Him and asked him if he was ready. He replied "ready for what . . . and who is this?" God spoke to him and told him that it's Him and Allen immediately knew it was God. God was there to settle all his doubts and to show him that HE is real. Then he was shown all the things that he could change in his life and scenes flashed before him. Then God said to him that "Everything will be ok. You will be ok." Then he felt God embracing him like a child and he was just enjoying the state of euphoria when God was holding him. After that, God left and he opened his eyes.

Isn't this just so amazing?

For the fear of heights

Amy has a fear of heights so her hands were sweating a little bit as she was climbing up the tower. However, she didn't want to look like a wimp in front of everyone so she did it and here's the proof:

Here's the snapshot of the tower:


Midway up!
Going up still . . .
Yay, made it to the little platform!
She looked down a few times and got weak knees, but overally it wasn't as bad as it seemed.

Sea World Fun

We got our Silver annual passes to Sea World!

Welcome Aidan Lum

Finally got to go see Helen's baby! Soooo cute . . . .