"Grinchmas"

It's December 23, daddy's day off. I kept my promise and took the girls to "Grinchmas" at the Universal Studios. There was a large playground covered with man-made snow. Hundreds of kids and grown-ups were throwing snow balls at each other... There were a few characters from the movie "The Grinch who stole Christmas" posing with the park goers for photos. We were in and out of the park in less than 2 hours, this sums up our 5th time at the Universal Studios this year with our annual pass, I don't think that we'll be going there again anytime soon.

Mini Christmas vacation to Las Vegas

Helen's friend Ada from Macau visited us during the Christmas holiday. A week long rain stopped finally and the sky turned clear... We had a mini vacation to Las Vegas in Christmas weekend. It was so lucky that we didn't hit any traffic in the entire trip. We stayed at the Planet Hollywood and M Resort, visited the Valley of Fire State Park on Christmas day, played with fireworks. Great seafood buffet at Todai, visited beautiful Christmas decorations at the Bellagio, listened to the girls singing Christmas songs in the van, our trip was filled with Christmas spirit.

Got a new resident in our house!

We went to Petco this afternoon to buy some freshwater fish for our aquarium after lunch, we saw they have four Russian tortoises for sale. We came home with a female one, Helen has been wanting to have tortoises for a long time, the girls named her Lily.

Sunday afternoon at the Universal Studios

The weather was quite gloomy today, forecast said it will rain tonight... It was a great day to visit the Universal Studios (our 4th time this year). We spent less than 15 minutes to get on the Simpson ride and less than 10 minutes to get on the Studios Tours ride. T2 3D only took us about 10 minutes to get in. The theme park is preparing for the Grinchmas starting next Saturday till January 2nd 2011. We might have make another trip back to the park to check it out. Meanwhile I snapped some pictures with the Olympus M. Zuiko 17mm, not too impressed with the image quality.

Best tasting cheese pizza

It was always the toughest thing to get both girls to compromise one place to eat... That night was no difference, Erica wanted noodles and Vivian want crispy chicken burger... We ended up at ZPizza in Westlake Village, got them each a slice of cheese pizza. Vivian told me it was best pizza she ever had, I heard she was telling Erica quietly while she was licking the crumbs off the table: "I wish daddy can buy me another pizza!"

Vivian is on product presentation board!

We are sending our product presentation boards to Toys R Us today... Our designer Ayami picked one of the pictures of Vivian I took last week and put on the Girl Gourmet Minilicious Mini Treats Maker packaging! Vivian got 2 missing front teeth replaced by Ayami skilled Photoshop retouch work!

Iceoplex

We took the girls to ice skating after shopping and pizza lunch at Simi Costco. This is the first time we took the girls to Iceoplex and more importantly, it's also the first time Helen and I went ice skating! It's way more difficult that we I thought! I was able to have lots of fun with the girls, thanks to the "walkers" we've rented! I was able to avoid many painful and embarrassing falls! Helen had made an impressive improvement but she had a couple of hard falls.

We went to Souplantation for dinner before we head back home, it's very chilly evening!!

Thanksgiving 2010

The girls were off on Wednesday the 24th so I told them a week ago that they can come to my workplace that day. Both girls were so excited, Vivian got up at 4am Wednesday morning and asked me how many more hours she has to wait to go to work with me... It was a very productive day at work, the girls worked with our Girls Activities teams and tested some Incredible Edible foods in the morning and worked as our photography models for the Minilicious packaging... I have used a few shots as design elements for our 2010 Christmas cards!

We spent the Thanksgiving day put together a new dinning table and house cleaning. We had our Thanksgiving dinner at the TGIF.

On the 26th Friday, we've invited Bonnie & Danny's family over for Thanksgiving. They stayed for both lunch and dinner. The girls had a lot of fun with Rachael and Rena!

On the 27th Saturday, we've invited Julia and her 4 kids (Hector Jr., Toni, Alan & Emi) over for lunch and dinner. We've spend some quality time together catching up everything that happened in 2010. This was 2nd year we've invited Gutierrez family to our place for Thanksgiving! Everybody had a great time!

Kid's Swap Meet

The girls have been waiting for this Annual Kid's Swap Meet for over a month since we submitted the application for a 8'x8' spot at the Thousand Oaks Community Center. Daddy has been busy organizing the girls old unwanted toys in the past week, everything was loaded on the van last night... We got up at 6:30 this morning, on our way to the Swap Meet, we grab some donuts, coffee and milk for breakfast. We were there at 7:45am and found most of the sellers are already conducting business! We started our sale at 8am, lots of early birds started buying our stuff even before we set up the table, there were a couple of ladies even wanted to buy our table! The sale was very good, most of our high ticket items were sold in the first hour of our business, the girls were very happy to offer discounts to multiple item buyers. We also took turns to visit other sellers' goodies and found some crazy deals out there. Mommy bought a ton of Christmas decoration items and the girls' clothes while daddy were hunting for DVDs, Nintendo DS and Gameboy Advance games for the girls. The girls also did some shopping and bought a gum ball machine, a big Lion King stuff animal (Nala), some necklaces & small decorative things... Before we close down the business, we donated approximately $50 worth of electronic toys to Erica & Vivian's pre-school teacher Mrs. Camarillo so the pre-school kids can play with them at their activity room. The girls made total of $209, we took out $10 Swap Meet application fee, $50 for the clothing, DVDs, various of video games and the toys we bought at the event, and the girls net profit was $75 per person, we let them keep the money. It was a wonderful experience for the girls and sure we'll be back next year!

Trick or Treat 2010

Like last year's Halloween, we had a dinner gathering at Kevin and Shelley's house together with Dudee, Mr. Chan, Judy, Paul and some friends with many kids... After dinner, we took the kids for a very long walk in the neighborhood, went door to door trick or treating... Our girls ended up collecting close to 7 pounds of candies! It totally broke last year's 4 pounds record! The girls were so excited all evening, when they finally went to bed at around 10:15pm, they passed out in less than 3 minutes!

Channel Island Ice Center

The girls were invited to go to Jennifer's party at Channel Island Ice Center in Oxnard this afternoon. There were a few good buddies from Erica's old school, they are so happy to see each other... This was the girls' 2nd time at the ice rink, last time they went to the Christmas ice rink at the Lakes in Thousand Oaks... Erica showed some interest in ice skating, Dudee told us that they sent Katelyn to the Simi Valley to learn ice skating last winter. We think it's a good sport for our girls to learn...

Camp Ronald McDonald Annual Family Halloween Carnival

It's our 2nd year attending the event located at the back lot of Universal Studios in Hollywood. We got extra kids tickets so Erica and Vivian invited their buddy Caitlyn to join us... It's a better organized event than last year's. The food was great and lots of Carnival games and rides! There are face painting, pumpkin decoration and lots of celebrities... The best part was the kids coming home with a van full of toy gifts!

Calabasas Pumpkin Festival 10-16-2010

This was the first time we went to the Calabasas Pumpkin festival. It's a fun annual event located just about 15 minutes south of where we live at Juan Bautista de Anza Park on Lost Hill Road in Calabasas. On the cloudy Saturday, there were dozens of marketplace vendors selling all kinds of arts and crafts stuff, live bands, Carnival games and many inflatable rides. It's a perfect event to kick start the holiday spirit!

A visit to Helen's old school on Sunday afternoon

It's been over 8 years since we last went to Helen's old school, California State University in Pomona. At that time, our Erica was not even born...

Helen said the school had a lot of changes. We went to the Japanese Garden which wasn't there last time when we went there. The grass was so green and the sky was clear and blue. The Leica DC Vario-Summicron on my LX3 performed flawlessly and captured some nice 24mm wide-angle shots...

Violet & Harujuku Cutie

There are still few weeks before Halloween but daddy has already received a few costumes for each girls through internal orders. Here are the costumes most likely the girls are going to wear on the Halloween evening. However, there are more Fairies and Princesses outfit which I will showcase in coming weeks, stay tuned.