"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!"