Spring break 2011 (Toronto)

It's Easter Sunday and we just came home form a week-long Spring break vacation visiting family in Markham, Ontario! It was the girls' first trip to Canada and they are in love with everything and every person over there! We are so glad to see everybody! We had tons of delicious food and visited many places including the famous CN Tower and the Niagara Falls! We want to say a big THANK YOU to my sister's family! They took great care of us and we all had a great time! We hope to visit again next year!!

Breakfast on Saturday morning

Saturday morning after dropping off two cars at Jiffy Lube for oil change, we found a mom & pop French pastry shop "Chocolatine"around the corner and had some yummy breakfast, it was a nice treat!

Girls' new pets

It's been over two years since we last went to Chinatown in downtown Los Angeles... We went to Ocean seafood restaurant for some late afternoon dimsum. The service was excellent but the quality of food was so so compared to the restaurants in San Gabriel/ Alhambra area, good thing is we don't come to this area often. Checking out the stores on Broadway was fun, we bought a few toys from street vendors... Before we head back home, we stopped by Liberty & Fish pet store and found lots of pets we don't usually see in a regular pet store. Helen found her favorite South American Red Foot tortoise, Vivian instantly fell in love with a white (patchy spots) two-week old bunny baby, Erica was stuck at the cages filled with chicks! 15 minutes later, all girls left the pet shop with their new pets!

Vivian is 6!

2/18 was Vivian's 6th Birthday! We didn't cut the cake because she was too tired and went to bed early right after a quick dinner... Our whole family is recovering form a week-long sickness -viral infection. Erica was the first one to get it, then spread to Vivian, finally it's mommy and daddy. It was pretty bad, since it was viral infection, the prescription antibiotics was not working at all, both Erica and Vivian had low-grade fever for 4 days, coughing, runny nose, tired... As of today, everybody is pretty much recovered. However, Vivian is still very tired, complained headache in the morning... We hope she'll be all energized like a bunny again soon!

Chinese New Year 2011

Happy Chinese New Year!! It's the year of the Rabbit! We wish all our family & friends a prosperous year! We wish you all happiness and great health!! Erica & Vivian dressed up with traditional Chinese costumes and sending their greetings!

Malibu Bluffs & Adamson House

A nice scenic drive to Malibu Bluffs State Park on Sunday morning with the family. We later visited the Adamson House right next to the Malibu Lagoon. What a beautiful Spanish Colonial style building build in 1930! The girls took their own cameras and took a lot of pictures themselves too.

New Year mini vacation at Palm Springs

Happy New Year everybody!

We squeezed in another mini vacation with the girls before the end of the holidays... We booked the hotel at Palm Desert the night before the trip. Our van left home at 8am on New Year's day morning, stopped by Alhambra and had a huge Hong Kong style breakfast. After that we were heading straight to Palm Springs which was only approximately another 1 hour and 15 minutes away. It was very cold and windy when we arrived, good thing was that we have brought warm clothes with us. We made a brief stop at the Palm Springs visitor center and we continue our trip to the Joshua Tree National Park. Not many people spent their New Year day visiting the National Park so we were able to make many stops in the park attractions. I was surprised to notice that there were not a lot of Joshua trees in the first 90% of the park, we started to see them until about 4-5 minutes before we exit at the northern part of the park near Twenty-nine Palms! We saw a lot of Joshua trees along Route 62 heading back to Palm Springs... We had a great buffet dinner at Grand Palms Buffet in Agua Caliente Casino & Resort (Rancho Mirage) before checking in at Best Western Palm Desert.

We got up at 8am on Sunday morning, had a great complimentary breakfast at the hotel before heading to the Palm Springs Aerial Tramway. We parked our van and the shuttle took us to the Valley Station. We were able to get on the cable car in 30 minutes. The view was breathtaking looking down the Palm Springs area from the cable car! It was a short 10 minutes ride and we arrived the Mountain Station at Mount San Jacinto State Park. It was freezing up there (8,516 feet elevation), the temperature was -1 degree C but the windchill factor made us feel like -15 degree C! The the ground was covered with 3 feet of snow. We were all exploring the winter wonderland there... After about 45 minutes, it started to snow!! As usual, Vivian started to get upset about the cold weather and wanted to leave. We were able to take lot of nice shots before leaving the Mountain Station. It was such a wonderful experience and we all enjoyed the trip.