My Favorite Things

My Favorite Things from David Chng on Vimeo.

Alex had plenty of energy on Christmas Day and was singing up a storm in the evening.  He was even incorporating some ballet style dance moves into his performances, inspired by the Nutcracker on Thursday evening, I'm sure.  This is a clip of My Favorite Things.

Merry Christmas!

Xena and Alex opening their stockings

Dr. Chng checking out his first patient, after receiving his Doctor's kit from Santa

Alex and his beloved Rodney Raccoon, posing in front of the Christmas tree

Family pic

Little fireman, after receiving new rain boots from Enrique and Beckie

We had a nice Christmas weekend and hope that you did too!  On Christmas Eve we went to the Wankel's house to celebrate and enjoyed good food and fun company for the evening.  Christmas Day was rainy and we stayed indoors in our pajamas with Alex opening his presents all day long.  We literally stretched it out until early evening, as he was lucky enough to receive so many presents from generous family and friends.  He enjoyed all of his new toys and books and looks forward to many more fun hours playing with them.  We had a roast duck dinner, with lefse as a special accompaniment.  It was our own fusion, kind of like Peking duck, but with Scandinavian lefse in place of the pancakes.  Hope your holiday was as good as ours.  Thanks to everyone for the presents and cards which you sent to us.  I always love looking at all of the pictures and cards and seeing how everyone is doing.  Merry Christmas!

Jingle Bells!

Jingle Bells from David Chng on Vimeo.

Alex's rendition of Jingle Bells, from Christmas morning.

Oakland Ballet's "The Nutcracker"

In front of the Paramount Theatre

Our big boy all ready to see his first ballet.

Checking out all of the cool details inside the Paramount.

Snuggle time

A view of the lobby from above.

Last night we went to Oakland Ballet's performance of "The Nutcracker" at the Paramount Theatre in Oakland.  We all enjoyed it very much.  Our seats were pretty much front and center and everything was quite fabulous, the dancers, orchestra, costumes and the set.  Alex enjoyed looking into the orchestra pit prior to the start of the performance, and during intermission, and was excited to see a tuba, trumpets and violins. 

 He was amazed when part of the set would  come down from the ceiling during the performance.  A couple of times, when something appeared he looked over and said "Did you see that?"  His favorite parts were the sugar plums and other confections, the rats and the hot air balloon, as well as the big cupcake which the rats came out in at one point. During intermission, he expressed concern about "the lady who fell down from the table", after being taunted with the rat.  He wanted to make sure she was okay.  Such a concerned boy.  

 I was amazed at his attention span.  It was only with about ten minutes left in the two hours, that he started to get a bit antsy (perhaps from the sugar kicking in from the dried apricot snack), and I took him in back to watch from there.  At that point he still wanted to watch, but I think that he wanted to dance as well, which he could do in the back.  

If you are looking for a fun activity in the next few days, you should check it out.  There is a matinee on Christmas Eve and the 26th of December.  http://www.oaklandballet.org/p_performance.html

Merry Christmas!

Christmas Carols

So serious in front of the Christmas tree at City Center

This afternoon, Alex and I went to a fun concert at City Center in Oakland, put on by the Oakland Interfaith Gospel Choir.  There was a good sized crowd and the concert was very lively.  Santa Claus was there and he was dancing around the whole time.  In fact, I think that is why Alex looks so serious in the photo above.  He was keeping an eye on the dancing Santa, I think to make sure that he wasn't coming over our way.  He did have a brief encounter with the very jovial Santa, who gave him some chocolate, so maybe they will be friends someday after all.  

Christmas Lights!

Look at all of the lights!

Hermie and Rudolph, a favorite

A whole family of snowmen

Flamingo reindeer

A cute display

The gingko trees in the neighborhood were beautiful as well, against the evening sky.

Last night we went down to Thompson Avenue in Alameda to see the Christmas lights.  The neighborhood does a great job of putting up displays and decorating their houses.  We were talking about the fact that if you lived in the neighborhood, being Scroogy probably wouldn't be a very easy option. :-)  Alex especially liked Hermie and Rudolph and the pink house, and the lit up moving deer and polar bears which adorned some of the lawns.

Christmas Season Activities

Picking out the card for today, from the advent calendar.

Trying to decide what to buy for his Giving Tree child.

I made an advent calendar at the end of November and we've been using it since.  In the pockets, I put cards, rather than treats.  The cards have a variety of activities/traditions on them.  Some examples include: make a gingerbread house, pick out a new ornament for the tree, buy a gift for a less fortunate child, go to a Christmas concert, visit a Christmas lights display, learn a new Christmas song, and make salt dough ornaments.  

Today's activity was to pick out a gift for a Giving Tree child, whose card we pulled from a tree at the bank yesterday.  The 4 year old girl had asked for a DVD, so I let Alex choose a DVD from the children's section when we went shopping today.  He chose a Curious George DVD which had a few episodes on it.  He happens to really like Curious George and he thought that the girl would like it too.  He kept wanting to know her name and I think that he thought he might meet her, even though I explained that we would take the DVD and a new Hello Kitty toothbrush to the bank and then they would wrap it and give it to the little girl.  He was quite proud to give the gift to the bank teller and she thanked him for the gift, which made him happy.  All in all, a success. 

Gingerbread House Part 2

I love my gingerbread house!

Close up of the house

After making all of the pieces on Friday, Alex and I worked on putting the gingerbread house together on Saturday night.  I must say, although challenging, there are definite benefits to working with a 2 year old.   This was my first experience making a gingerbread house and I made many mistakes.  I didn't realize that the icing would take so long to actually dry and hold the house together, I didn't do a great job of designing my house and planning how it would need to be put together in order for it to support the roof.  Did Alex care?  No!  He loved the house without the roof and didn't notice that every time he put candy on it, it was about to fall over.  He just had so much fun putting the candy on it and then even more fun playing with the birds we had made from candy the day before.  As you see, there is a cardinal in the front yard, and then another orange headless bird behind it (decapitated by the candy monster), and then on the right hand side, a sandhill crane, which became a "statue" according to Alex, because I had to put him on a fruit slice to help him stand up.  He played with these birds for probably 20 minutes and we kept adding little bird houses and feeders all around the property.  It was very fun, once I realized that perfection was not the goal.  

For future reference, I think that putting the house together the day before and having it ready to decorate would be the preferred plan of action.  By morning, the house was solid and would make for much easier decorating.  Perhaps we will do some renovations today and who knows, maybe we can even get that roof to stay on this time!  Hope everyone had a good weekend preparing for the holdiays.  I know lots of Minnesota friends were holed up making cookies.  I was a bit envious of the snowstorm when I heard about it.  Hope you all enjoyed it!

Gingerbread House Part 1

Brown sugar, in.

Some serious mixing of dry ingredients.

Mix, mix, mix.

Little bundle of energy and I made the gingerbread dough for our gingerbread house project, yesterday.  As you can see, he was all about wanting to help.  The pieces are cut and baked, some decorations have been purchased, let's see how it turns out.  First try for us, so hopefully it works out.

Long Time No See!

Photo op with Theresa in front of the Christmas tree.

We had a nice surprise when Theresa called last night to let us know that she is in the area for the week.  Luckily she had some time and was able to come over for the evening.  It had been way too long since we had all seen each other, so it was great to catch up.  Hopefully we will be able to get Matthew (3 in December) and Alex together sometime soon.  It sounds like they have lots of things in common and would probably have a blast playing together.  Alex loved Theresa!  He talked her ear off once he got to know her.  

Visit with Santa

Mom, quit taking the picture and get over here and rescue me!

Apparently Mrs. Claus was not as bad.

Over the weekend, we were in Moraga for lunch and Santa and Mrs. Claus happened to be there as well.  I don't recall ever being a huge fan of Santa myself, so I didn't intend to force the meeting with Santa, but Alex showed some interest when he and David took a break while we were waiting for our food, so after lunch we stopped by.  As I thought may happen, as soon as Santa and Mrs. Claus were encouraging him to take a photo, he became increasingly unhappy.  Even with David holding him, as you can see, he was less than thrilled.  At that point, I just took the photo anyway, one for the memories.  I don't think that we'll be visiting Santa again any time soon, if it involves actually getting within 10 feet of him.  He did warm up to Mrs. Claus in the end, so I guess she wasn't quite as scary.  

The Tree Is Up!

Christmas Tree Decorations : Time lapse from David Chng on Vimeo.

Here's David's latest time lapse creation, which I love.  The whole tree decorating experience in 22 seconds!  Alex had a very fun time decorating the tree and has already turned the lights on this morning.  He has admired it quite a few times in the past 15 hours and said "I love my Christmas tree!".

Our Happy Thanksgiving

Alex using my binoculars and actually seeing things in them for the first time.

Alex collecting leaves as usual.

A shot of sunset with lots of ducks in the foreground.

Some of the many, many cranes which came in to roost for the night.

Daddy and Alex after two hours watching the birds.  Ready to go and warm up.

After an illness (hope you are feeling better Tessa) changed our plans for Thanksgiving, we decided to take a less traditional route and go out and spend the evening with the birds in Lodi.  The Sandhill cranes and lots of waterfowl are back for the winter and we thought it would be a great opportunity to check them out again.  We packed up a picnic of fruit, bread and cheese and headed out to get there about an hour before sunset.  

We were some of the first people to arrive at the Isenberg Crane Reserve, which is a well known spot for migratory birds roosting at night.  Alex was quite excited and of course wanted to check out everything with the binoculars like I was doing.  This time, he actually did see the birds in the binos though, because he said "I see them", and then proceeded to say, "it makes them BIGGER!"  He was also quite intrigued by some sort of fire down the road, which sent fire trucks and an ambulance whizzing by, so of course, he had to keep an eye on the smoke and try to hypothesize as to what may be happening.  

An interesting part of the whole night was that our two and a half year old was perhaps the most patient person there.  I have never seen so many impatient people in my life!  It was chilly, I admit.  When we got in the car to leave, the temperature was 32 degrees, but I figured that if people made their way out there, they wouldn't expect that it was like a video online where you just press start and you can watch it and then leave after five minutes.  Quite a few people came up and asked if it really was that great and where the birds were and if we truly thought that they would see any birds that night.  Clearly, these people were not die-hard birders....oh ye of little faith.  I did at one point tell a lady that she just needed to be "patient, patient, patient".  I felt like I was talking to Alex, instead of a grown woman.  The birds always do come back at night, and with the Sandhill cranes, it does seem that they really wait until the sun is setting or practically until it has already set.  Needless to say, many impatient people left before they got to see the spectacular flocking of the birds.  Oh, what we can learn from a two year old.  Two hours after we arrived, Alex was still happily hanging out and enjoying the experience, watching everything that was happening, exploring leaves, watching the birds and drinking some hot pear cider, which I was happy that I had decided to bring.  

All in all, a very fun Thanksgiving activity.  After all of that, we were pretty cold though and the cold picnic lunch in the car, in the dark didn't sound all that appealing, so guess where we ended up for Thanksgiving dinner?  Yep, you guessed it, about the only thing open around there....McDonald's!  Alex has only been to McDonald's once, in Minnesota, during the Thanksgiving trip last year, so maybe that is the tradition now.  McDonald's once a year, around Thanksgiving.  He happily ate some chicken strips, rejected the fries and supplemented it with his grapes and Mandarins and milk.  Hope that you all had a fabulous Thanksgiving weekend.  The long weekend was so nice!

Happy Birthday Xena!

Alex singing Happy Birthday to Xena this morning

Happy 5th birthday to Xena!  We celebrated this morning with a carrot and peanut butter cake.  She enjoyed it immensely!

Happy Thanksgiving!

Happy Thanksgiving to all of our friends and family!  Hope that you are all having a nice relaxing day with family and friends.  We are truly thankful for you all.

Dungeness Crabs!

Dungeness Crabs from Half Moon Bay from David Chng on Vimeo.

On Sunday we took a trip over to Half Moon Bay.  The weather had cleared up and we enjoyed a nice lunch at Sam's Chowder House, followed by a trip to Pillar Point Harbor to buy some dungeness crabs from the fishing boats.  As you can see, we cooked them up and enjoyed them that evening.

Swing Batter Batter Swing!

Baseball is still a beloved activity around our house these days.  Alex loves to play in the afternoon, with him as hitter and me as the one fielding the balls.  He gives a good play by play of what is happening, including who is up, what number they are, how they hit and then of course, intermittent refills of chewing gum, because that is what baseball players do.  His favorites are still Buster Posey and Pablo Sandoval, I think perhaps because their names are catchy and the latest player he came up with yesterday was Richard Scarry Posey....interesting, merging his love of Richard Scarry the author with his beloved baseball.  

Happy Birthday Great Grandma Grace!

Happy Birthday Great Grandma Grace! from David Chng on Vimeo.

Here's Alex's abridged version of Happy Birthday for Great Grandma Grace.  Happy Birthday Grandma!  We love you!  Hope you have a very special day.

Yosemite Road Trip

Yosemite NP Fall 2010 from David Chng on Vimeo.

Here's a short video which highlights some of our trip to Yosemite last weekend.  Thanks to David for making yet another great video memory.  It wasn't actually raining the whole time we were there, although alot of the video seems to have been shot on the day when it was raining.

Just a little explanation behind Alex's comments regarding the bunk bed.  He kept asking if he could sleep on the top bunk and I had told him that once he was five he could sleep on the top bunk.  So when David asked him to show his bed and he pointed to the top bunk, he cleverly said "I'm 14!".

Mono Lake

Goofy boys!

Tufas at Mono Lake

More tufas

Alex leading the way along the trail

After crossing the Tioga Pass on Saturday, we arrived at Mono Lake, which is a saline lake that covers over 70 square miles and supports a unique ecosystem. Fish are not found in the lake, but it is home to trillions of brine shrimp and alkali flies. Along the lakeshore, scenic limestone formations known as tufa towers rise from the water's surface.  The lake is also a place where thousands of migratory birds come each year.  Unfortunately, we missed the height of the migratory period, but we did see some of the grebes which migrate there every year. 

It was definitely an interesting place to explore.  We enjoyed a picnic, walked around some of the trails and just took in the scenery while we were there.





Along the Tioga Pass

Family picture at Olmsted Point

Alex and Daddy at Olmsted Point

Alex and Mommy at Olmsted Point

Overlook with Tenaya Lake in the distance

View looking back while starting the descent down to Mono Lake

Alex on a big fallen tree in Tuolomne Meadows

Tuolomne Meadows

After thinking we had missed our opportunity to go up along the Tioga Pass this year, we were pleasantly surprised to find out that it had been reopened, after the storm in October.  We spent all day Saturday traveling along the pass, taking in the sights along the way, including Olmsted Point, Tenaya Lake and Tuolomne Meadows.  It was a gorgeous day and we found plenty of opportunities to stop and enjoy the scenery along the way.  Luckily we enjoyed ourselves on Saturday, because by noon on Sunday the road was closed due to snow and probably will not reopen until Spring.

Evergreen Lodge

Our cabin at Evergreen Lodge

Alex enjoying the rain on Sunday morning

Spectacular fall colors on the way to the lodge

Courtyard, Recreation Center and Restaurant/Tavern at Evergreen Lodge

Lake at Camp Mather, adjacent to Evergreen Lodge

Alex enjoying s'mores

Alex loved his bunk bed.  On Sunday morning he asked if we could take it home with us.

Chillin' in the cabin

We've been wanting to get up to Yosemite this Fall to see the colors and until this weekend, it just had not been possible.  Luckily, the weather was cooperative and we were able to make a trip up on Friday.  We made reservations at the Evergreen Lodge and will certainly go back again, given our experience there.  The location has been in use since 1921, when it was used as housing for the workers building the dam at Hetch Hetchy, but it has been significantly renovated and expanded since 2001, when new owners purchased the property.  

We stayed in a small, but nicely done cabin, with a queen bed and bunk beds, which Alex loved.  It was a great getaway, no phone, no television, just satellite radio and if you really needed a fix, there was Internet access at the recreation center.  It was very kid friendly with a nice big sandbox, plenty of toys and a family friendly tavern and restaurant with good food.  They had all of the fixings for s'mores every night.  You could roast the marshmallows in the fireplace, either indoors or outdoors, depending on the weather.  If you were so inclined, they had plenty of recreation options which were guided, or they also had bike rentals for all ages, as well as snowshoe rentals in the wintertime.  I would definitely recommend it as an option for a weekend getaway.  

It is not super close to the valley, (probably a 45 minute drive), but since we weren't planning on visiting the valley this time, it was perfect.  We were able to explore parts of Yosemite that we haven't in previous visits.  All in all, great weekend!  More posts and pictures of other parts of the weekend to follow.