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!".