BigSeefut

Last weekend we went on a family trip to Palm Springs.  We stayed at my cousin’s Westin timeshare and it was perfect!  I wasn’t good with taking pictures but my mom took a lot of good ones in the pool.

We arrived on Friday at noon with just a enough time to scarf down some lunch and head to the golf course.  I played surprisingly well for not golfing for so long and we even played the last 2 holes in the dark.  (It gets dark so early these days!)  On Saturday we woke up to loud howling winds.  The boys headed to golf and the girls waited for it warm up.  By 10am, the winds died down and the sun was out so we headed to the pool.  The kids had so much fun.  The pool was warm and they had a cool water slide that was faster than expected.  The boys joined us after golf and it was nice to drink and have lunch out by the pool.  After everyone took a nap, we started cooking our feast which included lamb chops, steaks, asparagus and lots of wine, vodka tonics and dr peppers.    It was fun playing games with the whole family too (my mom is surprisingly good at UNO and kept beating us).  We also had an iPhone Line It up Tournament.  I got everyone addicted and we all wanted to beat the high score.  Sammy had me beat for a while but I was able to regain the title (I couldn’t let an 8 yr old have the high score on my phone!)

On Sunday my mom made some tasty porridge and we headed to the driving range with the kids.  They all hit balls (except for Katie who was being grouchy and too loud for the golf course).  Then Sing bbq-ed up some more lamb chops and we ate all the leftovers.  Our family eats so well.    After packing up, we headed home.  It was a quick drive!  That might be because I slept the entire way home (thanks for driving P!).  This weekend was the first time Katie slept in the bed with me (at home we have a strict policy where she does not sleep in our bed with us).  I didn’t sleep too well with her though.  She tossed a lot, kicked me in the face and pretty much hogged the whole bed.  Why does such a small girl need so much room?!?  I was worried about her sleeping habits when we got home but she did great and went back to sleeping in her own bed pretty easily.

Thanks again to Sing and Rosalie for inviting us out on this fun family trip.  Next family vacation in Australia???

Click HERE for the full set of pictures.

I forgot to mention some things on my last Hawaii post:

-  Katie was exhausted most days as was back on a two nap schedule.
- Ishya brought me a book to read and I actually had some time to read it.  I don’t think I’ve read a real book for over 3 years.
- Since it was colder than I expected, you’ll see us wearing the same clothes in a lot of pictures.  Our clothes were so dirty but we had no choice since we didn’t have enough warm stuff.
- We sang lots of songs with Katie on this trip.  She can sing full songs on her own and will often tell me to stop singing because she wants to sing it by herself.
- Katie learned to say Thank You in Thai.
- We practiced saying Katie Chamkasem.  It’s hilarious when she says Chamkasem.
- I used to have a good rotation of dresses for weddings but I’ve been running low.  The bad thing about blogging is that you can see when I repeat dresses.  Please ignore the dress I’m wearing in photos.  I think I wore this to the last two weddings too.
- Katie recycled a dress too. She wore this a year ago and it was a little big.  This time it still fit and looked super cute!

I’ve added Ishya’s photos to my flickr.   Here are some highlights and you can click HERE for the full set of pictures.

Yay newlyweds!

They had a really fun bridal party.

The boys golfed three days and I joined them for one.  Golf in the wind and rain is hard so I won’t mention my score.

Here is a day at the beach.  A little windy…

VERY windy!!!!

Katie had a lot of quality time with Auntie Giftay.  Even though she says Auntie Debbie is her favorite, she still loves you!

Aloha!  I miss Hawaii!

It’s always hard to come back to work after vacation (especially with the time change and daylight savings).  I had to literally roll myself out of bed today…but back to reality!

So we were in Hawaii for our cousins’ Johnny and Joy’s wedding.  We started off with five days in Kauai and then headed to Oahu for the wedding.  The weather in Kauai sucked.  Light rain here and there but it was the wind that was annoying.  Ishya and I had a saying, “If only it were hot….”.  We pretty much said that every day multiple times a day.  We made a couple attempts to lay out at the beach but it either rained on us or the wind was so strong, there was a mini sand storm blowing at us.  We ate a lot though.  Tried a bunch of places but Hamura’s is still my favorite.  Saimin and lilikoi pie everyday!

In Oahu, the weather was much warmer but still a bit cloudy.  Johnny and Joy’s wedding was beautiful and it didn’t rain until we moved inside to eat.  Just in time.  It was fun to hang out with the family.  After the wedding we even had time to lay out at the beach.  Katie LOVED the sand and the water.  It looks like we’ll be making lots of trips to the beach this summer.

Ishya has most of pictures but here are some from my camera.

Congrats to Joy and Johnny!!

Looking cool

The view from our helicopter tour

Lounging around in the ocean

We saw Nemo at the Aquarium!

Due to the political unrest in Thailand, we decided to cancel that leg of our trip. We ended up spending more time in Hong Kong and took a side trip to China. We all had a great time and really enjoyed spending time with the family. Here are some highlights:

- Katie got sick the day we were leaving. Her nose was running non-stop. Luckily it only lasted a couple of days.
- It was supposed to be a 15 hour flight from LAX to Hong Kong but we sat in the plane for 17 hours due to delays and mechanical issues. We weren’t required to buy a seat for Katie but I’m SO glad we did. It would have been really hard if we didn’t have her carseat with us on the plane. She slept in the beginning of the flight but then was awake for most of the end of the flight. Luckily each seat had it’s own tv and they had two Mickey Mouse Clubhouse episodes. We kept repeating those for her.
- We met the rest of the family (The Chamkasems, Billy and Ishya) in Hong Kong
- Later we headed to China for some golf in Shenzen which included a personal caddy for each person
- Ask Billy about flirting with the caddies
- We all went to the hotel spa for some cheap massages. An hour foot massage and two hour full body massage cost about $35 US dollars.
- When talking about massages, my dad was joking about Happy Mandies (he meant happy endings). It became the joke of the trip and eventually warped into Happy Mandy.
- Later we took a China tour with the family (foshan city!)
- It included some long bus rides and eating lots of food.
- One stop was to an area with hot springs and even included our own hot springs in each room. Pish tried to turn on the hot spring immediately when we got there but ended up soaking himself. He only had one pair of jeans for that sidetrip to China so we had to dry it in front of the heater (which really wasn’t heating).
- The weird part was the toilet and showers were in the same stall in our hotel room (see pic)
- China was very interesting for everyone. At one point, Ryan came out of a bathroom saying, “There’s just a hole in the floor!)
- One night out included Karoake. I had fun singing a Carpenters song with my mom in law and a duet with Billy/Ishya and Liz. “A Whole New World” will always have a place in my heart. I just have to remember to only sing during the pink lyrics.

- Christmas in Hong Kong included a yummy dinner (Thanks Billy!)
- Trip to Macau. On the hydroplane boat ride over, Katie puked all over my shirt and all over her pants. Luckily I had her leg warmers with us. That held us over until we could buy her some pants.
- I also had to by a new shirt but the smell of puke still lingered. Then I ended up puking on the boat ride home.
- To clean up all the puke clothes we found a laundromat. Later I found out they lost my bra and a pair of Katie’s Babylegs
- While in Hong Kong we attended my cousin Susan’s wedding at the Disneyland hotel (Mickey Mouse everywhere!). Katie loved it until she fell asleep before dinner even started. This was common for her during the trip. Everyday at 7-7:30pm, Katie would fall asleep. I would put in the stroller and we’d all enjoy our dinner.
- We took a day trip to the Hong Kong Disneyland. It’s much smaller but was perfect for our kids.
- My brother almost got into a fight with a Chinese woman who was blocking his view of the Rainy Day Parade. It was pretty hilarious. He was so rude.
- We spent New year’s Eve at the Aberdeen Boat Club. 70’s theme! It was freezing though. Liz and I only wore our shiny outfits for about an hour.
- While in Hong Kong, we took almost every mode of public transportation. Taxi, subway, Ferry, double decker bus, mini bus, peak tram, hydroplane boat
- Katie saying “bye bye Hong Kong” on the way to the airport

After we got back, my brother was getting ready to drive home and Liz noticed Kennan looked really sad. She asked her what was wrong and Kennan started crying. She said, “I miss Katie already.” So cute. Also, my bro asked Ryan what was the best part of the trip and he said, “Spending time with the family.”

I think Katie matured a lot on this trip. She got to meet lots of our Hong Kong relatives, learned a lot of new words and speaks in more sentences now.

Click HERE to see the full set of over 500 pics.

Fun with Auntie Giftay

This is what Katie looked like every night during dinner. Asleep by 7pm!

Golf in China

Our shower toilet

Got to spend some time with Gramps. He is 93 yrs old and still walks faster than us

Enjoying some tasty crab

Merry Christmas from Ryan

Missing pants and a sock after the puking incident

Nice pic up at the Peak

Disneyland

Happy New year!

We got back late last night. We had a great trip but it’s nice to be home too! The jet lag for me and Pish hasn’t been too bad but Katie only slept from 11pm-1am. Then from 5am-8am. Surprisingly she wasn’t too grouchy today. She took one two hour nap and went to bed at 8:30pm. We are crossing our fingers that she sleeps through the night. I don’t think I can be up from 1am to 5am two nights in a row.

I didn’t take as many pictures as I’d like but I’ll be posting the ones I have soon.

I haven’t had time to post about our trip yet but I did sort through all our pics.  Here’s a link to our over 400 pictures.

 http://www.flickr.com/photos/bigseefut/sets/72157607243518977/detail/

 Maui was awesome and we were really sad to leave.  We took over 500 pictures that I have to sort through.  I started to upload some but it looks like they didn’t all make it up to flickr.  I’ll post them all tonight and will write a post about our trip.  In the meantime, here’s some of the pics that did get uploaded.

  Thanks to cousin Nina who took pics this weekend at our bbq.

Click HERE to see more pics.

We are back from Hawaii!  Fun….but too short.  I don’t have much time now to write about it but here are some pics for you to look at.

Click HERE to see all the pics.

We took Katie to mammoth this weekend and she did great.  She slept the whole way there and most of the way back.  Pish said she was a bit scared of the snow but we’ll have to change that!    Here’s a picture of her on the bed where she may have been conceived.  Everyone has named it the “conception room” already.  Next time we’ll bring a framed picture of Katie to keep in there.