Monthly Archives: November 2012

Lily’s 1st Thanksgiving, 2012

Thankful for our family!

We just celebrated our first Thanksgiving holiday as a new family!  I wanted to make sure this thanksgiving was extra special this year since last year we were in New York and couldn’t be with the family, and that made me miss spending the holidays with everyone.

So this year, we stayed home and were able to spend it with lots of family! We spent Thanksgiving day at Di A’nh’s house where Khoa’s uncle, Cau Dung made the best, super moist, flavorful turkey we’ve ever had!  The table was filled with lot of delicious home cooked foods like mashed potatoes, fried wontons, cream corn, stuffing, candied yams, and plenty of dessert made by Mo Thien (pumpkin flan, pumpkin log cake, and pumpkin chocolate chip cookies!!).

Saying a prayer before the feast!

All the amazing food!

Lily was really hungry!

 

The next day, we had dinner at Lanta Thai Restaurant with Khoa’s immediate family!  They had really good food there and we brought Lily’s booster seat for the first time.  She loved it at first, and she was playing with the toys that came with it, but then she wanted to be held, so the 2nd half of dinner, she sat on all our laps haha.  She wanted to join the party, that or eat our food…haha.

Saturday we had a friend’s gathering at our house with a small group of our closest friends!  It was a potluck so everyone brought all their yummy foods, and we bought 2 roasted duck from Lien Hoa BBQ Deli in Westminster!  It was really good!  I also made deviled eggs an my newest baking adventure, Apple Pie Pops!  There were a BIG hit!  Click here to read more about the pie pops!  Cynthia brought mashed potatos and roasted almonds, Aarin brought hawaiian sweet buns, fancy cinnamon butter and pumpkin scones, Steve brought spicy sausage bites, Alvina made green bean caserole, Bi-ying made salad and brought vanilla ice cream, Kristin brought cream corn, An and Linda brought veggie and fruit platters, and Roger brought a cheese and meats platters!  After a very satisfying meal, we then played Munchkin (a super fun, but also really nerdy board/card game) that lasted till past midnight haha.  It was great to see all our friends and play games, hang out, and eat good food!

 

On Sunday, we had lunch with my parents, and we ate at King Lobster and had dim sum, with some house special lobster and shrimp fried rice!  It was nice to spend all this time with all our family.  For more pictures of all of our Thanksgiving festivities, click HERE!  As we live our day to day lives, it’s really easy to forget what’s really important.  So I love the holidays because it’s a reminder, and good way to force us all to remember the simple joys in life and be with one another.  I have so many things in my life to be thankful for this year; my loving family, relatives, and friends.  I’m thankful for having a nice home, a cute doggie, and food at the table everyday.  I’m thankful for a loving husband who loves and cares about me, and puts up with all my shenanigans.  Most of all, I’m thankful for our bundle of joy, our Lily pad.

So thankful for our Lily pad!

For her Thanksgiving day photo, I wanted to have a large cornucopia with her surrounded by bountiful fruits and flowers.  I didn’t know that cornucopia baskets sell out really quickly, so it was a big challenge to find one.  Once we did find one (thanks to Khoa’s searching skills), it was still too small.  So I bought a basket from Michaels and cut it up, wrapped it around the small cornucopia, and wrapped some twine vines around it, to make it bigger.  I bought a bouquet of flowers, some fruit, and reused the leave garland from her pumpkin photo session, and laid a small towel in the middle for her to sit on and she was ready for her photo!  A cornucopia (horn of plenty) symbolizes and abundance, and nourishment so usually whatever you put inside of it always overflows to portray that.  So Lily in this case, is our abundance of joy and love.  She overfills our hearts with happiness, she is our biggest joy in our life, and I cannot express in words much I love her and  how happy she makes me.  She makes all my days days good, and my good days even better.  Thank you my baby Lily!  I love you SOOOOO much!  Happy Thanksgiving everyone!

Lily at 23 weeks & 6 days old!

Lily’s Sophie, Jumping and Pouting

Have no fear, more Lily videos are here!  I haven’t updated any videos in awhile (feels like a long time), so here are 3 recent videos of our precious Lily pad!

Lily (22 weeks and 2 days) loves her sophie the giraffe teething toy!!  I love her big cute toothless smile, and she’s so cute trying to chew the giraffe even though her excitement makes it that much harder, but it still doesn’t phase her!

Lily (23 weeks 2 days) is a really happy baby and so far warms up and smiles at everyone, except now and then, for some strange reason, she seems to pout and then cries when she sees her Ong Noi (grandpa on daddy’s side).  It’s so sad that she cries but her pout and crying is so cute and funny, I couldn’t resist recording it!

Lily (23 weeks and 3 days) is so much more active on the jumper, she super duper loves it.  Look at the energy and how much she bounces on it!  She likes to explore all the toys and random parts of the jumper as well!  She’s so cute!

Look Who’s Sitting!

So lately Lily’s been able to sit pretty well when she’s supported, and she was almost able to sit by herself several times but she would only hold it for a couple seconds before she tipped over.  Today, Lily’s 5 months and 1 day, was finally able to sit unsupported for about 2 minutes before she leaned forwards onto her belly!  I was so happy I had my camera nearby to capture this!!

  

Yesterday I saw her sucking on her thumb, which is really unusual since she likes to suck on her middle and ring finger, or all four fingers minus her thumb!  It’s so cute, I couldn’t resist snapping this cute photo!

“I’d give you a thumbs up but my thumb is busy” – Lily

Happy 5 Months Lily!

Happy 5 months old Lily!!  Since there’s no 5 month doctor’s check up, I measured her myself and she’s about 15 pounds and 26 inches long!  She’s accomplished so much this past month and it’s just so amazing at how fast she’s growing.  She was finally able to roll over from her back to belly just 2 days ago!  She likes to blow bubbles with her mouth and play on her jumper!  She still sleeps about 12 hours through the night and enjoys eating just as much as she enjoys sleeping!  She currently is eating 6 fluid ounces with each meal about 5 times a day.  She also likes to talk and mumble to herself and play with her hands and feet, and sometime chew her feet as well!  It’s so cute!  Also she loves to stand, and whenever we hold her up to stand, she always has a giant smile on her face!  We try not to do it too often because we don’t want her to stand too much to avoid bowlegged.   We are so blessed and lucky to have such a happy and healthy baby.  Sometimes I just hold her at night as she falls asleep because I know soon enough, she won’t need me to sleep or she’ll be too big.  Either way, we cherish every day we have with our precious angel!  Happy 5 months Lily!!  We love you so much!

Lily Rolls Over for the 1st Time!

Lily (21 weeks 3 days) rolls over for the first time!!  For a few weeks now she’s been able to roll over to her side, but never made it all the way!  Finally today when I got home, I let her play on her floor adventure gym, and then 5 mins later she was way off her adventure gym and almost on her belly!  So I moved her away from her gym, laid her on her back and had my camera ready.  I tried to get her to reach over to her toy and next thing you know, Lily just achieved another milestone!!  Congrats baby, we’re SO proud of you!!!! Watch her triumphant rolling over from back to tummy!

Khoa’s 1st Birthday as a Daddy!

Happy 1st Birthday to Khoa as a Daddy!!!  In case you don’t know, he just turned 28 years old!  This year I wanted to make Khoa’s birthday extra special because he’s a new daddy, so I planned a full weekend filled with fun events!  We had a surprised birthday party for Khoa at our house Friday night.  I ordered food from Famous Dave’s BBQ, one of Khoa’s favorite food item is RIBS!  So the catering choice was a no brainer!  We had a house filled with a bunch of friends and family all sharing the love and joy of Khoa’s special day!  I made an edible print of his Diablo3 character, a demon hunter, (thank you An for getting the screenshot for me!) and put it on top of a Marie Calendar’s banana cream pie, one of his favorites!  However, instead of printing on a wafer sheet, which was what I was familiar with, I decided to print it on a frosting sheet since it’s supposedly better, the print ended up dissolved and bled into the pie =(.  It looked quite horrible when I opened the box a few hours later.  Good thing I bought 2 pies so I can bring out the other pie for the cutting.  I was so sad, but now I know what not to do next time, which is not to use frosting sheets on super moist surfaces.  Anyways, the party was really fun and thank you to everyone who came out to celebrate!!

 

The next morning on Khoa’s actual birthday, November 3rd, we started the day by going jet packing in Newport at a company called Jetlev!  I got a deal for this event on Amazon Local Deal!  We took Lily along and she hung out on the beach in her stroller since we fly one at a time!  She slept through most of it but when she was awake, she had fun playing with her feet and enjoying the beach!  I was super nervous for my flight, I went first unfortunately.  They made me do a swim test first and that was when I knew this wasn’t going to be good.  I tried to swim but I just kept sinking.  I had so much trouble, I kept flying to the right and falling into the water.  After 10 minutes of struggling, I finally ending my adventure when I did a face plant into the shore…My right eye lid is scraped badly and my eye bruised and my nose bled a little bit, but overall, I’m ok!  I was able to give Khoa the rest of my flight time so he was able to fly longer.  He had much more luck than me and did SUCH a great job!  He was my rocket man soaring through the air!  They didn’t even make him to a swim test, he was a natural!!  Check out the video below of his flight!  At the end, the instructor told him to “fly” without hands and to flap like a bird, unfortunately this made Khoa yank out the key in the ignition and so he fell haha.  Other than that, he did great with all his “mocking God”, submarines, dolphins, and other tricks in the air!


That evening we went to the BIGBANG concert at the Honda Center with Lisa Guan and her boyfriend Eric Chao!  I won’t say much about this since this is Khoa’s post, but this was the most AMAZING concert and one of the most amazing events of my life (besides my wedding day, Lily’s birth, and anything related to Khoa being in my life of course =P).  Taeyang even did two of his solo songs, Look Only At Me and Wedding Dress, soooo amazing!!!  After the concert, Khoa bought me a t-shirt and a wand, and completed my night, I mean Khoa’s birthday!  You can see more pictures and videos from the concert HERE!

The next day, I asked mother nature for more time to enjoy Khoa’s birthday celebration, so we got a whole extra hour to sleep in!!  Oh the things I manage to get for Khoa! =)  I was planning to make Khoa a nice breakfast at home, but we had SO MUCH BBQ leftovers that we just ate that instead.  We then went to church at noon and brought Lily inside with no carseat for the first time, and she was so good!  She was awake the entire time and just sat there and enjoyed everything!  We then went to the mall to get some milk tea and relaxed at home with some TV shows.  I made dinner reservations and surprised Khoa by taking him to a Brazilian BBQ restaurant called Agora Churrascaria in Irvine.  They had a very nice salad bar and 16 types of all you can eat meat ranging from chicken, fish and red meats.  Khoa’s been bugging me for a long time to eat Brazilian BBQ, so FINALLY this was the perfect surprise.  I found it on yelp and this place had really good reviews and it definitely lived up to it’s expectations.  Just make sure you come with a very empty stomach because there’s a LOT of food there!  I told the waitress it’s Khoa’s birthday and he got a birthday flan dessert on the house!  We ended the night by watching some more TV shows, it was nice and relaxing, great way to end the birthday weekend celebration!  Happy 28th birthday Khoa, you deserve the best and I hope you enjoyed your special 1st birthday as a wonderful DADDY! Lily and I love you to pieces!!!

More meats please!