Origin of XX's Nicknames

Every once in a while we get asked why we call Charlotte "XX" or "Boo Boo." Some might think it's because of the girl from "Monsters Inc," especially if they heard us call Charlotte "Boo Boo." So when I try to explain to them that we actually call her Boo Boo because of Boo Boo from "Yogi Bear" cartoon, they would get really confused. Alas, WB redid a movie for Yogi Bear, so I can finally put Charlotte and the original Boo Boo together. :) Dave first called XX "Boo Boo" because when she first learned how to walk, she walked like the little bear. And as for the name XX, it is because her middle name is Xue-Xin, not because she is a girl (you know XX, XY?). Her cousin Careese's middle initials are YY, and since they were born only a few months apart we called the two XX and YY. So now you know :).

Boo Boo VS. Boo Boo

Merry Christmas !

Personalize your own digital greeting

XX School Life - Character Day Party

XX's best friend at school - Molly

XX's preschool doesn't celebrate Halloween so they came up with a Character Day party for the kids to dress up as a character from a book. XX loves princesses (she calls them jie jie 姐姐) these days, and she always wants to be one. One day, she found my wedding tiara, and insisted on having me put it on her. We were planning to dress her up as a panda to match Eric Carle book's Panda Bear, Panda Bear, What Do You See?, but we had to change her into a princess at the last minute because she refused to wear the panda costume.

She was hogging this car the entire play time

Starting a commotion

I can foresee that XX will be a troublemaker in school;
Look at what she was doing when others were praying

FL Trip Part II- Photos and Video

My laptop got wiped out last week, so we are still trying to recovery all the datas from the time machine. so Here are the video and photos that we recovered. Enjoy!

We found a Manatee family at our hotel beach. XX was so excited and happy to see them and she decided to name them after us  :).

Florida Trip 2010

Annual Family Trip: 2010 - Florida

Our 10 days in Florida: Miami - Key West - Key Largo - Orlando was a blast! We met up with Brian (David's high school friend) in Miami and drove down to Key West and Key Largo for 4 days. I will use adventurous to describe our trip. We had kind of a rough start at Miami, XX broke out in hives on the airplane, my iPhone somehow died and we had to wait 3 hours to get it replaced. Minus what happened in Miami, we had a lot of fun and did a lot of things that we had never experienced before. :) We visited a few national parks, saw a lot of wildlife, which included manatees, alligators, and hundred of mosquitoes.

We had a little scare on the airplane to Miami. XX suddenly had hives all over her body, from her face to her tummy. It had happened before when we visited San Francisco last Thanksgiving, and that time we had to take her to the ER. This time was way worse. Her rash usually gets better when we put Hydrocortisone cream on it, but this time it didn't work. We had Benadryl was packed in our luggage (it's over 3oz). Since we were sitting in the first row of first class the flight attendant stared at XX the whole flight, and kept asking me how the rash happened. (Don't you think that if I knew, I would've fixed it already??? Sigh....) Hives were spreading to her neck and eyes and we were worried that her throat might close up. The flight attendant called EMS to meet us at the gate. The funny thing was that we still needed to wait about 5 mins for the EMS to come after we got off the plane. What if XX was really suffocating? After they checked and confirmed XX's oxygen levels were fine, they just told us to go get our luggage. It was quite an experience.

Luckily we only stayed in Miami for a night. We spent most of our time in Key West and Key Largo eating delicious seafood, Cuban Food and of course, Key Lime Pie.

Dry Tortugas National Park

Bahia Honda Rail Bridge

This is one of the trails at Everglades National Park; This a pre-mosquito attack picture of Charlotte and me.

There were at least 20-30 mosquitos chasing after me. I ran for my life.








There were mosquitos biting XX's face. When I smacked them, XX thought I was smacking her. She just started crying. I even found a few mosquitos between my tank top and blouse. They bit through the shirt! XX got a few bites on her body. Poor kid, first hives and then mosquito bites....:(

Poor Charlotte with bites on her face

Although we almost got killed by mosquitoes, it was a great adventure.

I posted something funny go vote at failblog

This was waiting for me when I walked into school one day. Oh how the tables have turned...

What a weekend, and it's only Saturday!

Friday:

When I saw the email about the Crazy 8 grand opening in my inbox Friday morning, I knew that Alexis had to be there. She was still asleep so I texted her from downstairs, "Crazy 8 Grand Opening TODAY!" - and yes, texting is really the best way to communicate with her when she is just waking up. She sprung up and shouted, "We have to go!" Next thing I know she's downstairs getting XX changed and ready.

Crazy 8 is a sister company of Gymboree, and sometimes they have some fun clothes for cheap.

When we got to the store, there was a table out front with entry slips for their grand opening drawing. Prizes included $88 gift cards, ipod shuffles, and a $888 shopping spree grand prize. Judging by the number of entries in the box already, there had been fewer than about 10 people there before us.

The first drawing was at 11:08am - didn't win. Went out to shop the rest of the mall and stopped at Chick-Fil-A for some lunch. We were in an area of the mall where we didn't get ATT's more bars in more places, when I saw the voicemail icon appear. I ran out to check the voicemail since I was expecting a call from someone else but this is what I got instead: "Alexis, you've one our Crazy 8 12:08 drawing for $88! Awesome!" She pretty much ditched me and XX and she hurried back to the store to claim her prize. As XX would say, "Great Job Mama!"

Saturday:

I've always wanted to not have to pay for haircuts. My mom used to cut my hair, and she really did a nice job doing it. When I got to college, I cut it mostly by myself but usually recruited someone to help fix the back. Ever since I had to work professionally, I've had my hair cut by the professionals at Supercuts or Fantastic Sams. I've become a regular at a place in Rockville now, but I have been since thinking about having Alexis give it a try. Today she finally got around to it and again, as XX would say, "Great Job Mama!"

What our 2.5 yo can do

XX recently has been learning to take on responsibilities since she always wants to be part of everything. We have given her different tasks, such as putting her dirty plate and utensils in the sink after finishing her meal, going up/down stairs to get things for us (or for herself), and sorting garbage for recycling :).

One day I got tired of making her bed, so I told her to do it herself... She acutally did a pretty good job :) See our child laborer at work.

Video Clips from our trip

Finally have time to work on my video clips from our trip. well, so far just one, but I am still working on it.:)

Last Stop-Taiwan

Last time when we were in Taiwan; thanks to XX ,I had all day morning sickness, so I didnt get a chance to taste all the yummy food. I already told Dave before we left this time, I dont really care about sightseeing, all I want is to eat, eat and eat somemore. So that basically all we did :).

Ah-ma also went back to Taiwan to visit ah-jo ( great grandma), so we are lucky to have Mr. Wong 黃叔叔 and Ah-ma showed us around.

Special thanks to Uncle Mark's long distance phone call and told us to tried 洪師父牛肉麵 ( Master HUNG Beef noodle soup), It has became our favorite beef noodle too. While I was choosing pics to upload to our taiwan album, I got hungry again by just looking at those food. Yet, I just had steak for lunch...:) we really need to go back!

She accidently ate a chili and freaked out.

Can u tell she is a Chang?

XX was totally spoiled by 爺爺

Taiwan '10

More Thailand

For those who didn't have facebook / who didnt add me :)

Khao Lak, Phuket '10

Hong Kong

XX was having a great time with cousin Cami and Chloe in this trip. I was little worried whether they can get along at first, but they just clicked once they met. :)

XX learned Cantonese so much faster just playing with Cami and Chloe. I spend months to teach her count 1-10 in Cantonese, but she can only count to 3. It only took her 2 days to pick up from Cami to count 1-10 fluently, because they were fighting over toys and xx has to count to 10 for her turns :).

Cami was actually sad when her mother told her XX was going home. Cami asked why xx was going home and why can't she stay with them. We just can't wait to see them again. :) hopefully, they can all come visit us this summer!

1 Month Asia Trip-Rachel and Ho's Wedding

We were back to Hong Kong mainly to attend my younger sister Rachel's wedding. Fortunately, David was able to take sometime off to travel with us, so we visited different countries in Asia for the past month. It was a blast, but we are also very happy to be home now. I just missed the fresh laundry smell.

It was David and XX first time to attend a traditional chinese wedding, I am so glad they enjoy it very much. We didnt have a traditional banquet when we were married, 'cause I had to go back to school right after we finished our reception in seattle. We planned to have it a yr later in hk, but when the time came, we decided we didnt want to go through the stress and tiredness all over again. But seeing how happy Rachel and A-ho were, I know everything was worth it. Rachel was so gorgeous and everything was prefect. We love the decorations, pics, music and of course the food :).

XX loves the shark fins soup

Although Carmen wasn't able to come to the wedding, we figure a way to bring her whole family to celebrate with us. what do you think? :)

More pics click here : Rachel and Ho's wedding