XX and her new Compaq

David's old HP laptop died (several times) over three years ago and he decided never to buy another HP. Recently though, he found out that all of the problems that the laptop had were because of a defective video chip and that there was a Class Action lawsuit against nVidia (the chip maker) involving thousands of laptops that were built with the defective chip. David signed on and, long story short, we won. As part of the settlement we received a new Compaq laptop, which isn't truly fair considering what we lost.

David and I already changed to using Macbook Pros, and since our new laptop isn't really worth anything (it's a single core budget laptop selling for $299), Dave decided to set it up for XX to watch PBSkids.

Well, at least someone is excited about it :)!

We are still here....

This time I am going to blame my new photoshop guidebooks for my lack of blogging. A few months ago, I decided to learn how to use photoshop on my own so we bought 2 books and I was determined to conquer them. Don't get me wrong, I love reading those books and am amazed at how much I can do with my pics. However, the more I read, the more I wanted to edit my photos; so I ended up spending hours on a single picture. As a result, I only posted the pictures that I took from my phone on Facebook.

We actually did quite a bit since my last post. We tagged along for David conference in Whistler, Canada, visited ah-Ma in Seattle, saw the Cherry Blossom Festival in DC, witnessed XX graduate from her Tot 2 ice skating class, and of course celebrated Easter.

Back in March, David had a conference to attend in Whistler, which is the ski resort known for hosting the recent Winter Olympics. Dave had been talking about this conference for months because most of the meetings were scheduled for the early morning or late afternoon, so he would have plenty of time to ski. We also invited the Vuongs to come join our "conference/ski" trip. Despite the fact the United Airlines lost our luggage, causing David to have no clean underwear for 2 days, and him catching a stomach flu virus that would eventually get us all sick, our trip was wonderful.

Charlotte and her best best bud Jacob. They always talk about each other.

Us in the Gondola on our way to go tubing 

First real dog sled ride, smelled like dog poop afterwards

XX fell asleep half way through the sled ride. It was a good experience but won't do it again.

Charlotte 3.0

This past year Boo Boo has really grown up. She hit many milestones including: starting preschool, becoming fully potty-trained, and graduating from her toddler bed to a big girl bed. She also moved up from nursery and officially joined the primary at church. She is very independent, in fact, she even wanted to drive herself to school with her pink car :). She grew half a foot (6 inches) in the past year. She knows most of the upper and lower case letters now. Although her first language is English, her Cantonese and Mandarin have improved a lot as well. Her memory is sharp - she remembers everything from car and animal names to past conversations and even the freeway exit that we take to go home.

Her favorite cartoon characters are princesses, but she also loves playing with all kinds of cars and Thomas the train.

She loves to sing, dance, draw, and do homework. She recently started going ice skating and has been taking skating lessons once a week. She doesn't think of herself as a baby anymore, and neither do we. We have enjoyed watching her grow up and often smile when we look back at her younger pictures.
click here to watch on youtube : Charlotte can skate

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