Happy Thanksgiving!

Saya taking a bath while Alyson looks on - a night before Thanksgiving!
We didn't bake turkey, but had plenty of food.

Sean at Dim Sim place today

Aly liked the mango pudding

She normally stuffs food as much as she can

We had fun!!


We had the Dutts and Yukako over for the Thanksgiving dinner. We didn't cook turkey this year (maybe next year), but I prepared pork tenderloins, sausages, garlic green beans, traditional dressing with sausage, miso soup and a very tart apple pie. The tart part was unplanned... To try reduce the workload on the day, I prepared the apples the night before. Apparently, I put too much lemon then. The rest of the dishes turned out pretty well. The guests brought pasta salad and inari, the sushi rice wrapped in sweet tofu skin. The girls sat at the table almost the whole time and kept eating while chatting... Mike and Baskhar watched football downstairs and came up several times to load up the food. Since Baskhar is not familiar so much with football, Mike was enthusiastically explaining how to watch the game.

The kids were overall behaving well. Hanae's kids, Ayrie (3.5 yrs) and Rion (1.5 years) were champion eaters. Aly enjoyed chasing around Rion while Noah enjoyed playing downstairs with choochoos. Sean played well with Ayrie and he was asking where she was today. Saya was being shockingly loud, but that's not a surprise to us anymore. I just felt very fortunate to being able to enjoy the company of good friends and watching our children play and having a good time. I love my life!! I do feel very lucky to being able to say it.

Today, we were recuperating from overeating. Since Amy came to work this morning, Mike and I took Sean and Aly out. Aly has a gym class every Friday at 10:30, so I took her to the class while Sean and Daddy went to the Crossroad Mall. Aly had a good time at the gym, wide-eyed and constantly running around. We took the kids to our favorite Dim Sum place nearby. As we sat at the table at the restaurant, we joked how easy it is to dine with only two children. It is true!! Try doing it with four little kids and you'll be the grumpiest parents on the planet! We had a good lunch there. It was a really nice treat.

In the late afternoon, Mike cleaned the roof and gutters and hang the Christmas lights. He was being a very good husband. Thanks Mike!! Tomorrow, we'll set up the Christmas tree. Sean has been looking forward to this for a long time, so it will be fun. We'll try to take the kids photos in front of the trees again some time and hope they turn out better than last year!