Daily Archive

My little family trio just got back from Los Angeles (again). I was excited to finally meet my cousin’s new baby, but that still did not spark my interest in going back to Los Angeles. The amount of times per year my little family unit has to travel to Los Angeles for family events has now become a chore. Yes, we love going to visit our extended family based down in Southern California, & we love spending time with them, but it’s just become an obligation at this point. In case you’re wondering, none of our relatives from down south ever come up to visit us in the Bay Area…at least nobody from my generation, except for my siblings, & my mom’s siblings.

Well, however that may be, our little trip still had a fun time this past weekend. We had a typical Chinese family dinner with our aunties & uncles straight away, to pay our respects to the older generation. Then we took some time for ourselves as a little family unit before we had to attend the all-important (& the reason why we came in the first place) banquet dinner celebration of the newest addition to our ever-growing family. My cousin & her husband, along with her two sisters, coordinated a warm & wonderful party to celebrate our new nephew’s 100-day milestone. The 100 Days celebration is a popular tradition among many Asian cultures.

The party was raucous & fun, & I was totally shocked when my little bean adapted to the lively festivities like a champ. I mean, she barely had a decent nap in the car, at most 30 minutes…when she normally naps for at least two hours. Then, she normally freaks out at seeing rowdy kids, but this time she was cool as a cucumber. The only time she freaked out, even a little bit, was when we had to change her diaper in an empty banquet room (’cause the restaurant didn’t have a diaper changing table in any of the bathrooms).

Overall, we spent the weekend at a pretty chill pace. The weather was actually not hot for once, & it actually rained a tiny bit on the day of the big celebration. We ticked a couple of eating spots off of our ever-growing list of “Want to Eat” places. I was on the hunt for more interesting/unique children’s books for my little bean’s already full bookcase. More surprisingly, we ordered room service for breakfast each morning, mostly because there were no western style breakfast spots or coffee shops with breakfast-y foods near our hotel. Jian is usually the one who dislikes ordering room service, thinking the prices are a rip off & the food is mediocre at best. However, he was the one to suggest room service breakfasts on this trip.

In other news somewhat related to this post, I did a mini haul of stationery goods. I didn’t go nuts on shopping this time like I have done in the past. I didn’t get much of a chance to hit up many of my favorite spots, so there really wasn’t much opportunity for me to go wild anyway. I made sure that my purchases were modest & intentional. I mean, I honestly have a huge stationery supply already. I couldn’t possibly use everything in my collection, even within the next 10 years. So this time I picked out a few much-needed everyday use pens & added 2 more sticker packs to my does-not-need-to-grow sticker stash. Also, more recently, I’ve been really into collecting mid-size to large format vinyl decal stickers.

See below images for reference.

Well, that was my small rant-to-recap of my family-packed weekend. I am seriously counting down the days until my little family trio goes to Japan. We just received our little bean’s very first passport in the mail the other day, & that got me super excited. I mean, that’s just one more thing to solidify our big overseas trip. The moment we actually book our flights, that’ll be the final piece to our planning puzzle. By then, it will finally sink in that we are going on an epic adventure abroad, taking our kid on an airplane for the first time, going out of the country with our kid for the first time, also our first big-format travel plans since the pandemic happened. I hope that I will be able to take enough photos & get enough content to put in one of my long-format blog posts. Until the next one, cheers!

Today’s song of the day: