Everyone's Holiday

On a Friday night, we went to the Christmas party from Fiona's company.

P.S. Santa's beard is real!

The Party was held in Canada Place in down town.

Beautiful decorations for this time of year.

The party was really good, food, drink, and everything.

And Fiona won ipod touch from the drawing!!
But she says "I have ipod nano already..."

"It's mine now!" - Taddy

Nice view...

We stayed at the party until midnight. Free food & drink, it's just awesome!

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David and Amy came back from Seattle this weekend. We went out for dinner on Saturday night.

It's Chinese-Hunan style restaurant.

...uhhhh, not our taste, didn't enjoy very much.

Next day, we had dinner together again. This time, we went to a Chinese-Canton style restaurant.

The place was packed.

Cantonese cuisine.

Dishes are delicious! This time we enjoyed a lot.

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In our neighborhood.

Reindeers' heads actually move!

In upstairs' living room.

Justin has improved his piano pretty good lately.

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Dec 25, 2007:

Okay kids, it's a time you've been waiting for!!

Wow... Justin got ipod nano, and Ashley got Nintendo DS!

We received the present from them too.

P.S. The card is made by Ashley.

Hey, the parents also got Nintendo DS for themselves...?!

By the way, Lindt Lindor chocolates are the present from us.

They are now into their new toys.

Some of Ashley's tiny dolls are so cute.

Around 3 o'clock, it started snowing.

Now, it is White Christmas.

We had a Christmas dinner together too.

Randy cooked Chinese style chicken, and it goes with wine(Australian Shiraz) pretty well.

Of course, we got to eat deserts! Man, we ate a lot that night!!

And we watched Harry Potter and the Order of the Phoenix DVD together after dinner.
It's so hard to follow the story of this series now...


:::Hope you all enjoyed your Christmas day!!:::

Big Bang Pumpkin

Three days before Halloween, the landlord family asked us to join the Pumpkin Carving.

They had one extra pumpkin for us. Taddy wanted to try his first pumpkin carving.

Wow, they are big!

Justin and Ashley, you guys already have ideas?

All right, let's do it.

The cleaning was the worst part, but after that it's fun.

Almost...

Well done!

But Taddy wasn't very happy because the outcome was so different from his sketch.

Then we put the candles inside of Jack-o'-lantern.

They all look nice. We are ready for Halloween!

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October 31, 2007:

We decorated the house!


And kids are ready for Trick-or-treating.


Now, here are kids who came to our house for Trick-or-treating!

Some of them had style. We enjoyed seeing them!

The little girl wasn't much dressed up, but so cute!

But after all...

Poor pumpkins.

Well, maybe we'll dress up for next year, but until then...

See Ya!!

Mountain Drive Weekend

We went for a short trip on the weekend. Drove 5 hours to get to Adams River from Vancouver.

Arrived Roderick Haig-Brown Provincial Park.

We wanted to see "Salmon Run".

The trail was filled with a lot of falling leaves.

Pretty nice!

But we did not see many salmon at this point.

And later, we found that there wasn't much salmon to see this weekend...

But still, this is a very beautiful place. Nice to walk around.

Beautiful sky!

We really enjoyed walking the "yellow trail".

and loved the sound when we stepped on the leaves.

Finally, we saw many sockeyes salmons!

"Welcome back!"


There was a big lake by the motel we stayed.

So we took a walk before dinner.

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Next day, pretty much what we did was driving, but took a different route this time.

Stopped several points to see nice views on the way back to Vancouver.

And we also stopped by Whistler.

Well, it's nice to get out of Vancouver once in a while. We saw and enjoyed the beautiful nature scenes from this trip!!

Temporarily Away from Home

On the Ferry to Vancouver Island.

It was really nice day.

Ching family came to Vancouver in late June and stayed with us for a week.

We decided to go for a one-day trip on this Saturday.

In Victoria.


Walked into Bastion Square.


Somewhere along the coast line.

It was really beautiful!

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On Sunday, we went to see the Shannon Falls.

So cool!

On the way back, we stopped by Ambleside Beach.

We saw the cruise ship to Alaska. Very tempting...

Kids liked there.

Cleaning up??

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Following Saturday, we got a call from Tom Huang. After their Alaska trip, they stopped by Vancouver for a while.

Originally, we were going to have lunch together, but their flight schedule was changed.
So we just met them at the airport.

Fiona and Taddy were so shocked by Cole and Maya. Because they are so different from what we remembered.

Turning to Japanese

Fiona wore a kimono for the New Year.

This kimono is from Taddy's aunt.

In Japan, there are still a lot of people wearing this traditional clothes for special occasions.

...but it takes time to get used to it, it's pretty hard to move around.


Inside the train to Kanazawa.

Taddy's mom slept almost on every transportation.


After sightseeing in Kanazawa city, we came to Kaga Onsen.

It's dinner time!


It's onsen time!


In the lobby in the morning.


Then we went for the tour of Kaga city.
This is the one of the stops called YUNOKUNI NO MORI.

These old houses are craft shops (workshop), souvenir shops, and tea houses and restaurants.


Hello Kitty is everywhere...


At Kaga onsen station.

You can see the big Kannon statue from the station.

We stayed in this area for two days and one night.

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By the way, Taddy's family has a dog.

Ryu has been with the family for more than ten years.

The last day in Japan, Kenichiro family came to see us that night.

They were becoming good friends.