Day 320: Dylan and Yuri's Wedding

This weekend I was in Seattle to attend a wedding. It was a family friend's wedding. My mom is friends with the groom's parents. I have known the groom since I was a little girl. It was really nice to attend this celebration and share this special day with them. It is my first time meeting the bride and she seems like a really fun person.

My mom and I arrived on Saturday morning. It is Chinese custom to have a tea ceremony. It was at the groom's house only. The bride is Japanese and they didn't hold a tea ceremony at her place. The tea ceremony is only for family members. We just hung out till that was finished. In the afternoon we headed to the wedding venue which is an hour away from Seattle. It is called Lake Wilderness Lodge in Maple Valley (http://www.ci.maple-valley.wa.us/index.aspx?page=107).

The wedding ceremony was held upstairs. The groom's father passed away 10 months ago and there were many acknowledgments to him. They wrote their own vows. When the bride was reading her vow it had reference to the groom's father and I'm sure many people teared up. After the ceremony, everyone was directed downstairs for a cocktail hour. While everyone was downstairs, there were people upstairs rearranging the setup for the reception. Cocktail hour lasted about an hour. People were mingling and taking pictures with the bride and groom. The was an open bar and some appies.


The reception was pretty good. The buffet food was a mixture of Chinese food and Japanese food. I heard someone from the bride's side owns a Japanese restaurant and they were they one that brought the sashimi. It was a beautiful presentation of sashimi (as seen in the pictures). I have never seen sashimi at a wedding before and was pleasantly surprised. Another item that I have never had at a wedding is Peking duck. They had two servers preparing the item. The one server took the bun and put some Hoisin sauce and a piece of onion on it. The other server put the piece of duck in it. It was pretty good. They called tables in numerical order to get food from the buffet. There were 25 tables and I was table 21. By the time I went to the buffet, there was no more sashimi. I was so sad and disappointed. I was really looking forward to tasting the sashimi.


After dinner, they had some entertainment. They played the slideshow. They had speeches. The grooms cousins had a special presentation from the bride and the groom. They had a special dance number for them (video to be uploaded soon). Then the dancing started downstairs. I was upstairs at my table and I was talking to people at my table. It seemed like a wild party on the dance floor. The night ended quite early for me at about 10ish. It takes an hour to get back to Seattle and my ride needed to get home.

Day 319: "I don't get any."

If a family member did something you didn't really like, what do you do? Do you tell them? Do you just move on as if nothing happened? What if an aunt or uncle gave all your cousins a gift but nothing for you? Wouldn't you wonder what you did wrong? Why you were left out? Would you act differently around them because you feel resentment against them?

Day 318: The Restaurant Experience

The other night we went to The Keg by Costco by Still Creek. We had some steak. It was a Keg that we haven't been to before. It was really nice inside. It is very modern with lots of dark woods. It was very dark inside. Of course I took some pictures of my food. When I viewed the picture, that was when I saw how delicious my food was. The service was really good. He was very attentive and always refilling our water. We shared a prime rib and a teriyaki steak. The prime rib was served with mashed potatoes and vegetables. The steak was served with yam fries and vegetables. I had a tea. With tax and tip, my bill came to $87. I was very surprised on how quickly that added up. It was for two entrees and a tea and tax and tip. The price was quite high but it was a lovely experience.


Last night we went to Koon Bo on 41st and Fraser. My mom had a recommendation from her friend that they serve good quail and peking duck. We made a reservation for 6:30 but we were a bit late. We arrived and it was quite busy. All the tables were full. The tables were squished together. It was kinda cluster-phobic. There were only 3 servers for the whole restaurant. In turn, our service sucked. My dad had to go to the counter to get us more napkins. We had to put our empty plates on an empty table beside us. They didn't come to our table frequently to collect the empty plates. We ordered the three course peking duck which came with the skin and the wrap, the meat stir fried and the bones in a soup. My parents also ordered some fried rice, veggies and the quail. The restaurant was filled with noise from people talking. It was too much for me. It gave me a headache. I thought the food was ok. But I think it was effected by my whole experience. If the atmosphere and company is good, my food is good. But if the atmosphere is disturbing or too noisy, it seems like the food isn't as good.

Day 317: Luke Skywalker

My cousin Luke has twins that just came home from the hospital. Tomorrow my sisters family and my family are going to visit them. My cousin Luke and his wife are Chinese.

I was eating a snack with my niece tonight. I was mentioning to her that we are going to visit Uncle Luke tomorrow. She had this weird face and wasn't sure what his name was. I had to spell his name out to her. Then I said it's like Luke Skywalker. (She is very into watching Star Wars and knows her characters.) She looks at me with this wide eyed face and said 'he's white?' I said no he's not white but he only has the same first name.

I had to giggle because she says the cutest things sometimes.

Day 316: Koko's

Their mom was going out for dinner and I wanted to take them somewhere they haven't been before. The other night I took them to Crash Crawly's and I wanted to take them somewhere similar. I read on a site where this lady rated all the indoor activity centers. She rated Koko's a 9 out of 10. She only rated Crash Crawly's 5 out of 10. I thought if she rated it a 9 it must be a pretty good place. The price is about the same as Crash Crawly's. We walked in and they already noticed that Crash Crawly's was better. It was ok they made the most of their time here. It was located in Port Moody. It is really close to the Golden Spike Pub. Going to Port Moody wasn't fun in rush hour. We tried to get there as soon as we can so the kids can play longer. It was only opened till 8 pm. Through out the night they had to remind me that Crash Crawly's was better. We took some pictures and had some chicken strips with fries.

After Koko's, we went to White Spot for dinner. It was getting late for the kids but I wanted them to try the Pirate Packs. They enjoyed it. It was a lot of food for them. I had to help my nephew finish off his ice cream. It wasn't that hard to convince me to eat ice cream. When I got home, my sister told me she was taking the kids to meet her friend for lunch tomorrow and they are going to White Spot. Her friend mentioned that they have Pirate Packs for the kids. The kids will enjoy having Pirate Packs two days in a row.

Day 315: Richmond Oval / Rocky Mountain Flatbread

There was a park that my sister wanted to take the kids to in Richmond last year. Because she didn't take them last year, she wanted to take them this year. She forgot the name of the park. We tried to look for the name online and from her emails. We couldn't find it.

We decided to head to Richmond to try to find the park. Because we were heading to Richmond, we decided to eat dim sum there also. We went to Gingeri Restaurant in Landsdowne Mall. It is good for dim sum. My niece loved the deep fried squid. It came as a surprise to me that my little nephew loved chicken feet. He just took the feet and used his hands to eat it. He ate almost the whole dish.

After dim sum we walked around the mall. My niece (like her wonderful aunt) wanted some bubble tea. In the middle of the mall was a mini train with a Halloween theme. The kids went on the train. Beside the train was a merry go round. My niece wanted to go on it and wanted me to join her. Man, I'm so weak. Just going in circles a few times made me dizzy and nauseous.

My parents suggested going to the Richmond Oval. I have never been there before. I wanted to go. We went there and took lots of pictures. We only paid parking for an hour so we only spent an hour there. On the way to the Richmond Oval, there was a playground by the UBC Boathouse. It was shaped like a boat. The kids loved it there. There was a slide. The climbed up and slide down, up and down, up and down. They did that for almost an hour. It was time to head to dinner.

We went to the Rocky Mountain Flatbread Co. in Kitsilano. We went there last year. On Sunday and Monday nights the kids get to make their own pizza. My brother in law has two sisters and they have a few kids. We met with them for dinner and my brother in law's dad. It was fun for the kids. We ordered 3 large pizzas for the adults. It was $23 each for a large pizza. I think it is a bit expensive. We ordered a meat lover's pizza which was too spicey for me. I really like the BBQ pulled pork pizza. The third pizza was good. It was a chicken with tomato and spinach.

It doesn't seem like a busy day. By the time we got home at about 8ish, I was pooped. I was ready for bed. But my sister had to make some phone calls, so I had to give the kids a bath. Wow! I have never seen kids so eager to take a bath. When the water wasn't ready yet, they took off their clothes and were ready to jump in. I got my nephew some figurine from Cars which changes colour in different temperature water. It's the coolest thing! They loved playing with the color changing cars. We have glass shower doors. The kids have sponges and they just played 'window cleaners'. They just loved cleaning my glass shower doors. I was happy with that because then I didn't have to clean them myself. It was a struggle today because they were loud and restless. Nevertheless, we got them bathed and dried and ready for bed. Now it's my turn to head to bed.

Day 314: Family Tree

I originally was planning a get together with my second cousins on my mom's side in the summer. I thought it would be nice to just hang out at the beach and let the young kids play outside. The whole idea is to meet outside of weddings and funerals. Then we get a chance to talk. I found out my sister was going to be in town in October. I decided to postpone the get together till October. I thought it would be nice for her to meet with the cousins as well.

A few weeks ago I mentioned to my mom that I was thinking of doing a family tree for the get together. She thought that was a great idea. I was thinking it would be easy to just put the names and pictures of people and that was it. It was more complicated than I expected. My mom's relatives have a Chinese name and a Vietnamese name. First she wanted to put their Vietnamese names. Then she was thinking of using their Chinese names. Both was difficult because it was about translating into English. Finally my mom decided to use their English name, if they had one. I am really lucky that my mom knows most of her aunts and uncles names.

The family tree is on one of our walls. The other challenge is to make sure we had enough space to put everyone's name. My Grandmother from my mom's side had 10 siblings. Some siblings didn't get married and didn't have any children. Two siblings got married, divorced and is remarried. The ones that had children had 4-6 kids. Those kids now have kids and some of those kids have kids. I tried to include some pictures to make it more interesting. Some cousins sent me recent family photos. Other cousins I just found some pictures on Facebook. Luckily I had space for everyone. Luckily some of my cousins are on Facebook. It made it easier to connect with them.

I think most of my cousins enjoyed learning about their family history. Some cousins didn't know how we are related. But since they saw the tree, they know now! I know most of the significant others didn't know about the linage. It is overwhelming and can be hard to digest.