Happy Chinese New Year, everyone! We wish you all good health, true happiness, and peace at home!

Here are some New Year photos of us with our photogenic lil’ girl.

In case you are wondering, we never tell her how to pose. I always tell her to “stand properly and look at the camera,” and she will figure out how she wants to look in photos.

It’s definitely not a genetic thing.

She is just very comfortable in front of the camera, probably because I have taken more than 15,000 photos of her in the past 5 years.

A couple of weeks ago, my cousin Maggie & her family stopped by and stayed with us for a night, while on their way to Seattle from L.A.

I think the last time we saw them was like 6 years ago, on our wedding day, when their son was only 2 months old! We went back to New York and I think not long after, they moved to Taiwan for a little while before settling in Hawaii; so we haven’t seen each other since.

Although it was the first time the kids have met each other, I was great to see that they had no problem playing together and getting along.

The visit was short, but now that they are in Seattle and we are in SF, it will be much easier to visit them as well as my Grandpa more frequently then ever.

Of course, I’ll need to find a steady job first.

We certainly can’t believe that Kaitlyn is 4 already. As usual, my parents made the trip out to celebrate her birthday with us, along with a few good friends, in our tiny apartment. This year, Kaitlyn’s birthday happened to be on Chinese/Lunar New Year, so she got even more attention than she would have gotten already.

As much as I think that she is spoiled/blessed with so much materialistically & attention-wise, I believe she deserves all of it very much—she has grown into a very mature 4-year-old single child.

What do I mean by mature? Well, if I have to describe her, I would say she is hardworking, honest, very caring & considerate, brave, optimistic, funny, ambitious, fair, a good listener & has a passion for learning; I don’t think many of these traits are considered common or natural in people today (including myself), let alone a 4-year-old girl.

Of course she is still a handful, but she’s only 4 and that’s what great about it.

Besides, Kate has Mel & I—the best parents for her!

OK, enough talk. Let’s look at some photos from this year’s party!

And if you want, before clicking on the photo thumbnails, first click on the arrow below for some background music while looking at the photos! Enjoy!

Daughter — Peter Blegvad

Last Saturday we went to see the Ringling Brothers’ Coney Island Illuscination show with the Yau’s. Originally we were supposed to go last Wednesday, but the show was canceled due to power outage, so we went on Saturday instead. That turned out to be a good thing, since it’s on the weekend, Mel was able to join us. Also, thanks to the storm (Huricane Earl) that never came, by Saturday the heat wave was over & we ended up spending some time on the boardwalk after the show.
I thought the show was good, much better than the one Mel & I watched a few years ago at Madison Square Garden. For almost the same amount of money, we got to sit much closer to the action this time because of the small tent. Last time at MSG, I had a hard time keeping up with the show because there was stuff going on in 3 rings, whereas this time there was only 1.
Anyway, here are some photos we took. Enjoy!

Amazingly, Ether barely coughed for a day or two this past winter/spring. He was able to stay healthy for the most part. I guess, for him, work is just not as stressful as school.

Work-wise, he hasn’t been getting as many hours this year. Things have slowed down even more since a big project (a 2-year long project) that he was involved in is coming to an end in July. It was good in a sense that his work schedule and his awesome boss were flexible enough that he could basically take as much time off as needed. He was even able to work from home on many of the days that Kaitlyn was sick and had to stay home or go see the doctor. With the reduced hours, he’s even able to occasionally do the dishes, cook early dinners, and get grocery. Occasionally.

However, now that things are back to normal, he’s in the lookout for either more freelance work or a more stable full-time job again, here or elsewhere.

Merry Christmas everybody! Here’s our 2008 Christmas photo & newsletter. Click on the thumbnails below to see it in full size!

This past Halloween was Kaitlyn’s 2nd Halloween. Last year, she was a hot dog & she hated the outfit. Not because it’s a hot dog, but because it has no pant legs. Yes, she was only 9 months old but she was already standing up & starting to walk.

This year, she’s a cat. Although this one has legs, she didn’t really like wearing it either, but for the most part she was OK with it. It might be because she got to wear it once at a church Halloween party, a few days before Halloween. This year, we took her to Queens to her grandparents’ house & trick-o’-treated there. Our old pal Patrick was also there with us.

Here are some pix from the party & Halloween night:

If you haven’t heard, Melanie threw me a surprise party for my big 30th birthday a few weeks ago. She really surprised me this time, since she doesn’t really do things like that. But, thanks hun, it was fun!

So this is what happened. My old pal Patrick happened to come down from Boston that weekend. He stayed with us for a couple of days, so we, along with Diane & Nancy, went to Ave U & had dim-sum/lunch that morning. After that, Patrick wanted to go into the city & do some shopping. “We” tried to invite him to go to dinner with us, but he insisted on us going by ourselves. Of course, I later found out that he knew about the surprise dinner all along. Both Melanie & him were just playing along when I was trying to get him to come to dinner with us.

So we went home & decided to take a nap before dinner. At that time, I still didn’t know where Melanie was “taking” me to dinner, but it didn’t really matter to me, so I didn’t ask.

By around 6, we left the house. Since I was the one driving, Melanie had to act like a GPS, tell me where to go, turn by turn, without giving away the final destination.

So we got on the Belt Parkway, everything was fine, but then all of a sudden Mel started to complain about stomach pain. She pretended to pretend to act OK, but was soon taking deep breaths! We “happened” to have just gotten off of the highway, so I asked her if she knew of any place that has a restroom she can use, since we were at least another 15 minutes away from where she told me the next turn is. So she “suggested” Diane’s place & I said let’s call her & see if she’s home. (Of course she was!) She said no problem, but wants us to bring Kaitlyn in so that Mr Kwok can see her.

Mel jumped out of the car before it came to a complete stop. Diane was outside already. I pulled into the driveway, took Kaitlyn out, & followed Diane up the steps & into the house, & that was it——SURPRISE!

Here are some pics from that day:

Here’s a video of Kaitlyn having fun with her friend Darion at the party:

From looking at our last post, we realized that we haven’t updated this thing for almost 2 months now! Our daily readership has probably gone all the way down from the 40s to 2 a day by now; one loyal “reader” being my parents’ computer, since its web browser’s home page is set to our blog, and the other would be my sister.

Since school started 2 months ago, Kaitlyn has had the cold 3 times, Mel got sick once for a week or so, and I got sick once for a day (weird). So, that’s why we have been kind of unavailable to put up new posts.

But today, since I’m home again with Kaitlyn because she has a cold, I decided to finally write something during her afternoon nap. As a bonus, here’s a video of her during her first couple of weeks at school. Enjoy!

*more videos on YouTube

These are the “before & after” of Kaitlyn getting spoiled by her grandparents & aunts.
Can you see the difference?