Friday, July 26, 2013

We celebrated our 9-year wedding anniversary this week and 15-years of being together. Wow, how time flies and what an amazing time it has been!

Tuesday, July 23
Iris and I went out for an afternoon walk and took a break for some Jamba Juice (another one off my list).

Then a short nap in the Ergo. I love this carrier but she’s not quite big enough for it yet. We have the infant insert which is too bulky and hot for summer and she always seems uncomfortable while in it. Soon she should be able to fit into this which will make going out easier since she does not like being in her car seat.

Simon tired himself out playing with the neighbors’ grand kids. They are older so usually help to teach him stuff. This day they helped him with his batting.

Wednesday, July 24
I’m number one! Yes, you are 🙂

I love Iris’ cheerful awakening.

Today was our anniversary and we spent the morning in Walnut Creek to have Simon go to his camp and spend part of the day with Iris. On the way back from camp, Simon brought me some flowers. Simon presented me with the pink roses and Ron gave me the white long stem rose.

The roses went in a vase right away.


Nine years as husband and wife!

Ron’s parents came to take Simon out for the day while Iris stayed home with our nanny. Imagine, a free afternoon just for ourselves so we headed to our favorite local destination: Napa! We made late lunch reservations at Bottega. If you haven’t discovered Opentable, I say go try it now. They surprisingly have a good selection of restaurants with good availability.

We were seated outside which was perfect for the lovely warm day.

Everything on the menu sounded so delicious that we had a hard time deciding but I think we made good choices. After we ordered, they started out with fresh bread with some sort of hard cheese dipping sauce. There were lots of chunks of cheese in the sauce, a nice saltiness.

Our appetizers were the octopus and short rib meatballs. The octopus was so amazingly tender and the oil drizzled on top gave it a little kick.

The meatballs were a good size and the house made ricotta on top made the dish for me. It made the dish smooth, creamy, and light.

We shared the lobster cavatelli for our pasta dish. The sauce had nice large pieces of lobster and there was only one piece of uni but you could definitely taste uni with every bite. I loved this pasta dish, buttery rich sauce with these little chewy pasta pieces (that remind me of the shape of silkworms).

We also had the Sonoma Duck. While nothing to rave about, I still liked it. Had a crispy skin and the meat tender.

We also ordered a side of their truffle fries which were pretty delicious. There was fried sage and parmagiano cheese on top as well. I think sage chips could be the next rage, I could’ve eaten just that.

We skipped dessert at the restaurant because we were too stuffed so just took a quick walk around the marketplace nearby. We found Kollar Chocolates.

At ~$2 per piece, they are expensive but beautifully crafted. We chose a selection of 9 pieces to take home plus a poppy seed and saffron bar and a small bag of their pop rock bars. Looking forward to digging in! In the box are kahlua chocolate (center piece), lavender (purple), passion fruit (coral pink), earl grey (gray with orange) and cardamom (gray with green).

We then drove to one of our favorite wineries, Peju, for a tasting. It was wonderful as always.

Then for some outlet shopping before heading home. These sunglasses matched my outfit but were too outrageous for me to buy, some sort of hot pink leopard print.

During the afternoon, Simon visited the San Francisco zoo and looked like he had a good time.

We had a wonderful day out together. Thank you to my hubby for the fun day out and about. It’s been a wonderful nine years and I know we will have many more wonderful years together to share with our beautiful children. 143

Thanks also to our parents and nanny for babysitting so that we could have our day together.

To top off our memorable day, guess what? Our car ran out of gas. :(. As many of you know, we have a natural gas vehicle that requires a special fueling station that aren’t always easily accessible. Ron thought we would have enough gas to go back and forth to Napa but he was off by a few miles. Thank goodness for AAA! We luckily stopped near an apartment complex so weren’t in danger so just had to wait until the tow truck came which took about 20 minutes.

It took less than 10 minutes to get to the station to fuel up (less than 2 miles away!) then we went on our way home to rest. Simon was supposed to spend the night with the grandparents but they eventually brought him home since he couldn’t easily fall asleep and they didn’t want to over stress him.

An exhausting day for all.

Thursday, July 25
Good morning mommy!

Daddy propping Iris to sit up position.

Simon ready for “wacky day” at camp. Super Simon!

Iris discovering the comfort of sucking her fingers. Wait until she finds her thumb! Aiya!

Our little guy has had a rough two days with injuries. He scraped his knee and elbow yesterday while running around. Today he tripped on a bump on the ground and landed on his face so scraped his nose and had a bloody nose to go along with it. It looks worse than it is apparently since he doesn’t seem too bothered.

Friday, July 26
Oh no! She found her thumb!

But she couldn’t really get a good hold on it so I tried switching in a pacifier but she didn’t like that much. What she did like was seeing herself in the mirror. She kept on laughing and smiling at herself.

Crouching Tiger, Little Simon.

Today we went to Civic Park in Walnut Creek. Simon seemed to have a good time except that there were some girls he wanted to play with that didn’t want to play with him. I didn’t think girls formed cliques so young (they were probably 5-6 years old). But he tried to play with them anyways, oblivious to them not really wanting him to follow them around. I hope Iris will grow up to be kinder than those girls.

And yes, he is wearing a bandage on his nose. Our nanny put some antibiotic ointment on his scrapes this morning and Simon requested a bandage too. We thought he would take it off after a few minutes but he ended up wearing it all day. He loves his band aids!

Iris got a little nap at the park but was pretty fussy the whole time. She looks so peaceful here.

I discovered the possible reason for her fussiness, the recent sucking on her hands, the recent drooling, and the recent green poop… I think she is getting her first tooth! There is this little hard, white spot on her lower gum line.

She seems so young to be getting her first tooth so I guess we will just have to wait and see.