Weekend Pics

Fun and mellow weeked with excellent weather. Indian summer in full effect, and we are doing our best to soak it up. We got the weekend off right by stoppin by Susanna's new pad, which has a surprising number of Huelan friendly toys for a grown up's house. Susanna showed us an awesome korean bbq spot that offers all-u-can eat. They had to ask Huelan to leave after her seventh plate.

We also (finally) got to stop by and visit the newest Hardcastle- Destry, 11 weeks old. Already in 6month clothes, he's a big boy.

Other pics include: smoothie mustache, learning to play with scissors, and a shot of one of her two super sharp canine teeth. All the better for korean bbq.

Morning Jams

Leah and Huelan woke up ready to party.  For some inexplicable reason, Huelan cheers, "Go Giants!"

When I see these vids from early August, I get a little nostalgic seeing all that hair bounce around.  Maybe it's just hair envy.

*Credit to Kayla for producing/directing these clips.

ETA: just watched this vid again and was reminded how adorable Leah is.  Kayla encouraging the girls to jump on the bed... not so adorable.

Beautiful

We heard this song at least 97 times that weekend.

Freestyle

Another vid from the Nguyen visit.  Lighting is poor, but you can kind of make out Leah and Nicole shakin' it to the drummer's freestyle.

Leah & Kayla

This is another flashback to early August, when Viet come up to visit with Carrie, their daughter Leah, and their neice Kayla*. We hit up Fairyland in Lake Merrit, which overdelivered- bigger and better than we thought it'd be.

Viet & Anh also helped me explore the uncharted depths of our backuard (BTH= Beyond The Hedge). I'm sure one of us got lyme disease.

Capped it off with dinner and a freestyle at Jupiter- Pizza, Pints, and Jazz. Not a shabby way to start the Indian Summer.

Some pics here


*travelling with your neice is genius. Built in entertainment for Leah so everyone wins.

The Stoop

September is the best month in SF. Even in the Sunset, sunny days make for perfect stoop sitting.

Picnic

Lynn and Larry are on a trip to Ireland- a trip they've been planning for decades- but before they left we christened the new picnic table for lunch al fresco.

Disco

Found this vid from a few months back of Huelan getting her groove on. Not shy of being the only one on the dance floor in a full restaurant. Can uu blame her- check out that floor! We did this for about 45 mins.

Check Up

Dr. Vo (who tricked me into thinking that she was Vietnamese when actually she married a Vietnamese guy and took his name- sneaky) says 90th %ile in height, 75th in weight, and off the charts in cute. Medical fact.

Chores

Her chores include vacuuming her spilled rice from dinner and proofing my sales reports. Needless to say our floor is a mess and I am about to be fired.

We're back

It took us a little while to recover from the awesomeness that was August, but we're officially back!  One of our favorite features of the new pad is that we have an extra room to accommodate visitors more comfortably.  So we had peep visit almost every weekend in August.  They Nguyens: Viet, Carrie, Leah & Kayla.  Ba Noi, et al.  Omar and Odie. And we went to Tahoe one weekend, too, for good measure.

And HUELAN GOT HER FIRST HAIRCUT!  Which was not as crazy as I thought it would be. She saw Liz and I get cuts first, so she was totally into it, as you can see from the pics.  And getting to check herself out in the mirror sealed the deal.



We were lucky to have Nhuanh spend her last few days stateside with us, just hanging out.  She pulled up her roots and moved to Viet Nam at the end of August, so was on a wild spree of soaking up as much bay as she could handle.  Which mostly meant eating a lot.

Some pics from Mid August here (link fixed)

Somewhere Fun

We love having Gosia as our nanny, however one thing that we wish we could get Huelan more of is social interaction with other kids.  She has an activity almost everyday, whether it's storytime at the library or the fabulous Rockin' Kids Sing Along hosted by Ms. Stephanie, so she gets out, but we don't really get to see it because we're at work.  So on the weekends, we like to take her somewhere and let her run around.

When we're getting ready, we ask her variations of the question, "Where do Mom and Ba take you?"  She answers, "Somewhere fun!"

This past Sunday, we went to the playgound at Little Farm in Tilden.  Watching her interact is basically the cutest thing in the world.  She's not quite big enough to run around with the 5-8 year olds who are playing tag and climbing the jungle gym really quickly.  But she tries.  Eventually, she'll find a few girls (it's always girls) who are a little chiller and played with them.  

One girl Huelan just walked up to slowly and timidly held her hand.  They silently agreed to play with each other,  and soon were running around together like best buds.  

The girls in this pic were super nice. All older than Huelan, they helper her climb up this rock formation, giving her a little boost on the bottom.  Huelan was so proud that she had made some friends.

It's amazing how kids this age all share one priority- playing.  You won't be surprised to hear that at this park in Berkeley, there were no less than five languages being spoken. Doesn't matter.  

We try to hang back while she plays; we're anti-hover.  I try to not even let her know we're watching her all the time, keeping just enough of our eyes on her to intervene when absolutely necessary.  It's extremely difficult to do, but it's getting easier as she gains more confidence on the playground and we get a tiny bit more comfortable that she can take care of herself.