March Already

Somehow I lost a month and didn't even write a blog post in all of February.  That's a relative sign of how busy we were.  The month of February included such wonderful events as Mariah's seventh birthday, Chinese New Year, seeing a performance of the Rock of Ages,Winter break, which involved a trip up to South Lake Tahoe, and going to see a performance of Wicked!.

As always I guess I should start at the beginning.  The start of the month was a performance of Rock of Ages, which was part of my subscription to the Broadway San Jose series.  It's one of the shows this season that's not really age appropriate for Lauren, who I purchased the subscription for.  So my Uncle Tao and Aunt Cathy were willing to babysit for Lauren while Lauris and I went to see the show.  Lauren got to enjoy an evening with her favorite Grand Uncle and Grand Aunt, where much of the evening was spent playing Xbox, and we saw a wonderful show, given we had no idea what to expect going in.

Next we celebrated with Mariah at her birthday party at Straw Hat Pizza in Hayward.  Lauren loves any arcade, and there was one at Straw Hat, so the girls had lots of fun eating pizza, cake, and playing on arcade machines.  The girls are also getting older so they're asking for sleepovers more often and we had a few this month as well.

In the middle of the month we went back over my Uncle Tao and Aunt Cathy's house to celebrate Chinese New Year.  We had a great pot luck dinner, followed by more Xbox games.  My Uncle Tao also set up games for the kids, where the prizes were all snake toys (to go with the Year of the Snake), and of course there were plenty of hong bao (red envelopes) to go around.

Lauren's been asking to see Wicked! and Phantom of the Opera, both of which she's familiar with because I happen to play music from both quite often.  It turns out Wicked! was in San Francisco for a short run which ended on Sunday after our Chinese New Year celebration.  It took a few days of continually refreshing the SHNSF web page, but I finally got incredible tickets for the last showing, so Lauren and I headed up to SF for the show.  We had a great day in SF, first watching the matinee, followed by dinner in SF, dessert at Sweet Inspirations and book shopping at Printers, Inc.

Winter break followed, and it's one of the week long holidays that both Lauris and Lauren have the same week off.  So we took a trip up to South Lake Tahoe, and stayed at the Montbleu, a resort that we last went to when my mom was alive and we went up with her.  Lauren wasn't even born at the time.  It was Labor Day weekend and Michaela was just a baby at the time.

We went to Tahoe, since Lauren wanted to play in the snow, and we certainly got plenty of snow play in, including sledding for two days and going inner tubing.  Lauren and I went up the gondola to the top of Heavenly, and enjoyed the resort facilities.  But I didn't convince Lauren to take snowboarding or ski lessons yet.  Maybe next trip.

So that wrapped up our February, quite a busy month.

This past Saturday Lauren and I went to Home Depot for their Kid's Workshop, where she made a toy race car, followed by a Girl Scout outing to the Triton Museum of Art in Santa Clara, where they were holding a Family Day, with lots of activities around creating your own art.

This past Sunday, we joined my older sister and her family, along with Marie and hers in SF to have Dim Sum, followed by hanging out and walking around Fisherman's Wharf.

We're also in the middle of Girl Scout cookie sales, this being Lauren's first year selling cookies.  We're taking it easy and not trying overly hard to sell them.  Which may mean lots of cookies in our house.

This month will be no less busy as we've got lots more activities planned!