Somehow it's already late November, and I missed writing anything to this blog for the entire month of October. It's definitely gotten busier for us, if that's even possible. I blame the improving economy which has increased my travel at work. I guess I was lucky (and by extension Lauren too), in that for much of her formative years, we lived in a recession, which meant that my company wanted me to cut back on travel, so I was around for all the things I wanted to be there for. In my idealistic mind, I'd like to believe I still would have gone out of my way to be there for all of Lauren's important events, but looking back at it now, and comparing to what our schedule is like lately, I'm not sure I would have been able to pull it off in a good economy. That being said, I think I'm still doing pretty well given my busy travel schedule.
I'm writing this at 5 AM local time in Paris, France, on a business trip. I've managed to cut down this trip, a trip to Europe with a two city stop to only 4 days, keeping my absence from Lauren down to a minimum. Of course I have jet lag, which is why I'm up and typing this. But before I left on Monday, I took Lauren to see "Free Birds", the latest animated movie for kids, one about a turkey who wants to go back in time and stop the first Thanksgiving from happening so turkeys don't have to worry about Thanksgiving. So while, I was able to take her to a movie, I did miss the first production we were supposed to have gone to together this year of Broadway San Jose, "Evita". Instead Lauris will take her, and bring along Lauren's second grade teacher, Ms. Pardini, using what was supposed to have been my ticket.
Lauren's also been really busy with Girl Scouts, having already done the Veteran's Day parade for a second year in a row, and went to a special Girl Scout event at Hiller Aviation Museum. I got to go with her for both events. She especially like the Aviation Museum and being able to sit in the pilots seat of various airplanes and watch another dad take off with his daughter in a plane from San Carlos Airport, right behind the Hiller Museum. After our Aviation museum event, we stopped at IKEA for lunch before heading home. This week she's going to decorate ornaments for "Christmas in the Park" in San Jose, and after Thanksgiving the Girl Scouts will decorate a tree in the Christmas display in downtown San Jose.
We also managed to take a trip out to Idaho, for Lauris' aunt's 80th surprise birthday party. Lauren was a trooper getting up extra early for a 6AM flight to Boise. I think she also really enjoyed meeting more relatives, and got to play with some boy cousins her age in a game of "railroad dominoes", and play "mau-mau" a card game that her Aunt Mimi (Lauris' cousin's wife) taught her.
And of course in October, there was Halloween, which seems like there's no end of activities for Lauren. We started off with the Halloween parade at Chinese school the week before Halloween, so Lauren got to "trick-or-treat" from classroom to classroom. She wanted to go as a vampire this year, so she re-used last year's cape I made her, and removed the "queen of hearts" playing cards from her black dress to become a vampire. In addition she got to attend my company's annual Halloween party for kids, where there was a balloon artist, face painting, glitter tattoos, and of course candy and pumpkins for the kids.
I also managed to take Lauren to the straw maze at the Winchester Mystery House in San Jose. She loved it and ended up running through the maze at least 20 times. When Halloween finally came around, she and I started off the event by stopping by the Valley Fair mall, where she got a few pieces of candy from various vendors at the mall, and stopped by Build-a-Bear and picked up a Halloween costume for one of her bear friends, which she took with her to a friends house for the Halloween festivities that evening. We joined one of her Chinese school friends at their house where they were hosting a Halloween party, and of course the girls also got to go trick-or-treating in the neighborhood.
I also had to take a business trip to Philadelphia earlier this month, my first time to Philadelphia in at least 20 years. It's the location of my college, so I was looking forward to being able to walk the campus of the University of Pennsylvania, while I was there. It did not disappoint. All the sights brought back long ago memories, and boy did the kids walking around there make me feel old. I also picked up Penn paraphenalia for the family, and stopped by the LGBT Center, also known as the Carriage House, which was built in 2002, and was surprised to find my name listed on the donor plaque mounted in the reception area. I had donated money for the construction, and hadn't really considered that I'd be listed, which was a nice surprise.
Lauren also got to go to Chuck E. Cheese for a birthday party, and I volunteered again at the Buddhist temple last month for my yearly duty for Honoring Elder's day. My sister Marie, also walked in the Avon Walk for Breast Cancer is late September, so we got to take her kids with Lauren to the Palace of Legion of Honor in San Francisco, where we met up with my cousin Ling, wife Teresa and their kids. All five of the kids had a great time exploring the works of art there.
If there wasn't enough going on the last two months, we also bought a new car. Lauris' car, is about six years old, and we got him a new SUV, one that has a towing package, and is pretty nicely equipped. Lauren's pretty happy with the new car too, since I installed a new overhead DVD player in it right after we got it.
So that's the long and the short of it. More to come soon.
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