christmas just keeps getting "funner"!

Ah, yet another great holiday! Growing up as a kid, I've always enjoyed the holiday season. I couldn't imagine loving this holiday even more until Matthew came along. Last year he was of course too young to care about presents and therefore barely touched any. This year, he's still too young to understand but he's more interested...in the wrapping paper that is! He could careless what's inside! It's the outside that matters to him! He enjoys ripping the wrapping paper as he's been practicing tearing up tissue paper all over the place. The up side, I guess would be that he's building on his fine motor skills! Oh the mess!

This Christmas is by far the best! I used to fill the space under the tree with all the presents I secretly bought for myself. This year was totally different. I even forgot to get myself a "just in case I don't like any of my gifts" gift. Instead, I had only filled it with all these goodies that I found online for Matthew. After all, it's ALL ABOUT HIM NOW!

Matthew was great with the Christmas tree. At first, he barely paid any attention to this "thing" in the living room. As the weeks went on (we put up our tree right after Remembrance Day every year) he started to explore. At first he would poke at the branches, then worked up the courage to grab things from the tree. James was smart and decided to only hang up our homemade decorations made from felt...or was he just being lazy?!?! Matthew really enjoys the Christmas lights on trees and have managed not to tear the tree apart or any other tree that he sees!

I just realized that we hadn't taken many pictures of the holidays :( But here's a couple of the kiddies at our annual Christmas dinner at Allan's.

Merry Christmas to all! Love us!

adventures of matt matt and monkey!

Ms. Ly, one of Matthew's first teachers (the other one is Ms. Mabel Lam) made this beautiful hand-knit monkey for Matthew's first birthday. With Christmas approaching, Ms. Ly encouraged a meaningful, handmade gift from Matthew. She didn't care much for store bought or generic gift. All she wanted was just one picture of Matthew holding the monkey that she had taken her time making for him. So Matthew and I put our heads together and decided to create a whole book from iphotos with our new Mac! With weeks of hard work of posing with Monkey on outings and activities at home, a book was magically created! (Thanks, apple for creating such an easy app for mommy to use!) Here are some pics from this awesome book!

happy second halloween!

Since the weather was nice and we don't know what next year's weather will be, we decided to do the traditional door to door trick-or-treating in my brother's neighbourhood. It was fun watching Clayton and Matthew climb the stairs, knock on the door, and collect their treats. Once the treat drops, they would check to ensure their goodies were safely in their bags. So cute!

Happy first birthday!

Happy first birthday, baby boy! We thank you for the best year ever so far! Can't wait to see what you have in store for us :)

What a difference a year makes...or two!

This new blog definitely confirms exactly my first sentence from my first blog entry; I'm not a blogger! But a special someone has enticed me to blog and these memories will be all for him :) We love you lots, Matt Matt!

Since our wonderful Europe trip - part 2 December 2009 - we now have expanded our family. Our beautiful boy was conceived in Europe (we think it might have been from our stop in London but who knows?!?!). Matthew was born on September 6, 2010. He was adamant on his early arrival (9 days early). My water broke at 11:30pm on September 5. As James had just hit the sack, I woke him up with all the commotion (plus I needed help to get on the toilet!) Then we sanitized (of course!), repacked our overnight hospital bag, planned where we were going to have our last breakfast before the little guy came, took a shower...By 3:00am we were at the hospital! After reading many books, talking to other expert parents, and from our birth trainer, we were expecting about a good 16 hours before we got to meet Matthew. But boy, was he determined to meet us as soon as possible! By the time we were admitted to Emergency, I was 4 centimetres dialated. By the time I got wheel chaired up to our brand new, private Cedar room (equipped with its own toilet and bathtub!) at Women's, I was 9 cms! I was already pushing naturally when I demanded to be given the drugs! I wasn't planning on being a hero! The doctors were quite hesitant to drug me up but they finally gave in. Matthew was born by 6:30am. He would have came earlier, but sorry Matthew, mama needed the drugs!!!

We stayed at the hospital for one night and was quite determined to "get back to reality" so we asked to be checked out. Luckily James was able to get a month off so to spend Matthew's first 30 days together. And luckily for James, he actually slept way more during that first month than ever! Arghhh!!!

day 24 - before we bid farewell

It's our last day in Ol' Paris. We woke up to snow! It was so beautiful and romantic. We had a "free" day as we've done most of what we wanted to do. We decided to give Notre Dame a second shot so we went back to the St. Michel area. We had cheese fondue...yum! Then we walked around Notre Dame. After that I decided to take James to a supermarket that I remembered last time I was here. I was telling him how big and great it was. Once we were there, I realized it was just another Monoprix. It was disappointing but we still went in. We then walked across the street to Printemps, another great shopping mall packed with people. Just like the Galleries Lafayette, there was a women's, men's, and home store. We went to the women's side first and then the men's and found something for both James and I. We were told that we could claim the tax so that's what we did. We quickly learned that we needed our passports so we had to go back to the hotel to get it and then back to the store to fill out the forms.
After all this running around, we finally were able to rest and have a nice dinner. We even picked up some nice desserts which we are about to enjoy before bed time.
Paris has been great to us and i'm happy to report that James will return to Europe and has enjoyed his time here... I'm sad to leave this adventure but super excited to sleep in my own bed soon!

day 22 and 23 - exploration of the city

We started the day at Chateau de Versailles. Wow, what an incredible place. It was a very sunny day and the metro didn't take too long to get there (just under an hour). This place is huge! We walked around the museum and then to the different rooms of this Chateau. Many pictures were taken (pretty sure that there was a no camera policy but everyone else was snapping away so i followed...) We did the audio tour so we learned lots. Then we proceeded to the gardens. This place is just so huge! The walk down to the end was about 2km. I cannot imagine the upkeep for this place. This portion of of the day took almost 6 hours.

We walked by Les Galleries Lafayette but didn't shop inside. Instead we looked at the kiosks outside the store. There were scarfs, earmuffs, towel wraps, a piece of cloth that you can wear 10 different ways...I bought a scarf and a Russian type hat. We then went back to the Ramen Street (St. Anne) to have Ramen again. Our "favourite" place just closed as we got there so we had to settle for a less tastier Ramen restaurant. We then went to Monoprix to pick up some wine to enjoy in our room.

The next morning I finally got to eat a Nutella waffle. Mmmm...it was good. It was so good that i accidentally left some on my jacket! I have so much stuff to dry clean when i get back! We then went to the Avenue de Champs-Elysees. We started out at the Arc de Triomphe. Then shopped our way down. We had the most fun at LV which we went there twice! James was on a mission to find a nice wallet and I was on a mission to spend some dough. On our second visit to the LV store, we were stopped by a Chinese man who only spoke Mandarin. He was asking if we could go inside to pick up something for him and he would give us cash to pay for it and we could even keep the receipt to claim the taxes. I quickly searched for one of Professor Chan's (my one and only daddy) lectures and remembered that he warned me about this. He once told me that people come up to you to ask you to buy something for them as they have been banned by the store because they buy the products and then return to their homeland to make fake duplicates. James thought it was a good idea until I dragged him away and enlightened him in a short "Coles notes" version of the lecture. In the end we did not buy that wallet.
We then went back to Les Galleries Lafayette to have some fun shopping. Again, no luck in spending my money. I guess in a good way, it's better this way. We then took the metro to Nortre Dame. As we got there, it was just closing! So we walked along the Ile St. Louise walk and attempted to find Le Petit Prine de Paris, suggested by Momo. No luck so we just ate at a nearby restaurant near home. I got to eat my Moule frittes! We went back to our hotel and had wine again and called it a night.