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This journal is about raising identical twins.One Hundred and Third Month
Previous entriesNote: This page may contain Chinese text in Unicode encoding. Some web browsers (e.g. Internet Explorer 5) can display the text without any user intervention if the fonts are available. Some web browsers (e.g. Netscape) will display the Chinese text only if you switch Character Set under the View menu to Big5 traditional Chinese.
Monday, Feb 6, 2006 (8y+6m)
The twins are 8.5 year old today. They went to school as usual. They worked on their homework after school.
Tuesday, Feb 7, 2006 (8y+6m+1d)
The twins went to school as usual. They worked on their homework after school.
Wednesday, Feb 8, 2006 (8y+6m+2d)
The twins went to school as usual. They worked on their homework after school. They had piano class in the afternoon.When daddy came home from work, the twins asked if daddy is cool or a jerk. Daddy replied cool. The twins laughed c.o.o.l. meant constipated overweight old lady. J.e.r.k. meant Junior educated rich kid.
Thursday, Feb 9, 2006 (8y+6m+3d)
The twins went to school as usual. The twins' book report of the month was due today. They needed to read a science and technology book, come up with a question about a scientific topic, design a hypothesis, design a procedure to test the theory, then draw a conclusion. The idea was to go through the scientific method with a topic of their choice.Joanne chose a topic on polarized light. Her theory was that glares off reflections are polarized and a polarized lens would help cut down the glares. She used the 3D glasses from the Chicken Little movie to do the experiment. Joanne presented her project today.
Jasmine's choice of topic is about sound. Her experiment was to whip a jump rope in the air very hard to make the swooshing sound. She wants to prove that the rope make the air vibrate to produce the sound. Jasmine would do her presentation the next day.
The twins had a Chinese test today. The teacher post Chinese phrases on the wall, the students would write down the characters that recognized. Both Joanne and Jasmine said they knew all of them, there were 101 characters in total. Daddy wondered how the teacher check if the students really knew the words. Jasmine said the teacher asked her to read a few of them to her. But spot checking still couldn't prove the students really knew all of them. Jasmine said only Jeffrey and her in her class completed the test.
They had piano lessons in the afternoon. The teacher said they needed more practice. The twins might have slacked off during the Chinese New Year.
Friday, Feb 10, 2006 (8y+6m+4d)
The twins went to school as usual.We went out to dinner with Sonia, Jasmine and Ashley's family. After dinner, we went to Ashley's home for a while. We watched part of the Winter Olympics opening ceremony.
Saturday, Feb 11, 2006 (8y+6m+5d)
We had lunch with grandma Chui and aunt Elaine. Near the end of the meal, Joanne spilt a glass of water over her lap. Since she needed a change of clothes, we left the restaurant early. Grandma took care of the bill.Mommy went out to watch Brokeback Mountain with Ashley's and Jasmine's mom. The twins and daddy stayed home to watch Wallace and Gromit on DVD. We were invited to Clare's home for dinner. Terence's family, SiuLing, Evon and Ronald were among the guests too. The kids went upstairs to play in Claire's playroom after dinner. We stayed till around midnight.
Sunday, Feb 12, 2006 (8y+6m+6d)
We went to aunt Tina's home to retrieve something that we left behind in last visit. We had a late lunch in a restaurant near her home. On the way, the twins played a fortune teller game. The fortune said we would buy a winner lotto ticket today. Of course, we wouldn't pass such a good prediction. Couldn't wait till the drawing, Joanne folded one of the two tickets into an origami crane. I wish the paper crane would bring good luck and the folded ticket would still be valid.After we came home, we went to the park to play tennis with Claire's and Deanna's family. We played from 5pm till after 7pm. Claire's family came to our home for dinner. We just heated up the takeout that we bought earlier in the afternoon.
Monday, Feb 13, 2006 (8y+6m+7d)
The twins went to school as usual. In the evening, daddy helped them to print some Valentine cards for their classmates. Jasmine put some named stickers on the cards. Joanne said she wanted to save her stickers because they have cute cartoon characters on them. She rather sign all the cards by hand. The twins dressed up a neopet doll with a heart shape decoration and gave to daddy and mommy as a valentine.
Tuesday, Feb 14, 2006 (8y+6m+8d)
The twins went to school as usual. They have a Valentine's day party at school. They received a lot of Valentines from their classmates. They got cards, candies etc. Mommy prepared a nice beef steak dinner to celebrate valentines day.
Wednesday, Feb 15, 2006 (8y+6m+9d)
The twins went to school as usual. They had their music class in the afternoon.
Thursday, Feb 16, 2006 (8y+6m+10d)
The twins went to school as usual. After school, they had their piano lesson. They went with mommy to the pet store to buy another goldfish. One of the mollies died this morning. The mollies were chasing each other and the weaker one would hide near the bottom. Apparently, this one was also starved to death like the last one. The goldfish were slower swimmer, they couldn't escape even when the mollies attacked them. When the goldfish stayed put under all attacks, the mollies didn't get any pleasure from the act. The mollies turned to their own kind instead. The new goldfish was bigger than all the other we had in the tub. It was kind of laid back and didn't came to the surface for feeding.After dinner, Jasmine had a Nestle Drumstick ice cream sundae for dessert. Daddy was munching on a chicken drumstick. Joanne was holding her chopsticks like playing a drum. At that moment, we had three kinds of drumsticks in our hands.
Friday, Feb 17, 2006 (8y+6m+11d)
The twins went to school as usual. In the afternoon, we picked up Benjamin from school. He played with the twins in the afternoon. His parents needed to work on their newly purchased home today. We helped them to babysit Benjamin. We asked Christopher's family to come join them too. Christopher was not too happy because he was left alone when Jasmine and Ben played video game and Joanne did her Piano homework.
Saturday, Feb 18, 2006 (8y+6m+12d)
It was the beginning of another week long break from school. We had lunch with grandma Chui. We stayed home for the rest of the afternoon. The twins practice piano and work on their holiday homework. We then went out to dinner at a shabu shabu restaurant. We decided that we wouldn't go there again because mommy could make better shabu shabu herself. The twins played some game on the disney.com website before going to bed.
Sunday, Feb 19, 2006 (8y+6m+13d)
We got up early in the morning. We were all ready to leave for our ski trip by 8:30am. Claire's family missed the departure time by 45 minutes. We were unable to contact them because they had all their phones turned off. Without knowing if they have changed their mind or not, we couldn't afford to wait indefinitely. We departed at 9:15am. They called us about 10 minutes later when they realized we didn't wait for them. We told them they could still catch up with us if they drive faster. Claire was disappointed because she originally wanted to ride with the twins. We arrived at Sacramento for lunch at around 11:30am. Claire's family caught up with us at the restaurant just 5 minutes later. After we ordered the food, Ashley's family arrived too.We continued our trip after lunch. We arrived at Kingvale a little after 2pm. The place was packed with snow-tuber. We decided not to join the long line of people. So we just let the kids play in the snow for a while.
We continued out way to Reno. Ashley's family checked into the Circus Circus hotel first, they also helped us to reserve a room next to theirs. We went with Claire's family to Atlantis hotel a few miles further away. After they checked into their room, the kids went to the swimming pool. They swam until 5:30pm. They returned to Claire's room to wash off the chlorine smell from the pool. Then we went to Circus Circus for lunch. We ordered pizza for the kids while we waited for a table for sushi. Mommy also took advantage of the waiting time to take care of the checkin process. After dinner, the twins followed Ashley's family to their room while daddy and mommy went to the car to fetch our luggage. We went to bed after we settle down and took our shower.
Monday, Feb 20, 2006 (8y+6m+14d)
It is the Presidents' day holiday for daddy. The twins are still in the middle of their winter break. We got up at 6:45am in the morning. After a quick breakfast, daddy and the twins left to pick up Claire's family at Atlantis hotel. They have never gone to Mt. Rose before, we car-pooled with them to show them the way. Shannon's and Natasha's family arrived at the ski area around the same time too. We went through the equipment rental a little after 10am. Clarie's family signed up for the lesson, so we skied separately from them. Ashley's family brought their own skiing equipment, so they had already skied an hour by the time we got back together with them. Shannon followed us all day. Her father skied with her 3 years old sister Erin. Little Erin wore a harness and her father controlled her speed from behind. At only 3 years old, she already said she liked skiing. Erin's sister Shannon could already ski black diamond advanced runs at 8 years old. She was a few years ahead of our twins in skiing skills. Today's skiing condition was perfect, so we decided to ski another day.We dropped off Claire's family at their hotel after skiing. We returned to the hotel to take a shower. Ashley's family joined us for dinner at one of restaurants in the Circus Circus hotel. The twins begged to spend some time in the midway of the circus. Mommy took them there and gave them $5 each to play some games. Daddy went to the car to fetch something. By the time daddy returned to the room at 8:30pm, everyone was already in bed. We slept early in preparation for another day of skiing.
Tuesday, Feb 21, 2006 (8y+6m+15d)
Daddy took a day off from work to ski one more day. We got up at the same time in the morning. We were on the way to Mt. Rose by 8:00am. We didn't car pool with Claire's family because they already knew the way. Shannon's family went to ski at Squaw Valley. Natasha's family went home last night. We skied with Ashley's family for the rest of the day. Claire's family took another lesson. Since they were beginners, they skied on their own because they would not be able to catch up with us. We saw Michelle C. and her friend in the lodge, but we didn't ski with her. It was again a perfect day for skiing, sunny but cold day, no line at the lifts, etc. We took the twins up the top of the mountain to ski some Blue Square intermediate runs. The twins handled the steeper slope with no problem at all. We had plenty of run and were all exhausted by 3pm due to the higher demand of the blue runs. We decided to quit at 3pm. The kids played with the snow next to the main lodge while we took care of returning the rental equipment. We returned to the cafeteria to have some snacks and drinks before leaving. Claire's family decided to stay another day because the skiing condition was perfect. Besides Claire had made great progress in the past two days since she skied two years ago. They returned to Reno.We went the other way towards North Tahoe. We had a great view of the Lake Tahoe before merging back to I-80 near Truckee. We asked the twins to take a nap in the car. We arrived at Roseville at round 7pm. We had a great Japanese dinner at Mikuni. The twins watched a DVD in the car on our way home. We were back home at around 9:30pm. Joanne said she didn't want to check the fish tub because she couldn't bear to see a dead fish body. When Jasmine announced that all fish were alive, Joanne was relieved. The twins went to bed after taking a shower.
Wednesday, Feb 22, 2006 (8y+6m+16d)
Daddy returned to work in the morning after a 4 day break. The twins continued their week long winter break. Benjamin's family moved to their new home today. Mommy babysat him and his baby sister Serenity while their parents were busy dealing with the move. They had piano class in the afternoon.
Thursday, Feb 23, 2006 (8y+6m+17d)
The twins was still in their winter break. They went out with Jocelyn's family. While mommy and Christine had their coffee break, the kids played in the plaza in front of the coffee shop. The twins had their piano lesson in the afternoon.
Friday, Feb 24, 2006 (8y+6m+18d)
The twins had a play day at Ashley's home. In the evening, we had dinner out with a few other families including Natasha and Jasmine's The other kids except Ashley's family and ours were all attending Challenger School, they were not in their winter break like ours. They were all in their school uniforms at the dinner table. We returned home to watched TV before going to bed.
Saturday, Feb 25, 2006 (8y+6m+19d)
We had an early lunch with Terence's family. We invited Claire's family too, but Claire had to go to Chinese school on the weekends. We asked them to join us for miniature golf in the afternoon.We went to miniature golf after lunch. Jocelyn's family joined us. But Claire's family didn't make it. The kids spent some money in the arcade after golf. They played games to earn tickets which in turn exchanged for toys. We always told the twins these toys were very expensive because they took too much money to earn those tickets. After we returned home, the twins helped daddy change the water in the fish tub. They practiced piano in the afternoon.
In the evening, we were invited to Christopher's home for dinner. Benjamin's family was invited too. After dinner, we watched "Zathusa" on DVD. They started "The Chronicles of Narnia - The Lion, the Witch and the Wardrobe " afterwards. We left before the end of the movie because we had seen the movie in the theater before.
Sunday, Feb 26, 2006 (8y+6m+20d)
We had lunch with grandma Chui. We went to Costco in the afternoon. We couldn't find the things that we looked for, so we left empty handed. We stayed home for the rest of the day.
Monday, Feb 27, 2006 (8y+6m+21d)
The twins went to school as usual.
Tuesday, Feb 28, 2006 (8y+6m+22d)
The twins said goodbye to mommy when we dropped them off at school. Daddy then took mommy to the airport. She was going to take a week long vacation in Taiwan. She had already make all the arrangement so that the twins would be taken care of after school. Daddy would pick up the twins in the evening on the way from work.Jocelyn's mom took care of the twins after school. Jocelyn and Jessica helped the twins to do their homework. By the time daddy picked them up, they had already finished their homework. The twins requested to have dinner at Miyaki. They shared an order of udon and they got some sashimi from daddy's order too. They said they couldn't eat too much because they already had a slice of pizza at Jocelyn's home.
When we got home, daddy reviewed their homework and made suggestions to make improvements, Daddy asked Jasmine to rewrite many sentences. She got a scolding for showing an attitude. When Joanne found out she wrote her work on Jasmine's homework package, Jasmine took the excuse, ran upstairs, lock the bedroom door and cried. Daddy replaced the piece of paper and asked Joanne to go upstairs to apologize to Jasmine. A few minutes later, Joanne came downstairs crying too. She said that Jasmine didn't cry because of the homework screw up. Jasmine cried because she missed mommy. Joanne broke into tears and wailed loudly because she missed mommy too. She said she thought of mommy all day long at school, but she couldn't cry in the classroom.
Daddy tried to comfort them and explained that mommy just wanted to have fun. It would be wrong to cry and make mommy regret her vacation. The rational explanation didn't make a difference to the twins. They took turns crying for the next half an hour. They occasionally chuckled and laughed at each other's swollen eyes. They went to the computer and check the internationally time. They wanted to call mommy but they realized that mommy was still on the airplane and she could not answer their call. Daddy sent them to bed hoping that they could stop crying when they were asleep. They didn't practice piano because of that.
Wednesday, Mar 1, 2006 (8y+6m+23d)
Mommy called from Taiwan to wake us in the morning. The twins were glad to talk to mommy. They didn't mention they cried, they were very brave and considerate because they didn't want to ruin mommy's vacation.We went to school early. We stopped by Jocelyn's house to drop off the stuff for the twins' music class in the afternoon. The twins wanted to wait for Jessica so that they could walk to school together. They went to school as usual.
In the afternoon, Jocelyn's mom picked up the twins after school. They stayed with Jocelyn and Jessica until the twin's music teacher picked them up for their music class. Daddy picked up the twins from the music class on the way home from work. The twins requested xiao long bao for dinner. When we got home, mommy called and they twins were glad to talk to mommy. They were used to mommy's absence already, and they didn't cry today. They finished up their homework, but they didn't practice piano again.
Thursday, Mar 2, 2006 (8y+6m+24d)
Jasmine requested daddy to leave home early today. She said Cyrus was always the first to arrive at school each morning. And she said she would have beat him if they didn't wait for Jessica yesterday. She wanted to beat Cyrus to school today. We tried. It was 8:05am when we arrived at school. We saw Cyrus walking to the classroom from a distance. He reached the classroom door before us. The school ground was very quiet with only a few children there. Daddy stayed with the twins for 15 minute until more children showed up.Annette's mom picked up the twins after school. The twins stayed with Annette for the afternoon. The twins let her try their Chinese homework. She have forgotten many of the Chinese characters only a few months after she left the bilingual school. However, she told the twins her new school was much more fun because it had many field trips.
When daddy came to pick up the twins, Annette asked if the twins could stay for dinner. Jasmine also said she wanted to stay. So we stayed for dinner. Annette played Lady and the Tramp DVD before dinner. After dinner, they wanted to finish the movie. We stayed until 8:30pm. When we got home, the twins took shower and then each practiced half an hour on the piano. They were sent to bed before 10pm.
Friday, Mar 3, 2006 (8y+6m+25d)
Daddy dropped off the twins at school. They had a field trip today and they are supposed to wear their school T-shirt today for a performance. Daddy had to go home and fetch the T-shirts for them. They went to this place on their field trip to perform their Chinese zodiacs play for some audience. They performed this play to the parents some times ago in Mandarin. This time around they had to add English to the narratives.Annette's mom picked up the twins after school. The twins put their sheet music in their school bag today so that they could practice piano on Annette's piano. Daddy didn't tell them to do so, they figured that out on their own to save time. Daddy picked them up after work. We went to Terence's place for dinner. They invited us to have beef steak dinner. The twins each ate a full size steak. On the other hand, Terence got a half portion, but he only took a few bite and left the rest. The kids went to play video games on the Nintendo. The adults watched the movie Kingdom of Heaven on DVD. The movie was very long, we left before the end of the movie when Joanne said she was tired. Jasmine on the other hand didn't want to leave the video game machine. I asked the twins to skip their shower. They went to bed after changing their underwear.
Saturday, Mar 4, 2006 (8y+6m+26d)
When the twins woke up, they demanded to see Curious George. Mommy told them they could see the movie and they wouldn't give up that privilege. I asked Joanne to call Jessica if she wanted to go with us to the movie. In the afternoon, we took Jessica and Jonathan with us to the movie. Jocelyn didn't want to watch Curious George, she rather watch TV at home. When we came back from the movie, the twins wanted to play at Jessica's home for awhile. We left at around 4:30pm because our host had a dinner engagement with their friends. When we got home, the twins wanted to ride their bikes because they haven't done so for sometime. Joanne's bike rolled on some thorns in last bike trip and the tires couldn't hold any air until mommy took it in for repair. Daddy put on the rollerskates and we were off to the park. After we came home, they watched "Back to the Future" on DVD. They wanted KFC for dinner. They practice piano after dinner. And they watched Naruto on TV before taking a shower and going to bed. In bed, the twins fought for mommy's pillow. Jasmine has been hugging mommy's pillow ever since mommy left home. Joanne said it should be her turn now. Jasmine argued that she came up with the idea and she would not give up possession. Joanne sought daddy's judgment. Daddy told them they needed to settle any depute among themselves. Daddy suggested couple of methods, for example, Joanne could try reasoning to convince why she deserve it or she could trade with Jasmine with something more valuable. Jasmine wouldn't yield, so Joanne slept with mommy's bath robe.
Sunday, Mar 5, 2006 (8y+6m+27d)
The twins woke up early and played in their room for a long time before come to daddy's room. Daddy heard their noise all morning, but rather stayed in the comfort of the bed. At around 10 am, Joanne came to daddy and asked if we could go to the Border's bookstore today. I said we wanted to have lunch with grandma Chui first. We called grandma and planned an early lunch. Not long after that, Deanna's mom called and asked if we had lunch plan. We decided to combine our lunch, so we picked a new time and place. Deanna's parents treated us for lunch. After we took grandma home, we picked a large bag of oranges from her yard. Then we went to Border bookstore in Santana Row. Jasmine picked couple of books in the Animal Ark series, one book was about a golden retriever and the other about a labordor. Joanne couldn't decide, so Deanna's mom recommended couple of books in the Amelia series.We returned home to watch the Oscar's red carpet preshow. The twins played with Deanna on the computer. They all took shower before dinner. Deanna's brother was off to a rock band practice. When her brother was done, her dad bought us pizza and salad for dinner. Daddy prepared clam chowder soup. We watched the Oscar ceremony at the dinner table. This year's Oscar was quite evenly distributed, there was no one lopsided winner. After dinner, the kids continued to play on the computer. We rewound the red carpet show recording to see some gorgeous movie stars in their designer dresses and jewelry. Honestly, the pre-show was more interesting than the ceremony itself. The guests left at 10pm. Since the twins took shower already, they went to bed after brushing their teeth. Joanne laughed when daddy tucked them in bed. It turned out that she stole mommy's pillow from Jasmine's bed and she was not going to give it up. Jasmine was okay with mommy's bath robe instead. She knew she needed to give it up after almost a week and Joanne would only have it for couple of days because mommy would be home soon.
Monday, Mar 6, 2006 (8y+7m)
The twins are 8 year and 7 months old today.
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started on Mar 9, 2006