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This journal is about raising identical twins.One Hundred and Sixth 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.
Saturday, May 6, 2006 (8y+9m)
The twins were 8.75 years old today. We had a late breakfast and skipped lunch. We went to Home Depot to shop for gardening supply and tools. We had a late afternoon snack break with Christopher's family. Mommy cooked some wontons for dinner. We went to Terence's home after dinner. Terence's grandpa was totally into singing karaoke. We joined him in singing till 11pm. The kids watched Bambi II on DVD.
Sunday, May 7, 2006 (8y+9m+1d)
We went to Milbrae for dimsum lunch with Christopher's, Ben's and Terence's family. Terence's family was stranded on the highway when their car broke down due to overheating after a burst radiator hose. After dropping off the family at the restaurant, daddy took a detour to pick up Terence's family on the highway. After lunch, the kids went to Artopia to paint ceramic. Joanne painted a goldfish, Jasmine did a dolphin, Terence did a football coin-bank, Joie did a pixie fairy, Ben did a turtle and Christopher painted a koala into a green Yoda. After the craft work, the kids came to our house and played in the backyard until dinner time. Terence's family had dinner engagement with their own friends. We went out for ramen with Christopher's and Ben's family. When we returned home, the twins went to bed early after they practiced piano. Daddy and mommy stayed up to watch a Korean movie Sympathy for Lady Vengeance. It was a weird movie.
Monday, May 8, 2006 (8y+9m+2d)
The twins went to school as usual. The kids had their second week of STAR test. They didn't have any homework last week. The teachers asked the parents not to give the kids any work at home so that they were not stressed for the test.
Tuesday, May 9, 2006 (8y+9m+3d)
The twins went to school as usual. Their homework resumed because the STAR test was all done. They still have their Chinese test this week.
Wednesday, May 10, 2006 (8y+9m+4d)
The twins went to school as usual. They went to piano class in the afternoon.
Thursday, May 11, 2006 (8y+9m+5d)
The twins went to school as usual. They went to piano lesson in the afternoon. Daddy worked overtime every night this week and didn't come home for dinner.
Friday, May 12, 2006 (8y+9m+6d)
The twins went to school as usual. Christopher and Ben's family came to our place for dinner. Ben's daddy was treating, he bought kabar from a Persian restaurant. The kids had fun on the computer after dinner. The moms gathered at the dining table to chat. The dads watched Stephen Chow's monkey king movies in the living room.
Saturday, May 13, 2006 (8y+9m+7d)
The twins practiced piano in the morning while daddy and mommy listened in bed. We dropped off the twins at Cyrus' 10th birthday party at the Jungle. Daddy and mommy had lunch before picking them up again. The twins had fun and stayed until everyone left. Daddy read a book for an hour while waiting for them.We went to grandma Ling's home for a pre-Mother's day dinner. Mommy's close family were all present for the gathering. The twins played with cousin Natalie for the whole afternoon. They had fun with a 12 years old beach ball that had never leaked. Daddy told the twins that the inside of the ball contains daddy's breath from 12 year ago when daddy first met mommy. The kids thought about it for a second and then said yuk. They later went out to the Sanrio shore in Chinatown. The twins bought a couple of stuffed toy monkeys. When they came back to grandma's house, the kids played treasure hunt using their stuffed toys. They had great fun by giving hint like warmer, colder while the other were searching for the hidden treasure. When grandma Ling asked how much Chinese the twins learned at school, daddy picked up an election ballot on the table and asked Jasmine to read it to grandma. Jasmine said she didn't know all the words. Daddy asked her to just read the one she knew. Then she started to read, "Blah this blah that this and that", she kept on and on and grandma was impressed that she know more than half of the Chinese characters on the California Election sample ballot. We test aunt Jun with the same thing, she did worse than the twins. Aunt Jun left China after attending third grade, i.e. she had the same level of Chinese education as the twins. Since she didn't use it for decades, the twins beat her with hands down. We left after dinner.
Sunday, May 14, 2006 (8y+9m+8d)
The twins practiced piano in the morning while daddy and mommy listened in bed. We went out to lunch with grandma Chui and aunt Elaine. Aunt Elaine insisted she would pay for the Mother day's lunch. Grandma had a coupon for ice cream at Albertson. We headed to Albertson to buy the ice cream and we consumed them before parting our way. The twins also bought a Naruto magazine at the supermarket. Grandma insisted to pay for the twins purchase.When we returned home, Christopher's family invited the twins to swim at YMCA. We didn't have the membership, so the twins could swim there only when invited. They were back at around 6:30pm. After the twins took shower, we went out again to Flames restaurant for dinner with Jocelyn's family. We went to their home after dinner. The kids played video game, the adults chatted in the living room. We stayed till 10:30pm because the kids had no school for the next day.
Monday, May 15, 2006 (8y+9m+9d)
The twins had no school today. The twins followed mommy to the park to play tennis. They played in the park for awhile. They did their homework when the came home.Daddy changed the fish tub water in the evening. When Jasmine went to take a shower, she asked daddy to leave her the dirty filter to wash. Somehow, she enjoyed playing with the fish poop. Joanne wouldn't touch it with a 10 foot pole.
Tuesday, May 16, 2006 (8y+9m+10d)
The twins returned to school after a long weekend. The kids worked on their portfolio in preparation for an upcoming open house event. They did their normal thing when they got home.
Wednesday, May 17, 2006 (8y+9m+11d)
The twins went to school as usual. The twins had piano class in the afternoon. Since daddy is still working late everyday, mommy took them out to have Japanese dinner.
Thursday, May 18, 2006 (8y+9m+12d)
The twins went to school as usual. The teacher asked the kids who would want to participate in a talent show. Joanne chose not to take part. Mommy was quite disappointed at her decision. She could have signed up for a piano performance. Mommy gave her a lecture on being too lay-back and lack of participation in class activities.They worked on their homework in the afternoon. While mommy was on the phone, Joanne was just standing there doing nothing. After mommy got off the phone, Joanne said she was waiting for her help. Mommy was upset that Joanne wasted her time waiting instead of putting the problem aside and worked on something else until mommy became available. She had 4 other things to do, but she chose to waste her time waiting. Besides, they have piano lessons in the late afternoon, she was not able to complete her homework in time for the school open house tonight. Again, mommy lectured Joanne on being too lay-back while doing her homework.
Daddy got off work a little early to take Jasmine to the open house. Joanne stayed home to do her homework. Mommy stayed to watch her. Mommy wanted Joanne to know that she made mommy to miss the open house too because she wasted her time unwisely. Since all her classmates would ask why she missed the open house, so everyone would know about her bad decision.
Jasmine showed daddy her work in joint class projects and the portfolio of her other individual projects. Jasmine's Chinese teacher said she was very impressed by Jasmine's ability to remember a large number of Chinese characters they learned. Daddy told her that Jasmine impressed her grandma too. The teacher told Jasmine she should have shared that great achievement with the class. Jasmine showed daddy Joanne's work too. The open house only lasted one hour, we left after the classroom were closed.
When we got home, Jasmine joined Joanne in finishing up their home work. They finished everything and were in bed before 10pm.
Friday, May 19, 2006 (8y+9m+13d)
The twins went to school as usual. Daddy took the afternoon off to have a minor medical procedure done in the afternoon. The twins were surprised that daddy came home early. Daddy took a nap until dinner time. We played mahjong in the evening. Jasmine was very enthusiastic in playing the game. Joanne was indifferent, but she played along. Joanne let daddy help her, but Jasmine insisted she could manage on own. We played only three rounds. Jasmine won a self picked game of score 5 (fan), she won 32 chips from each of us. Joanne won a score-3 game from mommy, she won 16 chips from mommy and 8 chips from the rest of us. Mommy won a score-3 game from Jasmine, she won 16 chips from Jasmine and 8 chips from the rest of us. It was bed time after 3 rounds and daddy was the big loser, and Jasmine was the big winner of the night.
Saturday, May 20, 2006 (8y+9m+14d)
The twins warmed up on the piano in the morning. They went to the annual recital at 10:30am. This year's theme was ensembles, composition and improvisation. The twins played "The Music of the Night", a duet piece. They played quite well except that Joanne missed a few notes. Jasmine kept on playing and Joanne was able to catch up after a few beats. In our opinion, the twins made the least mistakes among the other students in the whole recital. Jasmine also completed her own composition titled "the frog", but she didn't get to perform it to the audience. At the end of the recital, the kids received a trophy for the performance and their certificates from the music exam they took some time ago.After the recital, the twins and Benjamin played in the lawn outside the recital hall for awhile. We went to lunch with Ben's family afterwards. When we came home, daddy stayed home to work on the video footage of the recital. Mommy and went went to play tennis with Ashley's family.
In the evening, we went out to dinner with Benjamin and Christopher's family at a Thai Restaurant in Sunnyvale. The restaurant was quite busy and the kitchen couldn't keep out with the orders. We came out of the dinner quite late. It was bed time for the twins went we came home.
Sunday, May 21, 2006 (8y+9m+15d)
We slept in for the Sunday morning. Sonya's mom called us to ask if we were interested in watching Sonya's dance performance. We went out to have a quick brunch before heading to Sonya's 2pm performance. The performance was held at Evergreen Valley High School in South East San Jose. Traffic was slow due to a heavy down pour and some accidents on the highway. We barely made it on time even though we started out with almost an hour to spare. The show was actually the recital of the students from a Chinese Dance school. Jana's family was invited to see the show too. Sonya's parents ere helpers and they needed to stay behind for the 7pm show too. Sonya left with Jana's family while her parents stayed behind. We were out of there at around 4:30pm. The twins looked tired, Jasmine said the show were boring.We invited Jana's family to our place, so that the kids could play for the rest of the afternoon. We went out to Pasta Pomodoro for dinner. The restaurant was busy, we had to wait for quite a while for the table. Jana's dad insisted that he would treat us though we wanted to split the bill. The twins wanted to visit the Borders bookstore next doors before going home.
When daddy came upstairs to tuck in the kids, Joanne was missing. Later she said she was hiding under the bed. Daddy told her it was up to her to crawl under the bed because she would need to deal with the spiders herself. Joanne said there were no spider web under the bed.
Monday, May 22, 2006 (8y+9m+16d)
The twins went to school as usual. Daddy continued to work late, but came home in time to tuck the twins in bed.
Tuesday, May 23, 2006 (8y+9m+17d)
The twins went to school as usual. Joanne called daddy at work about a tooth that came off. It was the lower third tooth from the middle, I think it is a canine. She put the tooth under her pillow. She wondered if she should stay up to see the tooth fairy. She said that some of her friends stayed up to wait for the tooth fairy, but all ended up running to their parents' room because it was scary to stay up at night.
Wednesday, May 24, 2006 (8y+9m+18d)
The twins went to school as usual. They had piano class in the afternoon. Daddy made a DVD of the piano recital and made a copy for Benjamin and one for the piano teacher. The piano teacher were surprised to get a DVD so soon because she only planned to do the same with her own recordings starting in summer. Jasmine got a runny nose today. Joanne had that for several days already, we were not sure if she caught a cold or just allergic to the pollens in the air.
Thursday, May 25, 2006 (8y+9m+19d)
The twins went to school as usual. They had piano lesson in the afternoon. Joanne's runny nose had recovered. Her appetite was back too. The twins did their famous person report. Joanne wrote about the astronaut Shannon W. Lucid. Jasmine wrote about Hilary Clinton. Both of them typed their report on the computer.
Friday, May 26, 2006 (8y+9m+20d)
The twins went to school as usual. Daddy didn't work late today. Mommy prepared a nice dinner to welcome daddy back to the dinner table after more than a week of overtime work. After dinner, we went to Annette's place. The twins showed Annette and her friend how to finger-knit a rope using some yarns. They learned that from Shannon who learned it from her girl scout troop.
Saturday, May 27, 2006 (8y+9m+21d)
Mommy originally planned to go to Monterey Bay Aquarium with Jocelyn's family. However, Jocelyn had no interest in aquarium, she preferred to shopping at Gilroy Premium Outlets. We had lunch before we left. We spent the afternoon shopping in Gilroy.Daddy bought two pairs of shoes from Skecher because they had the second pair at half price sales as Memorial Day sales. Jasmine bought a pair of Addidas instead. Joanne wanted to buy a pair of Nike, but she couldn't find what she liked. The highlight of the day was at KB Toys where the twins bought some toys at low price including a pair of Nano puppies. The twins had been asking for Tamagotchi because some of their classmates had them. Daddy didn't buy them because they were expensive. They found these electronic puppies in the store that only cost $5 a piece. It worked just like Tamagotchi, the puppies needed to be fed and cleaned up after they peed and pooped. They wanted to buy them using their own money. The twins had asked for allowance because their friends had that. Mommy gave them $10 each for this month. They had been busy finding ways to spend their money. Daddy were not familiar with the new system yet and offered to pay for their purchases. Jasmine often insisted that she would buy her own stuffs whenever she could afford it. She still lacked the concept that if she saved the money in this purchase, she would be able to afford more in the next. We had dinner at the Applebee restaurant next to the mall.
Though it was an unseasonably cold day at Gilroy, the twins wanted to soak in the bath when they came home. Daddy also wanted a hot bath because the feet and lower back hurt after shopping for an afternoon.
Sunday, May 28, 2006 (8y+9m+22d)
We had lunch with grandma Chui. Grandma didn't want to choose a restaurant. We let the twins pick and they chose our favorite Malaysian restaurant.We returned home after some quick grocery shopping for party food. We went home waiting for the guests to arrive. At around 3:30pm, the guests started to arrive. We invited 3 families to the tennis/pot luck dinner party. Ashley and Brandon came with their parents Winston and Anna. Jasmine came with her parents Andy and Annette. Rachel, Jimmy and Nicole came with their parents Bernard and Ellen. They then went to the park to play tennis and other games. When they came back, the kids had fun with the karaoke system and the playstation video games. The adults were busy preparing for dinner. After dinner, the adults started a game of mahjong and the kids continued on their video games. Rachel's family left early because her toddler sister Nicole needed her beauty sleep.
Jasmine's mom was a first grade teacher. She brought along some school papers to grade. She offered $5 to Ashley for helping her grade the papers. Ashley needed only to match the papers against a key (checked) answer page. When Jasmine heard about the offer, she dropped her game play and joined the work. Five dollar equals one month of her allowance. She even did some pages with a 100 arithmetics problems with no key page. i.e. she actually checked the arithmetics by doing the 100 calculations herself. Even Joanne and every kids jumped in to help. However, to their disappointment, mommy wouldn't let the twins take the money because they were overpaid. Besides the original job was $5 for one kid and now all 5 kids wanted $5 each. The party lasted past 11pm.
Monday, May 29, 2006 (8y+9m+23d)
It was Memorial Day Holiday. No school for the twins and no work for daddy. We slept in late in the morning. Ashley's mom called us. Their kids were going to watch "Over the Hedge". After a quick brunch, we rushed to the cinema at the Great Mall. Ashley's mom took all the kids in for the kid's movie. The adults went to see "Da Vinci Code". The kids movie ended earlier, and they went into the Great Mall for snacks until the rest of us came out. We parted our way at around 4:30pm. When we returned home, the twins spent some time practicing piano and their homework.We had leftover for dinner. While mommy was cleaning up the kitchen, she slipped her hand and dropped the blender jar on the floor. It shattered into pieces. The twins came to see the broken glass but were sent away for safety reasons.
Joanne put some apple cider into the ice cube maker to make popsicles. Jasmine told Joanne that she wouldn't have time to insert the toothpicks because they needed to go to bed right away. Joanne said daddy could help. She even set the timer on the microwave oven to remind daddy to insert the tooth picks when the ice cubes became half frozen.
Tuesday, May 30, 2006 (8y+9m+24d)
The twins returned to school after the Memorial Day long weekend. They forgot that their report on a famous person of their choice was due. Apparently, many other classmates forgot about the deadline too. They had already written the draft on paper. They typed up the document when they came home. Daddy work overtime. The twins called daddy on the phone because they need help printing their reports. Daddy came home after they had already fallen asleep.
Wednesday, May 31, 2006 (8y+9m+25d)
The twins went to school as usual. They had piano class in the afternoon.
Thursday, Jun 1, 2006 (8y+9m+26d)
The twins went to school as usual. They had piano lesson in the afternoon. Mommy decided that this would be the last lesson with this teacher. Though the twins had fun with the ensemble and improvisation, they didn't learn their skill too well with this teacher. Besides, this teacher always talk much too long to other parents between classes and often cut into the twins' lesson time. Joanne always complained that the lesson seems too short for her.
Friday, Jun 2, 2006 (8y+9m+27d)
The twins went to school as usual. In the evening, Hing invited us to their home for a BBQ dinner. Siu Ling bought a batch of beef steaks from her butcher brother at a good price. Hing offered the BBQ service. We offered to pay for the meat. The kids played on their own. The adults gathered around the dining table to chat until 11pm.
Saturday, Jun 3, 2006 (8y+9m+28d)
The twins went to Terence's birthday party at the miniature golfland. They had pizza for lunch. Daddy stayed home all afternoon. After the party, Terence followed Claire's daddy to come to our place. Terence's parents needed to take a break after organizing his birthday party. A few of Terence's birthday party guests continued the party in our house. Christopher's family also came to our house after the party. We set up a tent in the backyard to let the kids play in it. At dinner time, Terence was picked up by his parents to go to a family dinner. The rest of us went out to dinner too. After dinner, we gathered again in our place in the evening. The kids watched "The Wild" on DVD. The adults chatted about various topics, especially on how to raise children.After the guests had left, daddy and the twins camped out in the backyard overnight.
Sunday, Jun 4, 2006 (8y+9m+29d)
Daddy was waken by the birds at dawn. We continue to sleep despite the sun shining into the tent. We got up at a quarter to nine. Daddy and the twins We went out to lunch with basically the same group of people from last night's gathering. After lunch, mommy took the twins to Ashley's birthday party. Daddy took a ride with Christopher's family to return home. They stopped by a Mercedes Benz dealership to look at their dream cars. They were interested in the R350 and E350. Christopher said he liked the sport car in the show room. He really had an expensive taste, he liked the SLR McLaren listed at $465K. It was probably the most expensive car in the lot.Daddy took down the tent and packed it up in the afternoon. The twins enjoyed a great time in Ashley's poolside party. They swam on and off for more than two hours. They also had fun playing games on the poolside. They came home after they had pizza for dinner.
Monday, Jun 5, 2006 (8y+9m+30d)
The twins returned to school after the weekend. Recently, the twins were busy using the computer to do their writing projects. The twins just handed in a famous person report last week. This week they have a joint writing project with their classmates. After dinner, Jasmine was busy typing Rachel's draft into the computer. Joanne's group project was typed by Sonya, so Joanne was not busy at all. Joanne was helping Jasmine by reading it out loud. Daddy suggested Jasmine to just read and type on her own to save time. Joanne got tired quickly anyway and she went to bed early. We sent Jasmine to bed before she finished typing.
Tuesday, Jun 6, 2006 (8y+10m)
The twins are 8 year and 10 month old today.
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started on Jun 14, 2006