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This journal is about raising identical twins.Ninety Sixth Month
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Wednesday, Jul 6, 2005 (7y+11m)
The twins are one month shy of 8 year old today. Jasmine woke up with a little coughing and a loose tooth. Mommy said she caught the coughing from Benjamin because he was coughing during the BBQ on Saturday. The twins' bodies were weakened in the cold after they wetted their clothes playing the squirt guns yesterday. The twins went to summer school as usual. The twins played with water again in the backyard after school. They practiced piano and played some card games. Joanne said she had a headache while playing the games and listening to the radio at the same time. Daddy told her that she must have set the volume too high in the ear buds. We went out to dinner with Terence's family. Jasmine looked very tired during dinner. On the way home, she started to have a runny nose. Mommy fed Jasmine some cold medicine and sent both twins to bed early.
Thursday, Jul 7, 2005 (7y+11m+1d)
Jasmine complained that the tooth fairy didn't come. Mommy told her that may be the fairy was too busy. Daddy said perhaps the fairy didn't want to come close because Jasmine was sick. She still had a little runny nose, but mommy sent her to school regardless. After school, mommy sent both twins to bed. After a long nap, Jasmine no longer had the runny nose. She had recovered within two days. Due to the extra sleep in the afternoon, the twins stayed up till 11pm at night.
Friday, Jul 8, 2005 (7y+11m+2d)
The twins went to summer school as usual. As soon as they arrived home, they headed straight to the computer. Mommy disallowed them to play on the computer from Monday to Thursday. They really looked forward to Friday and they wouldn't miss a single minute of it.
Saturday, Jul 9, 2005 (7y+11m+3d)
We went to Terence's home for lunch. Before we left, we drank some strong tea. On the way home, daddy had a bad dizzy spell, probably a reaction to the food or the strong tea. After we returned home, daddy threw up into the toilet a few times. Daddy stayed in bed for the rest of the afternoon. The twins enjoyed an wet afternoon in the backyard playing with the garden hose. The twins spent the day playing their computer games until mommy asked them to practice piano. They didn't go to bed until 10:30pm.
Sunday, Jul 10, 2005 (7y+11m+4d)
Daddy went up on the roof to do some repair in the morning. Joanne was supportive and checked on daddy a couple of times. Jasmine was busy playing her computer game all morning. We went out to Stanford shopping mall. The twins' cousin Samantha's family came from San Francisco. We had lunch together and then daddy and the kids went to a book store to browser books. The moms went shopping in the mall. It was 5pm when we parted our way. The twins looked very tired after reading for an afternoon. We sent the twins to take a nap. Joanne kept bothering Jasmine because she said she was not tired anymore. Daddy sent Jasmine to mommy bed so that Joanne wouldn't bother her. We went out to dinner with grandma Chui in the evening.Jasmine was sniffing her nose again in the car. Daddy said that she must have caught some virus again. Joanne asked how virus gets into our bodies. Daddy told her that virus enters the body through the muscous membranes. Of course, they continued to ask what is muscous membrane. Daddy simplified to say all the moist part of the skin such as the eyes, the tongue, the gum etc. Joanne said if she hang her tongue out to dry, the virus could not get in without the moisture. Joanne hung her tongue out and spoke funny for the rest of the trip home.
Monday, Jul 11, 2005 (7y+11m+5d)
The twins returned to summer school as usual. The students were asked to write their classmates' Chinese names. The twins got the most names written correctly.It was a very hot day today. MOmmy didn't turn on the ventilation fans to get rid of the hot air in the house. The twins' room was still very warm when they went to bed.
Tuesday, Jul 12, 2005 (7y+11m+6d)
The twins went to summer school as usual. It was again a very hot day. Mommy took the twins to Benjamin's community pool in the afternoon. Mommy sat in the shade, the twins and Ben swam for two hours.After duskm, mommy opened all the windows and turned on two ventilating fans to blow away all the hot air. The house was cool when the kids went to bed. The twins asked for bed time story and we continued with the monkey king story after a long hiatus.
Wednesday, Jul 13, 2005 (7y+11m+7d)
The twins went to summer school as usual. We heard that Benjamin caught a fever, probably from yesterday's swimming. Luckily our twins had stronger immune systems, they were unaffected. The twins went to bed after 10:30pm, no bedtime story for them.
Thursday, Jul 14, 2005 (7y+11m+8d)
Mommy had to attend traffic school because she made an illegal turn somewhere at a restricted zone few days ago. Daddy took the twins to school before going to work. In the afternoon, the twins follow Itaka home. Mommy picked them up after her traffic school. The twins practiced piano and played on the computer in the afternoon. They went to bed at 10pm which still qualify for bedtime story. However, Jasmine said she forgot to brush her teeth. When she was ready it was already 10:10pm. Daddy took that 5 minutes to tell a different story using the globe. It was the Journey to the West, the Alaskan style.
Friday, Jul 15, 2005 (7y+11m+9d)
The twins went to summer school as usual. They still had one more week of summer school. But we plan to cut class next week for a long trip north.
Saturday, Jul 16, 2005 (7y+11m+10d)
We took off at 7:45am in the morning. We picked up Terence family at their home at 8am. Hing, Lucy and Terence travelled with us for two weeks to Alaska. Seven people fit in our SUV just right with barely enough room for luguage. We packed light and asked Hing's brother to take some of our luggage with him.We didn't leave until after 8:30am because they missed the alarm clock and overslept. We drove north and was stuck in traffic near Berkeley. The jam was unexpected in a Saturday morning. We found out on the radio that I-80 was closed due to a triple fatality accident at 3am in the morning. After 7 hours, the road was still closed for investigation. We took a detour to San Francisco to go around the block. We were also got stuck in other kind of traffic within SF city limit. We crossed Golden Gate Bridge and the San Rafael bridge to get back on I-80 beyond the road block. When we were still in SF, we heard on the radio that the highway reopened again. We wasted like 2 hours in the traffic jam and detour. It wasn't a smooth start for our long journey ahead.
We took a snack stop at KFC. We arrived at Red Bluff at around 2:30pm. It was roasting at 108°F. It felt like a furance when we walked from the air-conditioned car to the restaurant. We had an Italian lunch. We arrived at Medford OR around dinner time. We checked into the Reston hotel for the night. We went to Porters Dinning at the Depot for dinner. The restaurant was built on a historical train station.
Sunday, Jul 17, 2005 (7y+11m+11d)
We had breakfast a McDonald's restaurant. The kids were very excited to get some Neopets dolls in their Happy Meal. We went to Crater Lake. We tried to buy tickets for the boat tour on the lake. The trip was sold out by the time we got to the ticket booth. Only one ticket was left. It was not enough for our group of seven people. The rim village was blocked off because the parking lot was full. We had to park outside the villege and had a long walk to the Crater Lake lodge for lunch. When we got there, they had already stopped serving lunch. We settled with hot dogs at a fastfood vendor in the parking lot. We spent the afternoon going around the crater rim and took a lot of picture of the beautiful lake. The twins ran away from Terence because they were bothered by Terence trying to squeeze his way between the two twins. Terence chased after the twins yelling "I am not playing tag with you!" We left after we shopped at the gift shop. We were low on fuel on our way down the mountain. Given that our trip didn't start smoothly, e.g. we were blocked in Berkeley yesterday, we missed the boat trip and a decent lunch today etc., we started to worry that we might miss the gas station too. We were relieved when we found one before we were out of gas.We arrived at Valley River Inn in Eugene OR at around 7pm. We had a nice dinner at the river-side Sweetwaters restaurant in the hotel. It was a long dinner. The twins were kinda disappointed when it was too late for swimming after the late dinner. We played UNO in the room before retiring for the night.
Monday, Jul 18, 2005 (7y+11m+12d)
We ordered room service for breakfast. We took a short stroll along the river bank outside our hotel room before checking out. We arrived at Portland OR couple hours later. We were looking for the Chinese garden, but we picked the wrong address and arrived at the Japanese garden. It didn't open until noon on Monday. We waited outside the entrance for about 15 minutes. We spent about 2 hours there. We went to old Chinatown for lunch. It was 2:30pm when we arrived. We had a late lunch and it was not good food. We picked up a newspaper and found out where the new Chinatown was. We checked into Portland Hilton early. We swam in the pool before going out to dinner. The twins dropped a dime to the bottom of the pool and had a lot of fun diving underwater to fetch it. On the way to the new Chinatown at 82nd and Division, the kids all fell asleep. That was understandable after a good swim. We drove around looking for supermarket and ATM to replenish our wallet and bottled water supply. We eventually woke up the kids for dinner. The restaurant was quite good, its quality was comparable to those in the Bay Area. It proved once again that old Chinatown in any city was really for tourists and not appropriate for native-Chinese visitors.
Tuesday, Jul 19, 2005 (7y+11m+13d)
We enjoyed the complimentary continental breakfast before checking out the hotel. We went to Seattle WA. We had a quick lunch at McDonald's. The kids were glad to collect more Neopet dolls from their Happy Meal. We spent the rest of the day at the Museum of Flight until it closes at 5pm. We checked in to the hotel to freshen up. Then we went to the Sky City restaurant on top of the Space Needle. It was Hing's birthday and he treated us a nice and expensive dinner while the restaurant revolved around. We had a great almost 3 hour long dinner. We enjoyed the nice skyline of Seattle and a beautiful sunset. After dinner, we went to the observation deck above the restaurant to see the city lights. We did some shopping at the gift shop before leaving. We stopped by the "Brick", a square in downtown Portland before returning to the hotel.
Wednesday, Jul 20, 2005 (7y+11m+14d)
We left the hotel and drove to Edmonds to catch a ferry to Kingstons (the fare cost $42). We continued the journey to Port Angels to catch a ferry to Victoria. We were on time for the 12:45pm ferry, but we were put on standby after 17 other cars. The ferry was full and we had to wait for the next one at 5:15pm. Again it was yet another setback in our journey.With more than four hours before the next ferry, we walked around town to kill time and had lunch at a local cafe. We had no problem catching the ferry (the fare cost $75) when we were at the head of the line. We locked the car and went upstairs for a snack and played some card games. Terence had great fun with the digital camera on his daddy's cell phone. After we came off the ferry, the Victoria Regent hotel was just a few blocks away. We checked into a two bedroom suite which overlook the harbor with very nice scenary. We walked around the marina area where there were many entertainers performing to the tourists. We watched a few shows on the street until dusk. Then we had a late dinner at a Japanese restaurant at around 9pm.
Thursday, Jul 21, 2005 (7y+11m+15d)
We had the complimentary continental breakfast before checking out. We left Victoria and drove to the Butchart Gardens. We had lunch at the restaurant over the Italian garden. We spent the day admiring the beautiful flowers and took a lot of pictures. We left after 5pm after some shopping at the gift shop.We drove to Swartz Bay to take a ferry to Vancouver (the fare cost $82) This ferry was on a hourly schedule and there were plenty of room. We got on with no delay. All the kids fell asleep before we arrived at the terminal. They slept through the whole voyage. Since the kids were sleeping in the car, we played card games in the car. The twins woke up just in time to get a glance at the ferry as we left the ferry terminal.
We checked in to Four Point Sheraton in Richmond. We walked to Sun Sui Wah restaurant nearby. We had a very nice Chinese dinner. We dropped of the kids in the hotel before we circled around looking for a laundromat. It was closed for the night but it has drop off service in the morning.
Friday, Jul 22, 2005 (7y+11m+16d)
We dropped off our dirty laundry at the two hour laundry service at 40 cent a pound. There was a minimum charge for 15 pounds. We had to pay $6 per load regardless. The laundry included folding too.We went to a restaurant to meet mommy's relatives for lunch. They treated us a nice dimsum lunch. Terence's family rented a car and they arranged for their own activity for the day. They went to the science museum in Vancouver.
One of mommy's relatives Barbara took us to the Granville Island in the afternoon. We had some drinks by the waterfront. We bought some fresh fruits in the Granville Market. Then Barbara took us to Aberdeen Center. While they window shopped in the mall, daddy went for a hair cut. The twins found two computers at the barber shop and they surfed the Internet there. After we parted with Barbara, we went to have a Japanese dinner.
Saturday, Jul 23, 2005 (7y+11m+17d)
We went to dim sum lunch with Terence's family. Then we went to the aquarium in Stanley Park. The kids had fun at the aquarium. Jasmine and Terence especially enjoyed playing marine scientists to take care of the toy baby sea lions. The place closed at 5pm. We returned to Aberdeen Center before dinner. We went to dinner at a hot-pot restaurant with Evon and Ronald. Terence's family decided not to join us.
Sunday, Jul 24, 2005 (7y+11m+18d)
We returned to Aberdeen center to a brunch. We picked a Hong Kong style cafe and we all enjoyed our meal very much. Jasmine lost one of her baby tooth today. Mommy decided to have a haircut after lunch. The twins took the opportunity to surf the Internet again.In the afternoon, we went to Canada Place and boarded the cruise ship. The car was left at a long term parking lot. All the passengers had a lifeboat drill at 4:45pm. Everyone put on a life jacket and went to the designated muster station. The twins found it interesting to go through the drill. The ship set sail at 5:45pm. We went to a nature talk about Alaska before dinner. We had a very nice dinner on board.
When we came back from dinner, housekeeping had already pulled out the sofa bed and lowered a bunk bed from ceiling. Joanne was so excited about the bunk bed that she took over the bed right away. Jasmine put her loose tooth under her pillow and received money from the tooth fairy.
Monday, Jul 25, 2005 (7y+11m+19d)
The ship went through the Alaskan Inner Passage today. Mommy went to the gym and sauna in the morning. We sent the kids to the day care center on board. Terence loved it and wanted to go back after lunch. The twins didn't like it and wanted to stay with us instead. Daddy did the sauna and soaked in the thallatherapy pool in the afternoon. The twins took a nap in the afternoon. We had a formal dinner in the dinning room. The twins were excited to put on beautiful dress for the ocassion. We went to see a broadway type show after dinner.Jasmine took the bunk bed tonight.
Tuesday, Jul 26, 2005 (7y+11m+20d)
The ship arrived at Ketchinkan, Alaska in the morning. After breakfast, we took the tendor boat to go on shore. We walked around town for a while. We even took a shuttle bus to the Wal*mart to replenish our video tape and battery supply. When it started to rain, we returned to the ship for lunch. Terence's family got up early and they rode an amphibian vehicle to tour around town both by land and sea. Mommy went to workout in the gym and used the sauna. Daddy took the twins to the game room to play boardgames with Eddie. When they got tired, we sent them to bed for a nap. They played by climbing up and jumping off the bunk bed all afternoon. They didn't really sleep until very late in the afternoon when daddy forced them to. Daddy went to a piano concert before dinner. The pianist Vladimir Zaitsev was from Russia and he perform very tradition Russian classical music and then played his classical rendition of some Jazz and Beatle's music. The twins took their nap too later and missed the show. It was an infomal dinner tonight, though the food was as good as always.
Wednesday, Jul 27, 2005 (7y+11m+21d)
We slept in and went for lunch straight out of bed. While we were having the lunch the ship started to enter Yukatak Bay. The ship arrived at the Hubbard Glacier at around 2:30pm. Terence's room was on the starboard side and our room was on the port side of the ship. We watched the glacier from the balcony of our rooms. We ran around to each other's room to catch the best view when the ship manuvered in different direction. The twins watched for awhile and then spent all the time playing on the bunk bed. Daddy had to forced them back to the balcony to get a few pictures of them with the glacier in background. It was gorgeous and sunny when we watched the calfing of iceberg from the glacier. I overheard some conversations among other fellow passengers. One of the lady said she had been on the same cruise 5 times and she never had such gorgeous view of the glacier. In one of her trip, the captain cancelled the approach to the glacier due to poor weather condition. We went to the top deck to get a panoramic view of the great glacier. The glacier was so big that it was hard to get the sense of scale until one of the tendor boats were lowered and approached the 6 mile wide and 300 ft tall ice cliff. The ship departed at around 5pm and the weather started to turn bad. We were told by everyone that we were much luckier than the few other cruises weeks before us. We watched a show before dinner.
Thursday, Jul 28, 2005 (7y+11m+22d)
The ship docked at Juneau Alaska at around 8pm. After a quick breakfast on board, we went on shore and joined a whale watching excursion at the Auke Bay. It was a 3.5 hours trip. We had plenty to opportunity to see humpback whales surfacing for air in the area of Lynn Canal. They showed their flukes occasionally, but we didn't see any breaching activity. We also saw some bald eagles and sea lions on islands along the way. The kids watched a couple of whales and then sat insdie the boat. I told the twins that they each had a $70 boat ride for nothing if they didn't look out the window. When the shuttle bus took us back to Juneau, it was pouring rain. We got back on board for lunch. Terence's uncle York went to a bus tour to the Mendenhall glacier instead. One his recommendation, we returned on shore trying to catch the same bus tour. Apparently, it was too late in the day and we could not find the tour anymore. We went into the gift shops to buy souvenirs instead.In the evening, we watched a ventriloquist show after dinner. The dummy comedian Matilda was so funny that the twins were laughing out loud. They liked the show so much that they asked daddy to buy the DVD of the performance.
Friday, Jul 29, 2005 (7y+11m+23d)
The ship arrived at Sitka, Alaska in the morning. Terence's family went on shore early to join some shore excursions trip. We had breakfast with Evon and Ronald first. We went on shore by the tendor boats and walked around town to see some picture. Sitka was a Russian town before the purchase of Alaska by the USA. Mommy returned to the ship's spa for a massage session. We stayed on shore for awhile. When it started to rain, the twins nagged to leave. Evon and Ronald continued their shopping when we returned to the ship. We spent some time playing video game in the arcade.We had a formal dinner again tonight. We looked forward to the lobster tails.
Saturday, Jul 30, 2005 (7y+11m+24d)
The ship was at sea all day today. The ship returned to the Inside Passage again at around 4pm in the afternoon. We went to a nature talk about orca in the afternoon. We went to the top deck to dip in the hottubs. The twins jumped into the cold sea water pool to swim too. It was drizzling a bit and we had cold water falling on our hair while we dunked in warm water. At around 5pm, the ship passed through orca habitat. We got off the pool and returned to our room for a shower. While the twins were taking a shower, daddy went out to the balcony to look for orcas. We saw some Dall's porpoises swimming close to our ship, but there was no orca sighting.After dinner, we went to see a farewell show at the theater. All the performers from previous shows in the past week returned for an encore. The twins enjoyed the dummy comedian Matilda again. Daddy was glad that the twins got the chance to see the piano performance again.
At 11:45pm, the dining room was open for the viewing of the midnight buffet. At 12:30am, the culinary arts started to be consumed by the viewers. There were like three to four midnight buffet over the week, but this last one was a showcase of the presentation and arrangement of the food items and nice looking ice sculptures. We went through the buffet for the look. We didn't eat any because we were still full from the dinner.
Sunday, Jul 31, 2005 (7y+11m+25d)
The cruise ship docked at Canada Place before 7am. We had breakfast on the ship. The cruise ship had scheduled disembarkation process depending on each party's travel arrangement. We didn't have to make any connecting flight. We were told to be standby at 9:10am. But we were not called until 10am. It took time to go through Canadian Immigration and Customs. After we fetched our car from long term parking and returned to the terminal to load the luggage, we returned to Richmond for lunch. We started our return trip after about 1:30pm. We spent whole afternoon driving southbound on I-5. We took couple of stops along the highway to go to restroom. By late afternoon, we knew we couldn't complete the journey within a day. We stopped in Eugene OR for dinner. We were in the neighborhood of the U. of Oregon. We found an American Chinese restaurant at around 9pm. We had a late dinner and we ordered some chowmein and egg foo young. I have been in the US for a quarter century now and this was the first time I had egg foo young. Since it was not authentic Chinese food, I have been avoiding this kind of restaurant all along. We didn't have many choices at 9pm, so we settled with anything. Surprisingly, the food was acceptable and filling. We checked into a hotel nearby at around 10:20pm. After the shower, we all went to bed early. Right after we got in bed, we heard the train whistle of a frieght train passing a local intersaction. We all said "Oh uh!" We crossed our fingers hoping there weren't many trains throughout the night. When the train blew the whistle repeated, daddy said "Shut up!" and the twins giggled. It was a long day, we all fell asleep quickly. The trains whistle didn't wake us.
Monday, Aug 1, 2005 (7y+11m+26d)
We left Eugene OR after breakfast at the hotel sometime after 9am. We travelled south on I-5 and made several piss stops along the way. We had lunch at Applebee's in Redding CA. We were back in the Bay Area at around 8pm. We had dinner at Maruichi before going home.We first stopped at Terence's home to unload their luggage. When we got home, mommy was busy doing laundry and unpacking the luggage. We sent the twins to bed early.
Tuesday, Aug 2, 2005 (7y+11m+27d)
The twins went out to car wash with mommy. They took a long nap in the afternoon. They practice piano after dinner.
Wednesday, Aug 3, 2005 (7y+11m+28d)
The twins went out to lunch with mommy. They then ordered an icecream cake and went shopping at Mitsuwa. Mommy also visited the bank to withdraw some money.The twins played back Ms Shwu and her brother's piano duet recording. They learned the notes and played the duet on their own. They performed the duet for daddy in the evening. The twins dug up a Pokemon videotape and played it before dinner. They have not watched that video for years.
The twins took over daddy's bed again. Daddy slept on Jasmine's bed for the night.
Thursday, Aug 4, 2005 (7y+11m+29d)
Mommy played tennis in the morning. She took the twins along. After a two week vacation, mommy still could hit the ball right.It was a hot day. Mommy suggested to take them to ice skating. They turned down the offer. Mommy asked if they wanted to take swimming lesson. They said they just wanted to play in the pool, not taking lessons. They just wanted to play at home. When mommy took an afternoon nap, the twins didn't want to sleep, but they didn't bother her. The twins were good helpers. They fetched water and phone for mommy while she stayed in bed. They built some jigsaw puzzles in the hallway. They said it used to take them two days to finish, now it only took them an hour for the same puzzles. They wrapped a T-shirt over a fan to make a windsock.
The twins asked mommy when they could start riding the upside-down kind of rollercoasters. Seems like they are psychologically ready as soon as they are tall enough.
Friday, Aug 5, 2005 (7y+11m+30d)
The twins went to play miniature golf with Ben and Ashley and their family. Then the moms and kids went to lunch for dim sum.
Saturday, Aug 6, 2005 (8y)
The twins are eight year old today.
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started on Aug 13, 2005