jonathan’s blog

We made it home!  Here we are, on the VERY LAST portion of the journey…Denver to KC, 600+ miles.  Helen Cheng made a ton of gift bags for our kids to open on different days of our ride home, here they are ready to tear into the last of them.  Thanks Helen!…that was so thoughtful.

Mile 2168, home.

In all honesty…this last portion was REALLY hard.  Straight, flat, boring…and lots of miles, a new family record.  Also…just 90 miles from home, I got a ticket!  I was so careful the whole way, watching the speed, setting cruise control…but then we happened on a ‘construction zone’!…and the speed limit dropped to 50 mph.  I got caught doing 63mph!  Come on!…almost home!

And then…not knowing which streets near home have been closed off for construction, we were greeted with this!

But finally, at 3:15AM…almost exactly 12 hours from when we left Denver…we arrived!  Thanks everyone, for your prayers of safety.  We are zonked…going to get some rest and will post more about the journey home in the next few days.

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One more day of driving.  605 miles.  Denver to Kansas City.  1.5 states…half of Colorado and all of Kansas.  Pretty much nothing to see…but we are almost home.

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A couple of days ago, we started our long trek back to KC.  Here we are enjoying one of our last meals in LA…shabu shabu with Grandpa and Grandma.

Mile 0, San Gabriel California, one block from Half and Half.

A VERY content Noah and lollipop.

Ben and Eunice (Ayi-3 and Uncle-3) are doing this first leg of the trip with us.  Here we are stopping for Rubio Fish Tacos!

Mile 255, Las Vegas, Nevada.

We are staying in Las Vegas, off the strip.  Not off the strip, like the Hard Rock…we are WAY OFF the strip, like almost 10 miles west.  And it’s actually really nice.  We are in a non-smoking/non-gaming facilities.  It kind of feels like Palm Springs (desert, 100+ degrees, swimming pool).  Here are the kids, conked out on the sofa pullout.

We will be in Vegas for a bit longer…then on to Salt Lake City, Utah and then a couple of nights in Denver, Colorado.

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LA Traffic…definitely DON’T miss that.  Wow…even on the weekends!  I took this…just to remind myself.

We made it out to the LA Farmer’s Market…

…and has some really good Brazilian BBQ.  Yum!

This time out, the American Girl store was OPEN, and the girls got to tour the store.

A perfect day for the trolley.

This is NOT from the Groove…but I thought I’d throw it in just for fun.  I’m going to miss this food!

Here we are at Dennis’s Birthday Pool Party.  Jeff is showing off his amazing soccer skills…doing the old head butt the soccer ball trick.

Bekah and Mandy posing for the camera.

Sorry!  No actual pictures of Dennis or his party…too busy keeping track of all the kids to take more pictures.  Anyway, just a couple more days in LA, and then we’ll be starting in on our return trip.

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Yes…we are still in Los Angeles!  We decided to stay a bit longer, so that we could finish up the NBA Finals.  Go Lakers!!!

Just kidding!  We decided to stay longer because there are just TOO MANY things to do, people to see, friends to catch up with.  Here we are swimming again!  Kay…I think she’s biting off more than she can chew.  She can’t even really dog paddle yet…but she’s trying here to swim freestyle.

Bekah on the other hand, loads up on the flotation devices.  Here she has an inner tube, a float vest, and arm floaties.  I think more than 1/2 her body was floating OUTSIDE the water.

Noah gets a bit nervous in the water.  He won’t even touch his vest and arm floaties…but as soon as Emily called this thing a “boat”….Noah couldn’t get enough of it.

Thanks for taking them all around the pool Ayi-4!

Maybe this is why he gets nervous in the water…

By the end of the afternoon…the pool was full of kids!!!

And what’s this!?!?  Yes!…it’s the OCEAN!  The Pacific Ocean!  KC is totally landlocked.  The kids have been bugging to see the beach, so we braved LA traffic and made it out to Santa Monica.

And look at this…who would have known?  The Santa Monica Pier is the official END of the historic Route 66!

Kay…if she isn’t picking flowers, she’s sifting for sea shells.

The rides on the pier all looked too scary for the kids, so we decided to take them on the carousel.  We strolled our kids all the way to the carousel, only to find it closed for the day!  We decided to let them run barefoot in the sand, for a bit, to cheer them up.

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Congratulations Eileen!

Everyone…except Dad.  He was no where to be found…and without his mobile phone.

This was one of Eileen’s senior projects.  The wheelchair, not the painting in the background.  It made it to the front page of the UCLA Daily Bruin!

Getting ready for college?

The Graduation dinner celebration was at the Liu’s…here we are singing and praying before the meal.

And wow what a meal!  Eileen had the “Taco Man” cater food.  Here he is, setting up.

Freshly heated taco tortillas…

Fresh salsa bar…pico de gallo, guacamole, cilantro…

And super tasty rice, beans, and your choice of tacos…fish, carne asada, chicken, carnitas…I must have had upwards of 10 tacos that night!

Congratulations Leener!

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Noah, climbing chairs, and falling on tables…

Good thing it was at Dr. Chang’s house!  Nothing like having a doctor on the premises.

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Wow.  I had NO idea how much I missed West Los Angeles.  A couple of days ago, Emily and I took the family out to this once very familiar territory…and I had such a bittersweet time.  Up till now, we’ve been in the San Gabriel Valley, surrounding ourselves with family, friends, great Asian food and snacks…needless to say, it’s been a total blur!  So this was a nice little time for our family to be together and reminisce.

We started with a non-medical visit to our doctor that delivered Kay, Bekah, and Noah.  She has a new office and a book out…we thought it would be great just to say hi.  Bittersweet.  So nice to say hi…but so so so sad that she is no longer our doctor!  Having a world class OB practicing out of Cedar-Sinai really sets the bar impossibly high.  Then we walked around Beverly Hills, Century City, the Farmer’s Market, and The Grove.  The craziest part?…we could have done any number of other things, Santa Monica, 3rd Street Promenade, Westwood, Westside Pavilion…all within just 10 minutes of each other.  10 minutes!  In Lee’s Summit, It takes me 10 minutes JUST to drive out to the 71 highway!  Granted there’s traffic, no IHOP, and a host of other things…but this isn’t a pros/cons post, just a day for me to realize what a great 10 years it was living in West LA.

Here we are at Furaibo…some of the best Izakaya around!

Bekah went nuts over the chicken wings…she must have eaten through 6 or 7 of them.  She’s really good at cleaning all the meat off.

Here we are at the Farmer’s Market, getting ready to dig into a Strawberry, Banana, Gnutella Crepe.  I made each of the kids promise to ‘pace’ themselves as we ate…NOT putting the next bite in until they were done with their current bite.  Still…they devoured that crepe in record time, and probably looked like total animals to the people next to us.

Yummy Pinkberry!

A crowd had gathered to catch the end of a very disappointing Game 4 of the NBA finals.  Go Lakers!…Game 6 and 7, home court, you gotta pull this off!

So sad…the American Girl store was closed before we got there.

I miss you Westside!

On a different day, we spent some time with Emily’s Mom at the Huntington Library.  She LOVES nice scenery and photo opportunities…so this was a big picture day.  Here we are in the Chinese Garden.

And now the Japanese Gardens…

Noah and Lina found this little tree-seat tucked away beside a creek.

Getting little rocks out of their crocs…

Kids do the funniest things.  I sat on a rock to rest, Lina climbed up on one next to me…that must have reminded her of a bed?!  She pretended to fall asleep.

We let them run off the rest of their energy before nap time.  For some reason, Lina and Noah thought it was funny to run and fall on the grass every few steps.  Here they are, having just fallen.

This.  This is just pure Japanese genius.  Not because I have a shinto respect for nature…no…this is sublime intelligence because of one very simple fact.  NO lawn care.  NONE!  No mowing, no edging, no weeding, no watering, no seeding, no re-seeding, no fertilizing.  NOTHING.  VERY tempting…

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Fun with Lina, Ayi-4, Ayi-3, and Uncle 3…sorry Ben, accidentally cut your face off.

Nicole celebrated her 3 year old birthday at Lacy Park.  Nice, warm, dry weather…I’ll take the dry over the humid midwest ANYday.

The Chang’s made each family a picnic basket, filled with sandwiches, cookies, candy, fruit cups…wow!

Friends, reunited!

Bekah had a blast on Mandy’s bike.  This was the first time I’ve seen her really “get” pedaling, and just took off, zipping all over the place.  Pretty nuts when you think that almost 25 years ago, that was me, on a bike, in this same park!

Children at play!

Two little cousins at play.

More swimming…this time with the Shao’s from KC.

Kay hasn’t learned the mechanics of swimming or treading water…but she’s getting really into holding her breath and going under, for really long periods of time.

Bekah won’t put her face in the water, but she gets suited up and just kicks around the pool.

JoJo in mid-leap.

Moses in mid-dive.

Noah sucking on a kumkwat.

The older folk, chilling by the pool.

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Mile 1498, Las Vegas, Nevada.

First stop?…Tea Station, Osmanthus Oolong Tea, iced, with Aloe jelly.  Yum.  Can’t get that in KC.  Ichiza, Japanese Izakaya…can’t that in KC either!

After all those days of driving, we decided to spend an extra night here in Vegas.  Leonard, Liz, Lina, Benny, and Jeff drove out to join us.  Good meals, good times…thanks for driving out!

This was the first time we’ve taken the kids to see the Bellagio Fountains up close.  They were completely blown away.  It is quite a spectacle when you are standing right in front of it, with the music, and the sound of the fountain jets.

Kay and Bekah enjoying the dancing water.  Lina dancing to the music.  Noah closing his ears from the thunder of the fountain jets.

We got adjoining rooms, so fun went from sun up till sun down!

Quite the squeeze, but we managed to get these three into the crib.

ABC Store…probably the closest we’ll get to Hawaii for some time.

Noah and LIna picking out tunes at Johnny Rockets.

Noah and Lina gulping down Frozen Hot Chocolate at Serendipity 3.  Kind of a strange feeling eating at Serendipity in Las Vegas, as opposed to New York…at least there is no wait!

Ok…enough food and fun in the sun for now…let’s get back in the car and head back to LA!

Going back to Cali…

Mile 1786, Los Angeles, California.  We made it!

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