International Day

This year our ward had a International Day at church for our Christmas party. I was asked to participate and I was so glad to accept. How fun right?
I did Laos and Thailand since the people in my family are either Lao or Thai.
At first I was a little nervous and scared, couldn't decide what to make. I was afraid that our friends in the ward wouldn't like the food we make and stuff like that. You know different culture, different food and different taste. I decided to make papaya salad, spicy beef salad, sticky rice for Laos. Spicy meatballs with cabbage and Satay chicken for Thailand and for both country I made sticky rice with coconut juice with taro wrapped with banana leaves for dessert.
It was really fun to be there and see all those other countries and learn about them and try their food....yummy! Of course time chatting with friends is always a great time!

Our table. I didn't think to take pictures of it until the end of the program so this is when all the food was gone. Don't want anyone thinking I didn't bring anything! :) Look at Lien, he even wore the authentic shirt to show.

And for dessert! Sticky rice with marinated in coconut milk and Taro wrapped with banana leaves! I love this stuff. I was a little disappointed that it wasn't as sweet as I had wanted, but it was still sweet enough for every one to enjoy. These were the first to go! 

 

 

I really had a great time preparing the food for this event. Even though I cooked all day and didn't eat till we started the activity at church. I know crazy huh? That's how nervous I was...I was afraid no one would eat my food. So glad people were nice enough to at least try. :)
Makes the knee pain all worth it. Stupid knee why can't you be 17 again?

So I got to travel to Germany, France, Italy, Isreal, Japan and Mongolia. All within 10 minutes! I travel fast huh?
Too bad I didn't make it to Mexico, Chile and American. Oh well, I still have a lot of vacation time! :) Happy travels!!!!!!!

Fall leaves and Christmas tree

While the weather was good we were out raking leaves, we've been pretty neglectful with our leaves. They were all over the place...to make things worst our neighbor (who is a meanie) get professionals to blow them off their yard every year and those guys always blow some our way. So we get a lot of extra leaves from our neighbor. Lien has talked to the guys, worked for a bit and now it's back to the same thing.
So anyways the kids and I decided to go out and rake them before the snow and cold weather hits us. The kids wanted to play too. I have to say though, although it was fun raking leaves and messing with the kids, it was total hard sweating work. WOW! But we had fun.

After Lien got home we brought out the Christmas tree. Every year we wait till the last minute like literally a week or two before Christmas so this year we wanted to do it sooner. So it's up and running...now all it needs are presents! Anyone wanna help with that? : )

Do you have a Christmas tradition?
When we were kids back in Idaho. Dad use to take us girls out to the tree farm or the store where they have all the real trees for sale. We'd get to pick a tree. We'd take it home and dad would make a stand for it (every year he makes one out of wood for the tree) and we'd decorate it. We did that for a few years until we got a little older and dad didn't do it anymore. But i still remember those days! How time flies by. So no matter what, always stick with tradition, if you should change it please make sure it's a better tradition. Whatever you do, don't stop the tradition.

First time

Today Naree had her first piano lesson. It would have been a long time ago but either we were busy or our friend was busy. But i got down to business and did it. Very grateful to our friend for offering to teach Naree too.
We'll so glad that Naree is learning now, she is always playing with the piano we have at home. I got it about 2 years ago from this couple who were selling their parents home and didn't want to take the piano with them so they said if we could get it out of the house we could have it for free! Yippy!
It wasn't actually free for us since we had to pay someone to get it out for us. But it was still a steal. Needless to say when we were rearranging our living room this pass summer Lien moved the piano himself. He was really disappointed to find out he could do it himself, took him a while, but he did it. But oh well. What can you do?
Now i can't wait for her recital!

She's doing well, she already knows half of Old McDonald!!!

Happy Thanksgiving

I am very thankful for many things that the Lord has blessed me with. Thankful for my family, friends, food, a home, a job (Liens') and many more. I can say I am truly blessed. I have everything that I've ever wanted and even more.

This year my sister wanted to do Thanksgiving. Since she just got her own apartment she wanted to try it. I did a lot of teasing since this is also her first time cooking for us. Yikes!!!!
I'm so glad that she offered to do it. Usually every year we end up making Thanksgiving dinner and I'm usually always tired or pooped from cooking that I don't get to dress up or put any make up on.
This year I got to dress up (a little) and put make up on and make myself look pretty...or at least try to!

Food turned out well and we all enjoyed spending some time with our family. Nothing beats spending time with family.
After we spent some time with my side of the family we headed off to Liens' sisters house in Euclid. Had some more turkey and chatted a bit and then we were off to his brothers' house. We stayed there until 4 am and then I dropped the kids and Lien off at home. After that I head straight to my friends' house to pick her up for some Black Friday shopping. This is our very first Black Friday shopping so we were excited. Needless to say we were a little disappointed but we did score some good deals and we had fun. Not sure if we will be doing it again next year. We might just for the fun of it though! : )

I hope every one had a wonderful Thanksgiving. It's definitely the season to be thankful and definitely the year. It's been a hard road/year for a lot of people/families but be thankful that we still have our families and be thankful for the will to keep moving on.

God bless!

This is the whole family on my side except we are missing one older sister and her family. We miss you guys!

Happy Thanksgiving!

Champs

Nilun  and Naree had a gift certificate to Champs from their soccer coach this summer and never got to use it. So I decided to take them yesterday. It was a gift certificate for a free kids' meal. Who wouldn't like that? FREE!!!

The kids were pretty excited to go! I was too simply because I have never been to Champs and have been wanting to try it out.
The food was okay (i've had better) but our waiter was great. A very friendly and  nice guy.

Nilun is sneaky!

Our waiter was really nice. The kids' meal came with ice cream sundaes. Since we only had two certificates (Jasmine didn't play soccer this year) he said he would give us three sundaes and not charge me for the extra one. How nice!

Well the story goes. We had two certificates, one for Nilun and one for Naree. I gave him two but he came back with one and said i could save the one for next time. Kids eat free so we were able to just use the certificate for Nilun only and Naree ate free anyways. If i knew that in the beginning I'd have Jasmine pick something out of the kids' menu!

We had a great time there, joking and laughing about, well i don't know. Some of it was really nothing, we were just having fun. We ended our evening with a walk at Beachwood mall. Just checking it out, see what's on sale or if we can find anything. Needless to say, every time I go there, i always walk out empty handed. Nice place, but very expensive! Oh and that will probably be Nilun's last visit there. He hated it that there was nothing for young boys, toy/game wise!

Review

I've been pretty sick lately and been lacking on blogging. So to save you from all the bore i'll just do it in pictures. Spanning from a few weeks ago.

Oktoberfest a few weeks ago. It wasn't that impressive i must say. 

 

 

 

 

 

 

We made this cuties for Narees' team mates on their last day of soccer. Yummy! 

 

 

 

 

Naree was a Diva for Halloween. We missed our church's Trunk or Treat but she was able to go Trick or Treating with her cousins on Sunday! Nilun and Jasmine went with their friends this year.

 

 

My sister and her daughter were baptized this pass weekend. Congrats!!!!!