We Found Our Tree!

Ice cream!

Carter in School

This is what Carter has been up to at school. I remember when Katie used to love to polish the mirror.

He can get away with anything

This is what Carter told me yesterday...

"Mommy, I yove (love) cupcakes and you!"

Such a Mama's boy.

First Full Week of School

This upcoming week will be the fist full week for the kids. Last Friday, Katie awoke me at 6:45 AM already dressed and hair done, declaring that she wanted to be the first person to school. I hope that level of excitement continues(but maybe just 15 more minutes later)

Carter must in the plane of development that involves talking. He is such a chatterbox sometimes it makes me spin trying to process all his sentences. The thing is, you can't just pass him off with an un-hunh or yeah, he has to hear you acknowledge that you understood what he said. Whew!

I just had to share one last thing, I was just thinking about how much Katie has grown up and this one even popped in my mind. When she was younger, she wasn't exactly sleep loving gal she is today, but one day, Jenny came home and laid her down on the bed and in a matter of seconds, she was out! no intervention at all...

Mini-Vacation to Carowinds

Wow, I didn't realize that it's been almost 2 months since our last update, given that 3 weeks of that was due to the fact that Jenny and the kids were gone to Taiwan, but no excuses to the other missing 4 weeks.

We just got back from a 2 day trip to Charlotte, which included spending a day at Carowinds

It was the perfect weather (think intense, melting heat) to play in the water

Thanks to Goo-Goo Alice for coming along and hanging out with us

Back to the Alma Matter

Took the kids back to Chapel-Hill after Church this Sunday, and had a great time

Carter does his Morpheus Matrix Pose....

I know gong-fu!

Katie is just chilling in the Pit



Hugs all around

FamLee, by Katie Yu

Here's a story written by Katie at school

Win I wus litl i luvd to plai

on the nex dai wee had a bruther

his name wus carter

carter take a nap

win carter wooup wee plade

wee had fun

Makes me glow a little bit inside

Almost 6

This weekend we had family over to celebrate Katie's 6th birthday party. All was well, until, Katie started opening presents.


Carter was mysteriously missing and not making a peep. Jenny's dad came in and said that Carter was unhappy about something. So we went to go look for him and found him pouting in the corner, didn't want any one near him.


The funniest part about this whole thing was that the day before Jenny and I were just talking about whether Carter would even care about Katie's birthday party and opening presents, I guess we know now!

If I can't hit the ball at least I look cute doing it

With Carter not showing much interest in sports yet we are branching out and trying different sports. Up next: soccer maybe?

From our Photo Shoot

The pictures are up

Go to http://www.phrecklesphotography.com/flaunt/#/page/7811/yu-family/

The password is "fun" (without the quotes)

Let us know what you think!

Day 4 Atlanta

Day 4:Centennial Park, Fernbank Natural Science Museum

We spent the morning in downtown Atlanta running around the famed Centennial Park. We hung out at the water fountain area where the kids had fun running around the jets of water. Jenny took a neat shot of us on top of one of the structures:

We also spent quite a bit of time at the playgrounds there. The girls really enjoyed spinning on these crazy chairs. I don't know how they didn't get sick!

Carter had fun with the swings:


I watched my first IMAX show at the Fernbank Museum (amazing Carter slept through that,even though we were in front of a 30 foot screen and loud sounds). Here are the girls at the entrance of the museum

Atlanta Day 3

Day 3: World of Coca-Cola, Zoo, Shaved Ice
So Day 3 started off at the world of Coca-cola. We got to sample lots of different flavors from around the world. Both Katie and I loved the Pinenut Candy flavor from South Africa. Carter's favorite is Sprite, from North America(go figure)


We even got a shot in with The Polar Bear(He was kind enough to put down Carter's cowlick for us with a fake paw lick)



After all the tasty goodness, we had lunch with dessert at the Varisty near Ga Tech University. It was from there we headed to the zoo. We saw the animals (including a hilarious gorilla who was probably so annoyed with all the gawkers that he put his feeding bowl over his head).



We also rode the carousel a million times, which ended with Carter giving his mommy a biology 101 lesson:

Jenny:Which Animal did you want to ride?
Carter:That one
Jenny:Whats the name of the animal? (she couldn't remember at this point)
Carter:That's a cheetaaah mommie!



This is what we pay the big bucks for!



Did I also mention that He was running around in the petting zoo touching all the goats? For some reason he did not want to touch the pigs(The pigs were acting a little bit restless and snorting every time you get near)


We ended the day eating out at the Super H mart. It was a lot of food for not a lot of money. Pretty yummy. But the main reason we drove out there was to tryout the shaved ice place called Sunos. It was pretty yummy...and I yet to feel the after effects of having had some condensed milk..

Atlanta Day 1 and Day 2

We're here in Atlanta on our Spring Break. Most of Day 1 was spent driving down so nothing really interesting to talk about. Our hotel, is the Hyatt Place in Buckhead. Its pretty spacious and fairly clean, free internet (yay!), and a pretty decent continental breakfast. And free parking is a big plus

Day 2: Aquarium, American Girl
We spent about 5 hours at the Aquarium, which is I think a record for us. Carter really surprised us by wanting to touch all the various aquatic animals in the touching areas. We touched a sting ray, horse shot crab, and a bunch of different anemones. We even got to check out a 4D movie, which I thought was pretty neat Go Carter!

Just think, that there was no possible way to top off a day at the Aquarium, we took the girls to a special treat at the American Girl store in Atlanta. I'm not sure what appeal those dolls hold but Katie and Maddie are such wonderful kids, I think they deserve a little bit of materialistic encouragement from time to time

We got to eat there too:

OCD to the Extreme

Here's Carter cleaning his bath toys...

Good manners start young...

This morning while we were getting ready, I was in the laundry room putting some things in the dryer, Jenny was dressing Katie in Katie's room, when I heard the toilet seat go "thunk". Surprised and curious (because I heard no one walk to the bathroom) I walked over and saw Carter taking himself pee-pee potty. After he was done, he puts the seat back down and runs off, giggling. I was like uh-oh, he probably made a big mess and as I peered into the bathroom I saw nothing...way to go son!

Weekend udpates

Here's the conversation that Carter and I had this morning before breakfast:

Carter:I want to eat over there(pointing to the living room)
Me:No, buddy, we should eat at the green table
Carter:My baby che-che over there. I want to eat over there(pointing again to the living room)
Me:No, buddy, we really should eat at the green table
Carter:OK. Just joking!

I think he's gonna turn out to be a wise guy...he just always says the funniest things, I wish I could write them all down. He's probably the most helpful 2 year old(ahem, excuse me, 2 and half) I've ever met. Every time I yawn, he asks "You tired dada?" or when I'm trying to fix something around the house I hear him come over and he always ask "My help dada fix it?". And when something doesn't work "Oh No. It no working!"

Then there is this thing about water, my goodness, he loves drinking water and at all weird hours of the day(I've heard it from him during the middle of the nap and also in the middle of the night). It haunts me : "I need waltar!"

He makes life exciting, that's for sure



Also Katie and I was able to enjoy some alone time together because Jenny had bought us tickets to the Cinderella ballet at the Progress Energy Center. We both enjoyed it and I have to give props to the pianist who provided all the music, by himself, the entire time. Simply amazing

Carter Has an Opinion

One of my favorite stages of our kids growing up is when they start to communicate verbally. It has been a long time since Katie said "tomoyo" for "tomorrow," or "you talk like a joke" for "you are funny." Carter's vocabulary has exploded recently, thanks to his friends at school. This is a recent conversation we had:


Me: Katie, do you want to go back to Taiwan this summer?

Katie: No, I want to go to Disney instead.

Carter: I want to go to Disney.

**Me thinking: WOW, Carter remembers our Disney trip from almost a year ago.**

Carter: I want to buy BIG che-che.
(che-che is car in Chinese, he likes to say the word "big" very dramatically)

OK, I get it...Carter thinks we are going to the Disney store in the mall.

A quick hello!

This might be a record time between posts. Sorry about that!

The kids are growing up so fast. Carter has been just spewing out words left and right, words I didn't even know that he knew! Its been making every day interesting and it lead to some testy moments with his Jie-Jie, which I know he absolutely adores. We've had fewer tantrums lately and I think that really coincides with his ability to communicate better(or maybe we are doing better at understanding what he's babbling about). He has been very busy at school learning how to do a lot of practical life works, like sewing and cleaning up. I've been trying to encourage him more to play some sports, I think he likes baseball because he gets to "hit" something and no one tells him "di-di, no hitting!"

Katie is continuing to mature as a young lady, although, according to the Montessori Theory, she is leaving the current plane of development, which is one of absorbing information and order and entering a new one where things are out of order and questioning of the information. In simple terms, she's getting just a tad bid wacky, and we're just rolling with the good times and the not so good times. At school she has really taken to reading and just the past few weeks she has been extremely precise at pronouncing new words instead of just sounding out the phonetics. Like her old man, she enjoys reading than math...that's my girl

Snowmen, finally

We finally had a good bout of snow which we could play in and I always wanted to build a snowman but we just haven't gotten enough snow around here lately until now:

OK, so we were missing some anatomical features, but, we made due and made "green" snowmen...

This is why we can't live without the iphone

What does Carter do at school?

Jenny and I often wonder what Carter does at school...

Here is a great picture

Kind of reminds me of this

World's most amzing helper?

On Saturday, I took out Carter's laundry from the dryer. All of a sudden I hear Carter (who possess the world's loudest run) come towards me and then the basket with his clothes being dragged out. Then 1 minute of quiet passed, so I tiptoed down the hall to spy on what he was doing.

He was doing this:

Little man was folding his laundry into his drawers...and he was putting everything in the right place too! Ok..maybe he wasn't folding, more like stuffing, but still, simply amazing. I guess all that money going to school is starting to pay off

Had to be there moment

As we were wrapping up dinner tonight, Carter asked for his desert, which today was ice cream on a cone. So we handed him a cone, then got sidetracked looking for the scooper where he suddenly exclaims "I need something in here!" and pointed to his empty sugar cone...

Ringing in 2010

Many of you know that we spent three days after Christmas at the Great Wolf Lodge in Williamsburg, where it "snows in the lobby" and "a warm 84.5 degrees inside all year long"

We decided that we would spend some time in Historic Williamsburg before we checked in to the "Lodge". It was very cold and windy but the kids were troopers

Once we got to the Lodge, we never left. I think the kids had a pretty good time, although the water was a wee bit colder than 84.5 degrees. Katie enjoyed the wave pool and using the tube


Carter did too...but was content with hanging out on the side


The girls and Carter also spent a lot of time playing the MagicQuest game where you go around finding artifacts in the lodge. Of course Junior -Mage-Carter was accompanied on his journey by his mama