Yesterday was Crazy Hair Spirit Day at school. Nat didn’t do anything crazy to her hair, just added some flowers and chopsticks, but Tyler got crazy!

This morning while lounging in bed, Nat started an almost “where do babies come from?” conversation.

“If someone wants to have another baby after having one, can they always?”

“Not always.”

“If someone doesn’t want to have another baby, does it come anyways?”

“Sometimes.”

“Did Auntie Marissa want a 3rd baby or was it a.. a…”

“A surprise?”

“Yea, a surprise.”

“I think it was kind of a surprise.”

My boy turned 8 today.

He celebrated at school with his classmates with a nice birthday song and he passed out bubbles to all his classmates for a birthday treat. The school doesn’t allow food anymore, so we couldn’t do cake or candy. For dinner, he wanted to go to a pizza place with an arcade, so we went to Cicero’s Pizza. He brought a stack of quarters and blew them all. Then we had dessert at Yogurtland.

Over the weekend, we had a party at home and Tyler invited 10 school friends. It was going to be an outdoor party and we were going to set up a Nerf arena but it rained, so at the last minute, we set up a few video game stations and a rainbow loom station. I was worried that it might get a little too crazy with so many people inside the house, but it turned out OK. Nothing broke and nobody got hurt!

A very sweet conversation I overheard the kids today:
Nat: If you got to have another brother or sister, which would you want to have?
Tyler: A brother
Nat: If I didn’t exist, would you want another brother or me?
Tyler: You

So sweet!

The other night I asked Tyler if he wanted to go with me to Luckys to buy bread, he said “Sure!”
When we got to Luckys, I grabbed a shopping basket and he immediately took it from me to help me hold it. Such a good boy! While we walked around the store, I saw my favorite frozen meal (Michelina’s lasagna mozzarella) on sale. I searched for that flavor but couldn’t find it, but Tyler found it way at the bottom and back of the freezer. He said to me “See, aren’t you glad I came?” After we paid and were walking back to the car, I said to him “Thanks for coming with me Bud” and he replied “Your welcome. I just wanted to be helpful. I just wanted to be with you.” He melted my heart!

Nat lost a tooth on the way to Chinese school this evening. We were all having a casual conversation in the car when suddenly, “OMG! My tooth just fell out!” So I gave her a piece if paper to wrap her tooth and she rinsed her mouth out at school.

When she got home, she wrote a tiny note to the tooth fairy on a tiny post it note:

Dear Toothfairy last time I asked for your signature it wasn’t true because you wrote SO Big and you are so tiny. I would like at least 5 dollars for this tooth. Is it true that you use our teeth to make dentures for old people? Yes? No? Circle one!

Tyler joined a basketball little league at the local community center. His teammates are mostly kids from his school. He’s been playing pretty well and doesn’t mind waking up early on Saturday mornings for practice.

His team:

Here are some videos of him making shots

NBC news visited Tyler’s class yesterday to meet one of his classmates who wrote a letter to Olympic snowboarder Jamie Anderson. Jamie tweeted that she got “the most precious letter” and the classmate was all over the news!

Tyler’s class is learning about the Olympics. Each student wrote a letter to an athlete. Tyler wrote to Shaun White.

The news video:
http://www.nbcbayarea.com/on-air/as-seen-on/245390701.html

Tonight we went to Dynasty Seafood to have Chinese New Year’s Eve dinner. It’s the first time in my life I’ve never eaten with (extended) family on this night. And it’s the first time I’ve had to eat at a restaurant on this night too. We couldn’t make it down to LA this year and Keng Yee Po went to LA, so we are on our own. It felt a little sad.


The restaurant was packed! We had a nice but expensive dinner. They only had a “special” menu tonight. Special = double price! Maybe this means that in the coming year we’ll be eating a lot of good/expensive food!


Gong Hay Fat Choy!

We celebrated David’s birthday with the bigger group on Saturday with dinner at Pacific Catch. It was a nice restaurant that serves Hawaiian Poke among other seafood.

Tonight the four of us had dinner at Cheesecake Factory. I think this is the 3rd year in a row we’ve been here for David’s birthday. It’s definitely one of Nat’s favorite restaurants.

Tonight we were doing some last minute speech practice for Tyler’s family tree speech. I swear the kids’ school work sometimes stresses me more out than my own work does! It’s due tomorrow, and he’s done a pretty good job practicing.

Here is post about Nat’s same speech: http://natalieandtyler.com/blog/?p=2205