 a photo blog summary by peter . april 20 |
We haven’t updated our blog for a few months now but it doesn’t mean there hasn’t been much happening for us. On the contrary, we’ve been so busy there’s hardly a weekend that goes by where we’re not doing something. So here’s a quick summary of what we've been up to since February…
We all know what comes around this time of year, Vietnamese New Year - "Tet". We visited the International District in Seattle to stock up on Vietnamese groceries and had traditional Vietnamese food for lunch. There’s a nice little eatery in "Viet Wah" (Vietnamese grocery store) on Jackson street that serves the best food I’ve tried in Seattle. It looks like a cheap little take-out store front but it has a variety of traditional Vietnamese dishes cooked just the way my mum used to. Seeing as it was "Tet", we had to try out the traditional rice cake...
Every few years or so, my birthday and Vietnamese New Year falls around the same week. This year, my 30th birthday fell on the day before the new year. That’s right – I turned 30. Three. Zero. It’s just a number but for some reason it has a dramatic impact on your how you perceive things. My resolution for this year is to not act and look my age. To start off, we had a party...
 amongst the company of good friends |
 a delicious tiramisu birthday cake |
 awesome presents |
 & fun games all night! |
…and followed it through with a few more game nights and sleepovers in the weeks to come...
playing the starcraft board game
a game of pictionary
ramon takes the best spot by the fireplace
For the curious, I share my birthday with Ronald Reagan, famous for his cowboy flicks…and Rick Astley, famous for that song and the internet phenomenon known as RickRolling.
Besides turning 30, we also said goodbye to negative gearing and sold off our Sammamish condo and our Strathfield apartment. With US tax laws in favor of home owners there was little benefit holding onto those properties.
With Spring here, it’s that time of year to pull out the gardening gloves and show a little green thumb in the yard. I have to say, we have one of the most colorful lawns in the neighborhood. Where everyone else only has flawlessly green lawns – our front lawn is speckled with dandelions forming a sea of gold and green – very Aussie if you ask me. After watching numerous home and gardening shows, Cristina and I have decided to take on a fairly big project of our own. The idea is to turn the backyard into a nice entertainment area that can be used all year round in the northwest weather. The first step was to remove all the tall trees along the south fence that was blocking our sun. Our lawn was getting more of its green color from moss than grass. So after a visit to Home Depot and Lowes, I armed myself with an axe, pick and shovel and got psyched up for some yard work…
 |
 |
 |
 |
We had some help from our friends who'd come over to lend a hand on weekends. Cristina did her part in the renovation by focusing on the inside and decorating the rest of the house. She went on a girls weekend trip to Portland, Oregon a few weeks ago with her shopping buddy Stacy to buy some tax free home wares...
Cristina has also found a new addiction - Craigslist - an online trading post of sorts. She's on there constantly, checking out the furniture section in particular. I don't mind at all since we end up paying much less for things this way. She's found quite a few good deals on Craigslist already...
Now let's get back outside ...
With all the branches we've accummulated from cutting down the trees in
our yard, we decided to build a temporary fire pit to get rid of them
and have some fun in the process ...
 |
 |
With the Spring weather being so nice, Keli & Lana couldn’t help but take breaks to bake in the sun ...
 |
even the locals dropped by… |
We're getting really good use out of our firepit, often inviting friends over for some sausages, corn, sweet potatoes and marshmallows...
 |
But the good weather was interrupted unexpectedly. At the end of March, it started snowing again and all our backyard plans were frozen for a short while...
A few weekends ago, my brothers met up with some business associates in Las Vegas and asked if I wanted to join them. With deadlines at work I couldn’t take the time off but I managed to squeeze in an extended weekend from Friday to Monday to meet up with them in Los Angeles. So I packed my bags and a massive box (which one of my brothers had ordered online and had delivered to my house) and headed down to LA.
Jon brought Tan along, as well as two of his workers as reward for their hard work. Since none of us really knew LA very well, we relied heavily on the iPhone and Google Maps to give us directions to places. I asked the guys what they wanted to see in LA and the responses I got, in no particular order, were: “police brutality, drive-bys, crack whores and south central”. Unfortunately, I couldn’t show them any of those things but did take them to Little Saigon in Orange County, Vietnamese Mecca in the US. We also visited Long Beach, Manhattan Beach, Beverly Hills and West Hollywood. We enjoyed various ethnic foods from LA including Vietnamese in Little Saigon, Korean BBQ near downtown and hotdogs from a Mexican stand by the sidewalk at 2am. I dropped off the guys for their flight on Sunday night, returned the rental bus and headed back to the hotel to rest before my early flight back to Seattle on Monday morning.
with my brothers, Tan & Jon
So this week marks 2 years since we’ve been in the US. As you know, the E3 is a 2 year visa so most of our Aussie friends have been busy renewing their visas in Canada. Cristina was still on our original visa so we had to book her an interview with the US Consulate in Vancouver. We stayed at a hotel in downtown Vancouver close to the Consulate with a nice view of the city and a little of the water front...
Interestingly, the security guard at the Consulate was Filipino and the interviewing officer was a former Vietnamese refugee who spoke both Vietnamese and Tagalog. The interview went very smoothly and I even had a candid chat with the officer about my own experiences leaving Vietnam.
Since this wasn’t an official holiday for us, during the day we were both logged into work and working from our laptops in the hotel. Bo had his visa interview around the same time and Christine was now working out of Microsoft’s Vancouver office so we decided to meet up with them for dinner in Richmond. Peking duck and crabs were on the menu. We waited a day for the passports to be returned and headed back to Seattle, but not before a little detour by some home furnishing stores in Richmond.
Back in Seattle, we decided to do another games and fire pit weekend with friends. The fact that it started to snow didn’t stop me starting the fire at all. Le & Bo on the otherhand, decided we had a perfectly good gas BBQ and opted for that instead. The grill was fine for sausages, but nothing beats the fire pit for marshmallows, corn and sweet potatoes.
 |
 |
Now that's a fire!
Oh, it’s Tans birthday today. Happy Birthday Tan! You know you share the same birthday as Hitler right?