Roadtrip to Dallas

It was a wedding of my friend, Erica Quinn. So we drove up to Dallas to celebrate…
With 5 hours of “Are we there yet?” and “What road is this?”, we made it and stayed at Doubletree Hotel near Galleria. Here’s a pic of 3 reasons for my existence.

The kids loved the day. They loved the beds and jumped for good 10 minutes. And the shuttle ride that was provided as well. The reception was at Tower Club on top of the Thanksgiving Tower in downtown Dallas. They were dazzled at the night view across Dallas.

However, the fun ended there for them and soon wanted to go home. So I took out my secret weapon: my Cowon A2 30 GB video/mp3 player. On that 4.3″ screen, they watched their favorite shows… for 2 hours! Even that’s long for them… but thank God they pulled through.

We left “early” at 10:20 pm and eventually went to bed near midnight. Kids were cranky from that Sunday. We went to Irving Bible Church with Mo and then had lunch with Mo and Ricky. I forgot how much they grew. It was near nightmare coming back. Overall, it was good, but boy are we tired… Here’s to a good night’s rest!

You know you are a dad when…

1. …you find out that the cheese slice for your lunch has a bite mark on it.
2. …you realize that your cars have as much toys as you do at home.
3. …you begin to sing your child’s favorite tune… without them near you!
4. …you put your ring on the other hand just so that your son can touch it while he sleeps.
5. …you buy 2 boxes of “Basic 4” just so that your children can eat it … every week!
6. …you don’t have pictures of you and your wife anymore…
7. …you think that getting 6 hours of sleep is plenty, and 8 is just unthinkable!
8. …you go to 2 bookstores to find the other 3 plush toys of Backyardigans so that they can be complete!

More to come as I remember some more…

“Basic 4” and the Family

What is so special about this cereal?! I don’t find it that special… but evidently, ever since Soojin, Anna, and JJ discovered this cereal while visiting the grandparents over Christmas, this is all they eat at least once a day!! We go through at least 2 boxes of it a week!! Yikes… oh well… eat away, I say.

Now JJ is throwing up…

He will be staying home… please pray for his quick recovery…

When I got back from church, JJ wanted to lean on me on my legs and wanted me to rub his back… and then he fell asleep.  I forgot how good it feels when the kids fell asleep on me. 

Anna & ER: Viral Infection

So Anna started throwing up early around 5 am pretty much every 10 to 20 minutes or so… When it continued on for 12 hours straight, we thought it might be food poisoning or stomach virus… Since she couldn’t eat anything or hold even water down, as she showed signs of dehydration, we took her to ER.

Ok. I took her to ER. Soojin stayed home for two reasons. 1. She doesn’t do well with needles. Esp. when it goes into our kids. 2. JJ needed to stay home. So we went to Clear Lake Regional Medical Center. My 2 cents. We are never going back!

4 freakin’ hours of just waiting! And that is after she was tagged “urgent”! By then, it was 10:40 pm. Anna kept throwing up while waiting and so we just sat close to the bathroom. The poor bugger didn’t rest or sleep the whole 12 hours either…

When we finally did get in, they had to put IV in Anna’s small vein to keep her hydrated… At this point, she cried and I was just about to… you aren’t a true parent until you have to see your child being put IV in. They did some blood test and found out that her white blood cell count is too high …even for an infection. So doc was worried that for girls, it could be bladder infection. Thanks to IV though, she was hydrated enough to pee… When that returned fine, the doc still wanted to do a CAT scan to just make sure… that it wasn’t appendicitis! So she had to gulp down Barium drink … and since she hadn’t drank much, she threw up some of it. CAT scan was fine… she got to ride the elevator in the bed.

I just wanna say that Anna was a good sport. She was superb even. I thought she’d cry a whole lot more but she didn’t… she just wanted to go home… and who could blame her as we were there for NINE FREANKIN’ hours!! Our health system sucks. The whole thing should’ve just taken 3, 4 top, hours. But 9?!! Even if it’s same, we are never going back… to where? Clear Lake Regional Medical Center! There’s St. John’s Hospital near JSC… that is now our official ER place. It’s 4:10 am… I just hope Anna gets better… please pray for her.

Soojin’s Naturalization & The Longest Day

So today was THE DAY for Soojin… she is now an American! 
Please send her your regards… she can now moan and complain about the politicians like we do!! 
So what made today one of the Longest Day for me?
Here’s the recap…

1. Get up at 5:30 am to drive the family to Cyfair area in this horrid cold rain!
2. Traffic near the area is horrendous as nearly 2000 naturalized citizens and family showed up!
3. We left at 11…
4. Caught lunch at Pappadeaux near Gessner… way too salty dirty rice & blackened catfish! 
5. Drove to Social Security Services branch in Pasadena and waited two hours in the car while she was waiting.
6. Got back home to Clear Lake and dropped the family off.
7. Took my ol’ Honda to Nick’s place for oil change & state inspection.
8. Went to Verizon store ’cause my i730 PDA phone touchscreen decided to go AWOL on me.
9. Got home at 6:30 pm.
10. Went to Bible study at Formosan Church in west side
11. Got back home at 10:30 pm

Whew!  I’m exhausted… and the phone not wanting to work with me didn’t help either…  Good night…

Video Skype & Best Buy Anna!

So we finally got video Skype to work with my parents!!



That’s Anna speaking with grandma. It was pretty decent… not to mention free!!

And here’s Anna getting into BestBuy plastic bag! No kidding!

Silly girl… maybe I can sell this to Best Buy?!!