Mexico

Over the winter break, K-bao & family made a trip down to Mexico to attend the wedding of K-Mum's cousin Uncle Stephen. Sister C-bao was also invited to be a flower girl. K-bao was not happy to learn that she had aged out of the program. However, the trip was so relaxing and full of sugar that she quickly forgot about the disappointment.

K-bao had a lot of fun hanging out with her cousins J-Cuz (cousin Justin) and K-K. Here she take K-K on a lap around the pool, and then comes down the water slide with J-Cuz.

The key attraction was, of course, the unlimited dessert buffet. No further explanation needed.

One of the nice highlights of the trip included an in-house performance of The Lion King at the resort.

Lucky 13

Over Christmas and New Year K-bao got to spend some time with K-Mum's side of the family. Indeed, with K-Great-Grandmum in the house, along with all the cousins, there were 13 happy campers in all. It was a festive gathering which extended over many days.

There was plenty of lounging time...

...but also some intense activities. In the below "friendly" Bocce ball match, the judge (Uncle Calvin) had to resort to taking off his shoelaces to measure the distance between the balls in order to resolve a dispute between the teams. (One can also see contestant Aunt Christina - clearly not fully trusting in the process - on the ground closely inspecting the measuring activity.)

"Pull that string tighter! Tighter!"

A highlight for K-bao was of course spending time with her cousins, particularly J-Cuz, i.e. Cousin Justin. The two built Magna Tile castles, read Bible stories aloud and even tested their arm strength against each other (refereed once again by Uncle Calvin). K-bao and sister C-bao also had fun playing with Justin's younger sister, Cousin Kaitlyn, who is a few days older than C-bao.

"Don't let my expression (or my 2 hands) fool you, J - I'm only using 30% of my strength"

"Don't try this at home, kids"

As usual, K-Grandmum, saint that she is, spent most of her personal time cooking up great heaps of delicious food to feed the hungry crowds.

Splash Wars

K-bao visited Aunt Carol, Uncle Will and Co. (J-Cuz, K-Cuz) recently in Redding, CA.

While Redding has its many charms, mild weather is not one of them, and K-bao battled 105 degree heat all weekend. Like a hot hippo, she sought out cool water in which to simmer down, and ended up spending 80% of her weekend in the pool.

Here she makes a grand entrance, courtesy of a live launch pad (a.k.a. Uncle Will):

"Cowabunga!"

In the water, K-bao amused herself by diving for rings, playing aquatic football, paddling around with her floaties, and splashing her cousin Justin (thereby setting off several rounds of Chan-Hu wars - which, for the record, the Hu's claim victory in). 

Wall Squat

If there's one person K-bao has met who might be just as competitive as she is, that would be J-Cuz, also known as Cousin Justin. Recently J-Cuz visited briefly and soon the two were comparing notes on all manner of things such as who could do the prettiest cartwheel.

Before long, the two were in a match to see who could squat against the wall the longest (in fairness, an activity K-Pop instigated - perhaps with ulterior motives to utilize someone's energy units faster). First, Justin set the initial record at close to 3 minutes. Then, K-bao bested him by putting 5 minutes on the clock. Justin then upped the ante to 7 minutes (!!). Finally the two went head-to-head, as captured below.

Let the record show that J-Cuz outlasted his little cousin in their first direct wall squat competition. K-bao is gearing up for the rematch already.