Birthday gal

A few weeks ago K-bao celebrated her 8th birthday. Xiao Ah-yi and Jiu-Jiu joined her on the special day along with the rest of her family.

As usual, K-bao asked to go to her favorite Japanese restaurant, where she gobbled up numerous orders of unagi.

Afterwards, she enjoyed fruit and cake, while wearing a self-made birthday crown.

Uncle Calvin had also given her a Dubs shirt, which she sported proudly.

By the way, for the record, this evening was only the first of quite a few "birthday treats" that K-bao enjoyed over the course of the week. The celebration went on for a bit, which seemed perfectly fine for our little. 

Birthday

Happy birthday K-bao! Our not-so-little-one has turned 7.

K-bao had an active day. The morning was filled with a basketball game with her team, The Cats. Here she dribbles the ball upcourt before handing the ball over to a teammate for a blown assist.



After a big brunch, she and the fam were joined by Uncle Calvin for an afternoon of bowling.

Checking out the scoreboard with a concerned look

Check out that professional bowling stance

After dinner at a local Vietnamese restaurant, where she enjoyed garlic noodles, the family had a modest celebration at home with some of K-bao's favorite desserts, courtesy of Uncle Calvin. (We won't mention on these pages how much of these desserts she was actually able to partake in today due to other dessert consumption choices earlier in the day, of course).

Thanks for the sweets Xiao Jiu!

Sharing some hugs with K-Pop and K-Mum below.

Sweet

K-bao and sister C-bao helped K-Pop celebrate his birthday recently. 

With the promise of chocolate goodies ahead, all of our jovial natures came out quickly.

K-bao also wrote K-Pop a sweet note to go along with his sweet cake.

Vallejo

This weekend, K-bao was assigned to take care of her class mascot, Vallejo, and document their time together in a class journal.

It was a much anticipated couple of days, as the grizzled, unassuming stuffed lion is apparently very popular among the girls.

It was quite a packed weekend and little Vallejo had plenty to see and do. He started bright and early Saturday morning by cheering on his namesake team, the Lions, in their club soccer game.

That was followed by a visit to Golden Gate Park, where K-bao competed in the annual San Francisco Scholastic Chess Championship in the K/1st Grade category. Vallejo, who doesn't play himself, nonetheless gamely looked on while K-bao played four games over four hours.

Let the record show that that K-bao came away with two victories, a loss and one stalemate. Here she is with her medal, which she generously shared with Vallejo.

Later that evening, Vallejo accompanied our little one to a party at Uncle Steve's and Aunt Anna's place, where he joined the gang of "6-and-unders" running around hollering at the top of their lungs for about three hours. Here they finally take a quick breather:

On Sunday, K-bao took Vallejo to church at a new service on the peninsula, where they met with her three friends Dylan, Naomi and Emmett. This was followed by a birthday party with friend Alex, an occasion predictably filled with dolls, dresses and sweets galore.

Later in the afternoon, Vallejo, who was just about exhausted at this point, was dragged along by the ever energetic K-bao for further running and playing in the sun at a nearby park, where he met up with a number of girlfriends from the morning.

"Help! Too many X chromosomes!" cries Vallejo 

A full weekend indeed! Vallejo returns to school for a much needed 5-day sabbatical, after which he will resume his weekend adventures with another of K-bao's friends. 

Tea Party

To celebrate our little one's 6th, Aunt Christina (Xiao Ah-Yi) took K-bao out to a tea party at the famous Crown & Crumpet. K-Pop was one of the few esteemed guests of the birthday girl, along with sister C-bao and Aunt Leslie.

K-Mum was unable to make the event, but did extract a promise from the little one that she would limit herself to one sweet.

As soon as K-bao arrived, she picked out her one sweet - naturally, the one with blue and purple colors.

Throughout the afternoon K-bao spent an inordinate amount of time trying to figure out how to put only "one grain" of sugar in her tea, per K-Pop's orders.

Overall, it was probably the most high-society party our little one has attended, much less been the center of. Thank you Aunt Christina!

For Dad

K-Pop walked in the door tonight after a whirlwind business trip and was handed the below piece of art by little K-bao.

K-Pop learned that K-bao had drawn and written the above on her own initiative and by herself, with only a little bit of help from Xiao Ah-Yi (Aunt Christina) on the spelling of "Happy Birthday." What a delightful Welcome Home and Happy Birthday gift!

Birthday Politics

Happy birthday sweetie! It was K-bao's 4th birthday yesterday and here she partakes of her favorite dessert (also known as, "Oh my goodness, chocolate cake!!")

It must be recorded for posterity that K-bao achieved new levels of political behavior on her 4th birthday. K-Pop was late in arriving home due to a delayed flight, and rather than demonstrating her filial piety and self-control by waiting patiently, K-bao declared at 7 p.m. to K-Mum, "It's ok, let'sjust have the cake with you, me and Aunt Chris. I can't wait anymore!" After some heated negotiation, K-Mum talked the little one into holding on just a little bit longer.

Then, upon arriving home, K-Pop was greeted with the following: "Daddy, look, I picked out the chocolate cake for you because I know that chocolate is your favorite!" Left unsaid of course was the fact that (1) chocolate happens to be her favorite too; and (2) the cake would already have been eaten had K-Mum not intervened.

Birthday

K-bao's first time blowing out the candles by herself. A very humble little celebration with the K-folks and a slice of pie - on her 3rd birthday.

Uncle Birthday

Uncle Calvin was here for his 25th birthday a few nights ago.  K-bao was delighted to help celebrate it with him, not only because he's one of her faves, but also because it meant both staying up past her bedtime and lots of cake. Here she is enthusiastically joining in on both the Chinese and English versions of Happy Birthday.