My cousin Yuko sang the national anthem at the 70th anniversary of Zenimura Field, honoring Japanese American baseball pioneers. The Oakland A’s were there too to salute the three remaining Japanese Americans who built Zenimura Field, a baseball facility at the Gila River Internment Camp that opened 70 years ago.
You can see the photos from the event below, and hear the audio of Yuko singing in the video below. She’s got quite a voice! I am so proud of my rockstar cousin. 🙂
Continuing from Day 1 in Los Angeles, we stayed in and relaxed for most of the day on Day 2. March 3 also happened to be Hinamatsuri, or Girls’ Day in Japan, and Megumi went all out to celebrate this special day!
For lunch, Megumi was preparing a Hinamatsuri feast and invited a bunch of her Japanese American girlfriends, as Hinamatsuri is a celebration of girls everywhere! We were all floored by how much food she prepared, all according to the traditional dishes that are served for Hinamatsuri. Of course, she put a few of us to work to help with the food prep. 😉 I love helping Megumi cook/bake — it’s part of the fun, I learn new tips and techniques, and all the effort is rewarded with good eats!
Our time in Southern California was short but so sweet! The LA portion of our trip was over, but we still had lots of fun times ahead of us up in Northern California. Stay tuned!
We spent the past week visiting our family and friends on the West Coast! We first arrived in Los Angeles the first weekend of March, before flying up to the Bay Area to spend the rest of the time with Dan’s parents before we flew back to Virginia this past weekend. We really wanted to make the stop in Los Angeles while we were in California, because some of our closest friends that we’d made in Bay Area had relocated to Southern California in recent years, and we couldn’t imagine making the trip out West without seeing them! Our dear friends Megumi and Daniel graciously opened up their beautiful home in Alhambra for us to stay in, and we have Estella and Brent to thank for picking us up at LAX and shuttling us around everywhere the first day in their spacious car. It’s not easy to host and take care of a family of three (especially when one is a jetlagged toddler), and we can’t express how grateful we were for all their thoughtful preparation and warm hospitality!
As usual, we took so many pictures throughout the trip, that I’m going to break our trip up into separate posts. Enjoy our snapshots from Day 1, below…
After lunch, we headed over to spend the afternoon at Manhattan Beach… while it had been 28 degrees when we left DC, it got up to 85 degrees in LA that day! Life is not fair… made us wonder why we didn’t just move down to SoCal instead of to Northern Virginia! 😛
For dinner, Estella and Brent took us to an awesome Taiwanese place called Kang Kang Food Court for dinner. They’d introduced us to delicious soup dumplings before up in NorCal, but this time they took us to eat crispy soup dumplings! So good!!!
After dinner, Megumi suggested we go get dessert at Fluff Ice, which serves fluffly Taiwanese style shaved ice! True to its name, it was so fluffy soft and light, and we loved it! 😀
When we got back to Megumi & Daniel’s we put Mio to bed, and stayed up playing board games together while munching on delicious desserts that Megumi had prepared! You can see the rest of our stay in Los Angeles in Day 2, which happened to land on Hinamatsuri!
Saturday was a busy day, with back-to-back showers! After the surprise baby shower for Pat earlier in the day, we went to Xiaoyi’s bridal shower to celebrate before she ties the knot with her fiancé Bochen in April! Her bridesmaids Patty and Jennie did a wonderful job at organizing and planning the shower, as you’ll see from the pictures below…
I couldn’t stick around for the dinner and bachelorette party portion of the night, but I’m glad that I could catch up with everyone and help shower Xiaoyi with love before she bids goodbye to singlehood! ♥ I’m so happy for all the happy occasions among my friends this spring! So much to celebrate! 🙂
Our dear friends Pat & Theo are expecting their second baby in March, and Theo and his sister Aivi planned a surprise baby shower (or “baby sprinkle” as these low-key parties to celebrate the arrival of Baby No. 2, 3, etc. are called) for Pat! Our favorite mama didn’t suspect a thing, and was very surprised to see her family and friends gathered together to celebrate the much-anticipated arrival of their baby girl!
It was a lovely baby shower, and we had such a fun time catching up with Pat and Theo and celebrating this happy occasion with them. Best wishes to the soon-to-be family of four! 🙂