Dan’s brother Ted and his fiancée Jackie are in town visiting for a couple days, and our whole family went out to dinner with them on Sunday evening at Courtside Thai in Old Town Fairfax. They love Mio so she got a lot of attention from them, and they got to meet 11 week old Mirei for the first time, too!
Our family had a very delicious and relaxing Thanksgiving weekend! Here are some pictures from the past few days…
The day after Thanksgiving brought a lot more hustle and bustle to the house. My brother Ted and Elisa had spent Thanksgiving Day in New Jersey, but came to join us for dinner on Friday, as well as Dan’s sister who visited us from New York.
Some more photos of our little cutie…Â When I put her hair in a milkmaid braid, she pulled on my bathrobe and called herself “Queen Mio.” 😛
Last Saturday, some of my closest high school girlfriends and I got together to celebrate two happy occasions — our dear friend Jen being back in town from Indonesia, and Debbie’s 30th birthday! We started off the afternoon with mani pedis, and then ended the evening with a potluck joined by our guys. I hadn’t seen Jen in five years (!), so it was so nice to see her again after all this time and hear about her overseas adventures, and of course I was thrilled to be there to celebrate my best friend turning 30!
July 26th marked our five year wedding anniversary, and while continue to have daily nausea and am not really able to enjoy food these days, we still wanted to keep with our tradition of going to a nice anniversary dinner to celebrate. My parents volunteered to watch Mio while we dined at Nostos, a delicious local Greek restaurant in Tysons Corner.
I’m so happy to be celebrating five years since our wedding, and a decade since embarking on this journey together! I’m so grateful to have such a wonderful husband; especially these days when pregnancy fatigue and nausea have flattened me like a steamroller, he takes care of Mio when he gets back from work so I can get some extra rest, goes on late night runs to bring me whatever food I might be able to stomach even when I don’t ask him to, and just picks up the slack wherever I am failing. Thank you Dan for being the best husband to me and father to our children, my best friend, biggest supporter, daily foot-masseuse, personal cookie baker and sandwich chef, and just being my favorite person in the world. To many more years together… I love you! ♥
Mio turned two yesterday, and while we opted not to have a big birthday party with friends this year, we spent the daytime playing outside and had a little get-together with the family in the evening to celebrate with BonChon Chicken dinner, birthday cake, and opening presents! Here are some snapshots and video from throughout the day…
I love this video that Dan took of Mio while we sang “Happy Birthday” to her. She seemed to know exactly what was going on, and that she had to blow out the candles at the end! I love her excited smile and clapping at the end…
…but then of course she thought the candles were candy and stuck one in her mouth! Very much a Mio thing to do. haha* You can see how much she loves eating the cake in the following video:
After cake, we opened some birthday presents together! Dan and I got her a dollhouse, while my parents got her a family of dolls to match. Her reaction was more than we had anticipated — she was ecstatic! 😀
She also got some sweet and generous gifts from Uncle Ted and Auntie Elisa!
While it was a small birthday celebration in comparison to the birthday party we threw her for her first birthday last year, it seemed to leave quite an impression on her. Afterwards, she kept saying “two” in search of the candle shaped like a 2, and has been carrying it around with her ever since! I also caught her serving her stuffed animals toy cupcakes and singing to them “Happy~ to you~” (since she can’t say “birthday”) yet. It warms my heart to see how much she enjoyed and appreciated the family celebrating her birthday and how much love she must’ve felt!
