Although our time staying in the East Bay was short, we were glad we could see some of the faces we have so missed since moving away! There were new babies to be held and kissed, delicious restaurants to be visited (both old and new!), and a lot of catching up to do with dear friends.
Lunch in San Leandro with the Kims! Our two girls + their two boys was a crazy mix! It was great seeing them and how much Jinwoo and Sunwoo have grown!
Can’t contain our excitement over Burma Superstar!
Mio and I while waiting for our table and for Uncle Ted & Auntie Jackie to meet us
We so missed their samosa salad! Just seeing this photo of it makes me salivate…
Garlic noodles and shrimp
After our dinner at Burma Superstar, we drove over to Castro Valley to have some ice cream with Aileen and David!
Mirei behind the wheel at Knudsen’s Creamery in Castro Valley
With Aileen at Knudsen’s Creamery. It was so great seeing her again, and we have to also thank her for bringing us to this delicious ice cream parlor!
We finally got to meet Aileen’s boyfriend, David! He’s the first other Yokoyama I’ve met (beyond my own family and relatives). Yokoyamas are all awesome, naturally.
This wasn’t exactly meeting up with a familiar face, but we have definitely missed our favorite taco truck! We had to make a stop in Oakland to get our fix of those amazing al pastor, chicken, and carne asada tacos (plus lengua for Dan).
Revisiting our favorite taco truck!
While we were shocked to see how much their prices have gone up in the past two years, the tacos definitely hit the spot!
Up there among our top most-anticipated moments of our visit was seeing a couple of our dearest friends, Tarrin and Jason, and their newborn son Theo! He was only two months old when we got to see him, and I was euphoric holding that teeny baby and sniffing his head. That newborn smell is so intoxicating! (Before you write me off as a complete nutcase, I urge you to try sniffing a newborn head sometime — I’m pretty sure you will agree with me.)
Meeting baby Theo for the first time. Tarrin and Jason make a pretty cute baby!
After eating dinner at Mintleaf, they took us to a new (to us, at least) dessert place in Alameda called Cookiebar!
Vietnamese coffee ice cream at Cookiebar. Amazing.
Mirei was loving the ice cream!
Going in for another bite!
We miss you guys so much! You can bet I had a hard time letting that baby go… I almost carried him off with me to our car.
Selfie with Mirei when she refused to go to bed that night.
On our last day, we spent the evening with Dan’s family after we came back from Fairyland in the afternoon. Mio had fun helping Grandma prepare dinner for everyone!
Mirei at the San Lorenzo house, after we came back from Fairyland on our last full day in NorCal.
Mirei thoroughly enjoying her yogurt.
Yogurt-mouthed little lady.
Helping Grandma making California rolls for dinner
Mio and Grandma in the kitchen
Family dinner on our last night. Dan’s mom prepared quite a feast!
Mio saying goodbye to Grandma. She misses her so much!
…as she does Grandpa, too.
Mio messing with Mirei. I think she wanted Grandpa all to herself!
Saying goodbye to the grandparents
Saying goodbye to Uncle Ted the morning we left for Los Angeles. Thank you Ted & Jackie for being such great hosts for us during our stay!
We grabbed an “It’s It” at a rest stop on our drive down. We couldn’t leave Northern California without eating one!
On our last full day in the Bay Area, we got to take the girls to Children’s Fairyland in Oakland! I had heard about Fairyland while we lived in the area and that it was a really great place to take kids, but we had moved away before Mio reached the age where she could really enjoy a mini-amusement park like that. It was the first time going to Fairyland for all of us (even Dan!), so it was a new experience for all of us, and we fell in love with the quaint and charming mini-amusement park from the 1950’s, with its whimsical storybook sets, gentle rides, and friendly animals.
“There was an old woman who lived in a shoe…”
Inside the mouth of a whale!
The girls rode on the ferris wheel by themselves!
It seemed like they weren’t sure what to make of it at first, but they had a good time and Mio wanted to go on it again.
Mio & Mirei dancing in a hut!
Mirei crawling through a tunnel:
Mirei and Daddy by Rapunzel’s tower
Clothesline and windmill:
Mio at the “Fountain of Youth”
There were llamas there!
Sitting on the flower chairs at Fairyland. The girls look elated (especially Mio!) to be on their little petal thrones.
Mio insisted that Dan sit on it, too.
Sitting on the dragon’s back at Fairyland
Mio loved running up the ramp to slide down this giant Chinese dragon slide.
Mio’s the piggy with the straw house in the Three Little Pigs
Mio and Daddy going through the Alice in Wonderland maze.
Train ride at Children’s Fairyland
The girls riding with Daddy
Loved the rainbow of colors on the train ride… 🙂
Snack time. Eating a push-pop is serious business!
Mio is getting better about sharing with Mirei. So proud of her being such a sweet big sister!
They even had a Western-themed town at Fairyland. Here’s Mio going down the spiral slide.
Mio cranking at the well
Mirei riding the carousel
Mio LOVES carousels right now, so she was ecstatic to find one at Fairyland! She didn’t want to get off!
There was even a Japanese tea garden there that can be rented for private birthday parties! I loved that the mural had depictions of Japanese folk tales I grew up with, like Momotaro, Saru-Kani Gassen, Bunbuku Chagama, Kaguyahime, Shitakiri Suzume, and Urashima-taro. Mio recognized a lot of them too, since I’ve read a lot of the stories to her.
Mio looking into the Japanese tea garden:
Bookworms coming out of a wall of books
Daddy reading to Mio in the reading room
Mirei doing some reading of her own
Looks like Miss Mirei is going to be a little bookworm, too!
Boat in the sandlot
This pirateship playground was so neat! I love that Mio is steering the ship.
Mio’s obsessed with Beanie babies right now, so of course she was delighted to find them in the gift shop!
Fairyland was truly magical, and the girls had such a fun-filled day there! Our trip to California had been fairly grownup-centric with all the people and sights we wanted to see and places we wanted to eat, so I’m glad that we could set aside a day to dedicate to doing something that was all about our girls enjoying themselves. It’s too bad we no longer live in the area anymore, as Fairyland is definitely the type of place we would love to take the girls often!
While we were in the Bay Area, we wanted to make sure that we stopped by our old neighborhood in El Cerrito/Albany area. It was our first home as a family, where we brought Mio home from the hospital and where she spent her first year and a half. There are so many fond memories we have there, and we really missed it!
Our good friends Sonya and Sofia were still in the area, but packing up their house for their move to Portland. I’m so glad we could meet up with them and see them in Albany, before they moved! It was so sweet to see how both Sofia and Mio have grown so much, and reunite in the place they had so many playdates together as babies!
Shyly exchanging gifts:
Mirei kicking a ball around
Playing with bubbles!
Mio playing with Sofia’s toys
Can’t believe how much they both have grown up!
The girls playing in the backyard:
M&M and S&S reunited!
Best of luck with your new chapter in Portland, Pou family! 🙂
Hugging each other goodbye:
My heart could burst seeing these cuties reunited! Mio and Sofia hugging each other goodbye.
After our playdate, we drove over to nearby Memorial Park, where I used to take Mio often when we lived in El Cerrito. It’s still one of my favorite parks, and it was kind of surreal to see Mio running around on the larger playground, which I had to constantly steer her away from when she used to run into it as a toddler for fear that one of the older kids would crash into her. Now she’s one of the big kids! Mirei is around the age that Mio was when I would bring her to Memorial Park, too, so watching her there conjured up some sweet nostalgia for me.
Mirei on the swing with Daddy at Memorial Park in Albany
Mio climbing to the top! (of course).
Mio climbing the rockwall at Memorial Park
Mirei and I on the playground
Mio making her way along the monkey bars
Going down the big spiral slide
So grown up now!
It seemed like Mio subconsciously remembered the playground. As soon as she saw it when we parked by it, she broke into a run towards with a huge smile on her face. She happily refamiliarized herself with the playground, and played to her heart’s content.
It was such a beautiful afternoon, and we’re so glad we could spend it with our close friends and at one of favorite parks! There are just so many places in the Bay Area that we always wish we could stop by, and there’s never enough time…
I’m finally wrapping up on posting on our trip to California from earlier this month! Besides getting to spend a lot of time exploring San Jose, Monterey, and the San Francisco Zoo with Dan’s parents and visiting our dear friends in El Cerrito, we got to also spend some time seeing some of our favorite familiar faces in the area and eating at our favorite spots! There were some delicious eats that I had seriously been missing and craving, so I’m so glad we could get a fix while catching up with some of our dearest friends!
Catching up with Uncle Ted in Alameda over lunch.
The samosa salad at Burma Superstar. Never disappoints!
Another favorite from Burma Superstar: garlic noodles with BBQ pork.
Checking out the toys at Tot Tank in Alameda.
Bay Area newcomer Junko trying pho for the first time!
I’m so glad we could see Junko in Sunnyvale! We hadn’t seen each other in almost five years, since our wedding back in 2008!
A trip to the Bay is not complete without a visit to our favorite taco truck in Oakland!
It was great visiting the Kims so we could catch up with Sung Kook and Kayo…
…and see their adorable sons JinWoo and SunWoo again!
Sung Kook loves Mio, and she can tell… she was stuck to him the whole time we were there!
I really missed their pomegranate chicken, among their other delectable bites…
And since we were on College Avenue in Berkeley, we had to stop by Ici for their amazing frozen desserts!
So happy to be reunited with Tarrin in one of our favorite spots in Berkeley… 🙂
Lovely foil stamped labels for my baked goodies, cherry blossom pen, and macaron-shaped trinket case, all wrapped in matryoshka doll wrapping paper to boot! Thank you Tarrin for somehow gathering all of my favorite things. â¤
We also got to try the awesome yÅshoku restaurant Usagi in San Mateo and see some of our favorite faces from Nakayoshi! Special thanks to Sam for organizing the dinner and making the reservation.
ボンゴレ（ã‚ã•ã‚Šã®ãƒ‘スタ）~ Some of the best vongole pasta I’ve ever had!
We missed this beautiful couple!
Mio with Uncle Graig. Probably one of her most favorite people in the entire world… 🙂 She’s always giggling and smiling ear to ear when she’s with him!
Loved seeing everyone again!
It always feels like our time with friends is too short (especially taking into consideration toddler bedtime), and we wish we could have stayed longer with each of our friends, but we were so happy that we could see them again even for a short time! We are truly sorry for all of those who we were unable to see because of our limited schedule, but rest assured that we will be back soon enough to visit again! :) Thank you also to all of our friends who showered Mio with such thoughtful and generous early birthday gifts… it was totally unexpected and so sweet of everyone. ♥ Our family is so blessed just to have the pleasure of knowing all of you!
