"A successful man is someone who has lived well, laughed often, and loved much, who has gained the respect of others and the love of children; who leaves the world better than he found it; who never lacked appreciation of earth's beauty ; who always looked for the best in others and gave the best he had. "
- a variation of "Success" by Ralph Waldo Emerson

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Tuesday, December 18, 2007

Season's Greetings

Season’s Greetings


Dear friends and families,

We hope this letter finds everyone high in holiday spirit and you and your family are in good health. Since the holidays are coming and we all want surprises, why not start our letter with an exciting news – we are expecting a sibling for Alvin in early summer! Every child is a gift and our family is so blessed.

In addition to the news, we want to give you a little bit update on our family whereabouts. Alvin continues to amaze his admiring parents everyday with his physical and intellectual achievements. He is now 17 months old and runs and climbs everywhere as you can imagine. He just started to learn how to stand on one foot and jump without landing on his soft bottom. Dancing with music is his favorite physical movement and crying without tears is his most powerful tool to gain parents sympathy. Alvin also loves to draw like an artist and plays hide-and-seek everywhere in the house with his daddy. His language acquisition is improving everyday. He can now speak 20-30 words and recognize about 80 names, including animals, foods, objects, some US states and of course, China and US on the maps. Quite impressive, um?

Alvin’s Dad continues to be a fulltime engineer at work, a fulltime babysitter in the house and a part-time student at Hopkins. How can he handle all these? We don’t really need to know as long as his boss is happy, Alvin is healthy, Alvin’s Mom is merry, and the grade reports are all As.

Alvin’s Mom continues to enjoy her motherhood with an extremely supportive hubby doing all the housework, a wonderful boy giving her free massage on demand and a cute little baby kicking her tummy every now and then. What a life!

That is all about it. We are just doing as well as you would expect. Our holiday wishes go to you and your family.

Alvin, baby-on-the-way, Hope & Yuelun

Monday, December 3, 2007

Jungle night

Alvin had a night out with Santa Claus (sort of)! In spite of the severe cold weather, the parents took Alvin to attend his first evening event at the Gaithersburg Concert Pavilion. The event featured Christmas Chorus, Santa Claus arriving on a Firetruck, free jungle-bell bands and free picture taken with Santa Claus!

In many of the pictures, you will see Alvin wasn't happy. But, don't read it wrong. He loves the night light scene but we had to squeeze his face because he was supposed to look at the camera so he couldn't turn around to see his favor lights !

The goods always come with the bads. The trade off for the fun night out is that Alvin got a bad cold. You would think we are crazy parents but we are not crazy enough like others to wait in line for a picture taken with Santa Claus. Maybe we should have done that ... :)