Time for Vacation!

We'll heading out tomorrow on our flight to South America!


We leave out of LAX at 10:00am and land in Brazil the following day at 7:00am local time. Phew!

After Brazil, we're off to Buenos Aires, Argentina.

Then from Argentina over to Santiago, Chile!

We'll land back at LAX on Sept. 2nd at 11:30am. Then it's back to work the next day! UGH!

My first Dodger Game!

On Saturday, August 2nd we went to the Dodger’s baseball game vs. the Arizona Diamondbacks.

It was my first time to Dodger’s Stadium! Plus, I had my first Dodger Dog! (Sorry Dodger fans, it just tasted like a regular hot dog to me!)

It was little bit of a hike to the stadium from where we were parked. I’m used to parks like the Anaheim Angles or San Diego Padres where you can walk in on the ground level and walk around the park to get to your seat. At Dodger’s Stadium, you have to enter on the correct level and you are seated on. Of course, we were at the top of the hill, and we needed to be at the bottom.

We had been invited to go to the game by Jason, whom Cuong used to work with at the City of Downey. Jason had invited Cuong to be a part of a Fantasy Baseball League with many other planners. This was the first time Cuong had done the Fantasy Baseball and felt like he was “Going on Luck Alone”, like his log-in name said! Well, he must be pretty lucky, because he’s going head to head at the very end of the season!

We had a lot of fun at the game. We were able to see Manny Ramirez play his second game for the Dodgers and hit his first home run! It was a really exciting game! Plus, it’s always nice when the home team wins!
Now that we live so close to Angel’s Stadium, we’ll need to go to a few games and stock up on our Angels gear!

On our way out to the parking lot, we caught this great view of the skyline of Los Angeles.

Vegetable/Herb Garden

We recently decided to do a little more than just my herbs in the small pots. A litle while back we had bought a green bell pepper plant. Most recently we bought a yellow banana pepper plant, an oregano and a parsley plant as well. We cleared a small area in the planters in the back yard, and actually put them in the ground.

We now officially have our own little garden. The green peppers are growing and we can see the yellow one starting to develop a pepper.

In the meantime, the basil, mint, and dill are doing well. This past weekend, I planted some seeds of a yellow zucchini plant....so I'll keep my fingers crossed on that!

It's so nice to be able to go out and snip some herbs without having to pay a buck or two a pop!

Here's a picture of our in-ground garden:

Hummingbirds

A quick update on the baby hummingbirds:



We had been watching them grow, and getting bigger and bigger and barely fitting together in the next!


Last weekend, I walked up to them to snap a picture. As I was taking the picture, they were chirping to each other….and then FLEW AWAY. So this really was the last picture of them!


Then, here is a picture of the empty nest.

Every now and then I’ll see little hummingbirds flying around the yard, so I’d like to think it is them! I got a hummingbird feeder just in case!

My first Vietnamese Wedding

Back on July 19th, we attended the wedding of Cuong’s second cousin. We only were present the reception. Apparently the ceremonies were all day events which included a lot of traveling.

The reception was held at a Chinese seafood restaurant in Monterey Park. There were about 400 people! The section of the restaurant we were in was packed! Soon after we arrived, they introduced the wedding party and the bride & groom. The groom wore a shnazzy tuxedo and the bride wore a beautiful ivory mermaid style dress.

They had many large flower arrangements throughout the reception area. Each table had its own centerpiece, with styles that varied by table. Some tables had low, full flower arrangements while others (like ours) had beautiful tree-like centerpieces with votives and orchid flowers hung throughout.

They had about a 7-course meal. I had never had any of the dishes before. Believe it or not…it was the first time I had tried scallops (GASP!) and to my surprise, I liked them! Cuong said that they were the best course of the night.

After many speeches, songs, and the magic show, it was time for dancing! It was about that time when the older crowd started to leave. They had their fill of seafood and VSOP and were ready to head home.

We danced a little bit, but didn’t stay too much longer, as we had carpooled with Cuong’s parents. They had been up since early in the morning and had participated in the full events of the day.
Overall, I’m glad we were able to go. It was something different for me to experience. One thing I wish I saw was the bride change into the different outfits. To my surprise, she stayed in her wedding dress the whole night. I was looking forward to all of the different outfits. Oh well…maybe we’ll go to another Asian wedding sometime in the future!