Happy Year of the Pig!

E had the unique opportunity to perform at the iconic Balboa Park for CNY w/ a few of his classmates.

It involved a good few weeks of intense practice but it was worth it.

Game face!

The school performance the day before was a good dry run.

Then Uncle Cliff, Auntie Anna and Caleb came over while on their first visit to SD (from the Bay Area). We’ve been meeting up every December in Dallas for awhile and every year, they tell us it’s time to move to CA. It was funny to finally come full circle and have our (a bit delayed) annual meet-up finally in Cali! We had a CNY hot pot feast… and consumed leftovers for dayyyssss, haha.

The V-Day haul. So we found out that it’s actually not allowed to give candy/sweets to other students… YES!

School was out for 4 days over President’s Day so we decided to do a short snowboarding trip to Big Bear — gotta get max usage out of our Ikon passes!

Stopped in the small town of Redlands so Daddy could take a work call. Mommy and son explored downtown: found a neat little toy store, good drinks, 24 hour donuts, an amazing chocolatier, cute shops. E also got his rental gear here which turned out much cheaper than on the mountain and even better: NO LINES!

The snow was really coming down which closed two of the major highways to Bear Mountain. We had to take a roundabout route to get to the resort so we arrived in the late afternoon and did just a few runs. They did have night skiing ’til 8pm but it sure was getting chilly! Mommy’s becoming a fair weather snowboarder — will only go out when the conditions are peachy. ;)

Spotted him getting on the lift by himself w/ a fellow ski school mate? OMG!

Practicing on the bunny slopes w/ his class. Mommy and Daddy then whisked off for a belated V-day “date” on the mountain. ;)

LOTS of snow on the second day which meant sweet, sweet POWDER!

After a full day of riding, we left Big Bear and found a pretty good Chinese resto that turned out to be super close to Y’s Uncle’s place in Loma Linda. We were all crazy thirsty and famished! The jellyfish was stellar. :)

Still had 1 more day of the long weekend to enjoy… Legoland. It was kinda crowded since it was President’s Day so we just did a few rides and enjoyed The Lego Movie 2 promo that was going on throughout the park. They had an area displaying actual sets that were used in the movie.

Another jaunt through SeaLife as he wanted to collect the stamps he didn’t get to last time.

Been a few years since our last pose in front of the sign, eh? :D (BTW, that hat was his “prize” for collecting all the SeaLife stamps).

And since we had time, we went inside the Lego hotel just for grins.

Perhaps a staycation another time?

We literally missed the memo that E was getting an award one Monday morning assembly. He needed to go to the bathroom when we got there, which has never happened before, and while still occupied, they called his name! A bit unprepared but still made it just in time for the pic with Principal H. (Found the notice a week later @ the bottom of his backpack, hehe).

Recognition for perseverance! Always biased, but we’d really have to agree on this one, especially the last few weeks/month… :)

Outdoor Lego build.

Perfecting the closed smile look. :|