Backyard Sighting

The kids were arguing what type of bird is in our backyard one morning - imagine my surprise when I saw this:

Although we've had a couple of wild turkey sightings in the neighborhood - they were quite a few miles away and little did I think one would come roam right in our yard !

Lunar New Year Flower Market

I've always wanted to check out the SF botanical garden, so this Flower Market event was the perfect excuse to go. Although we did so much in the pavilion that the kids got exhausted and we didn't get to walk around garden much, we had lots of fun watching acrobats, lion dance, chinese instruments, dancing, making crafts, and trying out chinese painting.

Although this 花市 is not very traditonally "Chinese", it's very nice and airy and much less crowded than the one in Chinatown - highly recommended - we'll probably go again next year :)

Special Person Book

The hubby did not think I should be be spending this much time on a kindergarten project - but I knew if I didn't take the time to make a meaningful photo book when there's an "excuse" to do it, I'd never make one. Having always wanted to make a time capsule/keepsake box/baby milestone book but never did, this was my opportunity to make up.

The book stays at school till the end of the school year so having an electronic version is nice so she can enjoy it at home too.

Click on the mid-page arrows on the side to flip and click on the middle to view in full screen mode:

Yosemite Trip

For the first time in 10 years, Yosemite closed ALL ingress and egress roads due to huge continuous snowstorms. This rare event happened RIGHT before our scheduled trip - the 1st time the kids were going to get to see Yosemite. We were therefore very thankful that the roads opened up and the sun all of a sudden came out RIGHT ON that particular morning of our trip. It was also the ONLY sunny day with sunshine in a 20-day time span (it was rainy/snowy/cloudy 10 days before AND after that first day of our trip.) It was also on that day that I finally felt justified to have an SUV with all-terrain tires :)

Due to its low elevation, snow usually melts as soon as the sun hits so photographers had to get up really early in the morning to film the Valley in snow. Although folks who got stuck in the Park during the prior week also had continuous snow capped tree views, they had to endure horrid storms and road conditions. So we were indeed very blessed to be able to enjoy the magnificent snow-veiled Valley against blue skies with decent driving conditions.

We were actually glad that it snowed on the 2nd day as it was the kids first time experiencing snowfall and seeing how individually intricate each snowflake was. It got cold and rainy the 3rd day but we finished building our snowman and were on our way home anyway.

Had a great time relaxing, enjoying the scenary, sledding, tubing, making snow angels, watching snowflakes, and photographing. Enjoy the album :)