road trip

lily and i went to california last weekend and we had a GREAT TIME!
traveling with a talkative and giant-bladdered child is the best and i highly recommend it.

the keys to our success:
- lily is awesome.
- when we left on sunday, it was daylight for our entire 6 hour ride. no sleepy mama at the wheel!
- we found a very nice and clean mc donalds in indio (about the halfway point between phoenix and l.a.)
- we walked around l.a.'s cultural district for about 4hours on monday morning, then got in the car, and drove a million hours to get back home due to traffic in l.a. traffic! at 2:30 in the afternoon! really? why are there so many people on the road? i am an out-of-town-stay-at-home-mom! what's everyone elses' excuse???

we drove as far and long as we did, because one of my dearest friends, jenn, was in l.a. for her sister-in-law's wedding. jenn and her hubby jimmy live in beijing and are both architects. they met at MIT. and actually, the last time i saw jenn was when i went to visit her in boston when i was in my first trimester with lily. jenn and i went to high school together, and attended the University of Toronto together too.

anyhoo, we went to see her, but we were very fortunate to see our other friend who lives in l.a., minhee, and we stayed at her house sunday night. we walked around The Grove, which is one of my favorite places in l.a. it's kinda like san tan mall, only much bigger. and there's a farmer's market with a bunch of restaurant/stand type things, so we ate some brazillian bbq for dinner and had hot chocolate and cupcakes and walked around. just the perfect thing for a bunch of ladies to do on a sunday evening!

here's some pics from our 36 hours away from home:




my absolute favorite part of my time with lily was driving on the mountains. on our way to cali, we were coming down the mountain and lily started shouting: "my ear is not working!" so awesome. i told her it was because of the mountain and pressure and blah blah blah and that it would eventually pop and that her ear would be restored after said pop occured.

then, on our way home, we were going up the mountain and lily shouted: "don't do that!" and i told her i was just driving, and that she is not to yell at mommy. and then lily said: "i'm not talking to you! i'm talking to the mountain."
ok. so i let her yell to her heart's content.

lily: "mountain! don't do that to my ear! that's not funny! i'm not playing right now!i don't like it when you do that! you can't do that. stop it! that's not funny. say you're sorry!"

jihae/aka mountain: "sorry lily!"

lily: "mom! did you hear that? the mountain said sorry!"

jihae: "wow! that's so polite of the mountain!"

lily continued to tell at the mountain for about 5 more minutes. she stopped when chris called to check on us. then she wanted to talk to her dad.

"dad? is topher with you?... hi topher! it's noona. did you miss me?"

so hilarious.

meanwhile, back in az, chris and topher had a great time together. what started out as a joke-picture-message turned into a pretty serious new look for topher:



he loves the look and does not want to get his hair cut.

it was tons of fun hanging out with the kids seperately, but it is so great to be back together again!