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     Twin Babies' Journal
    This journal is about raising identical twins.

    One Hundred and Eleventh Month

    Previous entries

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    Friday, Oct 6, 2006 (9y+2m)

    The twins are 9 year and 2 months old. They went to school as usual. They have tennis class in the afternoon. Daddy came home early today. We hosted a pot-luck party for the Chinese mid-autumn festival (a.k.a. the harvest moon festival). We invited many families to our home including grandma Chui and aunt Elaine. The house was packed with 17 adults not counting the kids. The kids played on their own while the adults gather around the table chatting. The kids went out to the backyard to play with lanterns. Since there were only two lanterns, the kids took turns to play with them. The guests brought couple of battery powered inflatable lanterns too. But the two candle lit lanterns were the most popular.

    We had a mahjong table setup. But no one wanted to play. Four kids, Jenna, Jasmine, Christopher and Benjamin sat down to play. The parents stood behind to coach them. They only played a couple of rounds before the party ended.

    Saturday, Oct 7, 2006 (9y+2m+1d)

    The twins went downstairs to play on their own in the morning. When we came downstairs, we found them playing mahjong on their own. Mahjong is a 4 player game, they didn't mind to play with just two. Mommy prepared some rice for the family as light breakfast. The twins went to their swimming class in the afternoon. After the swim, we rush to Oakland to have a late light lunch with cousin Natalie and family. We then went to see grandma Ling and grandpa. We have not paid them a visit for a few months. Great grandma and aunt Jun were already there. The kids played a few rounds of mahjong with great grandma. We then watched a movie on DVD until dinner. We left after dinner. We suggested the twins to take a nap in the car if they wanted to stay up a little late at night. They did. They practiced some piano before going to bed.

    Sunday, Oct 8, 2006 (9y+2m+2d)

    The twins climbed into our bed for a huddle. We went out to lunch with Christopher and Benjamin's family. We went shopping at Macy's afterwards. Columbus Day sales was on, many items had additional 40% off already reduced price. We had a plesant surpise to find that when we used the Macy's credit card another 20% were taken off. Some items were less than half the ticketed price. The twins wanted to buy some T-shirts, but mommy told them not to because the summer was over.

    Mommy delivered our surplus kitchen cabinet to uncle Ivan. He would take it to grandpa the next day. Grandpa was remodeling a bathroom. We had this cabinet in our garage since our remodeling 4 years ago. It came in the wrong size, so the cabinet company ordered another one for us. We used it to store some junks in the garage. Now we found it a good use in grandpa's new bathroom.

    Daddy and twins stayed home. The twins practiced piano and they worked on the popup book for their "California's four regions" project. They went on the Google.com to find some pictures to past into their popup book. Daddy told them how lucky they were to do homework with the aid of the Internet.

    We ate some leftover from Friday's party for dinner. Daddy and mommy were debating who should do the dishes, and Joanne went ahead and washed the dishes. She left the pots behind for daddy to wash because they were too heavy to handle.

    Monday, Oct 9, 2006 (9y+2m+3d)

    It was Columbus day, but the twins had to go to school as usual. In the afternoon, Joanne said she was tired and needed a nap. Jasmine didn't need it, but she took one anyway.

    Daddy worked overtime as usual. When daddy came home, the twins had already finished their homework. Mommy asked them to practice piano several times, but they were just goofing around. They wanted to watch daddy change the fish tub water. After mommy gave them a warning, they practiced their piano. When they were done, Jasmine said she wasn't aware of the late hour. It was 11pm when they went to bed. But since they had a long nap in the afternoon, it was okay to stay up a little late. Jasmine said it was still too late for her bedtime regardless. Mommy asked her why she didn't start her piano practice early, Jasmine had no excuse.

    Tuesday, Oct 10, 2006 (9y+2m+4d)

    The twins went to school as usual. They had piano lesson in the afternoon. We went out to have dinner with grandma Chui and aunt Elaine. After dinner, we went home to cut grandma's birthday cake. Jasmine used the computer to make a calendar. She used a table to build the grids and type in the dates one by one. She planed to print a selection of her Naruto wallpapers for her calendar. Daddy showed her how to set up a table to list her Tamagochi characters last week, so she already know how to do the project on her own. One of the fish is getting very sick with white infection on its scales. Daddy changed the water and put some medications in the fish tub. The sick fish was put in a separate jar for quarantine.

    Wednesday, Oct 11, 2006 (9y+2m+5d)

    The twins went to school as usual. When mommy came home, the sick fish died a horrible death with leisons on its back. Mommy flushed the dead fish down the toilet and bought a replacement. Daddy worked overtime as usual. When daddy came home, the twins were making calendars. Jasmine already have most of her calendar pages printed. She would do the Naruto picture next. Joanne built her calendar by hand. She drew it using ruler and pencil and she said she would draw the pictures by hand too. She had a draft of what pictures to use for each month according to seasonal theme. For example, she used a ghostly character for Halloween in October and a penguin characters for December etc.

    Thursday, Oct 12, 2006 (9y+2m+6d)

    The twins went to school as usual. They went to play golf in the afternoon with aunt Jun. Mommy bought a birthday gift for Karisa's birthday. Joanne didn't know what it is and she opened it. Mommy was mad at her for opening other people's belonging. Both twins were grounded. No playing on the computer for a week. Jasmine's calendar project had to put on hold because she could not print out her Naruto picture without the computer.

    Daddy worked overtime as usual. When daddy came home, the twins were playing the Mickey mouse bowling game. We bought the game from Disney's store when the twins were two or three years old. The twins finally played with it after many years. They had a competition against each other. Jasmine scored 192 and Joanne scored 148. Joanne challenge daddy at a connect four game. Daddy won. Joanne said Jasmine was good and daddy might not be able to beat Jasmine. Daddy played with Jasmine and won two games, but lost one for being too careless. Jasmine said she always won or tied with Joanne. But when I watched them play, I saw Joanne won some games too. So she was not as weak as Jasmine said.

    When daddy asked Joanne why she would open mommy's package, she made all kind of excuse. She said it was like an unattended package in the airport. The security people would open it or blew it up into pieces.

    Friday, Oct 13, 2006 (9y+2m+7d)

    The twins went to school as usual. They had tennis lesson in the afternoon. In the late afternoon, they went to Karyssa's birthday party. Daddy and mommy went out to dinner. They originally planned to sleep over after the birthday party. But the twins were grounded since yesterday, so we picked them up at 10pm.

    Saturday, Oct 14, 2006 (9y+2m+8d)

    Daddy went to the twins' room in the morning. They were still wrapped in their comforter in their beds. Both were drawing tamagotchi characters. Daddy asked why they didn't get out of bed. They said the bed was warm and cozy. Jasmine added that Saturday was the sadest day of the week because they had to get ready for the swimming class. I can understand that when the temperature got colder every week. The twins had swimming lesson in the afternoon. After the swim, we went to a late lunch with Ashley and Jasmine's family. Benjamin followed us when his parents went home after the swim class. We dropped off Benjamin at his home after lunch. We went to buy some takeout food before going the Joie's birthday party.

    Actually Joie had another birthday party with her classmates in the afternoon. The party in the evening was actually a gathering of the parents. Besides us, Claire, Benjamin and Terence's family were invited too. Among all the kids invited in the evening, only Terence was at Joie's age. After the potluck dinner. some watched TV, some started a game of mahjong. Claire's mom brought a karaoke machine. The kids got to sing some children songs before Joie cut her birthday cake. Near the end of the party, Christopher, Terence and Jasmine wanted to take over the mahjong table. Christopher and Jasmine were serious about learning the game. Terence was too young to even understand what was going on, yet he was happy as long as he could get into the action. After the game of mahjong we stayed to sing a few songs before the party ended.

    Sunday, Oct 15, 2006 (9y+2m+9d)

    We had brunch in Santana Row with Jasmine, Ashley and their moms. After lunch, the kids and daddy went to Borders bookstore while the moms went shopping. They had some coupons to spend before they expire. We all returned to Jasmine W's home to work on the Halloween project. Jasmine's mom bought some fabric and she had an idea for the kids' Halloween costume. Daddy worked on twisting some wires. The moms were busy cutting the fabrics. The kids helped on gluing the parts together. Ashley was not interested and she went off to play on the computer instead. We had to order her to shutdown the computer before we could get her back into the project.

    We had to leave early because mommy wanted to spend her Gymbucks at Gymboree before they expired today. The twins helped mommy to pick some clothes they like. We spends about $160 total and after applying the $75 gymbucks, we saved about half. We also went to Macy's looking for good deals. They had some items on sale at 40% off alreaady and there was an addition 30% off. If we used the Macy's credit card, another 15% off on top of that. So these items were at 60%×70%×85% = 43% of the original price. Unfortunately, mommy forgot her wallet at home and we decided not to buy without the deep discount.

    We dined at the California pizza kitchen before going home. The twins practiced piano when we got home.

    Monday, Oct 16, 2006 (9y+2m+10d)

    The twins went to school as usual. They had some problem with their alarm clock this morning. They rushed to school but wasn't late for class.

    Joanne had a runny nose after school. Mommy believed they caught some virus from the weekend's parties. They were sent to take a nap hoping the rest would help them recover sooner. Daddy worked overtime as usual. When daddy came home after 8pm, the twins were still eating dinner because their nap pushed the schedule back. Jasmine asked daddy to find out the holidays and special events in 2007 and 2008 so that she could put them in the Naruto calendar she was building.

    Tuesday, Oct 17, 2006 (9y+2m+11d)

    The twins went to school as usual. Joanne has almost recovered. Jasmine's runny nose was worse than Joanne now. They had piano lesson in the afternoon.

    Wednesday, Oct 18, 2006 (9y+2m+12d)

    The twins went to school as usual. Jasmine still had her runny nose. Daddy told her to blow her nose in the bathroom sink, but she insisted on wiping until it was all red.

    Thursday, Oct 19, 2006 (9y+2m+13d)

    The twins went to school as usual. The twins still coughed a little today, but they were almost recovered because mommy sent them to bed early everyday.

    Friday, Oct 20, 2006 (9y+2m+14d)

    The twins went to school as usual. They had a fund raising walkathon starting at 1pm. The partent came to the campus after 3pm to watch the kids walk until 6pm. The twins had tennis class in the afternoon, they left early. Joanne did 16 laps and Jasmine did 12. At night, Joanne asked daddy to massage her calves because they were sored after the walkathon and two hours of tennis.

    Mommy held a hotpot dinner party at home in the evening. Most of the guests arrived late except Terence and his dad. Terence's mommy was sick so she didn't come. Siuling and her husband came from San Mateo. Cornell's family came from Sacramento. It took then 3.5 hours to travel during rush hour. Ronald and Evon brought some seafood for the hotpot. We had a full dinner until everyone was too full to eat another bite. The adults chatted around the dinner table until the party was over. The kids played with baby Mickey and toys.

    Saturday, Oct 21, 2006 (9y+2m+15d)

    Mommy went to traffic school early in the morning. Daddy and the twins slept in. We went to Ryowa Ramen in Mtn. View. The twins said it was the best ramen in the area. We visited the aquarium store after lunch. When we came home, we found one of the goldfish died. Mommy was still in traffic school, so we left a message to ask her to buy a replacement fish on the way home. We watched Back to the Future II until Jasmine W's family arrived. Mommy invited them over for dinner. The kids played on the computer after dinner. The moms chatted in the kitchen and the dads watched a Chinese movie on DVD.

    Sunday, Oct 22, 2006 (9y+2m+16d)

    Mommy went to play tennis with the other moms early in the morning. Daddy and twins stayed in bed until 10am. The twins came downstairs to play on the computer. At around 11:30am, daddy took the twins to lunch with grandma Chui and aunt Elaine. Aunt Elaine treated us lunch. Daddy brought up the new nicknames for the twins again. They were extensions to their nicknames Jojo and Jaja. Joanne was called Wuwu short of "wuwujojo" which means dirty in Cantonese. Jasmine was called Gigi short for "gigijaja" which means noisy in Cantonese. The twins got a good laugh but grandma said nicknames were not good practices in general.

    We went shopping at RiteAide and Costco after lunch. We bought some Theraflu and the "Over the Hedge" DVD. After we dropped off grandma and aunt Elaine, the twins wanted to shop at Didams. They found a pair of plastic rules for school and a bag of magnet stones.

    It was late afternoon when we got home. Mommy took a nap in our absence. Daddy also took a nap on the sofa when the kids practiced piano. We finished the Back to the Future II that we left unfinished yesterday.

    Mommy prepared some left-over food as dinner. We watched America's Funniest Video on TV. One of the video show a swimming pool that looked identical to Amanda's. Daddy asked the twins to call their cousins to find out if they sent in a clip to the show. Jasmine dialed their number and handed daddy the phone. Daddy said she had to talk to her cousins on their own. Jasmine hung up the phone instead.

    The twins stuck to the computer screen to play on Neopet.com until mommy came downstairs to warn them. They ran upstairs to brush and get ready for bed. When daddy tucked them in bed, Joanne whispered to thank daddy for taking them to shopping at Didams. Jasmine playfully hid under the comforter to dodge daddy's goodnight kiss.

    Another goldfish died today. We needed to buy another fish tomorrow.

    Monday, Oct 23, 2006 (9y+2m+17d)

    The twins went to school as usual. Mommy noticed that another fish look very sick too. So on the way home after she picked up the kids from school, she bought two more goldfish. When daddy came home, the sick fish was still swimming like a drunk. After daddy finished dinner, the sick fish was already dead. Daddy changed the water again and put in some medications in to water to kill ick and bacteria in the water. The fish were dying one by one, we suspected the water was contaminated ever since the first fish died of some white slime on the body.

    The twins worked on their homework after dinner. They were writing a report on their birthstone, Peridot. They needed to research on the chemical property of the stone. They learned about the chemical formula (Mg,Fe)2SiO4 for the mineral. They had trouble understanding what the formula meant before studying chemistry in highschool. Daddy helped them by drawing some circles on the paper to represent how the molecules are composed of different kind of atoms.

    Before they went to bed, daddy showed them the Line Rider website. They drew some lines and watched how the sled run down the slope. They were laughing hysterically when the sled crashed.