One year anniversary

Today marks the one year anniversary of our family's adventures with a stay at home dad. With me being on mat leave for five of those months, here are some of the adventures that we had as a family over the past year:
- traveled to San Diego and Las Vegas and went to LegoLand, San Diego Zoo and Safari Park and Seaworld
- spent 2 long weekends at a cottage in Muskoka on Lake Healey
- went to Ottawa, Montreal, and Quebec City with my sister's family and friends
- traveled to Hong Kong and Macau for 1 month
- went to a 1-week all-inclusive vacation in Riviera Maya with 2 other families
- went to Rochester's Museum of Play
- bought season's passes for Canada's Wonderland for both summers
- did weekend family activities like Maple syrup festivals, Wizard's World, and biking/picnics at Sunnybrook Park
- had many backyard BBQs and playing outdoors with the kids


It has been an awesome adventure and privilege to be able to do all this stuff. Looking forward to more adventures to come!

Saying goodbye

I've never been good at saying goodbye. If it's someone that I'll never see again, all i can think of is "bye, have a good life" which probably isn't the best way to drive closure to an 'acquaintanceship'. So I end up not really saying anything at all.

If it's someone that there's a possibility that I'll see again, I don't see the point of a long drawn out goodbye because chances are, our paths will cross again some time in the future, specially considering how easy it is to stay in touch with FB/social media nowadays.

If it's someone that I will truly miss having regular contact with, I also don't say much to belabor the goodbye because I tend to tear up easily and I don't like to cry in public because my face becomes one big swollen mess.

So if you are someone that I have to say goodbye to, I apologize in advance for the brevity of my goodbye but know that it's not because I don't care, it's just because I'm bad at saying goodbye.

Reading to my kids

My parents never read to me when I was little. In fact, I remember my parents bringing me to a library for the first time when I was in Grade 2 because a friend of my mom's told her that it was a good idea to get me to read. We got to the library and I was expected to choose a book. I had no idea where to begin, i didnt even know which section of the library to go to. Fast forward a few decades and as a mom, I'm now reading to my children (almost) everyday and bringing them to the library regularly. I'm trying to inspire a love of reading in their life because I really believe that reading is so helpful in one's future success from vocabulary, comprehension to imagination and creativity. There's a saying in Chinese, literally, it is "there's a golden house in every book".

My son loves his reading time every night. It has become a special time that we spend together before he goes to bed.

My daughter doesn't like to go to bed but she gets really excited when I say "let's go 'tai shu shu'" which means "let's go read a book" in Chinese. She will pick up her favorite book and run to the couch in her bedroom so we can read together. It's so cute.

I hope I'll be able to continue to inspire a love of reading in their lives so they can each find their own 'golden house'.