Day 365 - Flower and Envelope

Thought of the day: This morning, when I am walking under the brilliant sun on the trail, surrounded by rocky mountains and fall colors, I feel intensely happy. With my birthday coming up tomorrow, I have a feeling that I am entering the prime time of my life. Everything is so perfect at this moment that it seems fleeting and fragile. Somehow happiness always manages to bring out melancholy in me. Perhaps it's time to look outside of my own little world more often. The best way to maintain true inner peace and equilibrium of mind is to change the focus to the world at large. I have been exploring different paths for a few years now and the right path remains elusive to me. Lately I have the luck of being recommended by multiple people a book called "Half the Sky" by Nicholas Kristof and Sheryl WuDunn. The book documents the plight of many women in the real world. It's a thoroughly researched and immensely touching and convincing book. It's one of those rare books that can move people into action, one that has the potential to shape and change the world. I don't know where it will lead me, but wherever it is, I will be there willingly.


Photo of the day:

A surprise gift from a friend. I have been told by many people that love and happiness are the essential ingredients of life and they are all you need. I don't know. I always feel like there's a third ingredient, a larger purpose of life. Without the third ingredient, I can't help feeling that something is amiss.

Day 352 - Lila

Thought of the day: It was Friday - our regular hiking day.  Lila and I hiked for a good hour at Chautauqua with David's mom and cousin. We were also joined by Lila's friend Izzy and her mom. There were beautiful fall colors along the way and the trail was almost completely covered by fall foliage. Lila collected a bunch of leaves and branches along the way to make a collage at home.  She walked and ran all the way with her friend and in the last segment of the hike we were barely able to keep up with the two little girls! It's a day that will be remembered for many years hereafter, not in its full details, but as one of those days filled with luminous light and simple happiness.

Photo of the day:

Lila on the trail.

Day 342 - Lila

Thought of the day: The best time of my day was when I picked up Lila from preschool in the afternoon. Other kids had already left so we were the only ones there. The ground of the preschool was small but it was nice and peaceful so we hung out a bit outside. Lila showed me a collection of painted rocks in the garden, climbed the trees and relished in the opportunity to run about freely. We watched the moving shadows casted by the late afternoon sun while devouring delicious apples Lila collected from the trees. It was fun for Lila and relaxing for me. With two active kids, I have come to enjoy and appreciate these slow and simple moments more ever day.

Photo of the day:

Lila basking in the afternoon sun.

Day 324 - Happy Dance

Thought of the day: We spent a happy morning with our friends hiking at Chautauqua followed by a lunch picnic in the park.  We used to do that every Friday morning but stopped because we got busy with other activities. This morning’s hike and picnic reminded me of how important it is to firmly incorporate fun and meaningful activities into the regular schedule because it’s so easy for them to slip through the cracks and disappear into memories of the past. There are always other little things waiting to fill into the space and it's so important to get our priorities straight and put the things that are really meaningful to us first. In the long run, being able to prioritize can make the difference between a life that’s satisfying and fulfilling and a life that’s lost and aimless.

Photo of the day:

Izzy doing a happy dance after the hike.

Day 317 - Hiking

Thought of the day: School was off. Jasmine had two play dates and Lila had a friend sleeping over. In addition, we hiked in the morning, did gymnastics in the afternoon and ate out in the evening.  Amidst the whirlwind of activities, I had the most vivid memories of the happiness of Lila on the hiking trail and of the excitement of Lila and her friend when they chased after bubbles on our front lawn after dinner. I was not able to put together a quiet schedule as I would have liked to, but at least we were able to slow down and enjoy a few quiet and peaceful moments during the day.

Photo of the day: 

Lila on the hiking trail at Chautauqua. She was able to keep a reasonable pace on the trail, even though she was still easily distracted by a variety of interesting objects including these two "hiking sticks" she picked up on the trail.

Day 309 - Keynote Speaker

Thought of the day: I attended a YWCA luncheon today with some wonderful women from our neighborhood.  It was nice to catch up with old friends and meet up with some new ones.  We had an inspiring keynote speaker and two women served by YWCA telling touching stories of their personal journeys.  The speakers were all very frank, articulate and their speeches were thought-provoking.  It was an all-women event and I could feel a tangible, emotional connection among the audience and between the audience and the speakers. After spending years in a male dominated tech world, I have rediscovered and enjoyed the companionship of some amazing female friends in the past few years.  Our friendships are comforting, supportive and fun.  In a way, I think I'm trying to make up for what I have missed in the earlier part of my life. Today's lunch reminded me yet again of the power of our collective being. Together, we can overcome obstacles that life throws our way. Together, we can achieve what we can't achieve alone, namely, the finding of truth and the attainment of happiness.

Photo of the day:

Robyn O'Brien, our inspiring speaker and the author of "The Unhealthy Truth: How Our Food Is Making Us Sick and What We Can Do About It".  Reading her book had changed our family's diet in a fundamental way and we are all very appreciative of her efforts.

Day 282 - Juggler

Thought of the day: Each day seems to bring along with it such moments - a moment of drowsiness when I feel lost in the ocean of movements or non-movements, a moment of angst when I feel irritable, and (thankfully) a moment of happiness when I feel quite at ease. At the moment of happiness, life is all good and everything is just the way it should be. And that's how I felt when I left Alfalfa's this morning and that's how I usually feel when I leave Alfalfa's every time.  Perhaps it's the power of caffeine but most of the time I only got herbal tea in their cafe.  Perhaps it's the friendly staff but I don't feel the same way when I leave Wholefoods and they are friendly there too.  Perhaps it's the yummy and healthy food.  Perhaps it's the cozy atmosphere. Perhaps it's the absence of ripped-off feeling because the food is reasonably priced here.  Perhaps it's the bike rides to and from the store which put me in a more relaxed mood.  In any case, it usually feels good when I leave that place.  There's always somebody asking for help next to the store and when you are in a good mood, it's hard to resist offering them something - a loaf of bread, a snack, or even some cash if there's nothing more appropriate.  If I were to ask for help from strangers, I would pick a corner just like this where people are in a good mood instead of the intersections of major streets. This guy standing at the corner today had certainly picked his place wisely.

Photo of the day:

A juggler juggling some letter blocks to form different words.  He performed in Jasmine's end-of-the-camp party today. Thorne Ecological Institute surely knows how to put together a fun camp and to top it off with a happy finale for all.

Day 280 - Lila

Thought of the day: I felt grateful when I held Lila in my arms for a peaceful moment before putting her to bed tonight. The day scrolled by in front of my eyes like a movie: slow morning, Lila playing on a lawn, our happy ride along the creek to Meadows Plaza with Jasmine and her friend, Lila doing gymnastics, busy but cheerful waitress in the bakery, meeting friends, Lila napping on the bike in a cafe while Jasmine and I played games, our scary ride in the thunderstorm, taking refuge in a neighbor's garage (again),  everybody getting home wet and happy…  This day flew by like so many others.  It was good to stop and think about it for a moment. I never imagined that life could be so colorful and fulfilling.  It's in my thoughts every day that this could very well be the best period of my life and, many years in the future, I may read this blog with a smile on my face and feel envious of this person that I once was.  In the back of my mind, there's always a gloomy voice reminding me that life is brief and fleeting and this too shall not last.  But does that matter?  No, what matters right now is that I have had a great day and I'm happy and grateful for it.

Photo of the day:

Lila playing on the lawn while waiting for Jasmine and her friend to come back from their camp by school bus.

Day 264 - Pikes Peak

Thought of the day: We spent a lazy morning at the hotel pools.  Lila was still too young for the water slides, but she had fun hanging onto the edge of the infinity pool and looking out onto the neighboring lake.  The sight of swans, ducks, and large fish in the lake was very amusing for her.  At a blissful moment when I was sitting on the lounge chair, drinking a cold Pina Colada and watching the kids playing merrily in the water, I was suddenly overwhelmed by a sense of joy as intense as the bright Colorado sun that's surrounding us.  On a day like this, in a setting like this, there's no room for any dark or murky feelings.  No matter where we are and who we are with, spending time at the pools never fails to bring about a sense of happiness and well-being for me.  Yes, pools and summer are inseparable - one wouldn't have made sense without the other.

Photo of the day:

We took a cog train up to the summit of Pikes Peak this afternoon. At the elevation of over 14,000 feet, the view  on top was pretty amazing.  Katharine Bates wrote the song "America the Beautiful" after taking in the views here. It was a cloudy afternoon so the view was not as spectacular as it could have been on a sunny day, but the rain clouds made some pretty interesting images nevertheless. On the way down, we ran into some rain and soon afterward everybody on the train was elated to see double rainbows rising above the railway. The weather in the morning and in the afternoon couldn't have been any more different, as a typical Coloradan summer day should be.

Day 228 - Reflections

Thought of the day: We spent the day in Swiss Museum of Transport in Luzern.  The museum has several separate sections for cars, trains, boats, airplanes, etc.  All sections surround a large common square where a number of fun activities are available for kids while the adults can sit down and enjoy a well-deserved, quiet moment of coffee break.  Time and again I have found that Switzerland is truly a paradise for kids (and parents) as many things are designed with the kids in mind to ensure that they will have a good time. Of course, during brief visits like this, I can only get a glimpse of the surface of everything.  The experience of growing up here must have its hidden costs as the suicide rate remains pretty high.  Perhaps a unhappy person in paradise is a truly unhappy one as he has nobody to blame but himself, so as a result he is less likely to find sympathy and more likely to sink into despair.  The paradox of paradise?

Photo of the day:

Color reflections on the wading pool in the center square of the Transport Museum.

Day 220 - Canvas

Thought of the day: Today we celebrated Lila's birthday with her friends in the neighborhood pool. It was only the second day that the pool was open.  We got lucky with the weather: no rain or thunderstorm in the morning when we had the party.  The air was still a bit chilly but the pool was heated and the kids had a great time playing in the water. I can't believe that Lila is now almost the same age as Jasmine when we just moved to Boulder. Time is flying and kids are growing up fast. Looking back, the past few years felt like a movie, and a short one at that, but it was a happy one.

Photo of the day:

Lila's godmother made her a special canvas with her footprints on every birthday since she was born.  Now it's time to make another one!

Day 208 - Lila

Thought of the day: May is statistically the wettest month here and the past few days really showed it.  By this morning, my friend and I were so ready to get out and take a break in the sun that we did it even though we both had a long list of things to do.  I think we made the right decision as the girls couldn't be happier.  Yes, a happy smile is worth much more than a checkmark on the todo list.  A list can be postponed but life can't.

Photo of the day:

Lila playing with her friend in downtown.

Day 207 - Dinner Table

Thought of the day: Jasmine made lunch today - a tasty rice noodle soup.  She was proud to make it and serve it to us.  She seemed to have grown up so much recently, which made me both proud and sad at the same time.  I was planning for Lila's 3rd birthday party this week, which reminded me of Jasmine's 3rd birthday party that we celebrated near a lake in the bay area.  It was a couple of years ago but I felt like it was just yesterday. Time unfolds in a strange way and it provokes emotional responses from us in unexpected ways.  Over the years, we will go through various stages of our kids' lives and we will keep missing the previous stages and keep looking forward to the new ones.  It's a continuous process with milestones that we both love and hate. It's the same thing for ourselves even though we often don't pay as much attention to it as it deserves.

Photo of the day:

Dinner table - we celebrated a friend's birthday in Laudisio's tonight.  Delicious food, good group of people, memorable evening.  Our lives are marked with milestones too and I am glad that we have the opportunity to celebrated one with her.

Day 206 - Happy Pair

Thought of the day: It was the first day of Boulder Spring Festival - there're many weekend festivals and fairs at this time of the year.  I took Lila out to downtown in the early morning so the rest of the family can take a break.  There were musicians, painters, photographers, craftsmen and vendors setting up booths along Pearl St.  A woman was transporting an orphanage girl's photo onto a canvas and she did an amazing job of capturing the poignant expression of sadness on her face.  Her almost-finished oil painting stood out in the merriness of the festival crowd and it served as a reminder that there were very different lives going on elsewhere when we were out celebrating spring.

Photo of the day:

Happy pair - a daughter and father in Pearl St's rock park.  It's one of the most popular places in downtown.

Day 205 - Hike

Thought of the day:  It was finally a sunny day and I took a little hike with Lila on a trail next to our house.  Lila was very excited about the hike - she packed her own snack bag, put it in her backpack together with her little water bottle, put on her sunglasses, hat, boots and kept herself busy on the trail with fascinating discoveries that were typical on a hiking trail: little stones, branches, dandelions, butterflies and such.  She even scaled a small rock all by herself and was very proud of it.  We had our snacks on top of the rock.  After holing up at home for two days, I was glad to spend a morning under the sun.

Photo of the day:

Lila running down the trail.

Day 199 - Jasmine

Thought of the day: This afternoon, when Jasmine and I were having lunch at Zhou Mama's, I saw Zhou Mama outside of her restaurant.  She was sitting on a bench along the side walk and taking a break.  And then I saw a cleanly dressed man walked over to her, gave her a kiss and handed her a beautiful bouquet.  I could sense a gentle, loving connection between these two and it turned out that he was her son and the bouquet was for Mother's Day, which would be tomorrow.  Zhou Mama has always been very warm and welcoming to guests in her restaurant.  She often offers me special treats like freshly made Chinese sausage, Goji berry rice cake, scallion cake, etc.  She is always alert and attentive and it's hard to believe that she is actually quite a bit older than my own mother.  I have a lot of respect for her and feel a certain affinity with her.  After watching the touching gesture by her son, I decided to get her a Mother's Day gift too.  Jasmine and I found it in a fair trade store on Pearl - a metal watering can hand-painted by a Bangladesh rickshaw driver with a beautiful sunflower on a green background.  It's now sitting in her restaurant serving as a vase for her son's bouquet - I couldn't be happier with the arrangement.

Photo of the day:

Jasmine got a new hat today.  It's a perfect hat for the spring!

Day 196 - Ice Cream

Thought of the day: We are going to spend a couple of days in Greece next month and I am already looking forward to it.  There are tens of thousands of online photos of the village that we are visiting and I really like what I have seen so far.  Of course, having such a high expectation before a trip is probably not a good thing.  Last week we made a last minute plan and visited Stanley Hotel in Estes Park over the weekend.  I had not expected much but we all ended up having a marvelous time.  Come to think of it, the hotel and the locale were certainly important, but it was really the people who came along in the trip that made it so special.  For the Greek trip, I am reassured of the choice of location after seeing the photos and reading the reviews, now I just need to make sure that the other part works out well too:-)

Photo of the day:

Girls enjoying their Wednesday evening sweets.  They are the enviable creatures of the moment carrying very few memories from the past or plans for the future.  We, as adults, alone carry the burden of regrets and anxieties that are often unwarranted.  Wouldn't that be nice if we can unburden ourselves and treat life as a simple ice cream cone and just enjoy it one mouthful at a time?

Day 195 - Lila

Thought of the day: Lila had some pretty wild mood swings since I picked her up from preschool today.  The cause was pretty obvious: lack of sleep.  Her preschool set aside only half an hour for the kids to rest in the afternoon, which was way too short for Lila to take a proper nap.  As a result, she had been taking irregular naps since she started the preschool.  On some days she would skip it altogether, with disastrous effects on herself and the family.  And today was one of those days.  I have been routinely taking her out early so she could nap at home.  However, sometimes my schedule just wouldn't allow that.  The good news is that we're taking her to a different preschool in the fall, where she could get a proper rest.  Of course, by that time she may have already naturally outgrown her need for an afternoon nap, but even if she does, having some downtime to do quiet things is still way better than keeping going all day long without a real break.  I know it would be hard to convince a toddler that getting bored at times is better than getting overtired, but I wish her preschool had known better and had respected the kids' need to rest as much as they had respected the kids' need to play.

Photo of the day:

Lila in a residential neighborhood at Lafayette.  She was at a high point of her mood swings when I took this picture.

Day 192 - Wedding

Thought of the day: It was a perfect day in Estes Park.  In the morning, we drove to Rocky Mountain National Park and hiked on a short trail to Bear Lake, which was still completely frozen and covered by snow at this time of the year.  And then we hiked on Lumpy Ridge trail in town. The first trail was surrounded by a forest and it was covered by snow and slippery.  It was even snowing when we did the hike.  The second trail was snow-free and dry and ran through some pretty interesting rock formations.  It was nice and sunny when we did that hike.   The two hikes couldn't be more different even though they were just within a short drive from each other.  We literally drove from one climate zone to another in a matter of minutes.  Jasmine and Lila were very excited by the adventure and they both enjoyed climbing up and down the rocks along the Lumpy Ridge Trail.  In the evening, we checked out Rock Inn Restaurant which is a steak house and a popular music venue in Estes Park.  The girls danced an evening away to the merry tunes played by a local musician.

Photo of the day:

A wedding party in Stanley Hotel where we are staying at.  Today must be an auspicious day to get married as we spotted at least 3 wedding parties in the hotel.  Other than weddings, we also counted a lot of elks in RMNP and in town, including a dozen or so munching on the grass right outside of our hotel room.  However, I took a lot more photos of wedding parties  than elks, so the elks would have to wait until our next trip to get on the blog!

Day 191 - Happy Music

Thought of the day: We're staying in Estes Park for the weekend.  It's much chillier here than in Boulder but it's good to do something different.  Jasmine loved the coziness of the hotel room and declared that she would not mind staying here forever.  I think that might be a little exaggerated and a spur of the moment declaration, but she is always the happiest when she gets to spend time with us.  It's yet another proof that kids, at least the young ones, crave for the quality time with parents more than anything else.  Watching movies or playing with new toys may provide them with temporary excitements, but there's nothing like the parents' unconditional love and undivided attention to make them genuinely happy.

Photo of the day:

Students of Kutandara Center performing African music on the Pearl St.  Today was the Colorado Children's Day in Boulder where there were fun activities for the kids and all events were free (even the balloon man refused to accept tips).  Looking at this photo reminded me just how warm it was a couple of hours ago!