Day 318 - Basket Stand

Thought of the day: We were invited to a dinner party tonight. Our host is a superb cook and her delicious Sichuanese banquet always leaves me speechless. I admire people who can do any one thing so particularly well as that requires both dedication and talent and is a good indication that I have something to learn from them which is often far beyond the specific skills that they happen to possess.

Photo of the day: 

A fair trade basket stand in Boulder Hometown Festival. There's always something going on here over long weekends and this weekend is no exception. Parties, festivals, meeting friends - all good reasons to keep us in town and enjoy the waning days of the summer.

Day 276 - Korean BBQ

Thought of the day: It was a warm day and a perfect day to spend in the Eldorado Springs swimming pool.  The pool was located at the base of Eldorado Canyon State Park and fed by a natural spring.  The artesian water in the pool was very cool and refreshing.  The pool was surrounded by an ancient pool house, a dingy snack bar, some wood benches, a first-aid station and completed with a dive board and a metal slide.  Everything - other than the refreshing water itself - looked historic and a bit outdated but that did bestow some old world charm on the pool.  After our nice pool experiences in Switzerland last month,  I certainly wish there were more shades, especially over the toddler's area. I was also missing espresso machines and better food choices there.  However, if you are prepared to bring your own food and drinks, it can be a good place for you to cool down and whisk away a couple of carefree hours in a hot summer day.

Photo of the day:

The Eldorado Springs pool cooled us down sufficiently for a Korean BBQ in the evening.  We are hosting a Korean Soprano  (second to the right) for a couple of days and we, together with a couple of our friends, took her out for some yummy food tonight.

Day 257 - Watermelon Game

Thought of the day: Our neighborhood has a tradition of July 4th bike parade and pool party.  Jasmine and her friend decorated their bikes with red/white/blue ribbons and flowers, dressed in matching outfits and were excited to take part in the parade.  Lila rode Jasmine's old bike with the training wheels on.  It was her first day on a "big girl's bike" and daddy served as her reliable manual brake along the way.  The best part for the kids was, of course, the pool party that followed.  They played games in the pool - coin dive, watermelon game, among others. It was a big reunion for all the neighborhood kids who had grown to know each other over the years. Water, friends, games, what else do they need?  For adults, it was a good opportunity to see each other again and catch up over some food and drink in a festive air. I wish there were something like this every month! It could just be some informal gatherings over simple potlucks. We would feel more grounded in this borderless and ever-shifting global village if we are more connected to each other at a personal level and feel a sense of belonging in the small village that we call home.

Photo of the day: 

Watermelon game: try as you may, but I am determined to hold on to this thing!

Day 256 - Grill

Thought of the day: This is the July 4th weekend and we had a perfect weather to grill.  We hosted a small party in our backyard and spent some fun time outside.  Summer outdoor BBQ should be a simple and easy affair but it's actually amazing how many little things could go wrong.  Lucky for us, we had good temperature, little wind and no nasty mosquitoes, pesky flies or June bugs to deal with. Everything was as perfect as it could be and I sure hope it would stay this way for the rest of the summer!

Photo of the day:

Grill time!

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 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 178 - Baby Zoe

Thought of the day: We attended a kid's birthday party in a park today.  It was a beautiful day to have an outdoor party.  Adults talked while the kids played and everybody had a blast.  The only problem was that the wind made it challenging to light the birthday candles!  A birthday party provides a nice opportunity for the parents to socialize, especially since the same group of parents tend to meet in several birthday parties in a year and sometimes year after year.  Unfortunately as the kids get older, these parties  turn more and more into kids only parties and most parents would just drop off the kids and come back when the party is almost over.  It's a pity when a party morphs from a social event into a free day care.  If you have been to a packaged birthday party, you'll find that the hosting facility doesn't usually try very hard to accommodate the adults - oftentimes the parents are just expected to stand around when the kids sit down to have cake and such.  It often feels awkward to be there as an adult and maybe that's why most parents decide not to stay.  I wonder if this is a common way of doing things in all cultures or if it's just another symptom of our kid-centric society.

Photo of the day:

Meet baby Zoe - this birthday party gave us the opportunity to finally meet her.

Day 171 - Daisy

Thought of the day: Our neighborhood has an annual progressive dinner event which we have joined for a few times.  Tonight we just had this year's progressive dinner.  The appetizer course was hosted in our home, just like last year, where everybody met for the appetizer before heading off to different homes for the next courses.  After having soup, salad and main entree in three different homes, everybody met again for dessert in another neighbor's home and concluded the evening.  It is a fun tradition which we always enjoy when we are able to participate.  It's a good opportunity to meet people, some of whom we will otherwise not have a chance to meet even though we all live in the same neighborhood.  One thing I observed tonight was that I was the only non-white person in the party - a situation that I had grown so used to in Boulder that I only realized it after the party was over.  There were a few other immigrant families present but they were all from Europe.  Come to think of it, I have only met a single non-white person in the past years of progressive dinners.  It was an Asian woman who became a friend of mine but she moved away two years ago.  Boulder is not a very diverse city, to say the least.  It was so ten years ago and, according to the latest census, it was still so today, despite of the national and state-wide trend of getting more diverse.  Another thing I observed tonight was that there were quite a few overachievers in the neighborhood, and some were more pleasant to talk to than others.  I think what makes a difference is the degree of humility.  A humble overachiever can be really interesting to talk to as you can have a two-way conversation where you get to hear some interesting stories and you get to share some of your own lowly thoughts too.  A not-so-humble overachiever can be self-centered, overbearing and difficult to communicate with.  I suppose this can happen no matter you overachieve or not, but it does demonstrate that being successful doesn't make you a wise person.  It takes a wise person to remain humble and it takes a humble person to be compassionate.  I wonder if this contributes to the curious statistics that while average Boulder residents make more money than average Colorado residents, we are less generous in giving.  I suspect this phenomenon will get worse before it gets better because the housing is Boulder is not getting more affordable comparing to the rest of the state and we may end up attracting even more overachievers to the city in the foreseeable future.

Photo of the day:

One of the daisies we used to decorate the tables for the progressive dinner.