Labor Day BBQ at the Akamine's!

Happy Saturday Everyone!

Last weekend Alicia and I hosted a Labor Day BBQ at our home. I think this was one of the first real get togethers that we've had since our house warming in July 2010!  We had an amazing time spent with family and friends.  The menu was simple, American Picnic. Of course that weekend had some record breaking heat which made BBQ-ing quite a task but everything turned out well.

We had hamburgers, hot dogs, three different salads, and too many desserts! Also, it was Dylan's big reveal to the extended family! He was a hit! He was so well behaved as he made rounds in everyone's arms.  This was also Ouma's (Alicia's grandmother) first time meeting her first great-grand child! What a special occasion.  Daddy, Jason, was right there taking photos and capturing the moments.  Later in the afternoon Jason's dad also stopped by and checked out his grandson. That little boy is so loved! 

Check our spread!

I also took the opportunity to try my hand at making sangria. It came out pretty good, the only think I would change would be the amount of ice I put it! ...After a while it got diluted and just didn't pack the same "punch" as before.  Alicia made a delicious sugar free strawberry lemonade from scratch! It was delicious, the perfect drink to quench your thirst on a hot September day. 

We also had some fresh homemade guacamole, love that stuff! Eat your heart out El Torrito!  The key is to use RIPE avocados, duh...haha.  Say for instance, if you have five avocados but only four are ripe, then make a guacamole with the four avocados - don't even think about adding that questionable 5th avocado, it's going to ruin your guacamole and its raw texture and flavor is going to go viral in your drip and ruin it!

After we had our desserts and were stuffed out of minds Alicia's brother, Alan, had brought his X-Box Kinect and set it up!  I really want to get a Kinect... I think that thing is so cool! Have you seen those infrared pictures of how Kinect "see's" your playing environment? ...It's kinda creepy and cool at the same time, there are 1000's and 1000's of dots.  My dad also brought his new "toy" ...an Apple iPad! ...I want one of those too. Hahaha.  Anyways, back to the X-Box, we played the Kinect Sports and all took turns bowling, sprinting, and playing ping pong.  I think that the coolest feature of the Kinect is that it takes video of you while you're playing the games and in the review it shows the videos! They are so hilarious!

Isn't is so crazy to see what kids are growing up with theses days?  Even in my line of work I've seen a huge change from what the little kids play with while in the hospital... Things like books and toys are quickly being replaced with DVD players, iPads, and cell phones. It's strange, or...rather it's becoming more normal to see a little toddlers navigating those iPads with the greatest of ease. 

Hope you all have survived the intense heat this week! Have a restful weekend. 

I'm NOT too busy to blog...

Hello Readers, if there are any of you still out there... Perhaps I should start with another re-cap or another welcome post! Alicia and I have been so busy lately, not that there's a ton of stuff going on though, just work and life. I honestly had to re-read our own blog to find out when my last entry was! ...That's bad.  I've seen people on my Facebook news feed committing to daily blog entries, a song-a-day, photo-a-day, and I always thought that'd be such a cool project. I don't know that I have enough motivation to pull something like that off so I'll stick to my... whenever-I-have-time commitment.

In recent weeks we started checking out a local church here in the valley called The Lamb's Fellowship.

They seem to have a pretty awesome mission going on.  Dynamic speakers, uplifting music, and soul nourishing-spiritually fulfilling sermons.  Unfortunately, Alicia and I work every other weekend so we're unable to attend every service. When we first went we thought that their Saturday night service started at 8:30 pm, but we must have heard wrong, it started at 6:00 pm. We both rushed after work church only to find out that we were the only two cars parked in the parking lot! Haha.

One of Alicia's coworkers hosted a summer time pool party for friends and families in the La Cresta neighborhood. This area is absolutely beautiful with breathtaking views of the valley and estate size homes and land.  We had a great time hanging out with everyone there, even took a dip in the pool as the kids squirted us with water guns.  I think one of my favorite parts was the food, they had a taco guy there! Muy Delicioso!  Alicia had one of our neighbor's bring a celebratory cake for the whole ED staff. It was quite impressive!

We also met up with some friends/ co-workers at Tom and Heather's house in Yucaipa for a "wine n' dine" evening.  Alicia and I brought these stuffed mushrooms featured in the Atkins Diet, they came out so good!  If I wasn't a nurse I'd be a chef for sure... We had a great evening catching up with old friends and making new ones. Guess we're going to be hosting the next one!  Our friend Meagan and her daughter carpooled with us and her daughter used the backseat DVD player. First time I ever used that thing, I think it'll come in handy one of these days when we have kids of our own.

Speaking of kids and babies and such... Jason, Patti, and Dylan are coming down for a visit this labor day weekend! We're so excited to have them over. This will be Dylan's first big trip to Southern/ Southeastern California.

What else? Well, we could always chat about the weather! Haha, well, speaking of, it has been very warm the past few days with temperatures reaching over 100 F daily. Today the valley actually actually had a few fires, one of which I think is still burning down close to the Riverside/ San Diego county line, hope it doesn't spread any more because there goes wine country...  What's nice though is that sometimes the hot weather brings us beautiful skies...

Alright readers, I've taken enough of your time. I'll post more as the days, err.., weeks go on. Hope you had a restful weekend and hoping you have a great week! At least Monday is out of the way, phew.

Home Improvement... Again

Being newly married and living a newly built house... I have a feeling that there are going to be quite a lot of posts relating to home improvement. Well, maybe it's not so much home improvement as it is making our home uniquely ours. You've seen our backyard, that's going to be quite a project! We even have a side yard that Alicia is eying on transforming into our own vegetable garden as well as some hanging plants to dress up the view from our dining room window.

Driving around our neighborhood we've noticed that the builders use to construct these homes fairly large, with each home featuring a "courtyard" like area for sitting and neighborhood watching.  Transforming our front door area is also a project that we're considering. I drew a sketch of what we hope to accomplish sometime in the future, maybe it will be one of those weekend warrior projects!

Also, here is an inspiration board that we've put together to tie all the elements we're looking to incorporate into the design.

But, since it's been so hot the last few days we decided to take our improvements inside. With a handy picture hanging kit a few tools - mission accomplished!

We've had these photos laying on our living room floor for quite some time now. Today, Sunday, they have found their new home on our stairwell wall.

Our friend, Mandy, visited a few weeks ago and she said that pictures on the wall make such a difference to a home! She was right!

Home Improvement

Work seems to be getting the best of us these days! Haha. This past week my parents came down for a few days to help us out with some projects that we've been wanting to complete around the house. Two things in particular, a gate for our side yard and assembling our new dog run.  Unfortunately, the time they spent with us was also some of the hottest temperatures that we've experienced all summer long! Heat wave for sure... We made sure to keep ourselves hydrated as well as take breaks during the peak hours to avoid heat stroke and other ailments from sun overdose.

The gate that my dad and I put together was no easy task. I'm almost positive on this one, I think our backyard dirt is composted of clay and cement. I have never dug into dirt so hard in my entire life! (I had actually started digging the holes about one month ago, a couple inches every day...) At one point I even considered renting a jack hammer! Haha. My dad, mom, and I made a trip to Lowes and got all our supplies - I'm sure the people at Lowes know my parents on a first name basis by now. My mom says that Lowes is where all the young suburbia families shop and Home Depot is... Well, it just is. The fence went up with little to no problems. I still have to add the trimmings (lock, handle, etc...) but for the most part it's all done! I'm just waiting for the stain to dry - it's still a little tacky to touch.  The top portion of the gate is going to be filled in with trellis to give it a more quaint feel for when our backyard is fully completed... Some day!

The other project that we wanted to get up was a dog run that Alicia and I had purchased a while back. The box alone weighed in at 200 lbs so it was definitely a two person job. The dog run took a little longer to put up than I thought - mainly because I had never worked with chain-link fence before.  It was funny, as soon as we got it all set up Rocco and Bently went in and started wrestling - MMA style.

We're so thankful that my parents were able to spend a few days with us!

"A San Francisco Treat"

Hello Readers!

It's been too long! My appologies. Alicia and I worked a four day stretch and then headed off to San Francisco! We absolutely love that city, we both agree that if there was any city in the world that we could live in, San Francisco would be it. The buildings, the culture, the neighborhoods, the restaurants, and the public transportation make the city so appealing.

On Wednesday we headed to the airport but got there a little late so we had to park in the closer lot which meant more money! Oh well.... Better than missing our flight that's for sure! When we got to Oakland, we headed over to the rental car place, then to yet another off site rental place to pick up our car.  We booked with Advantage - mainly because of the price.  We're still not sure whether waiting a full hour from the time we picked up our bags to the time our bags ended up in the trunk of the car was worth it...

After making our way to the city and checking into our hotel we headed out to Rocklin, about two hours inland, to see Jason, Patti, and Dylan! The drive took forever. We hit each city's traffic, during rush hour, not fun.  Jason and Patti had dinner waiting for us when we got there! We had Buca Di Beppo's and then frozen yogurt for dessert.  I got to hold Dylan for the first time! He's one cute kid!! I'm an uncle! How crazy... Alicia was right, seeing pictures of Dylan is one thing, but then actually being able to hold, feel, and smell him is just something you can't but help fall in love with. ...Well, some smells I could do without. Haha.

We stayed at the Warwick - San Francisco, an older hotel with all the quaint amenities and decor of the euro-american old world.  What really happened is that we got lucky and won the "name your own price" bid on Priceline. I don't think we have any photos of the room but lets just say we now know what our dining room would look like if we put a bed in it. Haha. We enjoyed our stay at the hotel though, it was close enough to major BART stations, MUNI lines, a sketchy backpackers hostel, and a "Massage and Sauna" parlor...

The next day (Alicia's Birthday) we spent in Santa Cruz.  We love exploring little beach towns like that - it reminded us of the trip we took up the coast a few years back.  [Which, by the way, is a road trip that I encourage everyone to take - it's relaxing, carefree, and you get to see all the beautiful sights that California has to offer.]  We spent the majority of the day at the Santa Cruz Beach Boardwalk.  This may sound strange, but from the moment we walked onto the boardwalk I had a strong sense of deja vu - come to find out my parents had taken my brother and I there when I was about five years old. Can you imagine, twenty two years later, and I still remember the roller coaster and smells of the boardwalk!

Per the birthday girl's request we had dinner at an Ethiopian food restaurant off Geary St at Assab Eritrean Restaurant.

One of Alicia's old roommates, Rebecca, met us for dinner.  She is an amazing person, humanitarian, physician, and all around fantastic human being. I feel that if there were more Rebecca's in the world, the world would be a much happier place!

On Friday we decided to go out and have a famous San Francisco breakfast at Dotties! ....Yeah right! The line was at least an hour long. Moving on... We ended up eating at this place called Honey Honey Cafe and Crepery. Good food! It definitely hit the spot - chocolate waffles, pecan pancakes, can't get much better than that! Shortly thereafter, we were on a mission. We had tickets to go to the Giants game on Saturday but had no team attire! So strolled, strolled, walked, hiked, ran, etc.... all the way down to AT&T Park to get some Giants paraphernalia.

 Then! We got the call. The others had arrived! We had planned to spend the rest of the weekend with Monique & her husband Jeremy, Meagan, and Heather and her husband Tom. Such a great bunch!  We had lunch at a little cafe off Union Square where we were serenaded by a wannabe broadway singer. Meagan swore that he had a hidden microphone on him, but I think his voice was just that "boomy," he reminded me of that "man with the golden voice."

We met up with Heather and Tom at the Grand Hyatt and watched people repel from the top of the building - Scary and amazing all at the same time. Turns out it was for the Special Olympics or something, that takes guts! I don't know that I could have done that sober - that's for sure! Kudos to those athletes!
We ended the afternoon with drinks at the GH Lounge 36 floors in the air! Yup, your ears pop in the elevator going up and down! The view was amazing! I didn't know that you could take in such a spectacular view for free.

Friday night we had dinner at One Market. The food was great and the half price wine bottles were even better!  I definitely recommend anyone to dine there, make reservations though, it fills up quickly.

On Saturday we met up with some old friends, Melinda and Rick. They had graciously enough saved a spot in line for... Dottie's True Blue Cafe! We're so lucky! Breakfast was amazing - it was like a home cooked meal but better. I'm not the sharpest tool in the shed when it comes to making breakfast... mainly because of the whole waking up part...

Saturday afternoon was relaxing. We walked around Ferry Building and along the piers.  There's so much to see and do in San Francisco! Our on foot journey eventually lead us to AT&T Park for the Giants vs. Brewers game. This was my first Giants game, ever. And I think... my 4th baseball game? I'll be the first to say that I'm not a sports fanatic by any means.  Enter, my wife.  She patiently explained all the in's and out's of the game and laughed with me... or at me... when I called it a "double out" instead of a "double play."

After the game a few of us went to a piano bar on Geary St for some post game beers! ...The atmosphere was kind of a buzz kill though. The piano guy was mediocre at best and his covers were kinda... well, I'll just say we didn't stick around to finish our beers...

Sunday morning was our LAST day in the city! The whole group got together at Honey Honey again and had breakfast.  Alicia and I got there early and waited the line out for everyone else. That place was so packed but we managed to stick a few tables together.  I think eating is one of the ultimate social activities a group of friends can do. Before long, it was time to say our goodbyes and head back home...

We arrived at the airport in good time actually! Alicia and I have learned that between us we can master public transportation! ...Well, maybe her a little more than I.

On the airplane we were in line with this little old Asian lady.  She was shorter than my mom! I don't know, maybe it's my approachable face, my friendly aura, or the fact that I'm a young Asian male with a genetically ingrained cultural respect for elders... But she kindly asked me to help her with her luggage. Of course, I was more than happy to! As we were preparing for lift off the steward had moved her bag three rows back and I could see the poor lady turning in her seat, stretching her neck trying to catch of glimpse of where her luggage was relocated to.  I reassured her that I would get her luggage for her once the place landed.  Pauline, my little old Asian lady friend, was so grateful. I felt like I was on one of those pay it forward commercials...

There you have it! Quality time with your better half, great food, amazing friends, and random acts of kindness.

My photo project during our trip!

Smells like wet dog!

HAVE YOU MET OUR KIDS?!

I can't believe I haven't blogged about our pups! We have three pups! Ella, Bently, and Rocco.

Ella is a Dalmador (Dalmation - Labrador Mix). Her original name was Cruella (Creative right? Her face must have been the inspiration behind that name) but Alicia wasn't too fond of that name so it was shortened to Ella. Ella is the oldest and most mischievous of our pups.  She's been known to clear a 6 foot fence in a single leap! 

Bently is a Golden Retriever. He's probably the most friendly dog you'll ever meet! I think it's in their breed, I know other people who have the same dog and they always say that their dog wouldn't even harm a fly. We actaully adopted Bently from our friends Ryan and Heather Walter when they moved to the east coast. Bently is quite the pup! He follows whatever Ella does and one day that landed him a stay in the Dog/Cat Hospital in San Bernardino after he was injured by a car!! He's all healed now and is usually the one who starts an impromptu wrestling match with either Ella or Rocco.

 

Rocco is a weimaraner and is the youngest of our pups. He was my Christmas present from Alicia two years ago!  He's been such a handful! You should have seen how much trouble he's gotten into in the past... amazing. But he's probably the one pup that tries the hardest to listen and behave, he's cute. He just has so much energy and is still very puppy like in his demeanor. Loves to lick, play, and wimper for attention.

So the other day Alicia and I were talking about how our dogs (Ella and Bently) use to love playing in the water at the dog park in Redlands.  While Alicia is enjoying a girls day at Glen Ivy spa I went out to K-Mart and found a cheap hard plastic dog pool for our pups as the summer days grow longer and hotter! I filled up the pool and of course who jumps in immediately? Ella. By breed, Ella and Bently are natural water lovers. Rocco is freaked out by it - I think he thinks of water as nothing more than a means of hydration.

Well, there you have it.  Our pups, our kids! Have a great day!

The Refrigerator Saga...

This is my first mobile post. I'm not sure if there is a blog app or an easier way to do mobile blogging... I'll have to look into it for sure though. So in the quietness of the living room this morning I listened to the sounds of the neighborhood, the backyard, and the house. However, aside from the regular mundane sounds of a typical Saturday morning there was something else, something I had never heard before. The quiet humming of our GE refrigerator was tainted with what sounded like a little Japanese boy playing with chopsticks and a fan. tat tat tat tat tat tat tat tat... (you like that description? ...yeah, I'm sure I did that once or twice back in the day. Haha) There goes the cooler again. Sure enough, when I checked the temperatures the freezer was reading in the teens. I checked out the cooling grate in the freezer and it had started to ice over again! ...lame

After speaking with Alicia we figured the best thing was to call and check the warranty stuff. As it turns out, the refrigerator is still under the manufacturers warranty for 11 more days then our Home Depot extended warranty will kick in. This is probably the first time in my life I'm glad that we had purchased one of those warranties. So I got on the phone with GE and after five different 1(800) numbers and five automated menus the earliest appointment GE can offer is in 9 days - I'm told that until then I can chip the ice away on a daily basis... Really? Anyways, so this turned out to be one of those life's lemons and lemonade moments. We got the family activated and with my mom and brothers help we're loading my old fridge that was in San Bernardino and taking it down to our house in French Valley!

Alright, I'm gonna get ready. Just got the text that they are getting close.

So, As you can see. I really made sure that there was no way this fridge was going to open up on the freeway or fly away! We had that thing taped up and tied down like no body's business! The fridge was surprisingly light. I didn't tell Tony but I'm pretty sure he pulled the whole thing on his own. The most I was doing was making sure that it didn't tip backwards. Haha. When it came time to unloading Alicia and I were able to do it ourselves with no problem.

Our GE fridge continues to have fits where it's warm and cool, warm and cool. I'm not sure what to make of the situation.  The other fridge is up and running in the garage. It'll be nice to have two working refrigerators. Our current situation is this - we bought a GE profile series french door stainless fridge to match the other GE appliances, however, we purchased a counter depth fridge so that it wouldn't stick out like a sore thumb. It looks great and fits in with our kitchen perfectly the only down side is that counter depth fridges do not lend themselves to much storage space! 

I'm sure this isn't the last we'll hear about the Refrigerator Saga... Remember, 8 days from now GE is going to come out and fix our fridge - hope that goes well.

As for today, we're eventually going to make our way to my parents house and switch the vehicles back. Then just relax - Monday starts another work week!