my day

Today I woke up, brushed my teeth, changed, and ate breakfast. For breakfast I had peanut butter on toast and bean sprouts in chow mein.  Then I watched TV. For lunch I had chick peas fried rice and some kind of noodles.

In the afternoon my sister, my mom, and I went to the bank. I opened a bank account and put in $60. I have lots of money because my birthday is in September.  There were free cookies and juice at the bank.  I ate a cookie but I did not drink juice.

Then we went to the mall. We went to Starbucks and Shopper's Drug Mart. I ordered  small caramel frappucino with no whip cream and no caffeine.  M2 got the same thing.  Mommy got a pumpkin spice latte. We also got a lemon loaf but we did not give any to M1. We texted M1 to see if she wanted Timbits from Tim Horton's but she did not respond. Then we went home.

Now I am doing a blog. Now I am finished my blog. Now I am going to press "Publish".

M3





























































ow  I am doing a blog.

This One's For You

I have written letters to my daughters on their birthdays.  This one is for the Big Oh.

Happy Birthday my dearest husband.  I am thinking about you.  I am smiling because I'm thinking about all the things you've done that make me happy.

A long time ago you gave me a card.  A very large card.  You needed a large card because in it you wrote down 1000 things about me that you love.

We recently went to a beautiful wedding of one of our cousins and as emotional as the speeches were that night, our family remembered your touching speech on our wedding day 18 years ago.  And that made me smile.   I am remembering the feeling of pure newlywed bliss as a young bride.  The way you made me feel like a princess and you were my knight in shining armour to take me away to our paradise.

I am remembering the first home you gave me - OUR first home.  It was a small condo but to me it felt like a mansion.  You let me pick out all the furniture and decorate it anyway I wanted to.   We hosted birthday parties, Christmas & Halloween parties, and bridal showers for friends there.  It was also there that you studied for your exams - those long ago exams that felt like the most important & difficult things you would ever have to do in this world (little did we know then).  When you passed your exams we celebrated & we were so happy to be closing one chapter of our life together & starting a new one.

I remember coming to you one day and saying let's buy a house HERE!  And we did.  Again you let me choose where we would move to.  You let me decide all the large & small details that go with buying a brand new home from floor plans, to wall colours, to flooring and faucets and sinks.  If my first home was a mansion then this one now felt like my own palace - a castle fit for a king & queen!

And it is here where you have given me the 3 most important people in our lives.  It is here in our home now with our children that you completed me.  The love and adoration I see you have for your daughters is indescribable.  Only someone in love, that have children of their own, can really understand how I feel.  I am smiling as I am thinking about you & our girls.

I am remembering our hockey playing days, watching Hong Kong movies in Chinatown
& Market Village, concerts & casino trips, vacations and cruises, birthdays and anniversaries, apple picking in the fall,  Christmases & Chinese New Years, dance competitions, beginning of summer rituals & first days back to school.

I know I don't say it enough now-a-days...
I love you for holding me up on my weakest, darkest days.
I love you for letting me be me - angry, sad, joyous, and everything in between
I love you for giving me my space & solitude - even when you want to be by my side
I love you for loving me

Happy Birthday Big Oh

Y.C.

A Bad Morning

I wrote this letter back in May to a few best friends when I was having a particularly bad morning....

*****************

I'm going to be selfish this morning.  I'm only going to think about how I'm feeling right now.  I'm not going to worry that I'm burdening you with my problems or be afraid that I'm spoiling your day with my mood.  I'm not going to be positive.  I'm tired of being positive.  I'm tired of looking on the bright side.  I'm tired of thinking about all the things I have and not what I don't have. I'm just tired!

I yelled at M3 this morning.  Again.  She has an eye infection and a bit of a cold & probably some seasonal allergies that make her eyes extra ichy & her nose extra runny.  So to say she's in a bad mood & being a bit difficult is definitely an understatement.  She does not like putting in eye drops & is un-cooperative when we do.   This morning while struggling with her to put the eye drops in I lost it again and yelled & screamed at her.  I threatened to slap her!  I actually had visions of myself raising my hand & slapping her across the face.  I didn't though.  And the eye drops did get in ( I think/I hope).  She went to school.

I got a call 5 minutes after she got dropped off.  It was the school calling.  She had a bad fall walking into the school.  I went to check her out right away.  She was in the office crying.  Her face had scrapes on her forehead, on her nose, on her lips.  She was bleeding from her scrapes, her nose was turning purple with a bruise, and her lips were swollen.  I just broke down at school & started crying with her.  

I took her home & cleaned her up.  I held her.  I apologized for yelling at her this morning.  I told her I love her & everything will be OK.  I told her I could cancel the doctor's appointment I had this morning & stay home with her.  You know what she said?  She said, "No mommy, go to your appointment.  I want you to get better."

So this is where I am now.  Waiting for my turn to see the doctor.  My daughter thinks I'm going to get better but I know I'm not & it's killing me.  This has been a rough week.  It started with M1 crying & me consoling her and now it's ending with M3 crying & me telling her the same thing I told M1: "That everything's going to be OK.  It hurts but you're strong girls & it will get better.   That I love them & I'm proud of them."

I know that even when I'm gone there will be someone to hold them & tell them these things.  There'll be the Big Oh, they will have each other, their older cousins, all their aunts & uncles.  But I want to be the one to tell them these things!  I want to be the one they come to when they need re-assuring!  I want to be here!

This week has been a tough one physically, mentally, emotionally.

That's all I've got now.  Thanks for listening.

*****************

At the time I wrote this letter to my friends it was meant to be just an outlet for the tough week I was having.  I didn't know that rough week would end up being most of my summer & still going on.  My M3 still continues to have outbursts of anger, impatience, and frustrations.  We hope we are doing all the right things for her, but realize we may need professional help if her temperament doesn't improve.

And me?  My monthly hospital visits turned into weekly ones over the summer.   And the visits & treatments are taking a toil on me - physically, mentally & emotionally.  And I don't know if 

anything is working.   But I have no other choice right now - except to do nothing - which is NOT an option I am willing to consider.

Y.C.

Food Truck Day

On Saturday August 6th 2017 me and my family went downtown to a food truck festival.  We drove downtown and we put our bikes in the car.  We went to Auntie P**'s house first.  My sisters and my dad rood  their bikes to the festival.  We had fruit slushies , poutine, Mac and Cheese, grilled cheese sandwiches , and Vietnamese noodle rolls.

Afterwards my mom and I drove back to Auntie P**'s house and my sisters and dad rode their bikes there.  Then we loaded the car and all drove home.

M3

Pin Me!

I know I'm late to the game.  Aren't I always?

I discovered Pintrest this summer.  I've tried 2 recipes so far - quite successfully I might add.  It's INSPIRING!  I say "inspiring" because I browsed a few similar recipes I liked and melded them together to make something of my own.  The first one was this awesome Kale & Broccoli Salad I put together.  Here's the original pin (Autumn Kale Apple & Quinoa Salad) and here's my own take on it:

I basically took the recipe and added Broccoli, Carrots, and Purple Cabbage.  I omitted the Goat Cheese, Cranberries and Nuts.  I made the dressing exactly as instructed and made sure to mar the dressing in the salad for at least 1/2 an hour before serving.  Voila.  A to-die-for salad that suits perfectly the tastes of my family! 

I recently took this recipe to a friend's dinner party and received lots of compliments - it doesn't hurt that the kale was fresh grown from my dad's garden!  Give the recipe a try with your own variations - I'm sure you'll love it as much as we did!

Y.C.

Yokohama Sushi

Yesterday night my family and I went to Yokohama Sushi for dinner.

The service wasn't great. First, we ordered dinner on the i Pad that they gave us. They didn't have a lot of selection on their menu and the i Pad stopped working a few times. After we ordered, it didn't take very long to come. Sometimes they would deliver food to us that we didn't ever order and they looked like they were bored out of their mind. Whenever we waved them down or wanted to ask them something, they would always ignore us or tell us to wait and they would never come back.

The first item that came was Miso soup. At every other Japanese restaurant they fill the Miso soup, but at this place they only gave us a half bowl!! Then, as our other food came we found that the portions were SO small!! The tempura shrimp was almost half the size of other tempura! As we were finishing off of dishes and ordering some more, we found that a lot of the food didn't taste that good.

On our second order of food, we decided to get some noodles. We got soup ramen, fried and soup udon. When the ramen came there was barely any ramen actually in the soup, it was just soup and mushrooms!! The soup udon had no flavour at all and the fried udon was small so we got another one. We also got beef ribs during our second order. The beef ribs tasted okay, but it was very chewy and it didn't look very cooked.

Overall the dinner was okay, but the dessert is a WHOLE different story. We saved the dessert menu for after we finished our dinner to look at. They didn't have a wide selection just like the main menu. They had 3 types of ice cream and they didn't have VANILLA! Like honestly, what kind of place doesn't have vanilla ice cream. I was angry that they didn't have vanilla ice cream so I went to look for my next favourite dessert, a crème brûlée. Guess what?? They didn't have that either! Which got me even angrier than I was before. I ended up getting a chocolate mousse and my sisters & parents  got mango ice cream, mango tapioca, a tiramisu, durian ice cream and ginger milk. I jut have to say that the pictures are false advertising. All the desserts were miniature size. The tiramisu was the size of a finger and the ice cream looked like a bouncy ball. The mango tapioca barely had any tapioca and looked like yellow-ish water. Then we have my chocolate mousse...the chocolate mousse looked like a piece of TURD!! In the picture it looked like a cup full of yogurt, but in real life...it looks like a small piece of TURD!!!!! The ginger milk didn't even come, but the other dessert did. I was so disappointed at their lack in dessert...actually I was disappointed in their lack of everything.

I would recommend that you don't come and try their food. Thank you for letting me take out my anger on you.

M2

This is the turd I was writing about.

Being Bored Is Good For You

It is already 2 weeks into August and the summer is winding down for us.

Our last 3 summers seemed to follow a similar pattern.  July has been reserved for camps while August is our lazy month - a time for the kids to have nothing scheduled, to learn to amuse themselves and to be bored.  Please don't ask me to do anything with you - go figure it out yourselves!

I am embracing the whole idea of kids needing to be bored. The kids are learning how to be bored and then figuring out how NOT to be bored ON THEIR OWN.  M1 & M2 are getting the hang of it.  They'll find TV shows to watch, they'll read, look up crafts on the internet to do, and go out to ride their bikes or play basketball.  I've even allowed M1 to make her own plans with her friends to meet up at the neighbourhood park - and I have to admit I'm enjoying the freedom it gives me and the independence & responsibility it gives her.  We're still working on M3 - she'll have her moments where she can play on her own, but of course she'd much rather have us play a board game with her, do crafts together, or just keep her company.

We haven't really "vacationed" during the last 3 summers.  Other than last year when we spent 4 days in our nation's capital, we've been doing a lot of local day trips.  This year is really no different, except that we have booked a local hotel for a few nights later this month; a true "staycation" - hopefully there will be a blog or two on that later in the month.

And me?  I continue to focus on my weekly appointments & monthly check-ups.  There are bad days, and worst days, but there are still goods days in between.  My family, my support system, is stronger than ever.  Even my best friends, some who have had their own family, health, & work challenges to deal with this year, continue to check in on me & my family, send thoughtful messages & texts, think of us, and pray for us - as I am doing for them.  We really do need each other - in the best, healthiest, most positive way possible!

Y.C.