Happy New Year!

I'm spending New Year's with my family in PA. My grandparents are down from Ottawa, and we are enjoying a relaxing time together. Today, we made dumplings from scratch! And my mom even made the dough for it – no pre-made wrappers for us. We had four generations of Lu women working on this project:

My mom showing me the ropes: dumpling wrappers must be thicker in the center (to prevent holes from forming) and thinner on the edges (to facilitate the crimping). A and I rolled the dough, while my mom and grandma filled them.

Looking forward to the delicious results! (Look at A concentrating on her dough :) )

2015 has been a good year: Dave and I have finally settled into our lives on LI together, and while lots of uncertainties in the future remain, I'm glad we have some things figured out. I'm looking forward to 2016 and all the changes it will bring!

Christmas Tree 2015

We're a bit later than usual this year, but we finally have our tree up! It's another winner from the Lowe's parking lot, and I decorated this evening. Nice and slender, quite dense at the bottom this year.

And here are our new additions to the ornament collection this year! First, from Taiwan, the famous Jade Cabbage in the National Museum:

Our second addition is a quetzal made from felt from Costa Rica. We were so excited that we glimpsed the majestic bird in the Cloud Rainforest that we got this cute bird in the gift shop. This is a compromise between Dave and me: he loves souvenir shopping, and I am opposed to accumulating useless knickknacks. But Christmas ornaments, on the other hand, have a real purpose! So we try to get souvenirs we can hang on the tree.

I always love decorating the Christmas tree; less so, taking down the ornaments after New Year's (thanks for doing that for the past 35 years, Dad...). This year, I feel especially grateful for the opportunities we had to travel this year. I still can't believe I got to go to Taiwan and meet Dave's family, and our time in Costa Rica was quite magical. I'm sure there will be times ahead when we won't be able to go so far afield in search of new experiences, so I want to appreciate these moments now!

Dining area

We've finished unpacking all of our boxes and have made most of the furniture decisions for our new place. The last step (which probably should have been the first) is to paint! Dave has taken on this task himself. With the help of Lowe's and the friendly former owners of our unit, he's been making steady progress. The first room that's ready to show is our eating area, which we painted a blue (with gray undertones). We replaced the wall sconces and the chandelier with more modern fixtures. And there's no rug under the table now – not suitable for our most frequent, but rather young guests!

Here's how it looked before:

Thanksgiving 2015

Hello, blog! I'm emerging from the fog of a terrible head cold that lasted the entire month of November. But now I'm finally feeling mostly back to my normal self and ready to start posting again. We had a lovely Thanksgiving last week at my parents' house, with all the traditions in full swing.

Of course, there was football:

 

And cute kiddos on the couch:

The newest addition to the family, little Rebecca (my cousin Christina's newborn):

On the day after Thanksgiving, we went on our annual expedition to hunt down a Christmas tree. This year, we went to a nearby farm. Usually, it's cold, maybe wet and muddy, and at least a little unpleasant. But this year, it was gloriously warm and sunny. We didn't even need our coats! A. was particularly interested in the "fuzzy" plants she discovered growing around the trees:

For some reason, an old-fashioned train rolled by on the nearby tracks. It seemed to be carrying tourists, but I don't know where they got on, or where they could have been going. It's a West Chester mystery!

After minor debate, we picked a suitable Douglas fir tree, and A helped Stephen and Dave to saw it down.

M slept through most of the action, but here he is, checking out the Charlie Brown-sized trees:

Dave and I still have to go and pick out our own tree...maybe from the parking lot at Lowe's or Home Depot. Not quite as romantic as a tree farm, but it'll still look great, all dressed up. Now that I'm getting my energy back, I'm getting excited for the holidays!

Happy Fall

I'm sure I'm going to be complaining about the winter cold soon enough, but it seems only right to acknowledge that we've had a lovely and mild fall. Last week, I could still walk to the train station without a heavy coat. I remember Halloweens in Michigan when it snowed.

One of the nice things about living out in the suburbs is that I don't feel like we need to go anywhere special to enjoy beautiful foliage. Today Dave and I visited Cedarmere to look at the colors on the estate and by Roslyn Harbor.

 I wish this kind of weather could last for months longer. Fingers crossed for an equally mild winter!

Halloween 2015

This year's Halloween was another tour around the neighborhood with M and A! There were only 2 little kids, but 5 adults tagging along.

Cow and Turtle exchange glances

This year, A knew to say, "Trick or treat!" at each door. When asked whom the candy is for, she also knew to say, "It's for Mommy!"

Workin' it

Happy auntie (who is going to get a share of the loot later)

Ontario Weekend #2

This weekend, I went to visit my grandparents in Ottawa. It had been years since I'd visited them in their home, and since my parents were planning to visit, I thought I'd tag along. I took the Greyhound from NYC to Scranton, where my parents picked me up en route. I hadn't road tripped with my parents in a while:

Mom: "We really look like F.O.B.'s now!" 

K: "Don't say those kinds of things, Mom!"

Mom: "It's true!"

My grandparents no longer drive themselves, so their favorite thing to do during visits is to go out to eat. We really went to town on all-you-can-eat Mongolian hotpot:

Grandma and my cousin David. Grandma would be the last one eating!

My grandparents are in their late 80s, so it's a special treat to spend some relaxed time together. My grandfather won't remember, but I know he's happy when we're there.

See the family resemblance??

The visit was pretty relaxing: we mainly ate ourselves silly, napped, and did a little shopping. My cousin David, whose family I visited in Waterloo last weekend, is living with Grandparents while he's working a short-term job in Ottawa, and it was nice to catch up with him, too! 'Til next time, Canada...

Ontario Weekend #1

It's October – why not spend a lot of time in Canada? This past weekend, I traveled to attend the wedding of two friends from graduate school. The husband is from Saint Catharines, so they got married in a nature preserve near Niagara Falls (Canada side). Too bad Dave had to be at a conference in Chicago this weekend...

My visit kicked off with a stop at the University of Waterloo, to see my old friend Matt. We've been friends since freshman year of college, and we also overlapped at Michigan, where he was a post-doc when I was a grad student. Now he's a math professor! We got tea and caught up, and it sounds like everything is going really well.

I got to spend the night in Waterloo with my uncle John, aunt Virginia, and cousin Stephanie. It had been 8 years since I last visited them at their home, and it was fun to reunite with such objects as the FRIDGE:

We had the same exact one growing up, and it has the most amazing feature: a special drinks compartment, with a tray that flips down, where you can put your glass and pour your drink. Since "getting drinks" was one of my setting-the-table chores, I used this feature very often. I still wish I had a refrigerator like this.

We also ate Auntie Virginia's delicious homemade apple pie:

The next day, it was off to the wedding at Niagara Falls! My friends Evelyn and Mark are both classicists/archaeologists and met in Athens. They are a wonderful couple and perfectly suited for one another.

Post-ceremony joy

I liked their idea for table assignments: each table was associated with a place they've visited during their extensive travels, with a cute picture of them in each location.

Evelyn is a belly dancer on the side, so of course there was a performance by her former troupe...

...in which she also joined in!

Before I left, I stopped by the Falls themselves. That's a lot of water. It was too cold to ride the boat into the mist – while I was there, it began to SNOW.

Overall, it was almost a perfect weekend! But a final note on air travel: I arrived in Toronto on a Brazilian airline I had never heard of before, TAM. It was absurdly cheap, and I felt a little worried about entrusting my safety to this obscure company. However, flying with TAM was instead a throwback to the previous glories of late '90s air travel. I got to check a bag FOR FREE. We boarded according to ROW NUMBER, rather than customer status. They even gave us each THIS MUFFIN:

On the way home, I was flying Air Canada. Air Canada canceled my flight back to New York without explanation, and after rebooking me, refused to comp a hotel room for the evening. <shakes fist> I supposed I could have shelled out for the room, but I had to be back at the airport so early the next morning that I wouldn't have gotten a good night's rest anyway. So I spent the evening in these luxurious accommodations:

Yes, it's a slightly padded bench at the foot of a wifi-related statue, with a strange woman on the other side removing her shoes. Actually, I could've slept fairly well – I changed into pajamas and brushed my teeth, placed my head on my backpack, and had my coat covering me and my purse. It's just that there was construction, seemingly jackhammer-based, going on in the terminal all night. I am seriously disgruntled and will never fly Air Canada again! I urge you all to consider the same action.

homeowners!

Life has been quite chaotic in the past few weeks, as Dave and I have been preparing for the purchase of our first home together! It's a 2-bedroom, 2-bath unit in a co-operative building across the street from where we were renting. We closed last week, moved in over the weekend, and now are sorting through the carnage. The closing was more dramatic than I would have liked: the office was only a 15 minute drive away, but my car wouldn't start when it was time to leave home to get there! Good thing Grace was home and didn't need her car...I hopped on my bike in my skirt-suit, pedaled like mad up to Grace's house, and borrowed her car! When I walked in, everyone looked anxious and/or stony-faced. I was afraid that everyone was annoyed that I was 15 minutes late, but it turns out that the seller hadn't brought the proper, original paperwork, and he wasn't sure if he even had it! The closing was almost off, when the original paperwork arrived via his real estate agent, and we had a deal! Phew.

Celebratory Shake Shack after the closing

The Sandblaster being towed to the mechanic's shop the next day

So now we are in our new home. Our old apartment was brand-new, light and airy, and bigger than we needed. Our new home is older and smaller, and boy do we have a lot of junk! I can't believe how much stuff we just put in closets or left in the garage, and now that we no longer have that kind of storage, it's all sitting in the living room! The good news is that now we have to be disciplined about going through the old stuff and discarding the useless junk.

We had been planning to move in a few days after the closing, giving ourselves time to sort and donate, pack up and organize. But then we were told that we couldn't move in on the day we had planned, because it was a holiday, and instead we moved in two days after closing. We hired two guys to help us with the heavy stuff for a few hours (worth every penny! check out movinghelp.com, which is a Uhaul service), and then spent the next three days moving in the rest of our stuff ourselves. I had thought that I was in pretty decent shape, but it turns out that I was in approximately 5% shape for moving. I can't remember the last time I felt so physically exhausted...it must've been the last time I actually had to exert myself physically...

Nearly everything made it to the new apartment, except our COUCH! It wouldn't fit in the elevator or up the stairs. Here it is, forlorn, returned to our garage after our failed attempts to get it into the new building:

It has found a happy new home, though: Stephen and Grace's basement! So we can go slouch on it and watch TV there. =)

Finally, here are a few pictures of the nearly empty place. I've never really invested in a decorating a place before and customizing it to suit me. It'll be interesting to see how this goes. I'll be documenting our progress as it goes!

Go, Mets!

Dave and I have been talking about going to a New York Mets game for two seasons now, and we finally made it! We drove to Flushing, found free parking, ate delicious Chinese food for dinner, and took the subway one stop to the stadium.

 First time to Citi Field

Dave became a Mets fan during their championship year, back in 1986. He always expects me to remember how exciting it was, but since I was 3 years old, I really can't be blamed for not noticing. This year, the Mets are actually good and generating lots of buzz, so it was time for me to see them live for the first time and for Dave to return after at least 20 years.

Field of Dreams-dashed-by-hometeam's-frequent-mediocrity-but-hopefully-not-this-year

It was a gorgeous night – cool enough to remind us that it's fall, but still pleasant to spend hours outdoors. We had little company in the nosebleed seats, which was good, because I like to yell a lot. Doo-do-do-doo, do-DOOOO: CHARGE!!!

The stadium includes the Mets Hall of Fame, where you can admire the World Series trophies from 1960-something and 1986. There's also this guy:

Unfortunately, the Mets lost to the Atlanta Braves, a terrible team. But they clinched their division this weekend and are headed to the playoffs. I'll always count myself a lukewarm Phillies fan, but maybe I have a new team that I can get behind!

Tamarindo

I'm still not done with my Costa Rica posts! Haha. Our final destination was Tamarindo, a very touristy beach town on the Pacific coast (apparently, people call is Tamagringo, haha). Our two days in Tamarindo were devoted to relaxing and enjoying the beach, very different from the hiking and animal-seeking of the rest of the trip.

We visited Playa Conchal, whose beach material was made of crushed shells. Not as soft as sand, but more interesting!

I would like us all to contribute pictures so that we can make a calendar: Nerds at the Beach 2016 (that's a copy of a recent New Yorker)

Pacific sunset #1

Playa Tamarindo – look how broad and flat the beach is! Wonderful for walking and letting the warm waves roll over our feet

We did a catamaran tour one afternoon. But don't be fooled by the sunny blue sky; just 45 minutes later, we were caught in a torrential downpour! Fortunately, it was warm, and we didn't mind.

snorkel selfie

Farewell, vacation!

Pacific sunset #2, post rain-storm