After a 9 year relationship with Blogger, I am bidding this site a Final Farewell!! This will be last post on this blogsite. To my loyal readers, DON'T leave me just yet!! I'm just moving my blog to Wordpress! I still love to blog and will continue to blog. After thinking about it long and hard, I've decided that for the long-term, Wordpress seems to be a better option for me. It allows me to create additional pages and password-protect some of the my posts. It was just the right thing for me to do. For those who know me well, I'm a nostalgic person so it was extremely hard for me to let go all my previous posts. You can call me crazy, but I've replicated every single post from Blogger to the new Wordpress blog. Yes, it was a lot of time devoted to copying and pasting, but alas, every post is accounted for!! Now I still have the luxury to go back in history and reminisce the past on the same blogsite!! Please bookmark my new blog and visit me and leave comments!!
http://wanwanha.wordpress.com/
Friday, May 18, 2012
Wednesday, May 09, 2012
Discovery Museum / Sausalito
Lately, we've been blessed with gorgeous weekends here in San Francisco! We took advantage of the warm weather and made a trek out to the Bay Area Discovery Museum in Sausalito this past Sunday. Traffic was a breeze and we arrived at 10am, just as the museum was opening up. Sarah immediately made herself comfortable with the water feature and the indoor playground designed specifically for Tots. She had a blast!! This place is perfect for kids aged 2-5, with lots of activities both indoors and out. The stunning view of the bridge & the bay also made the place a great hangout place for adults. This place is very nicely laid-out with shady picnic tables for lunch, and different areas for different age groups.
After the museum, we made a quick visit to downtown Sausalito, since we haven't been here in years! It's still a very charming little town - relatively the same as I last remember it. We had some ice cream and walked along the pier and storefronts.
We ended our long day with an early dinner at Cheesecake Factory in Union Square (downtown SF). What a beautiful and fun-filled day!!
After the museum, we made a quick visit to downtown Sausalito, since we haven't been here in years! It's still a very charming little town - relatively the same as I last remember it. We had some ice cream and walked along the pier and storefronts.
We ended our long day with an early dinner at Cheesecake Factory in Union Square (downtown SF). What a beautiful and fun-filled day!!
Sunday, May 06, 2012
Hearts!
I used to go around town just to take pictures of these hearts all over San Francisco - that was back in 2004. Wow, how time has elapsed! I ran across 2 of them today at Union Square and made me remember my old pastime. Look under the label "hearts" and you'll see pictures of the other ones I took!
Saturday, May 05, 2012
Sarah is 23 months old!
Happy 23-month old Birthday, my sweet baby. In a month, you will be turning TWO!!
Friday, May 04, 2012
Reloc - Moving Along II
It's utterly surprising how moving out of the country can push you to do all the things you have always "wanted to do" but "never got around to doing it." It's like a time clock that makes you realize that time is short and you need to get things done!! Here are some examples of what I mean:
Financial Planner - This was on the list of to-do's for a long time. SQ and I are good savers but we are poor investors. We do not know how to use our money to make money. We want someone to not only help us invest our money, but also guide us in retirement planning and estate planning. We know we can not depend on Social Security or Medicare when we retire. Also, now with Sarah in the mix, there is a lot of things to think about - like setting up a will / living trust and her future education expenses. We need desperate guidance on what to do. So we finally met with a Certified Financial Planner a week ago. The session was only 1.5 hours, which was very short for the topics we had to cover. I felt like we barely scratched the surface, but felt good that we were given some ideas and quick fixes which can help us in the long run. We will meet him again in a few weeks.
Re-Finance - This was one of things that the CFP suggested we do. Late last year, our mortgage broker approached us to refinance our house. The rate difference between our rate vs the new rate was about 0.25% at that time and would save us about $100 a month in mortgage. We had just re-financed the year before and didn't want to reset our loan for such a small difference. Plus, we were too lazy to gather all the documents so we didn't re-finance. When our CFP suggested we re-financed - I was still a bit reluctant to, just because we only have a couple of months left before we leave and the last thing I want to do is to add 1 more thing to do on my already-long list of to-do's. He said if I don't have time, then I should just call my current mortgage bank and start there. So I did that, and I was surprised how easy it was! I got ONE full point rate difference! Every month, I will be saving $265! Hopefully, everything will be OK and we will close escrow in 21 days!
Medical Check-up - This applies to SQ only. He hasn't been diligent at getting his annual physicals. So because of the move, he finally saw his doctor for his physical!
Family Photo Shoot - I wanted to take family professional photos outdoors. We've only done photos inside a JcPenney/Sears studio, which are a lot cheaper, but they are only a hit or miss. Besides, Sarah hated these sessions. She doesn't like staying still and posed in a small hot room with a stranger and a camera. I wanted something a little more natural and for Sarah to feel like herself. It took me so time to get SQ to agree to go in on this. So we did it! ** More to come
New Mattress - embarrassing but we've had our mattress for 10 years! We bought our mattress at the same time we bought the house. We've been talking about getting a new mattress for about 2 years now, but never got around to it (too lazy to shop around)...so with the move, we definitely need to get a new one! You might ask why don't we just buy a new one in HKG? Well, the Queen size mattress is HKG is about 5 inches shorter than the ones in the US. I don't know if I'll like a shorter mattress ..Plus we want to take our bed frame with us, so we need to have a mattress that fits! Hence, we will buy here and have it shipped there. Mattresses are cheaper in the US and since we don't have to pay for shipping, so why not?
Financial Planner - This was on the list of to-do's for a long time. SQ and I are good savers but we are poor investors. We do not know how to use our money to make money. We want someone to not only help us invest our money, but also guide us in retirement planning and estate planning. We know we can not depend on Social Security or Medicare when we retire. Also, now with Sarah in the mix, there is a lot of things to think about - like setting up a will / living trust and her future education expenses. We need desperate guidance on what to do. So we finally met with a Certified Financial Planner a week ago. The session was only 1.5 hours, which was very short for the topics we had to cover. I felt like we barely scratched the surface, but felt good that we were given some ideas and quick fixes which can help us in the long run. We will meet him again in a few weeks.
Re-Finance - This was one of things that the CFP suggested we do. Late last year, our mortgage broker approached us to refinance our house. The rate difference between our rate vs the new rate was about 0.25% at that time and would save us about $100 a month in mortgage. We had just re-financed the year before and didn't want to reset our loan for such a small difference. Plus, we were too lazy to gather all the documents so we didn't re-finance. When our CFP suggested we re-financed - I was still a bit reluctant to, just because we only have a couple of months left before we leave and the last thing I want to do is to add 1 more thing to do on my already-long list of to-do's. He said if I don't have time, then I should just call my current mortgage bank and start there. So I did that, and I was surprised how easy it was! I got ONE full point rate difference! Every month, I will be saving $265! Hopefully, everything will be OK and we will close escrow in 21 days!
Medical Check-up - This applies to SQ only. He hasn't been diligent at getting his annual physicals. So because of the move, he finally saw his doctor for his physical!
Family Photo Shoot - I wanted to take family professional photos outdoors. We've only done photos inside a JcPenney/Sears studio, which are a lot cheaper, but they are only a hit or miss. Besides, Sarah hated these sessions. She doesn't like staying still and posed in a small hot room with a stranger and a camera. I wanted something a little more natural and for Sarah to feel like herself. It took me so time to get SQ to agree to go in on this. So we did it! ** More to come
New Mattress - embarrassing but we've had our mattress for 10 years! We bought our mattress at the same time we bought the house. We've been talking about getting a new mattress for about 2 years now, but never got around to it (too lazy to shop around)...so with the move, we definitely need to get a new one! You might ask why don't we just buy a new one in HKG? Well, the Queen size mattress is HKG is about 5 inches shorter than the ones in the US. I don't know if I'll like a shorter mattress ..Plus we want to take our bed frame with us, so we need to have a mattress that fits! Hence, we will buy here and have it shipped there. Mattresses are cheaper in the US and since we don't have to pay for shipping, so why not?
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