We be Parents

Nope, she hasn’t gotten rid of me – she’s just got a whitey of a new variety – a new car!  On Saturday, my 30th birthday, Yenari thought the best way to celebrate would be for us to go out and buy her a new car…definitely an awesome birthday present, just not for me!  Here she is with her new beaute – a 2009 Toyota Camry Hybrid:

Yenari with her new whitey

So now I’m definitely on the road to being a grownup – 30 years old, married, preggers wifey, and a family car!  No official belly shot this time, but she did just move past 30 weeks – that’s 3/4 of the way there!  Yenari is all dressed up in the picture because we were going out for a fancy dinner.  My mother and grandmother teamed up to give me a gift certificate to have dinner at Chez Panisse in Berkeley.

The food was great – here are some photos of the meal we had tonight:

Deep-fried green asparagus and onions with mustard Chantilly

Fish and shellfish ragoût with fava beans and chervil

Grilled Marin Sun Farm grass-fed beef rib eye with cabernet sauce, sautéed new potatoes

In our excitement on seeing the dessert we dug in without taking a photo, but I managed to get a shot of Yenari finishing off the ‘Bittersweet chocolate fondant with candied kumquat ice cream’ that topped off the great meal.

Yenari finishing off her dessert

Yup – I was there too – don’t I look so mature now that I’m all grown up?

me!

Chez Panisse sign on the way out after an excellent meal

We’re trying to sneak in as many nice dinners out and as much quality time as we can be for the impending (doom?) excitement that should be heading our way in 10 weeks or so.   Thanks to ‘moms’ and nana for a great birthday present!

Long time no posting – I’ll make it up with a painfully detailed post!

Yenari had a rare 3 day weekend this past weekend so I decided to take off Friday so that we could do something fun.  We decided to return to our roots – LA.  I was born in LA, but more importantly, LA has the biggest Koreatown in the US and thus the best Korean food in the US…and Yenari is definitely a fan of Korean food, so we settled on an eating tour of LA’s Koreatown.

We drove down on Friday morning, stopping at In-N-Out Burger (the only non Korean food for a few days!) and eventually making it to our hotel by around 2.  Once settled in, we headed down to Koreatown and drove around to get our bearings and eventually made it to a Korean salon where Yenari got a haircut.  Here she is mid-haircut:

Yenari getting her hair cut

Yenari knows several Koreans who live in the Bay Area that travel down to LA regularly to get their hair cut by people who ‘know how to cut Korean hair’.  After the haircut (the outcome can be seen in some of the other photos) we lazed around for a while and eventually headed out for dinner.  Yenari’s cousin (who also lives in the Bay Area) has become an expert in LA Korean restaurants and gave Yenari and cheatsheet of her favorites which we dutifully followed.  Our first pick was OnDal 2, known for their spicy crab soup.  They first serve the soup, you eat the crab, then they cook homemade noodles in the broth, and then they cook fried rice…all stages are pictured below:

Ready to start the crab soup dinner at OnDal 2

Crab soup closeup

Homemade noodles in the crab broth

Fried rice made from the crab broth

This was a truly excellent meal – each step was so good and so filling that we were stuffed beyond belief.  Yenari and I both can pack away a lot of food, but we had no chance here – we took about half the rice back to the hotel and passed out at about 9:30, exhausted from the eating (and maybe a little from driving 5 and a half hours).  I awoke at 7:30am to the sounds of Yenari chowing down on the rest of the rice!

After a passing out again from the great food, we eventually got up and decided we needed to be a bit active, so we headed down to the pool for some swimming.  Yenari has been convinced that she’s turning into a whale, so she figured it was time to bring it too fruition.  Here goes the swimming!

Yenari in the pool at the hotel

After the swimming we headed down to Koreatown on the subway for a late lunch at Myung Dong Kyoja, a restaurant from Seoul that opened up a branch in LA.  Yenari used to go the the restaurant in Seoul so she was interested in trying out the noodle soup and dumplings that she remembered eating there.  Here they are – both of ‘em excellent:

Steamed dumplings at lunch

Noodle soup at lunch

After lunch we took a long walk all the way across and through Koreatown to the Galleria shopping center – a massive Korean supermarket and mall – Yenari was in awe of all the things that had there and decided that a return trip with a car was needed.  Before leaving the city we did make that trip back and stocked up on lots of stuff that the Bay Area Korean markets don’t have.

For dinner we just kept on going with the Korean theme, dining at Dong Il Jang, a BBQ joint.  We went with a BBQ beef dished that we grilled at the table.  This wasn’t the standard marinated beef (bulgogi or kalbi), but instead was very high quality unmarinated beef that is just grilled and the dipped in sauce made of sesame oil and salt, eaten with a simple Korean salad.  It was great, and just like the crab dinner the night before, ended up with fried rice being made at our table.  Here’s the food!

BBQ beef at Dong Il Jang

Fried rice cooked at the table at Dong Il Jang

After stuffing ourselves with beef and fried rice we walked across Koreatown for another spot on Yenari’s cousin’s list – Pinkberry, a frozen yogurt place.  I don’t like frozen yogurt, so luckily I wasn’t tempted to add to my already loaded stomach, but Yenari was….here she is daintily going for the first taste:

Yenari taking the first stab at her froyo at Pinkberry

and then diving in head first for the rest!

Spoons are too slow

She actually didn’t eat the whole thing sans-utensils, just took off the pointy top part that way, but its not too difficult to image her just tearing into it.  With the noodle soup, dumplings, BBQ beef, rice, frozen yogurt, and a heck of a lot of walking under our belts, we headed back to the hotel and went to bed.

Yenari started off our last morning in LA by swimming again, we packed up, checked out, and then we headed out for our last meal in LA, a stop for some abalone rice pooridge at San:

More food!

Abalone pooridge for breakfast

After the tasty meal – the first non-massive meal of the trip – we headed back to the Galleria market for shopping and then headed out of LA.  On the way out of town we stopped at one of my favorite places in LA – the Getty Museum.  This was my third trip to the Getty in the last 10 years.  While the exhibits are great – we saw a couple good photography exhibits on portraits and early California photography in addition to the permanent collections of 16th – 18th century paintings, my favorite part about the Getty is the outdoor space, gardens, and architecture.  It is a beautiful place, perched up on a hill (you need to take a tram to get to the top) with great views of LA and great open space.  Here we are:

At the Getty Museum

The gardens and museum in the background

and yup, proof that I went on this trip too!

Yup, Greg was there too

And with that, after a great 2 day trip to LA, fueled by stomach busting quantities of Korean food, we hopped (as best we could after that much food) into our car, and made our way back home.

Phewf…the mega post is done – congrats if you made it this far!

Yenari and I met my dad for dinner earlier this week, and since it was his last visit to California until next year he decided to bring some Christmas presents along for us.  Because he flew from Chicago he couldn’t wrap them all, so we didn’t even need to unwrap our present early to see that he gave us a Wii Fit…and since we could see it, we figured we might as well use it!  We did some quick searching and it seems that the Wii Fit is quite popular with the preggers and is supposed to be totally safe, so Yenari hopped on for a try.

They start it off by checking your height, weight, and doing some balance tests.  After the tests they told Yenari that her BMI was 22, putting her right in the middle of the normal range.  Next I went, but I wasn’t so lucky…the first day my BMI was at something like 25.1 – just on the edge of overweight!  So the 12 week pregger (after gaining 8 pounds) totally showed me up!  Luckily the next day I was in the normal range, but I have to get working to keep in that normal range.  Here’s a photo of our characters:

Skinny Yenari and Fat Greg

Next, the Wii Fit asked us to enter fitness goals in terms of the weight we’d like to gain/lose over the next 4 weeks – this was a funny one for Yenari because she had to enter in a goal of gaining weight, something the game probably isn’t too used to.  Unfortunately they don’t have a mode for pregnant people, so the Wii Fit is going to be mad at Yenari for gaining weight and losing her balance control.  We saw postings on web forums where pregnant women were pissed that the game thought they were getting out of shape, losing balance, and asked them to lose weight!  Here’s a shot of Yenari Hoola-Hooping:

Yenari Hoola-Hooping in Wii Fit

To counteract all this great exercising, we had to eat some serious food today…a light sunday brunch at Palace BBQ, an all-you-can-eat Korean BBQ restaurant where the buffet is filled with raw, marinated meat that you grill for yourself at your table.  Pork, beef, squid…we had it all, and lots of it.  Yenari thought I was insane for putting rice on my plate – it was an all meat meal for her.  Here’s a shot of her grilling up some kalbi:

Grilling kalbi at Palace BBQ

After about an hour straight of eating Korean BBQ I was about ready to pass out – the photo looks a little blury, but that’s probably because I was shaking from a beef overdose – sorry.  Yenari kept eating for a good 15 mintues (6 more short ribs for her) after I finished up.  When we were leaving I was ready to go home to pass out for an hour or six, but Yenari insisted that we walk next door to the Korean market to buy tons of food – picking up six sweet potatoes, some mushrooms, and some bean powder for making fresh noodles.  It’s all kind of a blur to me, my brain had been called in to help with digestion.

Just as we were leaving she spotted some Korean rice cake which reminded her that she wanted to go to EWHA Dang Rice Bakery, a shop that specializes in the stuff.  We drove 5 minutes to go to the shop but they were closed (even though their sign said they should have been open), so Yenari was pissed…but luckily she spotted a bubble tea place and was able to continue the food fest with a mango bubble tea:

Yenari drinking bubble tea

I mostly wanted to write about this because I think that picture is hilarious.  Yenari is totally zoned out in bubble tea land.  She hates the photo, but it’s staying!  Internet, I hope you enjoy.

Lest you think a post can go by without detailing Yenari’s sewing habit, she has been sewing up a storm…several blankets, some hats made out of sweat pants legs (weird, huh?), and she just bought 8 yards of flannel fabric in order to make some PJs for herself and a couple other blankets.

Alright, enough writing for today – back to digesting…