Survey on Recipe Books

Hi guys, I need your help with a survey. I am trying to gather information on factors that influence people in buying a recipe book. Kindly share your two cents on how the following factors affect you.

1. Number of recipes

2. Hard Cover or Soft Cover

3. Price with a relation to your answer on number 1 and 2.

4. Content of the book – Do you think the recipe book should have only certain category such as Appetizers, Soups, Entrees, Desserts or mix of all?

5. Please share more factors that affect you in buying recipe books.

Thanks in advance for your help!

All Gone

Wednesday, November 5, 2008, 10:00PM

My computer crashed…it asked me to restore the system. As amateurs with this high technology, we decided to call HP Technical Support. After paying $49 because the warranty has expired, I was given instructions by one of the tech support. In the middle of the conversation, my phone got cut off. I called back and was helped by a different technician who then lead me to the wrong step. The result of it…………….

ALL MY DATA, DOCUMENTS, PERSONAL PHOTOS (Which is the big treasure) were all gone. All deleted by the system. I started feeling nausea and felt like everything in my stomach were being squeezed.

….and the worst thing is, we don’t have any back up of all things we have since November 2007. A year worth of hard work are all gone……………………..

Fun Summer with Everyone

I was writing on this posting with the song from Barney and Friends playing continuously on my head. Andrew likes to sing (or at least try to sing) this song. Fun…fun…fun…fun with everyone….

This is how I described our summer. This summer, we had a lot of fun. My parents, sister and brother in law came to visit us in LA for a week. We took them around LA and here are some pictures.

The picture above shown all of the women wore Batik. By the time we all dressed, Andrew insisted on wearing Batik too. So there we go from the Grove to Universal City Walk in our Batik.

A week later, we drove all the way to Milpitas to visit my sister, Jq. Our favorite activity that we had during our stay was walking around the complex. Andrew enjoyed having fun at the park, climbing a rock, posing on rock and some more.

We were all excited yet nervous waiting for my sis to go on labor. As soon as the doctor confirmed that she was not yet ready for delivery, we made our way to San Francisco. It was a fun short day where we enjoyed different kind of sushi at our favorite restaurant Sakana Bune. I didn’t have the chance to write a review on this, beside it was a treat from my brother-in-law. Thank you, Bert! Hopefully, I can write a review on this on my next trip to San Francisco. In short, this is the best Sushi restaurant that I can find in the US with reasonable price.

We then went to downtown San Francisco and quickly visited the newly built Westfield Mall and took some pictures at the mall and in front of the cable car. Our San Francisco trip was ended with a yummy famous Boudin breadbowl of clam chowder.

On our way back to Milpitas, we visited a far relative of ours. Andrew got a chance to meet with more friends, play with their toys and kissing the adorable Gabby.

During our stay at my sis’ place, Andrew was having a really good time playing with our good friend’s son, Nicky. Here are some pictures of them wrestling and swimming.

On my previous posting, I posted a picture of me and my older sister, Nat and how look-a-like we are. I think that is one of the reason why Andrew loves her so much.

A week later after we were back in LA, my brother came to visit with my cousins. Can’t believe how grown up they are now and even a lot taller than I am.

Being far apart from family, make you appreciate more of the time that you get to spend with them. I love my family and hopefully we can get together again soon. What a fun summer!

Stress

Everything has been going quite smoothly, but today I found out that there are things that caused so much frustration for a lot of people (including us) involve in this matter. At the end, it will cost us more money than we have projected, which is a really big issue for us right now.

What a day…I’m not in my best mood and have a terrible headache.

So sorry, Andrew…I hope you wouldn’t notice the pressures that we have right now. Hopefully in the next few days everything will be fine for us.

Happy 1st Father’s Day, Daddy!

In Indonesia, we don’t have a Father’s Day, and I don’t actually know why. It seems like the appreciation only goes to the mothers. Hehehehe. Anyway, I am really glad that now we are in the US, we get to celebrate the Father’s Day. So today, is the 1st Father’s Day for Arman.

Below is the wishes that Andrew likes to say to his daddy:

Happy Father’s Day, Daddy!

Thank you for all you have done for me since the day I was born!

Thank you for working so hard to provide for our family!

Thank you for being a loving and protective daddy!

Thank you for being the funniest daddy!

And….once for all, thank you for being the best daddy in the whole world!

I love you so much!

…looking forward to celebrate more father’s day with you!

Love,

Andrew

It finally came

As you might have noticed, there hasn’t been any new posting in this past one week. I’ve been through so many things that keep my mind very busy and the impact was my hormones seemed to be going like a roller coaster.

Last week, I looked at the calendar and noticed that my monthly guest didn’t make it’s prompt visit this time. I was getting worried and a lot more worried as it passed two weeks from the regular date. Could I be pregnant? Could I be carrying another child in my womb? If so, how would I feel?

Since the beginning of this year, I’ve been wanting to have another baby so much and weirdly I want to have a girl specifically. I can’t stop looking through the baby girl’s clothing whenever I walked by the babies’ store. I even imagined how my life would be with a loving husband, a toddler cute boy and a baby girl. But yet, as much I wanted to have another child, I now deep down inside that this is not the right timing yet. We still have a few other priorities that we like to have set up first and we know that financially we couldn’t afford having another child yet.

I was getting really nervous and decided that I should just get over-the-counter home pregnancy test pack and just get things over with. At least that way, I know what I would be facing. So I did and the result was negative, even though, honestly, I was sort of hoping it would be positive. I still wasn’t relieved and thought that the test pack must have been inaccurate. I waited for a few more days and before I did the second one, it finally came. Pheuwwww….this time, I felt very much relieved. At least now I have one less thing to worry. And hopefully the other things that we are facing right now will be over soon.

Andrew’s Favorite Play Area

Every week, after Andrew’s regular music class, we would go to the food court where we get our lunch. After we finish our lunch, Andrew then would ask us to take him to his favorite play area located in the center of the food court.

In this play area, there is a huge banana lying on the ground, a big piece of cut watermelon, a huge cup of drink fall down to the ground, a giant hotdog and a cupcake on a big yellow plate. All of these fake giant food are made of I would guess plastics.

You can see lots of kids of different ages having a great time playing here. Andrew always have a blast time running and climbing here and there. I tried capturing all those blast moments, but it was hard, Andrew was running all the time. Here is the best I got.

The Reasons…..

These are the whole reasons why motherhood is so enjoyable…

Now (Andrew is 31 month old)…

Then (Andrew was 10 month old)…

Those expressions always make my days brighter…

Precious Moments (Part II)

There were lots of comments that I got after I did my posting on Precious Moments. Therefore I decided to have a sequel posting to the first one. I was looking at my Precious Moments’ collages the other day and realized that I missed one figurine. I looked over the list of Precious Moments’ Figurines that I have but couldn’t find the one that was missing. I then realized that I’ve sold it to my friend, Cencen, back in October 2007.

Batik

This morning, as I was preparing food for lunch, I asked Andrew to pick his own shirt for his Gymnastic Class. Guess what, he chose to wear the Batik shirt from his Oma. I told him that this is not the right shirt to wear for such class but he insisted on wearing it. When we got to the class and to the park afterwards, Andrew’s batik actually caught a few peoples’ eyes. They told me how beautiful the pattern is and asked me where to get it. I guess Andrew certainly knows how to become the center of attention. Enjoy the pictures that I took after we got back from the park.