Lavender Cottage & Bei-Pu Town

Over the past two weekends,we visited Lavender Cottage and Bei-Pu Town. And since both of these places are in Hsinchu County(about 30 minutes drive from where we live),they make it a perfect choice for a half-day trip. : )

This was our second visit(Rainny's first visit) to Lavender Cottage.I think this yellow cottage style house is really cute. It's actually a gift shop where you can buy a lot of herb-related stuff to take home with.

The owner grows many different kinds of lavender in their herb garden. They have one kind that has pineapple smell so I picked one to smell and it dose smell like pineapple!

Lavender Cottage provides free cards for tourists to write down their wishes and you can tie your wish card on a tree. Out of curiosity, I couldn't help wondering what most people would have written on their wish card...so I looked and it turns out that lots of them wish:
"I want to be rich!","I want to have a lot of money"...that kind of money wish.
One guy even wrote down all the dream cars he wants...hahaha...lots of funny wishes.
Bei-Pu is a small Hakka town with lots of street vendors and Hakka food. A lot of the street vendors here offer free smaple of the food they are selling and we ate a lot! :p
We saw a guy standing in the middle of the road selling balloons and we wanted to get one for Rainny. I showed Rainny the Hello Kitty balloon but she wouldn't even look at it,so I showed her the Micky Mouse one and her face just lighted up!!! In order to test if she really likes Micky Mouse,I tried again by putting both Micky and Minnie in front of her. Guess what? She chose Micky over Minnie(because Micky is a boy)!!! Hahaha....so funny!!!

Rainny's First Chinese New Year!

Rainny got her first "Hong-Bao (red envelope)" on Chinese New Year's Eve(February 4th)! This is the only picture I could find with Rainny looking straight at the camera without squishing the red envelope...hahaha! Happy Chinese New Year to y'all!!! : )

Rainny and Daddy enjoying dinner with everybody.

Rainny got Hong-Bao from great grandma.

Rainny got Hong-Bao from grandma!
Being the first grandchild in our family,Rainny was really spoiled with lots of attention and of course, lots of Hong-Baos!!! Hahaha!!! : )
After giving Hong-Baos,our family has this tradition of putting coins in this big pottery pot for all the kids to grab. Every year on the Chinese New Year's Eve,all the kids(starting from the youngest to the oldest in our family) would line up waiting for their turn to grab as many coins as they can until all the money in the pot is gone.
Rainny got to join us for the money-grabbing action this year. Yeah!!! Of course,she didn't know what was going on and mommy had to do the work for her...lucky me!
Time to count the money!!! : )

☆ Happy Birthday Adam! ☆

I'm not very good at picking birthday gifts for Adam. For the past 4 years since I've known him,I've been giving him pretty much the same gifts on his birthday every year-Clothes,clothes and more clothes! Boring huh? I know...haha

Guys would always say that women are hard to shop for. I'd say men are more difficult to shop for. Hahaha! For Adam's birthday gift this year,I've been trying hard to think of getting him something that he'd really like and enjoy and something he'd get to use a lot...maybe. The first thing that came in my mind was the Wii game,but that was not the option because Adam's got all the Wii games he wants. So, the next thing I could thing of was "baseball!" Yeah,anything that has to do with baseball!!! Anybody who's known Adam well will definitely know that he is a huge baseball fan of the Dodgers. Speaking of baseball,there's a little interesting story that I'd like to share with you guys. It happened on the very first time we talked on the phone...back in the summer of 2003.
Adam was working night shift at his family's motel-the Best Western Baugh Motel and I just finished working in my family's restaurant for the afternoon. I called the 1-800 something number he gave me because he told me it was free(but it wasn't when you called internationally...hahaha) Luckily,I still had about 10 minutes left on the phone card that I used a long time ago when I went to the US. So, I went ahead and called him. I was so nervous at that time because I didn't know what he sounded like.

"Best Western Baugh Motel",somebody answered.
"Hello,is Adam there", I asked.
"This is Adam",he said.
"Hey Adam! It's me Nicole. How are you doing?",I said.
And then our conversation went on...Wanna know the first thing he asked me?
"Hey, do you know Chen Chin-Feng?",he asked.
"Nope",I said
"How about Tsao Chin-Hui? Hu Chin-Long? Kuo Hong-Chih?",he asked
"Nope,I don't know.Who are they?",I asked.
"Oh,they are all really famous Taiwanese baseball players that are in America right now.",he said.
"Oh...",I said.

He was super excited to talk to me about baseball,but I knew nothing about baseball at all at that time...well,I still don't know much about it...hahaha! I just think it's so funny and ever since then I've always remembered our first conversation on the phone and I'll definitely still remember for quite a long time. : )

Anyway,that's how I got the idea of getting him a Dodgers jacket and t-shirt for his birthday this year. From seeing the smile on his face when he opened his gift and saw the jacket,I knew I bought the right birthday gift...Happy Birthday Baobei!!! We love you!!! : )

Maybe the next thing he'll need is the ticket to the real Dodgers game in LA!!! That'll be awesome!!! : )