14 February 2012 - La Pizza by Mila...

If you don't know what to do on a 14th February (beside the flowers), here is a nice recipe from Mila:


Start as usual with a nice thin pizza paste and paint it in red using a tomato sauce...

then add some mozzarella cheese...

...and some more cheese...

Well try to cover the red color with the cheese if you can, it is much tastier!!

Then you can draw some red circle on top (Pepperoni) and add some mushrooms too, it's fun!!

Once done, this is what you get, nice isn't it!!

...and this is how it looks like after cooking!!

Happy St-Valentine mummy and daddy...

29 January 2012 - Happy Birthday my dear...

Happy Birthday my dear wife!!

Happy Birthday Wai Leng!

Thank you Mila for helping mummy blowing the candles...(35!!!)

Yeah, so fun!!...let's blow them one more time!!

I love you mummy...

28 January 2012 - How about a new...

We have been staying in our apartment @ Palomino for about 3 months now and we can't take it anymore because we've been having so many problems with...:
- Water
- Shower
- Fire place
- Heater during the entire winter
- ...and for each, the repair man came several times.


In total, we have called 20 times the repair man in 3 months!!! AMAZING!! So, we have decided to give an end to these problems and though to "eventually" move to a new place.


Our house hunting began end of January with an open house. Nothing really fancy but it was still interesting to see what you can get and for what price. We met our real estate agent, Denise, during this very first visit and since then, she helped us to find our new house. Overall, we have seen about 18-20 houses I guess...and believe it or not, the house that we "fell for" was one of the very first one we visited!


Now, it is good to have found a house but it is even better to have the financing to buy it...and welcome again to America with their "credit history"!!! So my next challenge was to find a lender willing to finance our new home. Do you know many people willing to give you USD300k not knowing anything about you and not being able to get any information about you!!! That has been the greatest challenge of my lender, Mike, from Wells Fargo. The fist time I met him he told me: "ok, let's see what we can do, I don't see how I can help you as you do not have any credit history"...so I told him: "well, this is exactly why I am here and I am sure that we will find a solution"... 


Within the next couple of weeks, I had to give him "proofs" of being a good payer while in Switzerland. So it was a race to have letters from car insurance, utilities, TV and telecom, credit cards, etc... It was quite challenging, in particular for the Credit Cards has I was not too sure how these companies would react. At the end it went well and in less than 3 weeks, I received my "pre-approval letter" for a loan of USD300k!!!


Once you have been pre-approved, it is much easier to "shop" for houses as you are backed up by the bank and the seller feels more keen to sell you his house.


On the weekend of the 10th of March, we went to see (again) the house that we liked and decided to send a proposal to the seller. OMG, I could not sleep at all that night and I finally got a relief on Monday morning @ 07:28 AM when Denise confirmed the sales...

It's a done deal ;-)

We got the house at a very good price...(that's all I'll say about it). And for those who wants to know, there are several US web site which will give you all the details about it (i.e.: Zillow.com).

At about the same time, we also got the final approval from the bank with the confirmation of the interest rate which has been locked for the next 30 years: 3.875% (this is a historically never-been-so-low interest rate), simply fantastical!!!

More details on the house once we will have signed all document. Expected to happen on the 16th April 2012!

19 January 2012 - First name trace

There are some events in life that you can't missed, and in particular when your daughter is writing her name for the first time:

Bravo Mila!!

21 January 2012 - Chinese New Year 2012 (Highlands Ranch)

At first we did not know about it, but the Chinese community is quite important in the region. So Wai Leng found a place where we could celebrate Chinese New Year with Mila. 

Mila has, so far, never missed CNY. She attended it twice in Asia (Kuala Lumpur) and once in the USA.

The festivities were organized by a the "Great Wall Chinese Academy", where Mila is also taking Chinese lessons every Sunday afternoon.

Mila attending the CNY festivities

The dragon dance was really nice!

Drums were great too

Mila enjoyed the CNY 2012 festivities a lot!!!

28 November 2011 - Mila in the Colorado

Mila had quite a lot of changes in a very short time: relocation from Switzerland to the US, new day care, new friends, new language, new environment...well we had to find her the right place where she would have fun and learn new things as well has make new friends! 

When we first arrived in Denver, we found this nice day-care (the Bright Beginning) that was really close from our hotel (Boston Commons Hotel) where we stayed almost two months before moving to Palomino. So we had to find a day care nearby our new place. Chances are that one of the finest learning center was just next to Palomino. We are very lucky because this is the only one in the Colorado of this kind! 

When we first went to visit it, Wai Leng and I were just amazed by this place and we "had" to put Mila there. It is so nice...almost magical! Welcome to "Crème de la Crème" Learning Center:

Inside "Crème de la Crème" learning center

This place is not called "Crème de la Crème" for nothing. The teachers are believed to be the best, the activities are split in 30min sessions and they have so many cool things: dance floor, gym, music, Spanish, arts and a super cool water-castle for the summer season. 

Mila has been there for 5 months now and she really improved a lot on her english. She also now have best friends (Aubriana and Massimo) which is really cool for her.

This learning center has very straight guidelines and Mila is required to wear a uniform to go to school (blue jeans is strictly forbidden):

Mila in her Crème uniform

Otherwise, Mila is having great fun over here; check this out:

Mila practicing her potty training

Mila is enjoying the nearby playgrounds

Mila in the snow @ Palomino (December 2012)

Mila the fashion victim at "Forever 21" (Park Meadows on January '12)

Thank you daddy for the beautiful flowers (St-Valentin 2012)

Mila loves eating cake...

19th November 2011 - Winter is approaching, better get ready...

The Colorado is well known for its amazing ski resorts, some of them being really world famous. For this first ski season, I bought a ski pass for the following resorts: 

(1) Winter Park

(2) Copper Mountain


But there are a lot of other ski resorts that are awaiting me for the seasons to come:

(1) Keystone
(2) Vail
(3) Breckenridge
(4) Beaver Creek
(5) Aspen
(6) Steamboat
(7) Tahoe
(8) Arapaho Bassin
...and many many more...


But first, you need the right equipment. I manage to find a truly amazing guy who has been manufacturing, or handcrafting should I say, snowboard for the last 25 years in his garage. He now has a warehouse and three employees to run his 300-500 boards a year production. Check this out: Donek snowboard


The cool things about Donek, is that you can have your snowboard fully customized!! You can choose the materials, the color and graphics on each side of the board; your board will then be unique.  

This is the design I have chosen for my first board:

Bottom & top of my 2011 Donek Snowboard

Simple design but hell it does a great job. I never, never ever, had a so good snowboard under my feet. I was already mastering my board after only two runs and...wouhaaaa, "la grande classe" as we say in French!!


Here are a few shots from the ski resorts I have tried so far:

Copper Mountain, CO

Winter Park Colorado...aslo with Mila who started ski this year!!!

Add caption

Mila ski pass 2011-2012 season

Mila on her very first ski on 8th January 2012

12th November 2011 - Life in the Colorado

Here are a few pictures of us in the Colorado "en-vrac"...

Wai Leng eating a nice ice-cream

Mila has just received her "lolettes" from grand-ma & grand-pa, yeah!!!

I don't know how do the Americans without a "Laura Star"...
A power transformer is mandatory too!!

Guess which one is our car???

Buying anything when you just arrived in the US is a real challenge. If you have not been here for at least 12 months and built what they call here a "credit score", then anything will be hard to get:

(1) A cellphone

(2) Internet connection @ home + TV

(3) A loan for a first car (IMPOSSIBLE!!!!!)

(4) A credit card (...only with a USD 5'000.- deposit)

(5) A loan for a second car (as long as -4- is ok, it "can" work...)

Well, when we arrived here everybody told us that it will be really easy to get a car loan and everything else for a true American dream...but since the 2008 crash (banks + real estate), they have learned a little and they are now taking no risks AT ALL!! So we had to buy our first car cash, give a few hundresd of dollars deposit for almost everything (cell phone, TV connection, Internet connection, utilities charges like gas / electricity and of course this was required for our credit card). T

he credit card is King (or queen) here in the states as it will help you to built your "credit history". The more you buy, the more you pay, the more "points" you get...the more reliable you are towards the bank...and the more money you can get... well, it is not too far from the reality!! 

As we got a secured-Visa card, we also could buy Wai Leng's car with a loan...AMAZING!!

Here is her very first-own-car ever:

Wai Leng's car (Mazda-2 - 2011)

to be continued in the next episode...

26th October 2011 - Move-in @ Palomino

Well, I thought I'll be able to keep up with the blog update but seems like not. Today is the 18th March 2012 and I have like 6 months to catch up with...

Where were we...ah yes, 26th of October is the big day as we finally received our 20 feet long (and full) container. 

Today isn't a beautiful day:

Snowy move-in day...

Not a real problem as we have a big garage where all the boxes can be unpacked before moving them upstairs. Oh, that's true, we never told you!!!

Here is our place...from the sky. We are on the first floor and we have a nice little balcony facing the Rockies (that we do not see by the way):

(1) is our apartment @ Red Canyon Village - Palomino

So, here we are on that day, and the nice movers arrived on time, which is great. Here are a few pictures of our move-in:

Very important to have an "unbroken" tag on the container!!!

Our container...super full!!!

Funny enough, I think this is the only picture we have form the inside during the move-in...

The crew

So, we do not have many pictures of the moving day because we had a lot of issues with broken and damaged furniture + the packing / unpacking of our belongings...so most of the pictures were actually "proof" for the Swiss insurance...so just one picture for the story...

My IKEA floor protection...

Fixing back the furniture was lots of fun, and in particular for Mila:

Mila helping me to fix the shelves...

It took us several weeks to unpack our things...and as we do not have enough place to open all of our boxes (162 in total, remember!!)...we kept about 40 of them in the garage side. We will see when we will need them...