20 March 2012 - Mila's birthday party (3)

Hello everyone, today is my birthday and I am 3 years old!!! Yahoo!!!


Daddy and mummy bought me a really nice bicycle...look, look:

My first bicycle...so nice in pink!!

...and I am of course well protected:

You see? A nice "Dora" helmet and a whole kit to protect my knees, my hands and my elbows. 

For my birthday party, mummy and daddy organized everything and I met all my friends at the "Little Monkey Bizness":

My birthday card, cool isn't?

Almost all my friends could make it and we had great fun at the LMB. 

Me having fun at the Little Monkey Bizness...

It is like a little gym and you can climb, jump, throw things and once you are really tired...you go and enjoy a nice birthday cake...or two:

My first cake (ice cream and cake)...yummy!!

My second cake from "Nothing but cake"...really nice + not shown here, the terrific cup cakes form the same place...

The most fun part of my birthday...when Aubrianna helped me to blow the candles...

OMG, look at mummy's face!!!

What a fun party, thank you all for joining!!!

Thank you Silvia, Massimo and Aubrianna

Now I am tired and I am going home...

Thank you mummy and daddy, I had a amazing birthday party!!!

18 February 2012 - Mila's best friend birthday party

Well, that was really a coincidence but one the first first day of Eric and Frank arrival, Mila had a BD party...not any party, her best friend BD party. 


Since Mila is going to her learning center, she had the opportunity to go to a few parties, but Aubrianna's birthday was the most memorable!!


Here are a few pictures of the birthday:

The main theme was "Raiponse"...so of couse, the cake had to be in a tape of a tall tower!!!

So cute all these boys and girls waiting for the cake to be cut...

Aubrianna and Mila crafting and eating...

Thank you Anbrianna for the wonderful birthday party. See you at mine in about a month :-)

18 February 2012 - Eric and Frank in the Colorado (Colorado-2012)

This is the beginning of a tradition which, I hope, will stay for ever! My best mates, Eric and Frank, will be spending about a week in the Colorado. On the menu: ski, ski, ski and ski!!! It's so cool that they could both come over here!! 

Frank and Eric in NY...a short stop over before the crazy week in the Rockies!!!

The first destination will definitely remains in each of our memories: STEAMBOAT!!! It is quite a long way to go there from home...about 4 hours!! And the weather did not help us much!!

The road to Steamboat is really amazing and the amount of snow that fell that day was just unbelievable: 70 cm of fresh snow...and WE were there!!!

Road to Steamboat...

70cm (28 inches) of powder!!!...and more to come!!

If you want to ski in the wild and in an amazing, light snow powder, you must go to Steamboat!! There is an unbelievable slope called "Shadow" where you basically ski / snowboard in "Aspen trees". This is simply magical!!

The "Shadow" in Steamboat...magical in 70cm of fresh powder!!

"La fine équipe" all geared up and ready to face the snow storm!!

...ok, relaxing for a while on a lift...

View on Steamboat valley from the restaurant on top...nice isn't???

We decided to spend the night in Steamboat as Eric was suffering a little bit of the altitude. Too bad for him, he had to give up almost half day (stuck at the restaurant) and we did not enjoy the night life much, beside a dinner at an italian restaurant.

"Jack", not feeling so well...

Following this memorable day, we headed in two other resorts: WinterPark and Copper Mountain. We had really great ski too...but Steamboat was still the best. Too bad that we only stay for one day!!!

I had planned some other activities at "Denver's ground level" and on the 22nd February we all went to the Pepsi Center to see the "Avalanche" vs the "Los Angeles Kings". For once, we had planned a baby sitter, and both Wai Leng and I had a great night out!!

Our "flash seat" ticket!!!

Wai Leng and me at the Pepsi Center!!

The plan was a fourth day of ski but due to the really bad weather, all roads going West, up in the mountains were closed and the GPS did not have much alternatives...

06:05 hours of road...usually it takes about 2hours to go to Copper Mountain!!!

...so half way through, we decided to go to Fort Collins, home of the"New Belgium Brewery":

The Colorado has hundreds of breweries...but this one was really a cool one to visit!!

A wide selection of beers...

One of the many reasons why the "Fat Tire Ale" is called so...

7 days were way to short...so we decided to renew this experience in 2013...so stay tuned for more adventure!!!

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...