Garden updates

The weather has been a bit wonky lately.  Warm then hot, and then another cool down.  I'm guessing the plants and fruit trees are probably a bit confused right now.  In any case, the fig trees are already starting to rebloom and I've yet to prune them!

Looks like I have my work cut out for me.  I have one tree here to prune:

And then another fig tree (in the background) and also the apricot tree here to prune.  The apricot tree has only given me 1 fruit since the four years we've lived here!

These yellow jasmines are pretty although they don't smell as much as the white ones:

Roses need pruning too but I'll just wait until these blooms die off.  Too pretty to get rid of right now:

I never quite know what these flowers/plant is called. It's just really a dull and flat palm-like looking plant but its flowers are amazing!

And these succulents have such cute flowers:

And I hardly water these either!  I'm just glad it's thriving... for now :-)

And oh, look what I found - a Monarch caterpillar!

Only saw this one little guy, although I should probably transfer him to the front yard.  The milkweed there is looking slightly healthier than the ones in the backyard.  Assuming I can find this little guy later though.  They disappear so quickly!

I suppose with the change of season, we should probably move this Christmas "salt" tree out of rotation. I wonder how long these salt crystals will stay on:

And of course, I couldn't help myself but to buy another plant.  I've always wanted something like this one.  I think it's common name is Ponytail plant.  I can totally see why it's call that now.  Ha!

I still have this trailing plant although the kokedama part of it is coming apart.  That's the twine part of it that wraps this plant up in a ball.  I do have more twine so eventually I'll have to wrap it back up together.  But in the meantime, it's sitting quite nicely in a small plastic container that I've hidden inside this orchid planter.  Looks pretty good - for now :-D

We still have our hummingbirds coming around.  I thought there were only two but looks like we have 3 now - Chubby, Tiny, and I'm not sure what we've named the 3rd one now:

I'll need to get my act together and prune the orange trees out back soon.  They are starting to sprout new leaves too!  Always something around here, and oh... which reminds me - the faucet of the sprinkler water line broke first things Saturday morning.  But thankfully that's fixed now.  Yay!!

Happy Valentine's Day

We don't normally do too much for Valentine's Day.  Mostly just a card and a few gifts here and there.  This year though I got a little bit more generous.  I ended up buying a couple of cute pillows.  Just couldn't help myself!

As if we need more pillows... but c'mon, too adorable! Yes, the boys too :-)

Bobby and the boys gave me lovely cards and also bought me some flowers and chocolates:

Although, they bought me Hershey's chocolate as a gag because they know I don't like those!  Thank goodness a good friend of mine surprised me with some Godiva.  YUMMM!!

The boys also bought me a cute little bracelet that says "Hope" on it:

They are saying they "hope" I don't yell at them too much. LOL!!  Little stinkers, I tell you!

And I requested for one of these pastry blenders as a Valentine's present.  My fingers are getting too sore when I have to cut that butter into flour.  Getting old really stinks for sure!

We bought another year's worth of the Baby Blue's calendar.  We really love this comic.  The one today was pretty hilarious:

The weather has been pretty weird lately - warm for a few days and then it would cool off again.  It's foggy during pick-up today:

I had to stop along the way just to take a couple more photos:

It's just amazing how this marine layer rolls in at 3pm:

We decided on having some cheese fondue at the last minute.  So I sent Bobby to get some but the German market was out of it!  Bummer,... so we ended up just having some bratwurst and I made some bread at the last minute as well.  Glad that turned out decent:

Bobby's pointing to the new outdoor fan.  So glad it's still staying up so far. Phew!

Bobby did also get some more yummy chocolate during his grocery shopping trip.  We were introduced to these by our good friends in Abu Dhabi when we lived there:

Tim Tam's are supposedly very popular in Australia (that's where our friends are from) and you are suppose to eat it with your coffee.  In this case, Graham is trying to eat it with his milk:

So, okay... he's not technically eating it quite yet.  He bites the corner of one end and then bites the corner off the opposite end.  And then, he sucks up the milk!  So it didn't quite work with his milk - perhaps because the milk was cold.  But you should definitely try it with warm coffee.  It's messy but so yummy. Ha ha!!

On top of the green Tabasco and also the little packets of olives, I had one last gift for Daddy.  Yup, more readers!

These are actually foldable ones so it's nice and small that I can just tuck away in my handbag. Bobby is constantly looking for his readers when we are out and about.  I'm hoping I don't quite need a pair yet but they do help sometimes.  Graham and Charlie said I look old in them.  Ha! :-P

I went to the eye doctor recently and he totally vetoed my current prescription of having one bifocal contact lens in my left eye and a regular contact lens in my right eye.  So with the new Rx, both eyes have reduced strength for my short-sightedness so I don't struggle as much when I have to read or look at my phone. I have a follow-up in another week, so let's see how it all goes.

As per usual, anytime the boys end up with my phone they always end up taking some sort of photos with filters.  Ha!

Boys are so silly.  Yup, my boys!

Love them all! XOX

Dad's surgery

Dad had his bladder removed recently (the last week of January).  Hopefully all the cancer cells were successfully removed too.  It was definitely nerve wrecking knowing he was in surgery for 8 hours, assuming I understood that correctly.  His wife was relaying messages to my sister and I in Mandarin while they were at the hospital. 

I was so happy to see my dad sit up and eat after his surgery:

The recovery is slow for now but he is getting used to having his urinal bag. You know he's feeling better when he jokes about how the bag isn't large enough when he drinks 2 cans of beer.  Ha ha!  Okay, he hasn't been drinking again (at least not yet). Dad's appetite is still not so good and getting Covid after getting home didn't help either!  Thinking of him lots and hoping that we will make our trip home back to Malaysia this summer.  

Speaking of going home, there are currently all these restrictions to enter my home-state of Sabah.  And after going through some online research, it seems that I was suppose to register my marriage to Bobby with the Malaysian government.  Now, it wouldn't be so bad if we just walked into the Consulate of Malaysia here in Los Angeles - but there's also a fine for late registration.  Oops!!! Penalty of $35 for late registration for the first 6 months and then $18 for each subsequent year.  Are you kidding me??! Bobby and I just celebrated our 15th wedding anniversary!! And oh, there's also an additional $34 registration fee and then another $15 for the fee to obtain a Cashier's check.  Bobby just said I'm worth every penny.  LOL!!!

Graham's eczema

We still haven't quite figured out what is triggering Graham's eczema.  It's been going on for quite a while now.  I want to say... before Thanksgiving?  We're wondering if it had anything to do with the Covid vaccination.  I guess we will never know!  He still has some trouble with it but nothing like what it was before. 

Here's a look at it when it first started out, in early December of last year.  This is one of his thighs:

Just sort of bumpy at first.  And Graham has had eczema when he was a baby too. It just hasn't flared up much until now.  By the end of December, the eczema was really "angry"!

Especially the back of his legs:

The colder and dryer weather probably didn't help.  We did make our trip to MN before Christmas as well.  And of course, Graham was never quite been the type of person to lather up in lotion.  Until now, of course.  I went out and bought a few different ones to try out:

And eczema lotion is not cheap!  Each bottle was at least $10 if I'm not mistaken.  

Coincidentally, we had an appointment scheduled (this past December) with a new pediatrician for Graham's annual physical.  And she recommended a prescription cream.  It unfortunately does have steroid in it, so we try not to overuse it:

But look at the difference!!

Especially the back of his legs... so much better now!

Graham did end up seeing a dermatologist as well, and she recommended another prescription that's non-steroid based:

And also another new bottle of lotion that was prescribed as well.  This one is $20, but thankfully everything else has been taken care of by insurance:

We are still struggling to find out what the trigger(s) is/are for Graham's eczema.  Some spots are coming back again.  We'll just have to spot treat until it all gets under control.  Poor kid!

But in the meantime, it's just life as usual for Graham.  He gets his hair brushed occasionally while we watch TV at night.  As you can sort of see, he doesn't like it too much because of all those knots and tangles. Ha ha!

He is still working on his Panda bear project that Santa got for him:

He still has to grow quite a bit to fit into a size Small pajama pants that we just bought from school. Well, I did sew it up so he can wear them for his school's Movie Afternoon (instead of Movie Night) this Friday.  He is so excited!

And Graham made it into the school's newsletter last month!  He loves his red Chinese New Year outfit:

Graham still has his quirkiness which I guess makes him Graham I suppose.  Just hope he gets better at some of his old habits as he continues to mature. He is going to be 12 years old this May.  I think we were supposed to talk to him about "the birds and the bees" in 5th Grade as the school district had provided some sort of video.  But since we never did do that, I guess it might be time by this summer.  Yikes!!

Installing new ceiling fans (2/5 & 2/14)

Seems like I'm constantly changing out our ceiling fans.  But it's amazing though, how a nice looking fan can really change the vibe of a bedroom!  Here's our old one in the master bedroom:

I was just going to change out those glass shades to a more modern looking one, but there was a good price on a new nicer looking fan :-)

Graham is my working partner today as Charlie is out shooting archery:

Okay,.. black wire and blue wire and what is this other one with the latch??!

Come to find out it's actually a safety line!  So I guess if I accidentally drop it, it won't hit my foot??!

Graham is obviously having too much fun with these new filters on my phone again.  Ha ha ha!!!

Woohoo!  Doesn't this new fan look awesome?!! :-D

But then the new fan started making this clicking noise 2 days later. It actually did affect our sleep! And then after about 2 days, the clicking stopped and all was quiet again.  Hopefully I didn't jinx it!

And then, I finally decided to take on the outdoor fan.  Well, there's actually 2 of them but I only have one section of the back patio ceiling painted for now.  I can't remember how long these have been sitting in their boxes, but here goes!  First off, I had to make sure it was actually an easy job to take down these florescent lights.  Oh geez, the one rusty screw actually broke my screw bit today!!

But once those lights were down, I had to figure out how to put this brace on.  It's suppose to support up to 50lbs.  It seems to be bending towards the ground though. Hmmm...

And this fan's motor is sort of heavy.  But knock on wood, so far so good!

I was missing a pack of these little screws, so I dug them out from the packaging of the 2nd outdoor fan.  I'll have to eventually get another bag of these.  These fans are refurbished so hopefully it won't be too much of an issue getting more parts:

Okay, blades are on!  I did check to see if the light was working prior to putting on the blades.  And then it was a matter of shoving all those wires into the little box at the very top.  I like these wide blades, although I hope it won't be a pain when it comes time to cleaning them:

Ta da!!!

I plan on taking down those hanging lights too.  I have some new ones that I will be putting up.  In time... ha ha!

We did eat dinner outdoors tonight although we really didn't even need the fan tonight.  The temperature was back down to the 60s today!  This weather has been really weird lately. It was in the high 80s/low 90s just this past weekend! 

I was perhaps just a tiny bit concerned about this brace setup.  Do you see how that rod is a bit slanted in the middle??  I did pull on it and it does seem quite sturdy but obviously my eyes are just not quite convinced, at least not yet:

Well, if we hear anything crashing tonight, we'll know what it is!  In the meantime, I still have so much painting and touch-up to do.  When will I ever be done with this back patio??! Well, actually there's still some other items on my to-do as well.  But I guess I'll have to finish this one before I start the next one ;-P