Officially now a yuppie family

Robby & I ambitiously sent out our first Christmas cards - 100 of them. What a feat. It took me two days to order the photos, write the holiday letter, buy the stamps, & assemble the envelopes. I sure love Costco.

Lots of things going on.

My grandpa Gong Gong passed away on Friday, December 11th, three days before my birthday. The funeral is in two days at Rose Hill Memorial Home in Whittier.

Gong Gong died at 96 years old, and before his fall and hip injury, he had few physical ailments - prostate cancer (common in older men), asthma, blindness, & deafness. I know 40-some-year-old people who take twice as many medications as he was taking before he died. His healthy took a downward spiral after the hip injury. Sitting in a hospital bed 24/7 sometimes seems more harmful than helpful, but he had a lot of healing to do & daily mobility was out of the question. Last week, he had a stroke in the majority of the left hemisphere of his brain. This affected the right side of his body. This also put him in the ICU for 2 days. My family went back and forth about life support. Luckily, his death was painless and quick, and my grandmother did not have to see his body invaded by tubes of fluids, running on man-made machines. She has lived her life for him more than for herself, so his death starts a new life for her at 89 years old.

Deaths and births have been occurring simultaneously in our family recently. Last summer, my paternal grandmother died less than a month before my niece was born. Robby and my wedding was shortly after that. This year, my sister gave birth to twins over Thanksgiving, and three weeks later, Gong Gong dies.

I can't say that any of this unfair in any sort of way. Our genes are resilient in old age, and we live for a very long time. When I was a child, I knew that I was very lucky to have known all my grandparents and that at one point in my life they would all wither and pass in a short period of time. I've so fortunate to have spent so much time with them.

I'm now 30 weeks pregnant & supposed to see the doctor every 2 weeks. Baby is doing well - kicking & punching all the time, like there's an earthquake in my belly. It's a strange feeling to have a little being incubating in my body.