O' Canada and Gung Hey Fat Choy

It was Chinese New Year's weekend and we had this crazy last minute opportunity to go to Canada and have a mini impromptu family reunion. (My cousin, Isabella, was visiting from Australia with her boyfriend and my parents were also going to Canada for the weekend.)
We found really awesome tickets to Seattle ($680 for the both of us!) We had to go to Seattle because neither I or Aaron had passports so we had to drive through the border. We just had to bring my naturalization certificate and his birth certificate as proof of citizenship. My parents are awesome and came to pick us up from Canada (it's a 3 hour drive from Vancouver to Seattle).
When we got to the airport, my mom brought Aaron a nice jacket from GAP that she got on sale. The collage below are pictures of us at the Honolulu Airport and at the Seattle airport. It was so cold when we arrived!

click to enlarge
We had no problems going through the border and we were in Canada! It was David and Aaron's first time in the land up north. We stayed at my aunt's house and slept for a couple of hours before we had to get up and get ready for church. We went to the Chinese branch and saw a lot of people that I used to know and my parents showed us off...mostly Aaron. My mom is so proud of Aaron and will point him out to everyone she meets. It's really funny. (It's not a bad thing Mom!!) David played in the snow and we saw a car with headlights that had it's own wipers!

We went to eat at a Vietnam noodle place and right across from it was a restaurant called Honolulu Cafe! We thought it was funny and had to take a picture!

We had a big dinner Sunday night to celebrate Chinese New Years Eve since not everyone would be able to do it the next day plus we (my family and us) were leaving already. David and Aaron got to meet a majority of my family.
My mom's side has a bunch of siblings so we grew up calling the auntys and uncles with their number (position in the family) in Chinese. or English. The family on my mom's side living in Canada were in order of oldest; Uncle (Stephen) and Aunty (Lucy) 4, Uncle (Herb) and Aunty (Lina) 6, Uncle (Richard) and Aunty (Joyce) 7. Plus my cousins; Bertrand, Warren, Annette, and Jeanette. My old(est) cousin Isabella and her boyfriend Andrew were visiting from Australia. OH and how could I forget my Popo!! She's another reason we went to Canada!

My Popo (Grandma) hasn't met David or Aaron and she loved them both! Everyone loved my men! Isabella was telling me that Popo was worried for David because they couldn't find a jacket to fit him and she thought the ceiling would be too low for David and that he might hurt his head!

We had a lot of fun the 3 days we were there. Monday we ate a Chinese lunch that Aunty 4 prepared and then we went down to Richmond to a Buddhist temple and it was so smokey and full of incense! Then we went out to eat at another Chinese restaurant and it was time to leave!
Uncle Richard was awesome and drove us back down to Seattle on Monday night so we could stay at a motel and a catch our flight in the morning! When we went to the border to go back to the USA , the border man just suggested that I get a passport by June. (so if you don't have a passport now, you better get one before June 2009 because you never know if you're going to go out of the country!)
And that my friends, was our crazy last minute trip to Canada to celebrate Chinese New Years!!