I didn’t think we’d actually go to the Bay Area so soon after going there last October 2024 when Anson said goodbye to coworkers. This time, the primary reason was so that I could pick up my guitar and keyboard so that I could practice for worship team. We were scheduled to play for Good Friday service and I was only able to practice at church.

Highlights:
Day 1: Zumba in the morning while Anson worked out with Gary, drove up to Bay Area, Anson ran with Frank while I checked out the MV library, got Tea Era for the Chans, Pokeworks for dinner, and met Anson at Mediterranean Grill House, chatted with Daniel and Kelly and family over the drinks (mango smoothie, strawberry smoothie, and pudding milk tea) staying w/ them for 2 nights, walked over to the Yeh’s house and caught up for an hour

Day 2: breakfast with the Chans (Kelly made avocado toast, fruits, and yogurt), went to Shane Co to get ring prongs adjusted, picked up Yoshinoya and ate lunch with Ruth/Albert, afternoon walk, picked up Nick the Greek (free wrap w/ UberEats!) and had dinner with Aunt Helen and Uncle Tim, night walk with Kelly

Day 3: church and lunch at RBF, talked for 3.5 hrs until voice was hoarse :/ got to know Garrett a little, hung out at the MV library until closing and picked up Mediterranean Grill House using UberEats (same price as in store, but using gift cards I purchased for 25% off and get a free baklava!) and had dinner with Uncle Kenway and Aunt Susan, packed up the guitar and keyboard, stayed with Emily and Kevin for next 2 nights

Day 4: woke up early and started hiking Mission Peak at 8am, finished at 11:30am, lunch at L&L Hawaiian BBQ (ramen and span masubi), got Paris Baguette and Teaspoon (BOGO!), picked up ring at Shane Co, got 3 packs organic brown rice and gas from Costco, and said “Hi” to Jada, Sheri, and Pilar at BWC, afternoon snacking with the Leongs, dinner at Google with Tracy (such good salmon!)

Day 5: Emily made eggs for breakfast, chatted with them (Kevin’s last day at AI company), drove back to SoCal, groceries and gas at Oxnard Costco…till next time!

Try to help our loved one be clean, safe, and comfortable
We won’t have all the answers
Try to remember that caring for our loved one is not a burden but a privilege
They are a fellow image bearer of God, and every person has both body and soul
Do not neglect your loved one
God’s grace is sanctifying
God is doing a work in us and in those we’re caring for
He comforts you so that you can comfort others
Every day, you have the privilege to display God’s glory
His power is made perfect in our weakness

Grieving with Hope
Denial, anger, bargaining, depression, acceptance
It is normal hurt. It is necessary to grieve
It is ok to grieve in a fallen world
Will you trust God even when life hurts?
One goal in suffering is to keep trusting and worshiping God, beauty out of ashes
The Lord has made everything for his purpose
When I’m ready, will you use me to minister to others?

I always seem to forget that I get dizzy for a month after going on a cruise. Our last cruise was in Feb 2020 right before the world shut down. I booked that same itinerery for March 2025 🙂

On Saturday, March 1, we drove to San Pedro and stayed the night at Jo-Ann’s new condo. She and her sister, Neeta, live together with their new adopted puppy, Uni. We bought takeout from a local Thai place, and ate dinner together. On Sunday, they brought us to the Long Beach cruise terminal and we boarded our ship.

Highlights
Day 1: lunch food was so good and was a taste of what was to come, only had to check in at our muster station w/o presentation, had the adventure course all to ourselves
Day 2: Day at sea, so was a little sea sick 🙁
Glad I splurged for fast internet and had a 2 hr Signal call with my mom, dressed up for prime rib elegant night dinner, cool musical performance show
Day 3: Did our customary hike in Catalina near the Wrigley Memorial gardens
Day 4: 5 Ziplines in Ensenada! Pretty rocky road to get there, but the sights were breathtaking! First time doing such long ziplines…but not the last! Had to do fine dining for dinner again to get the molten lava cake!

It seems like we have now reached the season(s) of which we are more likely to be going to funerals/memorials rather than weddings/showers. We went to my uncles’ not long ago and last weekend, we went to our church friend, Daniel’s.

It was a celebration of life service in which it is not necessary to dress in black. It was encouraged to wear his favorite sports team outfits (I happened to wear my royal blue shirt…dodger blue!) Lowell led in worship and Pastor Tom preached a sermon. There was a time of sharing from Daniel’s friends. He loved movies, sports, talking (lol), serving in the church, and sharing Christ with others. 

Anson remembered him as his Awana leader many years ago in which memorizing verses would give him baseball and Marvel cards (from his own pocket). He cared about the kids put in his charge and even if they didn’t know Christ at that time, he wanted the seeds of the Christian faith to be planted in their hearts. I remember being in the same life group with him during my short time at New Life Church and also attending one of his Super Bowl parties where it was my first time getting heart burn because of all the great (and rich) food! Ironically, the day after this memorial service was Super Bowl Sunday. 

We hadn’t talked to him for a while since we’ve been in the Bay Area and then moved to Camarillo, but almost every time we visited New Life, we would talk briefly as he would faithfully be in the back of the room. He suffered from esophageal cancer for the last few years of his life, but he remained steadfast in his trust in God and tried to serve to his capability. 

Daniel is someone I can look up to and see how the Christian life should be lived, how the race should be run. God will say to him, “well done, good and faithful servent.” I hope to strive to be faithful and loving as him and to serve others with joy and gladness. Farewell, Daniel. See you later. Hope you enjoyed watching the Super Bowl from the sky 🙂

My dad was diagnosed with dementia in April 2023. At the time, we knew that he was forgetful (my mom was thinking of buying AirTags for his phone/keys in May 2022), and the reason why my mom wanted to give me and Anson one of their cars was because my dad was driving a little erratically. He got into a car accident (all parties were fine), but later, they went to the hospital to get him checked out. That was when three doctors recommended that he not drive anymore as he could be a danger to himself and others. It has been downhill ever since.

Seems like each day is a new challenge. He frequently can’t find his glass, wallet, or keys. This time, it does look like he has lost his keys so we will have to make a copy of everything for him when we see them this Thursday. We just bought them AirTags to make it easier for them to find if/when this happens again. Some things are also just getting harder for him to remember how to do: turning on the stove, how to use a charger to charge his phone, unlocking the car door, etc. In his own mind, I think that he is trying to protect his family, so he goes through my mom’s stuff in her purse and hides it because they are important…but then he doesn’t remember that he does that or where he puts it. Just last month, he left the house twice and didn’t know how to get back home, and people at the hospital next door called us since they couldn’t reach my mom. We had to buy a door lock so that my dad won’t be able to leave the house in the middle of the night again.

The last time we visited was for my dad’s birthday in January and we stayed over for three nights…never again. The last night was just too much for me. I woke up 3 times for various reasons: one included my dad walking around and being afraid of ghosts in the room. I feel sorry that my mom has to be his caregiver. He usually becomes more agitated and frustrated as the night goes on and does not sleep at night and becomes restless. He does not make much sense and seems to live in his own delusions/hallucinations. We wanted to live in Camarillo because the weather is so much better than the valley, and also for us to have a little bit of space from parents, but we left the door open by buying a bigger place in case they ever needed to live with us…with my dad’s progression, I’m not sure if it would be wise if he can just walk out the door. Part of it is selfishness in which we don’t want our lives fully focused on caregiving, but part of it is also safety for him. I think we’re just taking it one day at a time. Praying for patience and endurance and compassion towards him…I’m sadly going to need it…

It was a normal Wednesday morning, but pretty windy outside, so since we woke up early, we decided to go to the gym. After a short workout, we left the gym and smelled a little smoke outside. When we went home, we could sort of see some smoke in the distance. I get notifications on my Ring app, and others were talking about a fire out in Somis/Moorpark area. A few mins later, there was an update that the fire had jumped the 118 freeway and made its way to Camarillo. I downloaded a fire watch app called Watch Duty by then since I was starting to get worried.

Winds picked up, 20 miles, then 30, then 40. We were packing by 10-11am as some areas were told to evacuate. Anson packed our documents, and I packed various things like food, personal hygiene stuff, my scrapbook I made when we were dating, our sermon notes, etc. I didn’t exactly know what I was packing…what is most important when you think it will all be gone that day?

The fire made national news and a few people we knew from LA and the Bay Area reached out. The first was Anson’s dad. We evacuated to their house around noon. Our area was on a red flag alert and firefighters were going door to door telling people that they had to leave. Getting out of Camarillo was a little backed up but orderly. Thankfully, the power at our house was back on around 3pm and I was able to use the Ring camera to see that our neighborhood seemed like it was still standing. Even though we were told to evacuate, our neighbors in front were there that night. 

We stayed two nights at Anson’s parents’ place, but we didn’t want to overstay our welcome and also wanted to make sure our home wouldn’t be broken into, so we came back on Friday morning. There were some streets that had barriers to close it off, but we found other streets open in order to get back to our house. Found out later that our other neighbors to the back (former firefighter) and to the right never left. 

Almost 200 homes were destroyed in the fire. Most of them were in more remote areas, but Camarillo Heights was still the area hit hardest. Looking at the map, our house was about 2000 ft from the fire (less than 1/2 mile). I feel sorry for those who have lost their homes, yet thankful that our house did not burn down. We only moved here 4 months ago, so in a way, I didn’t feel like this house had many memories for us as I did about Foley, but it would still be a hurtful loss. Would we be okay if we did lose it? We are stewards of all that God has given to us. He can give, and He can take away. Thank you, God, for protecting our earthly home. Help us to not rely on our own strength as we have little control and know that nothing in this life will last. Pray that we will store up treasures in heaven and to know that on this earth, we are just passing thru. 

Uncle William, my dad’s younger brother, passed away at the beginning of October. I didn’t know him that well, so it was nice to hear about what he did in his life. He was a quiet man, but played the violin in a well known orchestra in Hong Kong, studied and was a social worker, became an engineer when he moved to the states, and loved and served the church faithfully for years as the Cantonese choir director. We attended his memorial on Saturday, November 2, 2024.

On Friday, Anson and I had lunch with his parents before we went over to my parents’ place to stay the night. This was so that we could drive them to the memorial and was a way for us to serve them (I shouldn’t get annoyed at this) since my dad can’t drive anymore and my mom is uncomfortable with driving long distances. We were already going to have a busy weekend since we were staying the night in Hollywood to attend David Foster’s 75th bday celebration at the Hollywood Bowl (too cold and bad sound quality), but I’m glad that we went.

The service was well run (wondering if Emily helped lol…loved the Porto’s after service). Tim K led in worship with Amazing Grace, the choir sang one song, there were 3 people who spoke about Uncle William (a choir friend, Irene (his sister), and Hanson (his oldest son), and Johnson gave a message. One of the things his father said was to his grandchildren to “be a Christian on the inside”. He seemed like a loving friend, husband, father, and grandfather. He already knew how he wanted his service to be held and wanted the gospel to be preached as his last act to have others hear about Christ. He was never outspoken during his time on earth, but he did not need to be in order to make Christ known in both his life and death. Farewell, Uncle William. I’ll see you later.

We checked out a few different churches while we were deciding on where to make our home church. We visited CCAC since that is where Anson’s parents go, but we knew early on that it didn’t make sense to drive an hour to church each week. We also went to New Life Church since it was my home church for a year before we got married and Aaron and his family go there. It is 30 mins away and is doable…but I think still a little far in order to maintain community. We visited Christ Our Redeemer PCA which is in Camarillo at the local high school. We had good conversations with Cal and Bora. Though not an absolute red flag the way they conduct service is not something we’re used to. We also visited Pleasant Valley Baptist Church which was really close to us (5 min drive?). I liked the worship and the preaching, and a couple was very nice to us and they also had small groups/Bible study after service. This was a semi-contender as it was a nice local community. It seemed pretty established and I wasn’t too sure how we would be able to serve.

Throughout our visits to different churches, we kept coming back to Chinese Christian Church of Thousand Oaks. We liked that it was a smaller sized congregation, the expository preaching style (Pastor Steve has incepted our thoughts), recognizable worship songs, and Elder Wayne was very friendly and gave us a tour on our first visit. Some things that I may need some time to get used to is all the women leading worship (not enough guys with ability or desire to lead?), not having to be a member in order to be part of small groups, etc. Pastor Tim is relatively new in his role as the English pastor, so I know that it takes time to grow into the role and have the church change when there have been things just done for years.

We visited a few of their small groups: New Heritage (mostly retired folks), New Legacy (those w/ middle school to college aged children), and Semi Pro & Hungry (single and married w/o kids). We plan to visit CAMTO in the next month and that group mainly consists of those with young kids). It looks like we’re more comfortable being in Semi Pro as we like the discussions and teaching and it being more Biblically oriented rather than topical and it is easier to have conversations as it is a smaller group and doesn’t have as many disruptions where there are many kids. Regardless of which SG we attend, it does look like we have decided to make CCCTO our home church and have completed their 1st membership class last month. We’ll be taking the 2nd one next week and applying afterwards. Hopefully we will be able to serve and help the church.

Anson had to leave his company after his 3 months of working remotely. We knew that this was going to come as it has been the trend for tech companies to not let workers be fully remote anymore. Not exactly sure what I should blog about regarding this…should I talk about us going up to the Bay Area in October for his last 2 days? He had a dinner with coworkers and also ate with them for lunch on both Thursday and Friday and worked out with Frank both days. I ate with Emily (Lisa and fam stopped by) at Orange Square, ate at BJ’s with BWC peoples and caught up with them and Janet after she was let go. We also ate with Tracy at Google, with Uncle Tim and Aunt Helena (Little Saigon), and with Uncle Kenway and Aunt Susan (Mediterranean Grill House). We talked with people at church (Cindy, Jane, Ruth), and ate with Randy and Eva at Big Bites. But…seems like this paragraph is more about the week we went up rather than about Pure…instead, how about a list of things I would like to remember about his company of 11.5 years.

– Him randomly bringing leftovers home from the office (using waiter.com and Eat Club)
– When IPO’d, they gave him an IPad Air 2 (what I’m using to type this blog entry on) and an Apple Watch (which we gave to my mom).
– A generous amount of stock options as he was employee 115….they’ve grown to 4000
– Meeting him down at Le Boulanger for dinner before Janette’s small group on Castro
– Going on the weekends after church for snacks and studying
– Bringing church friends there to eat snacks
– The massage chair!!!
– Blueboard award that gave us a free sailing trip and annual passes to Great America
– For his 10 year anniversary, he received a Bose sound bar that retails for ~$400
– Various swag (shirts, jackets, cups, etc) he’s received thru out the years
– When moving to Santa Clara, we started carpooling to the office, and I would drop him off, go to GA for lunch, go to work, stop by GA for dinner, and bring to his workplace to eat there
– Very fancy Christmas party in San Jose one year, Anson going on a couple ski trips, cool picnic at Saratoga Springs, and two years at The Plex with good food, ice skating, and games.
– Even though they stopped lunch after moving, at least had a subsidy for the cafe. And yes, they downgraded some snacks due to inflation, but still had nuts, drinks, eggs, guacamole, cheese, yogurt, milk, teas, chips, etc. Thankful for fun times eating snacks!
– Walking around his company while he and Frank worked out/ran…he will miss his running buddy
– Anson working from home for a good amount of time cuz of pandemic…which made us realize what we should be working for
– Pure not letting him WFH anymore so that he can finally have a break 🙂
 
Anson’s had his ups and downs at work, but that is to be expected. Pure has given us much to be thankful for and I know he was glad to work with many people at the company. They compensated him well to the point where he has the freedom to do what he wants now. Thank you, Pure, for everything…

Wow, was my last entry just about our get together up in the Bay Area??? There’s been so much that has happened and seems a little overwhelming to write it all down 🙁 I guess I’ll try my best…

Our pod from 1-800-PACK-RAT was dropped off on Wed, 6/26, and it would be picked up on Tuesday, 7/2…this was NOT enough time to pack everything as we still had to work, do different last get togethers, bidding on a house, and mistakenly thought we could do all the packing ourselves. And to top it off, we had a heat wave come through and were packing in 100 degree heat. I sort of had a breakdown as things were just pretty hard trying to pack everything on Tuesday before the truck came to pick up all our stuff…yet, it wasn’t actually all our stuff as we had to bring a car full to Uncle Kenway’s place for them to store for the next few months. The plan is to pick it up (maybe) when we visit when Anson says farewell to coworkers in October.

Even though we brought stuff to Uncle Kenway’s, we still had two car loads full and had to push our date to move down by one day since there was still so much to pack and Anson wanted to leave the buyers a clean the house. On that day, July 4th, I looked over our house, swept one last time, pulled some weeds from the garden…and cried the whole time. This has been our house for 10 years and had many memories in it. We’d been in the Bay Area for our whole married lives, and leaving this place and all our friends was definitely sinking in 🙁

During this time, we were also looking over houses in Camarillo on redfin. We had met a real estate agent, Regena Ryan, at an open house when we came down in April, and she had been helping us look for places while we were selling our Foley house. She was the one who noticed this house even before it came on market listing at $1.295m. It was single story, 2700sq ft, slab foundation for one room to be Anson’s gym, big kitchen with smart fridge, a beautiful backyard that I’d actually want to spend time in (gotta learn how to use a hot tub!), in a good neighborhood, 1 mile from Ralphs and .5 miles from the park. The only bad thing is the location since Foley was close to many stores and the library, which was a reason why we bid $1.25m…site unseen. Sellers had bad experience with selling this way, so they wanted us to see the place and wanted their original price.

We drove down to SoCal and stayed over at the Wongs’ house for one night, then went over to the house on Friday to see it with our own eyes (Regena had given us a virtual tour which didn’t count to the seller), and put in our same bid but with a fast closing. We thought we were in a pretty good position since we could offer all cash. Anyways, we drove to my parents’ condo and stayed for 2 nights, where we found out that our offer was accepted! Hooray! We went to New Life on Sunday 7/7, had economical lunch there for $3/pp, hung out with Aaron’s family, then went to Wongs’ place for dinner. While packing up, found out that the inn we were going to stay in had their front office close at 10pm, so we wouldn’t be able to make it to check in. We ended up staying for the night (which Anson’s mom was happy about).

I had booked us a month’s worth of hotel/Airbnbs for the month of July…didn’t know we would get an offer accepted so quickly. Our first week, 7/7-7/13, was at Bella Capri Inn in Old Town Camarillo. The 2nd week, 7/13-7/21, was in a Santa Rosa Airbnb, and the 3rd week, 7/21-8/1, was in an avocado orchard in Camarillo 1.5 miles from the house we were buying.

At Bella Capri, the room was pretty small and only had one desk with both Anson and I having to still work remotely. It was nice to walk around Old Town Camarillo at night. This was during their heritage week and they had carnival rides, food trucks, and various musical/dance performances. We also had to go to the house to be there for the various inspections (home, sewer lateral, and termite). I also had to create accounts for SoCalGas (gas), Southern CA Edison (electric), and City of Camarillo (water, sewer, garbage). We also got not great news that a forklift damaged our container pod, so they had to transfer all the contents into another pod. Joys of moving…

At our Santa Rosa Airbnb, it was owned by a retired couple (Gary and Mary) who forgot that we were going to stay this week haha, but everything was set up already. It was a spacious place with a dining room, kitchen (though the stove was outside), and bedroom. We had much more space to work and lounge. The only knocks on this place were probably the sink that would randomly make noises on some days and ants as the property was in nature. On Sunday, 7/14, we visited CCCTO for the first time, where we met Wayne, an elder at the church, Steven (a deacon), and Gary (SG leader) along with many other people. People were very welcoming and it was nice that there was lunch after service.

Throughout our Airbnb stay, Mary gave us those various fruits and even included a bottle of wine to celebrate us buying our house. We closed escrow on Tuesday, 7/16! We met with Regena in the morning on Wednesday where she gave us the keys to the house. We took a picture with Regena and our new house before the tent went up and the fumigation process started. I met up with Gina at Panera on Thursday since we both had the free drinks promotion and had brunch. The tenting was removed on Friday, 7/19, and our container pod was dropped off same day.

We packed up and left our Santa Rosa Airbnb on Sunday 7/21. We visited Christ Our Redeemer PCA church in Camarillo. The way they conducted worship was something that we weren’t use to (communion, reading of passages, etc). It’s not to say it was bad, but just different. We met Cal and Bora there and talked a while with them. They’re very into pickleball and their daughter goes to CCAC. Not sure if we’ll be going to this church, but hopefully, we can hang out with Cal and Bora again and get to know them better. After church, we checked into our next Airbnb hotel in Camarillo Heights that was situated in a working avocado orchard! We were able to self check in and Sterling, our host, answered questions via chat. The place had a full kitchen, two tables, Netflix access, and a separate bedroom. The only knock was that it did not have air conditioning.

On Monday 7/22, Aaron, Anson’s parents, and Lauren’s parents all came to help us move our items from the pod to the house. Auntie Esther mom made a bunch of food for lunch. It was very nice of them to help us unpack since we were first thinking of hiring movers cuz of our bad experience packing, but it wasn’t necessary since we are just taking our time unpacking (now still :). During that week and the next, we traveled between the Avacodo Acres Airbnb and our house since it was nice to enjoy some comforts in a fully furnished place especially when we were still working remotely, so we took our time to enjoy the Airbnb (it was also fully paid for…oops, at least the interest on selling our Foley house paid for part of our stays…yay for high interest rates!). I had made Anson get another credit card and it was pretty easy to hit our minimum spend with all the moving costs. I’ll write another blog on all the costs cuz…accountant 🙂

During this time, we signed up for a local gym (Fitness 19….we were previously at this gym in the Bay Area), and got lifetime memberships costing $400 after a month of being a member…guess we’re committed to this place! So far, I’m liking the Friday Zumba class! On Friday 7/26, we met Aaron and Lauren for a dinner of Costco sushi we brought and Aaron making spaghetti, pizza, and chicken wings at their campsite in Point Mugu (south of Camarillo). Aaron makes a pretty good fire, and it was nice to catch up and try to be closer to family (Aaron mounted our tv as a surprise for us!). Eventually, we figured that it was getting a little unnecessary to travel from one place to the other. We had to be there to meet the termite repair guys and for the delivery of our dining table set, so we cut short our Airbnb stay by one night so that we could focus more on unpacking and making this house our home.