babysitting

We have spent the last two weekends in Beijing, spending time inspecting a construction site. Here we are ready for quality control.

Hong Kong hello!

It is great to be in Hong Kong. We love our new harbourview apartment in the Hunghom Bay part of Kowloon. So far we have really enjoyed it and have been keeping very busy! We have an extra bedroom for guests waiting to be used...

So many babies

Yes, babies seem to be everywhere...and Sunny is now addicted to shopping for babies :)
But for some reason, it's the litle baby girls that get the most clothes ;) As Sunny's mom says, since you're their aunt, I don't need to do any shopping...now, is that a good or bad thing?
It's been great though being able to share in others' happiness vicariously while leaving the responsibility at the door.
It's also an interesting phenomenon that people keep on asking when we'll have babies now that we're married, and we just keep on thinking...wait, didn't we just get married and make the biggest decision in our lives up to this point? Marriage was over 20 years in the making, so getting to the next biggest step in our lives might take a little time (though not 20 years ;)). We probably did the same thing though and bugged our friends...it's always different when you're in the hot seat.
We know though that Alicia and Rick's baby boy will be an adorable mixie, and that Reuben & Katie's newborn Ariana is a super cutie with both Chinese & white features (we'll post pics as soon as we can). We wish everyone with little tots goodluck and lots of fun with little rest.
Oh, and in all the excitement of Ariana's birth, Reuben gave Jonathan acupunture for his sinuses...yay for super thin needles placed on painful places!

Utah Reception pics....finally!

Pics from the Amazon...caymen (alligator cousins), anaconda, monkeys, and natives!!

Pics from Sao Paulo, Brazil with Jonathan's Members...so nice and fun!

Live from Brazil!

We have enjoyed the five days in São Paulo! The time here has been spent almost totally visiting wonderful people that Jonathan worked with and met on his mission. We will publish photos on the blog soon.
We are going to the Amazon tomorrow morning, and we hope that the long airport waits are not going to affect our travel plans. Brazil has been hot and occasionally rainy.

Happy New Year to you all!

Jonathan proud of his Mandarin

We discovered on Sunday that Jonathan now knows 142 words in Chinese!

Laie Temple Pictures - 22 Nov. 2006

Laie Temple Wedding - 22 Nov. 2006

We're finally posting pics of our temple wedding in Hawaii! Sorry for the delay. Things have been hectic with planning our Utah reception (pictures soon to come), and now we're moving into our home together at Sunny's condo in Provo. Hopefully everything will get neat and organized soon and then we can have people over.
The temple ceremony was amazing, and both of us cried like babies...surprise! It was beautiful, and it was so wonderful to see both of our families there, along with friends from BYU, China, Taiwan, Hong Kong, and Seattle. We took tons of pictures outside the temple with everyone, and even though it was raining on our drive to the temple and right when we came out, the sky cleared up and the pictures turned out great. As soon as our photographer gives us more pics, we'll post those.
We also had an amazing reception that evening with our family and friends at the Kahala Resort east of Honolulu. It was great to see everyone there and share good food, videos, dancing, and laughter. Everything seemed like a blur, and even though we had stress about our super late-showing DJ, it all went well.
We'll blog our Utah reception soon too. Enjoy the pics!

Arrived safely in Honolulu

We have arrived in Hawai'i, with family, baggage, stress, and all. We got in Sunday afternoon and have been running around doing errands and eating good Hawaiian and Asian cuisine.

delay

We apologize for the delay in posting anything new. We have pictures that will be posted soon. Only 16 days until the wedding!! WOW!

Dinner at Christopher's

Following the priesthood session of General Conference on Saturday, 30 September, our families got together with many friends for dinner downtown SLC at Christopher's. In these images you see: Erik Conard, Jonny and Sunny Chen; and you see the Robins . . . she grew up with Sunny's dad in Taiwan and was Jonathan's dad's MTC instructor in Hawaii in the 1970s. What a small world! It was a fun reunion and we all had a good time. Oh how we love General Conference. Finally we have photos for you!

Jonathan and his roommate, Erik, took the LSAT on 30 September and received support from family and friends. Here they are standing outside their apartment following the long exam.

This is one of the shots at La Caille in Salt Lake. Believe it or not, this is not in Europe, but UTAH!

LSAT is done & Business Trip for Sunny

Well, it's been a long time since we've put up a post...sorry~! We've been kinda sorta busy...basically, we're stuck at one of our apartments every day with Jonathan studying for the LSAT or Sunny on the computer doing work or planning stuff for our wedding. So it's great that Jonathan took the LSAT on Saturday...YAY!!!! He studied very hard every day in September, tried to improve on his weak sections, and he hopefully succeeded and did well on the test. We won't find out for a few weeks, but at least it's over with and now we can relax...kind of.
Last Saturday, right after Jonathan's LSAT, he and his roomate, Erik, held a beautiful bonfire at the Wyview apts. where they burned two of their LSAT prep books. Lots of heat in the backyard, and lots of smiles and dancing around the fire. It felt a little sacriligious burning books, but they'll never use them again. Then we rushed up to Salt Lake to meet Sunny's family who came to Salt Lake for Conf. and Erik (Jonathan's roomate) literally ran to make Priesthood session for Gen. Conf., the women went to Deseret Book which was super duper packed with a live concert going on (yes, I'm sure some guys wish they could've been there...Jonathan called it the General Enrichment meeting of the Church). After priesthood, we all went out to dinner with both of our families and a bunch of Sunny's parents' friends who live in Utah. It was a really great time at Christopher's Seafood and Steakhouse...very nice.
We went to Gen. Conf. Sunday morning at the Conf. center, and we all listened to some wonderful talks from the church leaders, then afterwards Sunny's family checked out of their hotel, at lunch at Chuck-a-Rama (Sunny's dad's fave place to eat in Utah), and then went to the airport....yes, this is the somewhat detailed semi-quick rundown of last weekend.
So, now life following the LSAT is just as busy. Jonathan had a slew of tests this week and aced most of them, Sunny finished up some wedding stuff, and now Sunny's on a business trip in Los Angeles. She'll travel to Tokyo, Korea, and Beijing from LA next week. Jonathan will be busy until she gets back though because he has been invited to particpate in some political campaigns and the Model Arab League all in the one day that Sunny has been gone. Yep, always busy, not much time to rest, but we really do enjoy our time together. It's too bad we have to be apart while Sunny's away on business, but hopefully next year we will be able to travel to some places together.
As usual, we're uber excited for marriage...it can't come soon enough!

Finally back in Cali together with Anabelle & Jonny. Also a pic of Jonathan holding our friend Julie's kid...so cute!

Here are pics of Sunny's new members at dinner and the Taiwan Taipei Temple...it's so nice to see it in the middle of the busy city!

My sister and her daughter...so cute! We got her a Chinese dress in Beijing. And then her costume for Halloween is sooooooo cute! A nice fluffy, chubby chick :)

Adventures in August & Start of School

Since we haven't posted consistently in the last month or so, we figured it was time to catch up.
August was a crazy, busy month. While Jonathan was in Washington, D.C. finishing up his 2 internships, Sunny had a business trip to Taiwan, Hong Kong, and China for 2 weeks with her parents. While in Taiwan, she got to see some of her new members and also get to eat all of the Taiwanese food she's been craving for the last couple of years! Then it was off to Hong Kong for 2 days where she met up with old friends Alicia & Rick Abelmann who are there working for the next couple of years. It was really nice to catch up. Then it was off to Beijing where she got her wedding qi pao and to look at some hotels that were just purchased, and after many gala evenings and meetings in Beijing and Hebei, she finally made it back to LA where she met up with Jonathan. Jonathan had been at home for a couple of days before having some family reunions and getting partially situated before heading out to LA.
We would just like to say that Skype is amazing! We talked online for free every day, multiple times a day while we were apart this summer. And we got to use video too on Yahoo Messenger. It was great to be able to keep in touch despite the distance, and from this couple of months apart we've learned that we're extremely bad at separation. So we're going to keep it at a minimum from now on...only 2 weeks at a time for Sunny's business trips.
After our short, short trip to Hawaii where we took engagement pics and finished all the arrangements for our wedding there in November, we flew to LA where we were models for a day for some Sunrider advertising. It was actually really tiring, and now we know that the life of a model is not so easy...yeah, not a future career path for either of us.
Now it's back in Utah, and we've been able to visit Jonathan's family, see his aunt and uncle's new Japanese style house, and busily get ready for his classes and law school applications. Deciding a career can be so hard, especially when you have so many interests that range from law to linguistics. But we know that the Lord will guide us in this important decision on graduate programs and law schools. We're looking forward to this final year in Provo, and it's been really nice seeing our friends...we're really excited to get married though! Everyone keeps asking us if we already got married this summer...so funny because the trend in Utah is only a few months for engagement. But, the day is coming near...finally!
That's all for now, and we'll definitely keep posting more frequently from now on. Enjoy the pics!