Summer Summary

Wow! 3 months since our last post, i guess a post on our blog is LOONG overdue! What can i saw, Facebook has been so much easier to update our weekly/daily status. Blogging, somehow seems so 2005 any more... Oh well, maybe practice will make perfect, i'll try to keep posting more. On to summer, what have we been up to? Here's a few of our greatest hits so far!:


1. Spent 4 nights over in Club Med Sandpiper in early June. At Port St Lucie, FL, its the last Club Med left in the US that caters for Kids as well as adults. All inclusive, so food, drinks (booze), and most activities are covered until your stay. Got an awesome deal on our stay, there were running a last minute special, so we held out booking until 2 weeks before our departure date, and took advantage of the pricing! Priceless was the sailing, sunning, swimming, trapeezing (yes we did that!), partying, and tennis playing that we got to enjoy! Of course, a good deal didn't help either!






2. Few weeks after Club Med, visited Wonderscope Children's Museum in Shawnee. It was a nice day out, and Wonderscope was having a membership drive day, with local merchants sponsoring games, food and ice cream in the Wonderscope parking lot. Also, free entrance for that day to the Museum. Mostly the kids loved the ice cream! Jaz got a little too obsessed with the water toy here. Check out her look when we asked her to go... Inside the museum had tons of stuff for kids to play too! For her age though they had a toddler room, which she had a blast climbing in and out, up and down the play
area!






3. Spent a busy part one of 4th of July visiting the Prairie Village Festival on Saturday morning. Tons and tons of stuff for kids to do. Donkey rides, Puppet shows, food stalls (like pasar pagi), petting zoo, etc. Jaz wasn't a big fan of the donkey's in the background, but was mesmerized with the puppet show, and had fun trying to touch/feed the goats in the petting zoo!














4. 4th of July part two, drove up with the Kinsella Clan to the Missouri Wine Festival in Excelsior Springs, MO. Not as big as some of the wine tasting shin-digs that we went to, and Excelsior Springs is like 1 hr drive from our place, but still had a few good tastings there! Dragged our kids along, but they had at least some things for the toddlers to play with while the parents sampled the wines... As you can tell from the picture, we had a GREAT time. :)












5. Discovered a fine restaurant/grocer in KC "Kim Long" that sells FRESHLY made Roast Duck and Roast Pork last week! Also, they carry an awesome and reasonably priced "Chap Fan" (you pick your own sides with rice) selection in their attached mini-restaurant. So defintely worth the 30 minute drive from Olathe to the Rivermarket!

Happy Memorial Day Weekend!

Phew! its getting close to memorial day weekend already! Time sure flies, especially since we've been back from M'sia. So, on the eve of the summer season, I've been scouring the "internets" in the last few weeks to do some financial spring cleaning. Specifically, looking at some good investment ideas in this current economy. Stocks, for those that know me, I've been dollar cost averaging already as they are still at 10 year lows...














On the other hand, fixed income securities like Bonds, I've never considered until now. Reading cautionary tales of near-retirees being wiped out on the cusp of cashing in their 401ks that were primarily stock based, my attention now focused on fixed-income. For me, I've always been a big proponent of index-based stock trackers, like the S&P500 index and I even have positions in an international index tracker as well, but unfortunately while I am diversified industry wise and regionally, I was not Asset class wise. I'm 100% stocks in my 401k.

How much bonds to put in my portfolio? Some of the suggestions out there was take your age=bond percentage. So 30 years = 30% of your portfolio in bonds... Ouch. Dunno about you guys, but I'm still open to "SOME" risk, especially when stocks are at their 10 year lows, don't want to miss out on probably the best run up (hopefully soon) in decades. So, did the easy (lazy)way, just funneled 15% of my new 401k contributions to an intermediate range bond investment, with low fees (0.2%). I'll revisit at the end of this year to with a target of at least 20%/80% (Bond/Stock) allocation by YE09'.

How would you guys do it? Agree disagree?

We "Luvs" Southwest Airlines

So Yeesin and I are going to Florida for our Wedding Anniversary at the end of this month, and we booked out flight tickets on Southwest Airlines last night. We thought we got a good deal already to Fort Lauderdale @ about $200 per person and bags fly free. :)

Then the next morning, we find out that the fares dropped overnight, and they have openings for direct flight from KC to Fort Lauderdale now. :( Usually, this is were we normally kick ourselves for booking to early and missing out on a deal. Totally KIASU!

Then, I remembered that SW has a really good change policy where they (1) charge no change fees (2) Give you credit for the price difference (3) Can do all of this online..


The Result: Save $177 on our flight, changed it to direct on the return leg AND got the money refunded on my AMEX, and we did all of this ONLINE! (I was PLEASANTLY surprised!) We LUV Southwest, what more can I say!

Getting some serious paperwork done

Yep, Jaz just turned 1 now, and we finally finished up some long due paperwork. You know, the kind of worst-case-scenario type stuff that you never want to talk about because of "pantang". Seriously though, as parents now, we need estate plans to be inplace for the safety of your children. So, we finally wrote up a living trust for both of us courtesy of a fixed-price legal plan from work.
Interesting few factoids that we found out in the course of getting this done. Wills and living trusts are not the same, look it up on wikipedia to see the details but basically living trust allow you to go around the probate process versus just doing a will. Plus living trusts have have additional other things that you can "legalize", like financial & healthcare powers of attorneys. Wills are cheaper for sure, but with this fixed price legal plan, it defintely made the living trust option cheaper for us.
Anyways, its finally done, so now we can sleep easy now that this is taken care of. :)

Good news, we saved a bunch on our refinance.

Well, we did it. After a 2 month long wait, we finally went and closed on the refinance on our house. Managed to get the rate dropped from 6.125% to 5%, which doesn't seem like much at first. However, after we factored in the existing balance and interest into a new loan, we managed to drop the mortgage payment by about $500 per month. Actually, the main reason we were doing it wasn't so much to get the payment down, the real reason was to get the remaining interest down!
Here's an interesting back-of-the-envelope fact, most people pay at least the same amount of interest on your mortgage. So, instead of thinking how much you need to pay per month, we should be thinking, how much of our money is going into interest. So with this refinance, the monthly minimum payment dropped, but we took advantage of the payment cushion by paying up with extra principal on the loan. Long story short, saved a bunch of (total) interest, to the tune of 70K on our refinance! Plus, we gain the additional flexibility (if we have to) of not prepaying and dropping to a regular payment in cash conservation scenarios...

DIY for the people that are interested Below....

For the Calculator savvy folks out there, check out these free link to see if you can do the same on your own refi's too!

Refinance Interest Savings Calculator
Prepayment Interest Savings Calculator

Postcards from our M'sia Vacation (Penang)

Just arrived in Penang after flying in on the regional Fireflyz propeller plane. Grandpa really proud of his new granddaughter. Our little one decided that she wanted to follow in her mom's footsteps, and be a motorcycle-ahmoi! Went to Bali-Hai on Gurney Drive, met up with Yeesin's Cousin's family and Marvin from the US joined us too! Check out the delicious seafood in the huge fishtanks behind us! Jaz decided to use the plastic chairs there as walker toys... Cheaper than buying a brand new one! Grandpa's neighborhood closed up the whole street and had dragon dances, dragon-snake dances and fireworks and not to forget food to celebrate CNY! Jaz finally learned how to eat porridge in Canton-I at Queensbay mall. Before this, she won't even want to touch that stuff! Mom and Jaz at Seafood place at Raja Uda. Long drive across Penang Bridge to get there, but YUM!!!!

Postcards from our M'sia Vacation (Klang Valley)

Yes, its been a while since we last posted anything of import. Mainly be prepping for our first trip back to Malaysia with Jaz, and after the trip trying to get everyone back on their original schedules, and obviously to unpack!

Spent a short overnight with Yeesin's uncle and aunt in San Francisco enroute from Kansas City back to Malaysia. San Fran seemed like a good resting point between the long flights. Jaz was sleeping already before we even got on the plane!
Jaz's first AngPow ever! She wasn't sure what to do with it for a while, mainly just chewing on the packet. We don't think she'll understand the concept maybe for a few years!
Mommy bought her a really cool CNY outfit! Its a little big for her now, but the best thing is she can wear it for a few more years!
Had to do Bak-Kut-Teh in Klang. Rite of passage for all the Yeoh clan. Grandpa brought us to this really cool "Yeoh" branded Bak-Kut-teh (See sign in the background). Too bad no discounts for same last name! Jaz got her first ever swim! Mommy bought her a swimsuit and swim diapers, so she was good to go. Her favorite things was to let us dunk her in and out of the pool! Whats CNY without a reunion dinner! Here's the shot before we "Lo-Sang"ed. All the Yeoh's in the picture with yours truly behind the camera.

Refi'ing with the crowd...

Taking a little detour into mortgage refinancing this post. Looks like if things work out, our existing lender Capital Federal will let us re-lock into a 30 year, 5% mortgage. End result? About $500 less in mortgage due every month. Still we'll not want to pay any more mortgage interest (as tempting as a tax break it is), so will continuing making our existing payment-> Result? More flexibility, less interest win-win! Will update when we close!

Happy New Year 09'

HAPPY NEW YEAR 09!!!! Yes, we have been a little lazy in updating our blog, especially so after we got our facebook accounts... Truly, its a lot easier to post bite-sized info of our day, instead of typing up paragraph summaries of our weeks! However, I do remember that this blog is probably our only live online journal of our lives, so I guess I'll continue to post stuff here too!

Anyways, 2009 is probably the only year in a long time that we didn't get out and about to party the night away and ring in the new year. Boy! What parenthood will do to screw up our night-owl activities. This year, with Jaz around the household, the additional logistical problem of getting a babysitter came into play. No-joy from our next door neighbor, so we stayed in-instead. The Kinsella's joined us for our in-house party too, starting the night at our local Mexican resturant (pictured here)
.
We later adjourned at the Yeoh's B&B with an Special New-Year showing of "The Mummy 3", which incidentally I'll give a 2 thumbs down for driving the series to its death.

Still, all of us managed to be entertained, albeit at the expense of some critical thoughts on how the movie can be improved. Plus, as the night grew later, the kids naturally got more on-board with going to bed, so that helped a little too! Midnight came really quick, though its interesting that most of us lost practice in staying up late ever since our kids entered our lives... :)

Jaz woke up the next morning and found evidence of our fun. She didn't mind missing our NYE celebratation, as long as she could chew on some of the props! HAppy New Year 09;!

Hung out for about 3+1/2 quarters at the Chiefs vs Saints Football game yesterday. We managed to be able to let-go a little and let our babysitter watch Jaz for about 4 hours while we enjoyed the outdoor game a little. Heck with the local Chiefs having only 1 measly win this season, we couldn't pass up on $30 tickets that were 30 rows from the endzone! Still, we forgot that parking was $22 bucks and food was at least $5 each, so... maybe it wasn't as cheap as we thought. Still! had a great time while we were were there with a couple of our football friends as well! Chiefs still lost 20 to 30, but at least my Fantasy Football League QB Brees didn't do shabby!

Happy Halloween!

It's not a stuffed animal on my desk, its Jaz in her Peapod outfit! We brought her all dressed up to a Halloween work event on Thursday evening. Everyone had their kids in tow all custu'med out as well. In my building, there was tons of kids games, with haunted cubes, ghost bowling, etc. Well, basically activities for toddlers and above.

For our little Jaz, not so much stuff for her to do, except be carried around and get her parents to say "trick or treat" for her. She did participate somewhat though... She can grab for candy if its placed near her, just can't eat it yet! Rest of the evening was taken up by strolling the aisles, looking for candy that Mommy and Daddy likes, and chatting with people about how nice Jaz looked in her costume.

Our little peapod didn't really make it past an hour of trick or treating... Ah.. Its real hard work being a baby. :) HAPPY HALLOWEEN ALL!

Ahh. so happy to be locked up

Here's a video of our favorite pack-n-play captive. Nuff' said. :)

Raya + Rennaisance Festival Weekend

Brought Jaz to her very first Hari Raya celebration organized by some Malaysians in town. Weather was great out on that Saturday afternoon, the organizers booked a lodge (hall) in a nearby park, and the event had meticulous organization (As opposed to something yours truly would be able to pull together!). Picture on the left has the kids in the background playing tug-of-war.

Nice to be out and about, especially when the weather is getting cooler these days. Jaz had a good time being a social butterfly saying hi to all the aunties, in her "teaparty" outfit. Picture on the right had baby Mika in the background in his baby seat, our newest brand-new out-of-the-wrapper Malaysian with proud mama Zurin looking on. Next to Yeesin is auntie Pat with her little on on the way (can't tell from the picture) and auntie Angela which we just keep asking her "when"...

Spend the next day Sunday over at the local Rennaisance Festival, which is like a outdoor event with a Midieval theme. All the performers and storekeepers basically dress up and speak like they are back in Midieval times, and they STAY in character -> For better or for worse... We would have missed it this year if not for the free tickets a co-worker of mine gave out, and for the fact that it would be a fun first activity for Jaz.

Didn't really purchase anything of importance over there, just strolled around, people watching, looking at the sword fighting, minstrel-ling, jousting events.. and eating our favorite food - Turkey Leg! Here's a shot of Jaz enjoying HER favorite food while at the Joust. You can almost see her peeking at the event while eating.. :)

The dog whisperer

Yep, the title just about sums it up. Instead of trying to talk to us, we caught Jaz trying to "talk" to Benji. Its more amusing when Benji whines back because he thinks that Jaz has food, but hoarding some from him... Check it out :)

We made the NEWS!

Seriously, we made the news. While we were out strolling about the Plaza Art Fair, a reporter approached us for a quick interview. Check us out here: Our little bit shows up a sec: 00.50 :)

Kinda Crawling

Sharing a pic of my girls :) Plus 2 videos of Jaz doing kinda crawls on the carpet. She's more schooching than crawling, but I think its close enough! :) Enjoy!

Baby = wonderful business plan

Over the past couple of weeks, I've noticed this interesting phenomenon once whenever we go about town with Jaz... The inexplicable action of giving money to a baby's parents. Happened this one time at a local indian buffet, where the owner came by and gave us a dollar for Jaz with a smile to Yeesin saying "Cannot use to buy handbag for mommy ok?". Then a couple of days ago, on the way back from the Lake @ the Warrensburg dairy queen, an employee stopped by and happily contributed a quarter for Jaz' piggy bank. :)

So, maybe I'm just biased, but I'm thinking that with these 2 data points, I think I can start charging about $0.60 per look @ Jaz to contribute to her savings account... It might turn out to be a good business plan. :)

Happy Labor Day!!!

Happy Labor Day all! Posting from the Lake of the Ozarks! Decided to do a last minute short trip here, bringing Jaz on her first road trip of her life. :) It was about a 4 hr trip East from KC, with one stop @ Columbia, MO to find a diaper changing station, and feed. Other than that, there was a few fussing incidents in the car seat, but we made it to Ozarks all fine @ 7pm last night!

Spent the rest of the day with fun filled activities designed to occupy both the body and check book. :) First up, a quick hike in Ha Ha Tonka State park! With Jaz securely in her carrier, we did a 2 mile hike up some strenous terrain. ;) Jaz was so tired after the hike, she fell asleep in the car right after we strapped her back in her seat, I would think the tiredness was probably due to the stimulation than actually walking!

After a quick lunch, with Jaz snoozing away, we went to our 2nd big destination of the day -> Outlet Malls! Yeesin disappeared from my sight about 2 secs from us entering the COACH store. In fact, the activity in the store kinda reminded me of bees buzzing around. The ladies looked like they were darting from corner to corner admiring the purses, bags, etc and their sweet sweet low prices. Jaz and I decided to let Yeesin and the rest of the professionals shop in peace and found a seat beside the rest of the husbands/boyfriends/drivers and just relaxed.... Capped off the night at Andre's, my favorite restaurant @ the Lake. They had a really interesting Mango Habanero Ice Cream, yep you read right, first sweet, then spicy!

Last stop Sunday mid-morning, was the Seven Springs Winery outside of town. It was a really young winery, only open all of a few months, but their white's weren't too bad. One major complaint was that they had Sangria on their wine tasting menu, which is more of a filler-drink, than a wine-taste... But then again it was really popular with the rest of the wine tasters! Maybe its a Misouri thing? Anyways, we had a nice lunch topped off with half a bottle of their Summer Blend, before we drove back . All in all, it was a great 2 days at the Lake, even with the minor incidents of trying to time Jaz' feedings in between car, and even being so far out in the boonies that our GPS didn't even know where we were??!! Back in KC now, posting Monday morning.

Have a GREAT LABOR day weekend ALL. Here'e a bonus HAPPY picture!

Foozball Season is back!

Actually, its FANTASY football season. Mainly for the people that cannot exert enough control on their local teams to make their local boys win, a more palatable alternative is to engage in Fantasy Football! Cherry picking players from the entire NFL universe and putting them on your Virtual team is a wonderful way of winning every week!


I'm the commisioner of our league (which really means that I have enough time to waste to play stuff like this) so we organized a Draft session this past weekend. Most of us are Malaysian, so we are a pretty kiasu bunch. Some of us came prepared with analysis and spreadsheets on who the best players to pick are, and some even with a draft strategy. As kiasu as we were, 2+ hours of gut-wrenching, sweat inducing drafting later we were actually done! Surprising that I actually budgeted 4+ hours for something like this. Yeesin? she had better things to do, spent most of the time shopping @ Target with Jaz. :)

P.S - If you didn't understand what all this business is about, here's a good primer on Fantasy Football.