(I love the Mondavi Center!!)

I feel blessed to be able to attend this event by Yo-Yo Ma, where he performed three of Bach’s suites for unaccompanied cello. He dedicated this performance to Robert Mondavi, the renowned winemaker who passed away a year ago. Mondavi's the major donor of the performing arts center.

You cannot beat the acoustics at Mondavi - I can feel the music echoing back at the perfect pitch to my ears from the walls, especially the bass notes.

Ma was larger than life on stage - a lone chair in the middle. I was glad to have brought the binoculars - The myriad of micro-expressions on Mr. Ma's face was completely amazing and captivating. Bach pieces are not popular repertoire for the masses-they require "depths" from both the musician and the audience, yet give incredible emotional ranges in hands of great cellist.

And than came the encore-he seemed to have put some thoughts to it. It sounded like a Chinese song to me, beautiful-many commented that it's the best piece in the recital.

At the end of it, like one of the usher lady exclaimed - the feeling is "like God descends to earth". How lucky I am to hear two of the most celebrated musicians in the world, Yo-Yo Ma and Itzhak Perlman in the span of three months, 2 minutes from home?

(BTW, check out the youtube video of the Obama Presidential Inauguration Piece "Air and Simple Gifts" arranged by John Williams, where Yo-Yo Ma performed with Itzhak Perlman et al. Amazing and beautiful. )

Brother and Sister (2009)

(Oh men, my kids are so grown up now, compared to in 2009 >_<)

They play, they fight, they learn– brother to be nurturing and share what he has (and expected to be, since he’s 5 years her senior), sister to learn to do the big kid things from the big brother, such as playing with “real” Lego and not swallow them (ok, she did like to “chew” on those little tires). In turn, sister learns to share too, and be considerate toward others (of course, still learning as a toddler..)

I’ll always remember how sweet the kindergartner big brother was – past the toddler/preschool age, he was able (and willing) to help mom take care of sister, and yet understood enough to not be jealous with her.

She’s his talking, laughing and moving doll that he pushes around the house in the doll stroller. Yes accidents happened-such as the time when they got too excited jumping on the bed--sister received three stitches on her head. It happened in a spit second, right in front of my eye. I still won’t trade anything for their laughter during play, though.

After taking thousands of pictures, I hope to have captured some of the brother/sisterly moments to show them when they grew up.