Jenie and Frank dot com slash blog

Happy Holidays to all of you! We hope you’re enjoying this special time of year with your loved ones.

Frank and I spent the last two days celebrating Christmas with both of our families. Our tummies are full of yummy food and we had such a great time exchanging gifts and fun with everyone! Frank went shopping at my favorite store for my Christmas gift (guesses anyone?) and he got computer stuff, video games, and a great looking Warriors warm-up shirt from me! Kiya got some treats from mommy and daddy and a new squeaky toy from Santa. She ripped open all of her gifts on her own! It was cute!

We hope that your holiday wishes came true! Best wishes for a happy, healthy 2008!

December 15th is a special day for me and Frank. 3 years ago today is when Frank and I first met. And 1 year ago today is when we got engaged! What a great day!

And…Happy Anniversary to my parents! They tied the knot 31 years ago today in Hong Kong! Congrats!

Like I said, what a great day December 15th is!

On a side note, we went to get my engagement ring cleaned today and found out that Vera Wang is no longer making her jewelry line. I was kind of sad learning that, but Frank thinks of it as sort of a ‘limited edition’ kind of thing. It makes my ring a little more unique I guess. All I can say is good thing we already bought the matching wedding band!

We went to the Warriors/Lakers game tonight and what a game it was! The Warriors never fail to make games exciting and nerve-wracking for their fans! We had a great time, even though the family sitting behind us tried to take our “We’re Back!” Warriors t-shirts after we left them on our seats when we went to go buy food (we were sporting our jerseys instead). Some people!

I must ask: What was up with the officiating???

My voice hasn’t fully recovered since getting sick while in Washington, but I still managed to scream and cheer, especially in the 4th quarter. It’s probably going to take another week to get back to normal now. Oh boy!

A big thanks to Kerwin for inviting us! Let’s Go Warriors!

We’re back from our Dream Dinners training in Snohomish, WA. We learned tons, and now have a bigger list of things to do in the next few weeks! We had a great time there and met some awesome people who are also opening Dream Dinners stores. Our training week was anything but ordinary, and we shared tons of laughs along the way! I’m sure our trainer will remember our group forever!

Kiya is also home, settling back in. Unfortunately, Frank had to take her to the vet today because she seemed to have injured herself. When we went to pick her up, we noticed right away that her walk and run didn’t look quite normal for her. The doctor gave her some ant-inflammatory medication, thinking she probably strained a muscle somewhere. We think it might have been all the digging she did in my parents’ yard. Bad Kiya!

Thanks Alyssa for watching her for us, and sorry mom about all the dirt!

I didn’t get a chance to write this past Sunday because we were traveling to Seattle, but it marked the 8 month countdown to our wedding! Again, we can’t believe how quickly the time passes!

We haven’t really done much wedding planning in the last month. Report cards and parent-teacher conferences were in November and store construction started up, so we’ve been busy! I actually tried to book the make-up artist, but she doesn’t take bookings that far in advance! How funny! My mom has returned from Hong Kong, so when we get back to California, I’ll have to visit to see what wedding stuff she was able to take care of there. I’m anxious to see my Chinese wedding dress fabric and my veil! Exciting stuff!

On Monday night, I worked on the scrapbook pages for the Dream Dinners book. Every owner is asked to make the pages, and they keep the books here at the Dream House. When we first arrived, we looked through some of the books (there are lots of them sitting in the living room) and we found some of the California owners that we’ve met in the last few months. It’s fun to get a glimpse of the Dream Dinners family.

We came prepared with pictures of us and Kiya and some pictures from the store. I’m not really a scrapbooker, but I had a lot of fun working on our pages. It took me FOREVER though! One of the other owners walked by and was like “You’re still working on it?!” and I was only on the first page!

The theme was “2008 is going to be Great!”–it references the two big things happening for us in 2008. When I finally finished, I felt kind of sad that I had to leave them here in Washington, so I took pictures to remember my work. Anyway, here are some pics of the pages:

The Owners Page

The Store Page

This would be a really fun hobby to start up, but I think it would take up too much time and money that I don’t really have right now. It would be great to have a scrapbook of all the events related to the wedding though…hmmm…

Yea! We finally got our building permit! After about 6 weeks, I’m proud to say that we are officially permitted to build (construct) our store. We’ve been building out on a temporary permit for the last two weeks, but now…we’re officially underway!

Here are a few pictures of where our build-out process was before we left for training…

Another pile of dirt

Note: If you look carefully, you can see a Baskin Robbins and an In and Out cup in the back.

Ceiling Electricals

Future Bathroom

Alan: If you’re reading this, you can appreciate this picture. The square in the middle of the picture is the site of our future toilet.

On another note…

Today was our second day of training. We spent the day at a corporate-owned store in downtown Mill Creek. We learned the ins and outs of the shipment process and building and breaking down of the stations. The more involved we got, the more we learned and the more we realized what we have ahead of us. Sometimes I wonder what I have gotten us into! Doug, our trainer, was very helpful through it all. He explained every aspect of the process in a thorough and informative manner. All in all, it was a fun day and everyone learned a lot about running our own stores.

We’re braving the weather here in Washington. If you’ve checked the news lately, you know that the Pacific Northwest has been hit with a pretty big storm. Both of our training days have been delayed due to blocked roads and flooding–our trainer had to take the long way around to get to us yesterday, and today, he has to pick us up to take us to our training site because we can’t drive on the roads we were given on the map. During our training yesterday, we kept getting distracted by large objects floating down the Snohomish River. We actually saw a kid’s swing set float by, amongst many downed trees and logs. Oh boy! We picked a great week to visit!

Last night, I worked on some of our Dream Dinners homework–2 scrapbook pages. We were supposed to do it together, but Frank wasn’t really into it (obviously, right?). We were asked to create one page of our family and one page for our store. I must say, for a girl who’s never really scrapbooked before, I really like my pages. I’ll post pics later!

We’ll be heading to a local Dream Dinners store to learn a little more about construction and inventory today. Should be very helpful!

Cross your fingers for us for better weather!

We are currently in Snohomish, Washington, the location of Dream Dinners’ home office. We’ll be here for the week, learning all about the finances, guest relations, marketing, inventory/ordering…the list goes on.

We arrived yesterday, after a very turbulent plane ride due to very bad weather. I spent about the last 20 minutes of the flight with my head between my knees, hoping not to loose my lunch! Wasn’t very fun.

We’re staying at the “Dream House” with 2 other groups of owners. One group is from SoCal and the other is from Wichita, Kansas. It’s been insightful speaking with them thus far. We’ve got a group skit to create for our Thursday night Dream Dinners barbeque (don’t know how we’re going to barbeque in this rainy, cold weather, but oh well). I hate homework! We’ll let you know how it goes.

Gotta get back to training! We’ll check in soon!

P.S. We miss Kiya. A lot. Thanks again to my family for watching her for us. Sorry about her hole-digging. I guess she likes dirt.