We really got into meetups and went to quite a few in July: dining out with other people in the DFW area, playing Cashflow 101 games, etc. We really enjoy meeting like-minded people, and we learn something new every time.
On 7/21 we went to our friends David & Michelle’s house party. They moved from CA to TX a year after us. Michelle really knows how to throw a party! The chocolate fountain was a big draw (at least for me). David (mine) really got to practice his golf swings (virtually) with wii. We stayed late into the night sitting by the pool and chatting with everyone, and had a great time.
As our MonaVie business grows, we had a lot of fun meeting people in our team virtually (on conference calls) or physically at open meetings. We’ve been so impressed by the quality of the people we met through this network. Not only are we involved with a world-class company, with an awesome product, but our team is wonderful too. This business is exceeding all our expectations, which is rare for us, since we’ve learned to be very conservative in the business world. We feel very blessed that we got into this business by accident (well, maybe it’s NOT an accident after all…)
I’m continually amazed by the power of networking. I’m truely a reformed DIYer now. I don’t know what took us so long to get this: one person doing 100% of the work has no leverage! When you have a team of 1500 people, each doing 1% of the work, you get 1500% work done, plus time to enjoy the fruits of your labor!
We also got busy evaluating quite a few deals brought to us from our new network. We used to work pretty hard finding good deals by ourselves, but looking back, the best deals were a result of networking with great people.
We had planned a “big trip” to the west coast for awhile – we like to go to CA and Pacific Northwest region in the summer time. It was also our 6th (!) wedding anniversary on June 23, so we wanted to celebrate up in Vancouver B.C. (one of our favorite cities) where we went for our honeymoon. Anyway, it turned out to be more business trip than vacation, but that’s OK – we still met up with many friends and had a good time!
We hit all our favorite spots: Bay Area (northern CA), Vancouver B.C., and Anacortes, WA and surrounding islands (by boat). Enjoy the slideshow!
Thu. June 14
We didn’t get much sleep the night before, since we took the first flight out to San Jose, CA at 7am (our shuttle picked us up at 5am). We arrived too early in the morning to check in to our hotel, so we drove our rental car, with our luggages, directly to lunch with my Intuit friends in Mountain View. It was great to see everyone again (kicking myself for forgetting to take photos).
After lunch we spent 2.5 hours at a title company signing papers for purchasing 3 properties — the transaction should have happened 2 weeks before (but didn’t), so we had the title company send the paperwork over to San Jose for us to sign. Delays like this seem to happen all the time with real estate transactions.
We thought we were done with “business” in San Jose (little did we know…) and went on to meet my college friends Khang and Betty for dinner at a Thai restaurant (great food, but too noisy unfortunately). Again, I’m kicking myself for not remembering to take pictures! Nothing makes you more aware of the passage of time than seeing your friends’ kids grown so much in a year’s time!
We went late into dinner, but David still attempted to get a “pearl milk tea” drink he missed so much – he caught the clerk 1 min. before the store closing, but they were “out of pearls” (tapioca)! He got himself another dessert drink and vowed to come back the next day.
Fri. June 15
We met my junior high friend Irene and her husband Tin for lunch in Milpitas at a Chinese restaurant very close to our hotel. We’ve missed Chinese “home food” restaurants in the Bay Area, so that was great. Kind of envious of Tin’s proximity to the 99 Ranch Square where the good eats are, since he works at nearby Cisco.
Our new friends Brion and Jean (we met them at the April mini-Maui event) hosted a big sizzle party at their house Friday evening in San Jose. We met so many interesting and accomplished people in business, investing, etc. at the party it’s hard to recount them all here. After everyone’s left the party, we stayed and chatted with Brion and Jean until 1am before we realized how late it was!
Sat. June 16
We had brunch with Alan (Intuit friend) and his wife Jenny at our favorite dim-sum restaurant Loon Wah. Good food, good people, good conversation. We would have chatted longer if not for a wedding at 2pm we were going to.
We arrived just in time for JP’s wedding at 2pm. David’s friend JP from his old hockey team got married to Sarah in a beautiful ceremony. Funny engagement video was shown before the ceremony – I think all the women in the room wished their husbands had wrote them a song to propose to them. Then again, not every guy could sing like JP
We were happy to sit at the same reception table with David’s old buddies Les and Ryan, as well as Lun (David’s friend he hasn’t seen for awhile) and his beautiful wife & daughter who we met for the first time. Other friends from David’s hockey team were present as well. We were also happy to see our friends Eric and Charlene in the wedding party. Another unexpected bonus was seeing our friend Curtis as the wedding photographer (he took some wonderful photos at our wedding).
We visited Eric & Charlene at their house that night, and had fun watching their son Nathan “exploring” around the house and in the yard. It’s great to see a nurturing home environment like theirs, which every kid should have.
Sun. June 17
We had a mini-crisis on our hands – the subject of travel and passports came up at the wedding on Sat. and we suddenly realized we didn’t have our passports with us! We were planning to fly to Seattle and then drive through the Canadian border to our hotel in Vancouver B.C. Somehow we both forgot about passports while packing – this is not usual as we actually had a “travel checklist” (but “passports” were not on the list).
There wasn’t a whole lot we could do before flying out to Seattle early Monday morning, so we did some research online and called my parents to see if they could find and overnight our passports to us, once we know where we would be on Monday.
After a yummy lunch at Coconut Grove (Malaysian cuisine), days of sleep deprivation finally caught up with us. Our hotel (Sheraton) was very nice but the freeway noise at night made it hard to sleep. So we napped a few hours in the afternoon, before meeting our friend Tuan for dinner and visiting our Intuit friend Hugh, his wife Michelle and their daughter Danielle. It was great to catch up with old friends, and we had a good time.
Mon. June 18
Another long traveling day. We caught the first flight out to Seattle, and spent some time getting our rental car (they tried to ask for extra proof of liability insurance for driving into Canada). While we were driving north towards the border, David got a call from the title company that there was “one more form” to sign (remember the real estate closing we did a few days before?) So we had to stop and find a UPS store to receive and send fax, etc. We also found out that our passports were in a safe box in our bank in TX, so we had to think of ways for my parents to get to them.
Somehow we found the time to stop by and check out an ocean-view property in Bellingham, WA, before continuing our drive to the border. Luckily we had printed out at our San Jose hotel some documents that got us through the Canadian border – we weren’t sure the U.S. border guards would be as accomodating, so we asked my parents to overnight our passports to us in Vancouver.
Our timeshare condo in Vancouver B.C. was 19 floors up in Yaletown. The bedroom has great views of the city.
Wed. June 20
We made it to the ribbon cutting ceremony of the MonaVie distribution center in Burnaby – it was a small office and jam packed with people that day. MonaVie CEO Dallin Larson arrived with his executive team to celebrate the official opening of the Canadian market. That evening we also went to the open meeting at Westin Bayshore Hotel in Vancouver – the room was packed and spirits were high, and we heard lots of incredible stories about how people’s lives were changed because of the product and/or the business opportunity.
In between the MonaVie events, we walked along the beach at English Bay and enjoyed some good eats (though not as good of a deal as we remembered because of the weak U.S. dollar).
Sat. June 23
This was our 6th wedding anniversary! We couldn’t believe it had been that long ago, but we know we’ve come a long way. I like to say “our first year was horrible!” in comparison to how well we work together now. We feel very blessed to be together, have the free time we have, and actually enjoy each other’s company (most of the time)!
David drove us around looking for a “beef noodle soup” place for me, since I had been craving some good home-style Taiwanese food. We did find one where the food was good; however, the service wasn’t so much. We had good “shaved ice” dessert after the lunch that sort of turned into dinner.
One of my favorite things about Vancouver B.C. is the delicious variety of food you could get at a reasonable price. We had dessert at Death By Chocolate the night before, and it was heavenly! Too bad we didn’t find time to go multiple times.
Sun. June 24 – Wed. June 27
On 6/24 we finally left Vancouver B.C. and drove back through the border to Anacortes, WA, where we met David’s parents and brother Eric for lunch. After lunch we checked out some real estate listings in the area. The prices for ocean-view homes were more reasonable than I thought, at least compared to most areas in CA. We were treated to some amazing views!
The next day 6/25 we looked at some more real estate with an agent before heading to the 42′ boat that David’s dad had chartered for the week. I was amazed by all the technical gadgets used to navigate the boat. I even got to sit on the captain’s seat while the boat went on auto pilot (OK so I wasn’t really “driving”)! We stayed at Friday Harbor for the night and it was my first time (in a long while) sleeping on a boat.
The highlight of the day on Tuesday 6/26 was the appearance of some orcas (whales) – actually, the guys tried to follow some whale watching boats and their cryptic signals and it worked! We were right in the middle of the action, with about a dozen orcas approaching us over 10-20 min. It was pretty exciting (I was hoping for some “jumpers” closer to us though). I don’t have very good pictures of this, so I hope David’s mom captured some better photos.
The women (David’s mom and I) left the boys alone in the afternoon (they dropped us off at a ferry station). We took the ferry back to Anacortes and drove to Seattle to spend the night at a hotel. The next morning 6/27 we went to the airport. My flight was delayed 2.5 hours due to bad weather in Dallas (my parents told me on the phone it had been raining and flooding badly, but I didn’t know how bad it was). I got to spend some quality time with my mother-in-law at the airport She was keeping me good company during the long delay.
When my flight arrived at DFW airport, the gate was closed due to heavy rain and lightning, so we were stuck in the airplane for what felt like 20 min. I feel fortunate that I didn’t lose my luggage or have a connection flight, as many people were stuck at the airport due to lost/delayed luggage or late connections. My parents braved through the bad weather and traffic to pick me up, and by the time I got home, it was about 10:30pm.
Thu. June 28 – Sun. July 1
While I spent the next few days processing emails, paperwork, and phone calls for both of us, David got to spend some quality time on the boat with his dad and brother. Not that I was complaining or anything… I’ll let David write about some interesting tidbits on this part of the trip. Funny thing is, this was the longest time we had been apart since we got married, and I hardly had time to miss him because of all the work that piled up while we were gone!
David flew back late Sun. night (really it was early AM on 7/2).
On 7/21 we went to our friends David & Michelle’s house party. They moved from CA to TX a year after us. Michelle really knows how to throw a party! The chocolate fountain was a big draw (at least for me). David (mine) really got to practice his golf swings (virtually) with wii. We stayed late into the night sitting by the pool and chatting with everyone, and had a great time.
