Skip to main content

We wish you a Merry Christmas!

By

We have had a wonderful time this holiday season even though we've been stuck at home because of all the stay-at-home orders going on. We've made the best of the situation by still celebrating - I know lots of people who stayed in PJs all holiday but we did the opposite and went big with celebrating small!

First, I got in on the advent action when Way sent me this delightful advent calendar from Palais de Thes. It was super fun to wake up each morning and open a little treat, and then text with Way and Samantha to compare tasting notes. There were some intriguing flavors and I have to say that I was surprised to find out how much I liked the green earl grey. Thanks for the lovely treat, Way!

I loved all the inspirational quotes each day.

Beautiful packaging.

Then, my mom got us a shipment of Portos goodies. YUMMMMMMM! No potato balls but we got chicken empanadas, chocolate twists, guava and cheese strudels and cream cheese tarts. Thanks, mom, for the yummy treats!


The girls even put on a little holiday concert for us a few times. They dressed up and worked on different lighting options and everything! You can't really tell in the pics though because we had to turn on the lights in order for the photos to turn out. 


The week before Christmas, we decided to do a Christmas celebration with our quanran-team, the Wongs. It gave us a chance to dress up and eat lots of good food, and the kids did a secret santa to exchange gifts.

The kids goofing around in front of the tree.


Me and my girls

All ready for dinner!

Soy sauce turkey

First time making sticky rice. YUMMY.


And then for the ACTUAL day of Christmas Eve and Christmas, we had Grammie and Grandpa visiting from LA! The girls were beyond excited to see them since we haven't seen them in many months. I was super sad to not see my side of the family - this is the first time in 41 years that I haven't been home for Christmas! I had to make do with several Facetime calls and sending pics back and forth of the girls and what we were making for dinner. :P

Since the weather was clear, we did a quickie Christmas Eve hike to show Grammie and Grandpa where Goldie is buried. Goldie lays near the Coal Creek dam and it's a fairly easy 10-15 minute walk through the woods to get there. It was very chilly, but clear, and we saw lots of other folks out and about enjoying nature.


Nora being a good sport about taking photos.

Hiking photo

For Christmas Eve, we heated up a Costco ham (pretty good! Recommended!), made some freshly baked no-knead dinner rolls, and then cooked up some wild rice and green beans. For dessert, we had the usual cookie platter which was chockful of home made deliciousness - oatmeal raisin cookies, brownie cookies, zucchini bread, pecan lace cookies and cranberry butter tarts. I think this may have been our best year of cookies yet!



Photos before dinner

All dressed up!

The girls wanted to do a funny photo.

Festive bubbly


Dessert tray

I love this candid photo of Evie laughing


Nora showing me her chocolate lipstick

On Christmas day, we spent all morning opening gifts! It was a lot of fun and took a while because usually we split present opening into 3 different events (Christmas morning at Grammie's house, Christmas night at the Apollo Yu house and then our immediately family gifts when we come home after the holidays). The girls were over the moon for their gifts, and there was a lot of squealing and happiness. 

For dinner that night, I made a pot roast type dish, mashed potatoes and brussel sprouts. For dessert, I finally had time to make the cranberry curd tart I've been wanting to make for ages! I see so many pretty instagram photos of it and while mine looked ok, it was really quite yummy. It was a lot more work than I thought it would be, but it was good and I'd make it again for a special occasion.

Ginormous pile of gifts.

Photo of them in last year's Christmas jammies

An action shot of the unwrapping.

Most unusual and surprising gift: Scott made me a homemade squatty potty. 


Dinner that night of pot roast, mashed potatoes and brussel sprouts

Cranberry curd tart


And that concludes all of our holiday trimmings and trappings! Considering the craziness that was 2020, this Christmas was really low key but nice. I missed everyone very very much though and can't wait to see everyone again in person hopefully sometime soon!

Our Christmas Card wall. If you sent a card - thank you!! 


Merry Christmas, everyone!

Comments

  1. WDecember 29, 2020 at 8:58 PM

    Aww, looks like you guys had a great Christmas week! I'm glad. We wish we could be together during the holidays this year too. We miss all of you SO MUCH!

    ReplyDelete

Post a Comment

Popular posts from this blog

Japan trip

By
We got back from Japan about a week ago and we're still talking about what a great trip it was!  Japan has never been super high on my places to visit but for a lot of reasons (I've never been, it's clean, it's safe, it's different) we took the plunge and booked it as our summer vacation this year. It helped that our friends, the Wongs, went last year, raved about it and loved it so much they were going again and we were able to coordinate so that some of our trip overlapped with theirs. It helped even more that the yen is at a 10-year low (maybe all time low?) against the dollar, which, aside from airfare, made everything quite affordable.  Look how low the yen is! We lucked out that it kept falling after we booked our tix in Dec. Since this was our first big overseas trip since COVID and with kids (or, lets face it, SINCE kids), I dove into prepping for our trip - including trying to keep up my Duolingo streak of learning Japanese for at least a few minutes everyd
1 comment
Read more

Family time

By
I had to do a quick trip to LA towards the end of July to say goodbye to my Uncle Pang, who passed away a few weeks earlier. I have fond memories of fun cousin time at his house in Palos Verdes and Uncle Pang taking us to the beach when we were younger. I remember how he delighted in making us kids squeal with laughter by pretending the car ride was a rolleroaster - we'd take sharp turns and all of us kids would slide to one side of his Volvo station wagon or he'd slow the car down to a roll and we'd all chant that we couldn't let the car stop and it would inch slowly forward at a stoplight.  Although it was a sad reason to get together, I think he would be happy to know that the weekend was also a wonderful get together with family. Because it was fairly last minute, none of the kids flew over which meant us "adult cousins" were able to have long talks and linger over food. Kin and Meredith were able to host a summertime bbq at their house and we had a nice t
1 comment
Read more

Miss Evie becomes a teenager

By
EEEK! We officially have a teenager in our house!  I can't believe our little Evie is now 13 years old. I can still see her as a little girl saying "Swiper no swiping!"  For her birthday this year, she and a few of the neighborhood girls went to get their nails done at the salon nearby. She doesn't remember the last time she got her nails professionally done ( back in 2016! ) so she was pretty excited about it. She picked a very pretty teal color. Afterwards, the girls had some cake.  To celebrate her actual birthday, her ask was for tv time, shopping and sushi. So after a morning spent hanging out in from the tv, we headed to Bellevue Square mall where guess what? She got a phone! Technically, I got a new phone and handed down my old phone to her. We spent a good 3 hours doing all the transfers but she was very patient about it and grinning from ear to ear when we went to dinner that night.  At 13, Evie has become a very stereotypical teenage girl - she loves clothes
1 comment
Read more