Skip to main content

December roundup

Wow, it's been a minute since we last posted!! So much to share, so we'll just do a quick overview of our December shenanigans....

First, we had a couple of school events. Nora is part of the school choir (Sunset Singers) and they had a holiday concert one evening. She also got elected/selected to be part of Student Council, and the kids did an amazing job organizing a food drive for a local shelter. After they were done collecting, they loaded up three vans with all the food. It was heartwarming to watch the kids being so kind and helpful with each other. Lastly, we signed Nora up for a free intro lesson to fencing. She looked so cute out on the floor, but I'm not sure how much she liked it. 






For Christmas break, we did our usual and headed down to good ole LaLa land! We had lots of fun planned out:
  •  Dinner at the Mission Inn in Riverside
  • a Hawaiian Christmas concert
  • horseback riding lessons
  • Disneyland
  • Making cookies with Grammy
  • Christmas Eve dinner
  • Christmas dinner
  • Hotpot night
  • a CH reunion
  • Visiting the Broad museum
  • Phillipe's for french dip sandwiches
And, of course, lots of time hanging with family! It was a great few weeks that always recharges our souls. The girls always look forward to going down and are so sad to leave, but we always take away with us lots of great new memories and this year was no exception.

Dinner at Mission Inn. Kinda kitschy, but also nice. Food was meh.

Great decorations in the lodge.

SO MANY lights. And, free too!

First ride of the day at Disneyland!

Star Wars was really cool. Two thumbs up.

The weather didn't cooperate but we made the best of the situation.


This year we made gingerbread cookies. YUM!

Hawaiian Christmas concert was great - very intimate and the performers were so talented.

Christmas Eve family selfie

Christmas morning

My asian-inspired veggie dip appetizer plate - miso tahini, red curry white bean dip, chili crunch hummus with all the veggies, pretz, japanese rice crackers and mala nuts.

We got a family picture in this year! That's everyone minus Cameron and Caty, and Caspar's family.

We did a separate trip to visit Caspar's family. The little ones have grown so much since we last saw them in 2019!

In N Out, of course. 

CH buddies FOR LIFE!

Our crew has grown!

Phillipe's beef dip, double dipped with mustard, please!

At the Broad Museum's Infinity Mirror room..

hi doggie!

Mahjong sharks.


Comments

Popular posts from this blog

Family time

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

Japan trip

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

Miss Evie becomes a teenager

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