Holiday Wrap-up 2012

One last post about the holidays to wrap up the glorious season. I fully admit that I’m not a December person or holiday person. Work is busy for me in December. Add traveling and shopping for gifts, my stress level could get pretty high. Another reason that I usually don’t look forward to Christmas holidays anymore is because my mom isn’t here with us anymore. When she was around, things were different. But I make the best of it, and this year I had a fun time with family and friends.

On Thursday 12/20, we had a group lunch with friends at work at Panda Buffet.

That was quite fun and I had a good time chatting with everyone. I prepared 3 gifts for friends whom I knew were going to bring me gifts as well. (I just know based on past history, LOL.) So this year I went prepared!


Our Christmas season was full of our favorite hot chocolates, which is always a good thing.


I made a button tree.


I finished my handmade holiday cards. (More details to come in a separate post.)


I learned to take some shaped bokeh photos.


Noodle took too much interest in the small tabletop trees and the large tree.


He was also very snuggly.




I gave Todd a heavy Christmas gift.


Always the joker!

He’s been doing P90X for two months and needed more varied dumbbells.

He gave me a Kindle Paperwhite.


My childhood friend Minnie and her family drove down to San Diego for vacation and I got to hang out with her a bit.


We took some photos in front of the tree.


And of the gifts under the tree.


On Christmas morning we made nutella ebelskivers for breakfast.


It was all kinds of yummy.


We had Christmas lunch at China Max, a standing tradition.


So much yummy dim sum!




And of course, we went to the beach. Ever since we moved here in December 1999, we have had Christmas On The Beach every year, except for 2006 when my mom was really sick and we couldn’t go.




We came home and opened up other gifts.


As usual, Santa brought us new Ohio State Buckeye shirts.


We chatted with Todd’s family on the phone, after opening gifts from them. Noodle loves the Ohio State laundry basket.


I Facetimed with my friend Sally as she opened her gifts from us.


And we Facetimed with my sister Joyce and her family.

I love that technology brings far away family and friends together!

We got to hang out with our friends AJ & Meera and their kids on Friday 12/28. We got to open up our gifts for each other.


Todd played piano with Keiji.




We got to see some fantastically decorated houses that had lights synched to music!


And it was so much fun to hang out with good friends.


This holiday season has been full of blessings. I’m reminded of how much my family and friends mean to me. I’m reminded that every relationship needs to be treasured and cultivated. I’m blessed to have such awesome people in my life.