Merry Christmas from LA!

Just wanted to wish everyone a Merry Christmas. We're here in LA to celebrate with my parents, Edwin's mom, my sister, and Edwin's sister. It was a lot of family time. I'll post pictures soon, but in the meantime, here are the pics from our anniversary trip to New Orleans. I finally had some time to finish them!

New Orleans Anniversary

Who's that in the big, red suit?

Last week was super busy. On Monday, Edwin was Santa Claus. On our street, the men take turns being Santa Claus until December 23rd in the evenings 6:30-8PM. Edwin, I mean Santa, sat in the sleigh while kids came up to him. There was a steady stream of kids. Some of the kids were pretty docile. Most gave him their Christmas list while their parents watched, listened, and sometimes laughed at their requests. I overheard that Hannah Montana products were very popular for the girls and video games were popular with the boys. Who is this Hannah Montana? Anyway, we had a great time.

I also participated in a gingerbread house making contest at work. It definitely makes work a lot more fun. There were 10 teams of 2-3 people. We had kits with prebaked houses that we had to decorate within one hour. My coworker Renee and I created a replica of our 2 work buildings. Here's a few pics...

I also previously posted a few pics of the decorations from our house, but here are some updated ones.

Simplify, Simplify, Simplify

Though each holiday season brings a lot of celebration and festivity, it also can be very busy. In years past, I feel like I have enjoyed the hustle and bustle of the holiday season. This year, I'm going to try and relax a little more. Most of the time, I am the person that is constantly making lists and checking things off. I enjoy buying gifts for other people. However, lately, I have been reminded more and more that Christmas shouldn't be a time where I have to do stuff like buy a gift or write Christmas cards (or decorate our house!) It should be a time to reflect on God and family. Since we moved this year and we are hoping to remodel the kitchen, we still have many of our things in boxes. There are still a few things that I would love to find (like our can openner!) but for the most part, do we really need those things? Not really. I find myself looking every quarter for things that we don't need and being able to find a lot of stuff that we can give away- yet our house is still full! And of course, we are also buying a lot of new things for the house. Though it's still tough to get rid of something that is perfectly new and nice, but we never use.

On Friday, we attended my company's holiday party. It was held at a club called Mezzanine. It was fun, but I realized that there are still a lot of people that I don't know. It was pretty posh with open bar and lots of appetizers. They even had a photographer there who would take pictures of you "prom-style." There was also dancing, so it did feel a bit like high school. There were people dancing on the stage and I kept thinking to myself, "I like dancing onstage like the next person, but these are people that I work with. I just don't want to make a fool of myself and then have to explain it on Monday."

On Saturday, Show and I baked Christmas cookies. We made sugar cookies, cupcakes, and snickerdoodles. It's funny- I don't particularly like eating Christmas cookies. Chocolate is usually my dessert of choice, but I do like to make Christmas cookies. I don't really bake very often, but I do like doing it around Christmas. I think that we end up giving away 90% of what we make so that we don't become complete gluttons.

Today, we also went to see a really cool band in Alameda. That's right- I said Alameda! The band was playing in a tiki bar called Forbidden Island. The bar itself was pretty cool, but the live music was really great. It was pretty crowded for 4PM in Alameda. The music was kind of bossa nova/ Jazz/ 60 style. One of the guys was playing a thermidor. I have no idea if I spelled that correctly. It's this really cool instrument that works based on 2 antennas and the left hand controls volume while the right hand controls pitch. If you have ever heard the theme song to Star Trek, then you know what this thing sounds like. It's a little twangy and kind of electrica. I wish that I could remember the name of the band. I also found it very amusing that the lead singer was pregnant. It was unexpected how cool this experience was. The music was great and Edwin really liked the bar.

Redo!

Tonight I went out with the girls to watch the Brian Boitano Skating Spectacular at Pac Bell Park or whatever they're calling it these days. I think that most of you know that I used to skate in my younger days. My parents also used to take us to the ice capades a lot too. I didn't realize how much I missed it. For some reason, Edwin didn't want to go see the show... totally his loss. Though we were one of the youngest people in the audience, we had a blast. The added bonus is that the show had Barry Manilow singing live. Though they advertised that it would be set to Barry Manilow music, I just figured that they would play his music, not have him singing it. So, we got a 2-for-1. Now, I can say that I have seen Barry Manilow in concert. I went with Michelle, Monica, and Jen. None of them knew each other, but they all knew me. Surprisingly, there were 4 guys sitting in front of us who also went together (and they weren't even gay!)

I really enjoyed it. I forgot how much I admired the people that could do that and make it look so easy. I had fun skating, but I never thought it was easy. Dorothy Hamill was so graceful and I have always really liked Yuka Sato- she's just such a great jumper. Viktor Petrenko was another highlight. All of them were former Olympic skaters. There were also these 2 Russian skaters who were just amazing. It was like watching Cirque du Soleil on ice. They were doing one-armed handstands while skating. I've never been a huge pairs fan, but I think that it's just crazy that someone can carry another person with one hand and make it seem so easy.

We might also be on TV because they were broadcasting the show and the cameraman sat next to Michelle to get some close-ups of us watching the show. (Like I said, we were one of the youngest people in the stadium.) Here's what we didn't know before the show: after they tape the whole show, the skaters got to redo parts of their routines in case they didn't do a jump well or if they flubbed something in the routine. I guess that since these guys are getting older and not training everyday, they make more mistakes than they did for the Olympics. The jumps definitely did not seem as big until they got to do the redo. Made me suspect that Barry Manilow was lip- syncing too.

It made me think about being able to redo things in my life. Some would say that's like admitting a regret, but I disagree. Redoing doesn't mean not doing something that you have done, but I think of it as just being able to improve upon something that you did, not replacing it with another experience. What are some things I would re-do? I would have purchased things that I like that are girly. It's a lot harder when you have to share a bank account to make big purchseses. There's not too much that I can think of that I want to do again. Maybe our wedding day, but I don't want to actually change it, I just want to do it again.

I'll be posting up photos when Michelle sends me copy.

Lights Up!

Some of you may be wondering why it's been a while since my last posting. Both Edwin and I got colds last week. I found out that Laura, Alex, and my dad all got colds. I guess that at least it did not ruin our holiday. I just uploaded some photos from our Thanksgiving in Cincinnati.

This past weekend, we put up the Christmas lights on our house. We spent most of the weekend shopping for lights and then putting them up. Everyone on our block was supposed to have decorations up by December 2. It was quite the experience. We have a theme, but I didn't realize how much work it would be. We're not quite done yet, but here are some photos of what we have so far. Edwin is in all black on the picture to the left and the right picture is a close up of our surfing Santa. He's going to get a surfboard and we'll be making a wave, but that's still in production.

We also attended our first block party on Sunday night. There were over 100 people that showed up for the potluck. It was fun and very interesting. We got to meet a lot of our new neighbors. I think that the remarkable part is that the party started at 6 and promptly ended by 8PM. We weren't even finished eating and they started taking down the tables.

So the Christmas decorations have been a little distracting from the home renovations, but this week we had a contractor install a new furnace. We're still getting used to it, but it's louder than the old one because it has a blower. However, we're hoping that it's going to be more efficient. This nice thing is that we got all new ducts and they moved the furnace to the crawl space, so now we technically have more room in our unfinished basement in case we want to finish it.

So the parade of cars has already started. They come to see all the lights. It was so embarassing to be one of only 3 houses on the block to not have their lights on Saturday night. Though we were told that we should have lights on by Sunday, there were a lot of people that had their lights up by Saturday. Note for next year. If anyone wants to visit Santa this year, Edwin will be making an appearance as Santa on our street this year on Monday, December 10th. I'll be the elf beside him.

This video was something that made me laugh. It really does describe some of the experiences I've had getting my nails done. Michelle- remember in San Diego? They kept trying to upsell me all these services and I would say yes, then they would tell me the price and I would say no. Funny how that works.

By the way, most of you were right on the poll- Edwin is 36 this year.