Category: Holidays

Here is the one collected family photo. We open presents on Christmas Eve, and the grand parents bought all the kids Fuji Film Instax 8 cameras and Bernard hung some of the pictures on the wall, which was pretty cool. The silly picture, Albert asked everyone to tickle the person next to them.

We met Suephy, Edward, Jared, Dylan, Mama, and Papa at Mitsuwa Marketplace for lunch on the 23rd.

We then celebrated Mama and Papa’s 50th anniversary at Din Tai Fung South Coast Plaza 鼎泰豐. 18 trays of xiao long bao were consumed. Our parents went 2-3 hours early so that we could get in “easily.” Happy 50th Anniversary Mama and Papa!

After Din Tai Fung, we heard a live singer singing Christmas carols and the kids danced to the music. Curie has a way with little kids and she danced with two of them. Elia did too, and it was the first time we saw her as a big kid taking care of little kids since she is usually the youngest.

The next day after Suephy, Bernard, and Albert helped Mama and Papa with the house, we took the family to Kula Revolving Sushi Bar in Torrance, Erin‘s now favorite restaurant (we went once when we got in). We sat in two tables across the conveyor belt from each other and ate 98 plates, six bowls of Ramen, two bowls of miso, five desserts, two fried chickens and other miscellaneous dishes and a few drinks, and still it was cheaper than Din Tai Fung.

Agnes and the twins treated us to a Christmas concert before opening presents as is our custom on Christmas Eve. Look how proud Bernard looks! 🙂

Sam Woo Restaurant (even cheaper than Kula but no less good!) and miscellaneous fun: an epic arm wrestling contest between Jared and Erin, playing with the Instax 8 cameras, Wii and Mario Kart, making muffins, dancing in the supermarket and generally having a good time.

Bernard and Agnes chose a tour of and dinner on the Queen Mary, which was an impressive ship for its time (Ed and Suephy chose Din Tai Fung, Mama and Papa chose Sam Woo, and Albert and Erin chose Kula). One of the most impressive things was a Lego model of the ship.

We did a fair amount of clowning around, and to be honest trying to get a group of our size around at the same time was challenging, but we had a nice dinner in a private room.

So on the left is Mike Jenkins’s work from last year, the other two are two different artists this year. I will admit to liking Mike’s better.

We’ve been using postcard builder since our save the date card in 2007. In 2009 we had a version that was in sepia that was the forerunner of what has become our traditional card, but we have somehow lost the back. Here are our cards from 2010 to this year.

New friends in a new neighborhood!

This was the first year that we did not surprise the Hoaglands with our costume and instead coordinated. David and Candace were the inmates for their Hayfield Home for the Criminally Insane theme haunted house this year and we (with the exception of Steve,who is in San Francisco as an intern for YouTube and missed the party for the first time), were the doctors. This year we printed stickers labeled “Staff,” “Sane,” “Insane,” and “Zombie.” Curie initially did not want to wear her costume but ended up having the most fun diagnosing guests and giving them their stickers. like the VIP passes in 2013 everyone started looking for Curie and Erin to get their labels. I am sure people wondered what the labels were for, but it was just for fun. For the record, these were not the kids’ Halloween costumes.