Happy 1st Birthday, baby Aaron!

My cutie-of-a-nephew turns ONE today! Can't believe it's already been a year since he was born. He's grown so big and he's so fast when he crawls now. He already makes sounds and says 'Mama'. Can't wait til he starts walking and talking more words!

Happy Birthday baby boy!

Am I the only one at work today?
Who else is at work today?? No one is updating their blog and work is slow...

Merry Christmas!
Hope you're having a great holiday. Here are some pics from the last week:

Alan and I hosted a Christmas party with the Berkeley crew. Had some great food, laughs, a fun gag-gift exchange, and a white elephant. I love hanging out with the crew!


The "Freshman Girls" being crazy. I love my girls!


We went to Alan's grandpa's (great-uncle acutally) 90th birthday celebration! He's still so strong and funny :)


We volunteered for the Family Giving Tree and wrapped/sorted/packaged lots of toys for kids!

I also added pics to previous posts below too. More to come when Alan downloads the pics from our Christmas celebrations! :)

Rockin' Around the Christmas Tree
Alan and I got our tree on Tuesday night at Home Depot. Afterwards we drove to In & Out to get food (with the tree still on top) and the guy at the drive-thru started laughing once he saw it. He said that we were the most festive car he has seen all day. :)

Got home and started decorating with our 12 ornaments. Why so little? We started a tradition in 1999 - our first Christmas together - that we give each other an ornament every year and those will be the ones that we put on our tree once we have a tree together. So, we have 12 total, and with the 2 new ones that we'll give each other this year, that makes it 14. We added a few of our wedding favors (the gold bells) this year to fill up the tree a little more. We put lights and put vertical ribbon this year (gold ribbon leftover from our wedding!) I got some garlands for our fireplace at Michael's and hung our stockings too. I like Christmas-decorating :)

Girls' Night Out
Ate at Mijori on Wednesday with Jo, Ro & Jane. (Welcome to the blogging world Ro, by the way!) Their sushi is sooo good, exactly the same stuff as Sushi House (but for some reason I like Sushi House better). Had lots of sake bombs during dinner, while making a mess at the table and causing a ruckus at the back on the restaurant. :) Then walked over to Lucky Lounge to hang out, gossip and catch up with the girls.

Last minute visitor
Eileen decided to fly up for our holiday party yesterday, so I picked her up from the airport, went home to get Alan and had dinner at our favorite restaurant - Banyan Garden. Then we went to get bobas at Tapioca Express and rented Cinderella Man (which was a great movie, btw)!

Got to take BART this morning - which I love since I can read - so that she could use my car today. Tonight is our crew's gift exchange at our house. Can't wait to see everyone!

It's the most wonderful time of the year

The parties have begun. This past weekend we had 3 parties in 3 days. Friday night was Alan's high school friends' holiday party in San Jose. Alan's high school friends always have a lot of good food at their parties - this year was no exception. We ate, had two gift exchanges (regular and gag gift), sat and chatted about upcoming weddings and babies (one that we just found out about that night!), and just hung out. We ended up with: a set of plates, a portable fridge, a clock/calculation from one of our friend's company, and an ice shaver - for making halo halo! :)


Saturday night was Alan's college friends' holiday party in Santa Clara. Again, lots of good food this year and did the gift exchange (we ended up with a Jamba gift card and AMC movie tickets!) and just hung out. And we heard another announcement that another one of our friends is pregnant!

Friday lunchtime was the Summer Madness crew holiday party in Hercules. More and more food and another gift exchange - I ended up with the Turbo Cranium game! There was an awesome custard/fruit pie that was really good.... I wonder who brought it.

Babies everywhere!
So, I know six people who are currently pregnant! Including my cousin who is due in 9 days! I guess we're getting to that age where people are either recently engaged, getting married, or having kids.

The Fish Market

Last Thursday we went to The Fish Market in San Mateo for Abby's birthday! I have always wanted to try it and I always see it off 92 when I head towards Daly City. It didn't disappoint - I had the scallop and shrimp skewers with potatoes and steamed vegetables and it was awesome! I highly recommend that dish.

Puzzles
Recently, at every party/dinner we go to, we end up hearing these mind-boggling puzzles, like "There are 3 light switches, and a bulb in the another room. You have one try to figure out which switch controls the bulb. How do you do it?" or "There are 8 balls; they all look the same but one is slightly heavier. Using a balancing scale, what is the least amount of times you need to use it to figure out which one is heavier?" They are really fun to figure out! I guess all those logic puzzles that my dad made us do as kids paid off :)

Get in another line!
So I went to Safeway today during lunch to deposit some $$ at the Wells Fargo ATM and then to buy vanilla extract and cream cheese (because I'm going to make Bibingka with cream cheese, with a recipe my mom gave me!) and I walk to the front and stand in the express line, only to realize that the lady in the front had more than the stated 15 items and didn't read the sign. So there were two other ladies in front of me and we start talking about how this is supposed to be an express line, but it was too late because she had almost half her stuff taking up the whole belt already.

Reminded me of that scene in You've Got Mail where Meg Ryan gets in a "CASH ONLY" line but she only has a credit card, and people behind her start yelling "Get in another line!", and Tom Hanks comes up and charms the cashier into 'zipping' her credit card through the machine. One of my family's favorite movies and scenes... you'll often hear us quoting: "Zip zip!" and "Happy Thanksgiving back". :)


Dinner at The Social Club
Had dinner with Alex and some friends at the club that he's part owner in. Had lots of food and yummy lychee tea. Nice atmosphere, I especially liked the fireplace. I haven't been there since it was called Storyville back in college. Cool to know someone who owns a bar.

Matron-of-Honor
Yikes! That sounds so old? Anyway, so Judy and I went to the place where we're going to buy Kitchie's bridesmaids' dresses from... actually it's the same place that Judy got her's from, so when I was telling her Kitchie's name, she was like "This sounds familiar" and when I got down to Judy's name, I realized I hadn't told her that I was referred to her by Judy. The lady was really nice and she has her studio above her garage in Castro Valley. Tried to figure out which size to order for everyone since the manufacturer's size chart was a little strange. She had me try on these 2 different dresses that she had on her rack and they were really cute and happen to fit me perfectly! :) I hope all the sizes we ordered fit!