I decided to get into the Christmas spirit by entering our department in the Gingerbread House Contest. With some help from my co-workers, we managed to make a house with a ramp, some janky-looking wheelchairs, and trees made out of thermoplastic scraps. Ryan even made a pipecleaner four-point cane and walker. Don’t think we’ll win next to the fancier houses but oh well. Merry Christmas!!
On Saturday, we went to CuriOdyssey for Bang and Rowan’s birthdays. It was nice to catch up with old friends. 
These boys were roommates back in college and I love that some things haven’t changed despite all these years and so many life-changing events.
I loved seeing Kumquat sitting at the kid table. That’s Rowan, the birthday boy, eating his lunch.
This is the picture of Reese thoroughly enjoying some cake for once. She’s allergic to dairy and usually doesn’t get to having any birthday cake. Vyl made a gluten-free-dairy-free cake and she loved it.
Happy Birthday to Bang and Rowan!!
I don’t really know what’s going on but Kumquat has been waking up in the middle of the night and partying. My hunches are that she may be going through a growth spurt, teething, or she’s sick. I’m thinking it’s a growth spurt since she seems well, I can’t feel any new molars, and she’s been asking for more milk lately. All I know is that she was up from 4-6 am on Tuesday morning and she was up from 12-1:30am this morning. She rolled around and was really restless so I wasn’t able to get any sleep too. I really hope this doesn’t last long. I came home sick with a fever of 100.4 this afternoon and my stomach has not been treating me very well for the past 24 hours. This photo was taken earlier in the evening when I was hopeful that she would sleep better last night. I was wrong.
My cousin Andrew is on a little break before starting the CRNA program at Duke so he came out to California to visit all his cousins. I hadn’t seen him in over 10 years! 
He went to see Ishya and the twins yesterday and this morning Uncle Sak drove him up to visit us! 
We took a leisurely walk down to the Ferry Building for brunch and Andrew got to snap some photos.
His next stop will be SoCal where he’ll be visiting my parents, Brother, and Pish. Good times…
The last time Jes and I threw a Christmas Party was back in 2006 when we lived in Irvine. It was before any of us had kids and some of us weren’t even married yet. On Saturday, we threw a party and it was almost like a reunion for some people. It was just nice to have a lot of the same people all together again under one roof. 
We reserved the Clubroom and we had a decent showing of 17 adults and 9 kids! My oh my! I remember back when our parties consisted of at least 25 adults and maybe 4 dogs.
Anyway, the day started with a little drama. Jes started the prime rib at 11:30 thinking it would take 7 hours to finish. There was smoke all up in the house because it was turned up to 500 degrees (nothing bad happened) and the roast finished by 2:30!
So, in a panic, we went to Plan B and decided to make prime rib sandwiches with horseradish aioli, onion relish, and arugula instead of serving slices with sides. It turned out just fine and the meat was perfectly medium rare. Yum.
We had a kid-friendly menu and activities also prepared and they had a fun time together.
The adults also had a little game to play – we set up a blind wine tasting of cheap and more expensive red wines.
By the end, everyone was pretty rowdy. Check out the Reese and Jack Team vs. Uncle Jimmy. 
Keenan almost stole a kiss from Zoe until Uncle Victor spooked her.
I’m so glad the timing worked out for everyone. It’s rare that we all have a free Saturday to hang out all together nowadays. What a great way to kick off the Christmas season!!
I don’t know why but I can’t stop laughing when I see this photo. I think the caption and comments really top it off. Thanks for capturing this pose, Brother!
Recent Comments