Living An Intentional Life
For Christmas Eve, we went to a Saddleback service with my sister’s family. We then all had dinner at my parents’ house.
We had my favorite food tradition–my mom’s log cake!
I like making a big Christmas breakfast at home. k and n do not wake up any earlier on Christmas, which I find strange!
This Star Wars robe was one of n’s favorite presents!
We pretty much avoided the malls before Christmas. However, we thought it would be fun to walk around and look at the big Christmas tree at Newport’s Fashion Island on Christmas Eve day. We went early, and it was not crowded at all!
We made a stop at Starbucks. Coffee for the parents, hot chocolate for the kids.
In early December, we went to Ruby’s Diner to take part in their anniversary special of a burger and fries for $1.99. We had to wait about 45 minutes since we had to wait for D to come home from work. We weren’t too impressed with the burgers though. I actually like In-n-Out’s better!
Last month, k turned nine years old. This was a bittersweet celebration since nine is half-way to eighteen years old! How can that be? This article about this milestone really resonated with me. We were supposed to be in San Diego for her birthday, but D was sick, so we had to postpone our trip to the next week. Although I did not enjoy being in the hospital just before Christmas when she was born, it is nice that she is usually on school break on her birthday now.
This funny girl wanted pumpkin pie for her birthday dessert!
One of our Christmas traditions has been to attend the Christmas program at Salvation Army Church with my parents. I thought the acting/storyline was very clever this year.
The transition will be a process, and it has already caused some very frustrating hours, but Limbylim 2.0 is coming soon!
I won a couple of sets of tickets to Aquarium of the Pacific, so we went to their holiday celebration. We also were able to invite some friends to come along with us.
We saw some feedings.
This moray eel is so creepy!
My favorite—penguins!
When our friends came, the kids became braver about touching the animals.
Well, maybe not that brave. Look at the disgust!
Our trip was cut somewhat short because one kid in each family was not feeling well.
We did make a quick stop to slide down the small snow hill before leaving, though!
D went to Memphis to shoot this commercial. You can only see him for about a second, but he’s the Asian American guy in the car, playing a salesman–haha. We have yet to see this commercial on television, but plenty of other people have told us they saw it.
We had dinner the night before Thanksgiving at a neighborhood Italian restaurant called Il Posto. Note to self: the kid’s cheese pizza is the same size the adult pizza. Also, the meat pizza has tons of meat!
The leaves actually change color in Napa! How lovely.
We ate Thanksgiving lunch with D’s family at Embassy Suites in Napa.
They were already ready for Christmas!
The kids had fun playing with their cousin S. Good times.
k presented “Give Thanks” with our church’s gospel hula team for Thanksgiving. I really enjoy watching her and the team bring glory to God through dance. As a side note, I like to call k “Keiki” as a nickname since it is close to her name.