Merry Christmas!

Merry Christmas!!! What a great time to rejoice in the birth of Jesus and be reminded of the abundant blessings. December was just packed...hanging out with lots of people and eating good food.

Ryan has been doing really well in preschool and always looks forward to going. Lauren has started teething and eating all kinds of solid foods. Her favorite foods are peas, sweet potatoes, winter squash, and rice cereal. Ryan also likes to eat Lauren's baby food as a snack...as a matter of fact, I too, like to eat it for a snack. Only Chang doesn't like baby food...he's the oddball in the family. Lauren's 12 hour nighttime sleep has been interrupted the last 2 weeks due to her teething which is also the reason for my excessive coffee drinking, but things are returning to normal again and she has been sleeping through the night. But she is still teething like crazy and everything goes straight to her mouth.

Anyways, we had a busy month. We started the festivities at the NLMC Christmas party. We had a white elephant gift exchange and ended up with a mini pool table. Great food and fellowship!

Also, look at how long Lauren's hair has gotten.

And also look at how fat her cheeks have gotten too.

On Christmas day, we woke up and opened all the presents under the tree. This was the first year where Ryan actually WANTED to save opening the presents till Christmas day. Lauren in the meanwhile LOVED the wrapping paper and was shoving it all into her mouth. This was good because mommy and daddy did not buy her a present. Haha. We did buy her a cute hat a week later though.

Afterwards, we went to church Christmas service, ate lunch, and then played with all the new toys at home while Chang watched his beloved LA Lakers playing. And for Christmas dinner, we had some yummy food at a friend's place and hung out there. 

 

After a long day, the kids like to sip on some cooooool milk. And then Lauren goes to bed in her favorite crib and Ryan goes to bed with his favorite yellow blanket and his ladybug pillowpet.

Normally, we go to LA to visit family during this season, but we decided to stay up here. The good thing is we got to meet with lots of people that we normally don't see...Esther, Mary, Phil & April, Laurie & Wayne & Lucy, etc.

Meeting Adelynn for the first time

And how can we not end this blog entry without a video? Ryan is very musically inclined and he especially likes drums. We contemplated getting him a drumset and some drum lessons for him, but practically I know the noise would drive us nuts so he'll have to settle for using this baby music set that he got when he was like 1 years old. Even after 4 years, he plays with this toy. Definitely got our money's worth on this one.

We want to wish you a Merry Christmas and Happy New Year!!

Thanksgiving 2010

November is always a busy month for us. We celebrated our 7th year of marriage on the 22nd! Oh how God has blessed us over the years. This year we had dinner at Spencer's Steakhouse. I got the Eye of Ribeye steak and Chang got the Prime Spencer's Steak...so delicious! And their bread and wine were super good. Despite not being carded (booo!), we had such a good time and got a bit buzzed from the wine. Afterwards, we headed off to see Harry Potter at the theatre. We were so thankful to have Jandre's family babysit BOTH kids for us. It was the best anniversary present ever.

This year, we had 3 Thanksgiving dinners. One at church, one at Jandre's, and one at home.

We had kalbi, chicken, sausage, jabchae, soondae, and lots of other yumminess at Jandre's place. His mom can cook! She is such a diligent mommy. Our stomachs were happy and Ryan got to hang out with Jandre's cousins so he had fun.

Below is our dinner at home. I really liked the turkey this year but it was a mishmash of multiple recipes so I totally mixed things up and lost track of what I was doing so I probably cannot repro this turkey again ever. My fav recipe this year is the cranberry sauce though. I love it so much I've even been putting the leftover cranberry sauce on everything! Cranberry sauce on salad...cranberry sauce on rice...cranberry sauce with cookies. LOL.

Lauren will be 6 months on Dec 4 and these days Lauren is sitting up by herself ... ALMOST. She flaps her arms up and down like a chicken whenever she gets excited or when she wants to keep herself occupied. When Ryan was her age, he used to put his hands together and just stare at them. It's interesting how each kid is so different. Ryan used to sleep with his butt in the air, but Lauren likes to sleep like this. HAHA.

These days Ryan's most favorite thing to do is have a sleepover in the living room. We lay out the futon in front of the big screen and watch a movie with popcorn and snacks and then play in the makeshift blanket tent with a flashlight and sleep there. Oh so fun!! Oh man, I know I'm gonna miss these days sooo much when the kids are older.  

Our marriage has been blessed with these two sweet kids. I love them!!

Happy Thanksgiving!