CJ is Crazy for Legos and Star Wars

CJ is crazy for Legos and Star Wars. He's no longer a Thomas fan; instead, he's now a huge, enormous, gigantic Lego fan, especially Lego Star Wars. For Christmas, CJ asked everyone for a Lego Star Wars kit. He got six kits and he was in heaven. Santa gave him Slave I, Boba Fett's ship.

Did I mention that CJ is obsessed with Legos and Star Wars? Since I'm a huge Star Wars fan, I'm not complaining. CJ has now watched all six movies. We play Star Wars Monopoly all the time. Maki and CJ play Lego Star Wars on the PS3. And CJ makes endless Star Wars kits and ships.

CJ loves his lightsaber! It makes a humming sound, just like in the movies!

Christmas Is All About Family and Friends

For me, Christmas is all about family and this year, I'm really glad that nearly everyone was in town for the holidays. My mom, sisters, brother, nieces, Maki's parents, Maki's brother all came to the house on Christmas Eve, along with some friends and neighbors. Our friends Eve, Karl and their son + Seana, Duane and their kids have been spending Christmas Eve with us for the past few years so it's officially a tradition that they join us!

The real stars of the show are the kids. There's something so magical about having kids around during the holidays. CJ and my niece Jessie spent the day playing at my house and tracking Santa's travels on the Nordic Santa Tracker.  They would laugh and squeal with delight as they viewed photos and videos of Santa in places in Japan, the Philippines and Australia. We figured it takes Santa 36 hours to visit every country and deliver all his presents.

It was wonderful for the kids to spend time with their favorite uncle, Uncle Alex. Alex is my divorced brother who doesn't have any kids but the kids absolutely adore him. He's kept his childlike sense of wonder and he loves to play games with the kids. CJ loves it when Uncle Alex tells fantastical stories about Fang Boy and other characters.

We tried to make sure CJ was well aware that Jesus is the "reason for the season" but of course, for him, Christmas is about the presents, family and food.  Here are some photos of the family from Christmas Eve.

Noche Buena (Christmas Eve) Dinner at Home - The Menu

This year, since I had the cute baby, everyone came to VA to spend Christmas with us. My mom, older sister, brother and niece flew in from CA. Maki's parents and brother are already in VA so the family was nearly complete. All we were missing was my nephew Rusty, who graduated last May and moved to Tokyo. I was so happy not to have to travel with a 6-year old and infant!

Our family celebrates Christmas on Christmas Eve. We call it Noche Buena, which literally means "good night" in Spanish and typically refers to Christmas Eve. Ever since I can remember, my family has attended midnight mass, followed by dinner and opening of presents. Because of the kids, we no longer attend midnight mass. This year, we attended the 5:00pm mass.

I knew it was crazy to host Christmas Eve at our house, but we did it! We had 25 people, including my family, Maki's family, close friends, neighbors and a co-worker. Everyone helped. Maki, my mom and brother helped get the house ready. My younger sister made the ham and desserts. I made the sides. Friends brought wine and soda and more sides. Our Christmas Eve menu consisted of:

• Cream cheese, pesto and sundried tomato dip
• Brown sugar glazed ham
• Roasted vegetables
• Mushroom and chestnut dressing (stuffing)
• Beet and goat cheese salad
• Fettuccine with brie, tomato and basil sauce
• Pear and arugula salad
• Plain and spicy enari (tofu stuffed with rice)
• Tiramisu cake
• Cheesecake
• Biko 
• Chocolate and caramel crackers
• Chocolate
• Hot chocolate
• Spiced cider
• Beer, wine, soda

Yum! We ate a lot of the food, but surprisingly, very little of the wine was drunk. I guess we're all getting older and drinking a lot less! Too bad I forgot to take pictures of the food!

Baby Marcus John Gets Baptized

Since everyone was going to be in town for Christmas, it made sense to have MJ baptized during the holidays. Thank goodness our parish priest was able to squeeze the baptism into his busy holiday schedule!

We asked our friend Eileen and my brother Alex to be MJ's godparents and they said they'd be honored to do it. Great! I told Eileen that being a godmother (ninang in Tagalog) is a serious thing with the Filipinos; she's now a member of the family!

MJ's baptism was a small affair, just my family, Maki's family and a couple of friends. The baptism was held on Thursday, December 23rd at 2pm, an odd time for sure, but it worked for us and the priest. The church was beautifully decorated for Christmas so the backdrop for the baptism was wonderful.

After the baptism, everyone came back to our house for a small meal. Goring, our nanny, had made pancit bihon and pancit palabok, two traditional, Filipino noodle dishes. Yum and thank you, Goring!

Lessons and Carols

Every year, on the last day of school, CJ's school has a Christmas pageant called "Lessons and Carols."  There's a message from the Head of School and the Reverend, readings by some of the kids, and Christmas songs performed by each class.  I love this pageant because it always gets me into the holiday spirit in a big way.

The kids get all dressed up.  The girls are adorable in their fancy, sparkly, satiny dresses.  CJ was wearing a button down shirt, a real tie from Land's End and a blue pin-striped blazer.  I think his blazer was just a little too small.  I tried it on him this summer and it was still really big, but he must have had a growth spurt because when I went to put it on him this past week, it was a little snug.  Oh well.  He's only worn the jacket three times in his life.  It will go into the MJ 5-year box so we can get a little more use out of it.

CJ's class joined with another class to sing "Oh Come Little Children."  The music teachers did an excellent job of prepping the kids.  The 5th graders in particular did an awesome job.  Maki calls them the A team.

CJ is on winter break for a few weeks.  I love that we don't need to scramble in the morning to get him out the door by 7:45am but I'm not nuts about having him home with nothing to do.  Time to organize a thousand playdates!

Annual Tree Trimming Party

Yesterday was our annual tree trimming party.  We normally invite some people over for snacks, hot chocolate, and decorating. For me, it's a great way to get into the holiday spirit and I get help decorating my tree!

Last year, we invited a lot of people to the party: neighbors, a couple of CJ's friends from preschool and CJ's entire kindergarten class. It was super fun but it was a mob scene. This year, we invited CJ's best buddies from school and their parents. I just didn't have it in me to do a big party, what with the baby and all. Plus, since MJ is so little, I wanted to limit the germs we were introducing into the house.

We had a ball.  For the first time, the kids actually helped decorate the tree. Last year, the kids put all my candy canes in one section of the tree. This year, they put up candy canes and non-breakable ornaments and they did a great job of spacing out the decorations around the entire tree!


Once the kids got tired of decorating the tree, they went upstairs and played with CJ's Legos. Then they had a quick dinner of mac 'n cheese.  My mom, the other moms and I finished decorating the tree and putting up garlands and bows throughout the house. The house looks so great!

Hilarious photo of the boys during dinner!

Christmas Eve Celebration

I hosted Christmas Eve dinner at my house again this year. My older sister and her family were in Australia, and my brother couldn't come out from the West Coast coz he couldn't find a sitter for his Great Dane, so Christmas was going to be just our family + my mom + my younger sister and her daughter.

But, as luck would have it, we had friends in the neighborhood who didn't have plans, so we decided to join forces and have a big party. Christmas Eve turned into a wonderful, full, and lively celebration with family and some of our dearest friends.

Christmas prep this year was a lot less stressful and I think it's because my mom and niece were around to help and I took the 23rd and 24th off from work to shop, clean the house and cook. Even better, my sister brought ham and dessert; my friend Karl brought some fantastic side dishes, and Seana brought more dessert. Seriously, when everyone pitches in, entertaining for 18 isn't a big deal!

My Christmas Eve menu consisted of:

• Corn chowder
  
• Beet and goat cheese salad
• Mushroom side dish
  
• Ham with a brown sugar glaze
  
• Beef tenderloin stuffed with blue cheese and mushrooms
• Sourdough dressing with pine nuts and cranberries
• Roasted asparagus with balsamic vinegar
• Sesame noodles with red bell pepper
  
• Leche flan
• Brownies
• Cheesecake
  
• Fudge
• Sugar cookies baked and decated by the kids
• Spiced cider, beer, wine and hot chocolate
  

So Christmas Eve was a lot of eating, drinking, chatting and just hanging out. CJ had a blast playing with his friends from the neighborhood. We didn't do presents for the adults this year (we decided we all have everything we need and we don't need stuff in our lives), so we let the kids open a present or two, then they just played.

At the end of the evening, we just had to play some Rock Band. CJ and his friend HE had a ball singing Beatles songs. HE tried to play the drums, but it's too hard for a kid. I have recently done more drumming than singing and I absolutely love it! There's something satisfying about whacking the drums. I will probably only ever play the Easy level, but that's okay with me.

At the end of the evening, CJ and I put out some white chocolate-covered pretzels and a hand-painted sugar cookie for Santa. Mom went to bed early since she wasn't feeling well. I think she was also a little blue because the family wasn't all together. I was grateful for a wonderful evening, for my mom's long and wonderful visit, for time spent with my sister and niece, and for my wonderful friends and neighbors who turned Christmas Eve into something really festive and special!

CJ giving his friend HE a big hug for his presents.

CJ and his buddies in front of my tree.

Fire Spinning

My nephew spins fire.  Or rather, he practices fire poi, which involves spinning metal balls filled with kerosene and suspended on metal chains.  He got introduced to fire poi in high school and continues to practice even while studying in Japan.

While visiting us over the holidays, Rusty gave us two command performances: in front of our house and in front of the office.  Thank goodness no neighbors called the police on us.  Rusty is very careful, he has hundreds of hours of practice behind him, he wears a kevlar mask and gloves, and he performs a good distance away from folks.  He is also very careful with how he disposes of any leftover fuel.

Let me tell you, fire poi is unbelievable.  It's mesmerizing, it's graceful, it's frightening, and it's beautiful to watch.  When Rusty was performing in front of our house, some neighbors came out to watch.  During the performance in front of our office, the security guard joined us and seemed to really enjoy the fire spinning.  Here are some pictures and a video.

The photos were taken with my Sony cybershot camera, on night mode, no flash, 3 second exposure.

This photo makes me think of musical notes.

This video was taken with my Sony cybershot in video mode.  I have HD footage but the file is huge and I'm still new to converting HD video to different formats.

Christmas Eve at Home

No matter how much I plan, Christmas Eve always sneaks up on me. This year, my shopping was pretty much done, my Christmas Eve menu was planned, and I had a plan for the evening's events. I had to work the Monday and Tuesday before Christmas Eve, so I think I robbed myself of enjoying the holiday season. It was nice not to have to travel during the holidays since traveling has become such a hassle these days.

But the tree was up and decorated, the house was clean (thanks to some extra help from mom, Maki and Alex), I had a pressed tablecloth (thanks to Alex) and all my presents were wrapped (God bless mom!).

I took December 24 off so I could cook all day. I love to cook and it's a treat to have more than 30 minutes to get a meal on the table. My Christmas Eve meal was:

• Meatballs
• My famous pesto dip and crackers
• Mexican corn soup
• Homemade stuffing (I guess you call it dressing since it wasn't cooked in a turkey)
• Greek salad
• Roasted sweet potatoes and bell peppers with haloumi cheese
  
• Baked ham with a brown sugar glaze (thank you Dina)
  
• Asparagus (thank you Eve and Karl)
• Leche flan (thank you mom)
• Filipino biko (thank you Dina)
• My famous tiramisu

Our family tradition is to go to early evening mass, have dinner (noche buena), then open presents. It makes for a long night, but it's always a really great evening. The whole family is together and we spend hours eating, opening, eating, opening, eating some more.

Half the family attended the children's mass at St. Joseph. CJ was wiped out and actually napped during mass. It was a blessing in disguise since he had a long night ahead of him. Our friends Eve, Karl and Hans Erik + Seana, Beckett, Peyton and Tanya came over, which made the evening very festive. Back in CA, we always had friends join us and my entire family loved it. The more, the merrier.

After the first round of eating, we attacked the presents. My older sister is always the MC of presents. This year, the focus was on the kids, Jessie and CJ, who got mounds and mound of presents. CJ favorite's presents were Trackmaster Thomas at Action Canyon, The Great Discovery movie, a take along Thomas belt (which makes CJ look like a construction dude) and matchbox cars (a bunch of them).

CJ and Jessie enjoying their presents

Auntie Bambi and CJ

Misty and Jessie; Jessie loved the leopard skin from Misty!

Mom and the boys

The entire clan