Wednesday, December 31, 2008

December 2008 thru X'mas to New Year Eve

The word "師走" literally fit our December life. We had a quick trip to Japan at the beginning of December, and then Bob had to go up to SF area for a couple of days, while I was busy with the neighborhood's activities and work-related mess. Then Ko-chan arrived and helped us going into the holiday mode.

Right before X'mas, we were invited to my friend's B'day party, which was nice, but when we came back learned that our pot was burnt to unusable. Good that it was just a pot. And X'mas was here. Not sure if it is because of the economy or what, Christmas was rather quiet all around. But, we had very cozy and good Christmas holidays. In the morning on X'mas, we opened up each other's presents - just like every year. Then for dinner, we had Ko-chan's friend come over. We had the first attempt of a duck cooking, which came out very well. Yummy!

And the weekend after X'mas, we had a luxury of finally meeting Chris and Mag's lovely son Brandon. He reminded me of 一休さん character I used to watch on TV when I was a kid. He will be a great thinker and philosopher!

Then our long awaited friends came! Marc and Kyoko. It has been a while since I saw Marc the last time. I believe it was at the United lounge in Narita. I bumped into him accidentally on the way to Korea. It was certainly great to see Marc and lovely Kyoko again. A bit of too much partying on the first night (but with lots o great talks!), which affected the second day - yikes - can't do that at this age! But both Bob and I had lots of fun!

Somehow I was a day behind from the reality. When I realized it was the 30th, I got panicked. I realized I couldn't do 大掃除 :(. Instead, I spent the last day of 2008 just doing shopping for お正月 and cooking おせち料理! But we got to watch 紅白 on TV and spent very laid back 大晦日.