Welcome, New Year - I hope you all have been having a lovely New Year's weekend. Just wanted to share a few quick thoughts. My journal draft folder is really full of my previous account of Great Western War, GWW -- an SCA camping event from back in October. But it didn't seem like the thing I would post first for 2011, so it'll be my 2nd post.

I had an interesting Dec/Jan holiday season. I'd just moved into my new home at the beginning of December, and the first night I spent in my new home was the first night of Channukah. I managed to keep my channukiot and candles from being lost, and then was pleased to light candles every night for the holiday. If you haven't followed me on Twitter or Facebook, you can find the pictures here: (all my images on Twitpic, night one, night two, night three, night four, night five, night six, night seven, and night eight).

A week before Christmas is my Mom's birthday. My niece and her boyfriend put together a weekend party for all the families, so we could also see the Christmas Light Parade at Balboa Island. I only managed to snap one photo with my cell phone, and the glare discouraged me from snapping any more. But my Mom got many *wonderful* photos of the parade, and some cute photos at the party. I've copied my favorites of her photos, and uploaded them to my site. I snapped a few of the pictures with my mom's camera for her... namely Megan chopping up bananas, plus the image of me and my sweetie "mugging for the camera" (as my Mom captioned it in her album).

Mom's Birthday & the Balboa Island
Xmas Boat Light Parade

Then, while my sweetie and the boyo went to his parents' place up the coast, I did a bit of house-sitting for him (feeding and snuggling the kitty) and prepped for Christmas at my sister's house. I cooked up some stuffing and brought fresh green beans, Jan did the turkey and the ham, and everyone else brought side-dishes to the perennial holiday party at her home. I was bummed that we didn't see my step-brother and his family, but then again his second daughter was only born ten days earlier. We had a lovely time with all the nieces, nephews, cousins, aunties, uncles, and even my Grandad made it out for the day.

Then back to my sweetie's house to set up for "second Christmas." Since the grandparents are not really big on video games, we saved the big electronic gifts for when they returned home. I should have taken a photo of their little tree, all decorated with stacks of gifts and stockings. I surprised them both with extra special niceties for "second Christmas" on the 26th, and the Boyo declared "real Christmas" to have fallen on "second Christmas" this year. Of course, he could be biased because he received the PS3 gaming system he was dreaming of and drooling over. My favorite image this year might likely be this one of the Boyo, here hugging his PS3 fresh from the box.

New Year's Eve, my custom is to attend a Poker Tournament hosted by some friends. Last year I managed to come in fourth place, this year I came in third. My winnings were nice enough to treat my sweetie, me, and the Boyo for Pho for lunch the next day. Gotta love a free meal!

I was bummed I couldn't be in 2 places at once, as my new roomies were throwing the first party of the new house for New Year's. But I hope we'll have many more house parties to come, and I look forward to being there. The house looks amazing, as we all worked hard to get it ready for the New Year's party. And I'm just thrilled to be living there.

The rest of my New Year's / holiday vacation days were filled with hot soup and hot drinks, movies, tv shows, video games, photo editing, website updates, and lounging about for hours while the winter weather descended outside. We made a big crockpot of black-eyed peas and greens into a bean-meat soup... Turkey bacon for me, and then a later version for the boys with the ham bone from my sister's Christmas cooking. The kitty got lots of extra snuggles, and I went into my New Year surrounded by warmth, love, affection, and good food. I like this year already.

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Today's Blessing That I'm Thankful For: Good health, good family, good employment.