last day of 2010, first day of 2010

My mom's birthday is New Year's Eve so we usually have dinner, then hang out with Jan and Craig until midnight.  When Ryan was younger, he played with sparklers and other fireworks all night, but this year it rained most of the evening so he played a little then came inside to watch "Despicable Me" and the 2010 Band Trip DVD. 

It was great to re-live our memories from the trip.  It's been crazy since we got back so I never even printed my photos yet.  I don't think I even finished blogging about it, so maybe memories that would have been captured have been forgotten already.  Uploading the photos now to be printed.  I debated whether to do a photo book but since I have a bunch of memorabilia to go into the scrapbook, in addition to photos and tons of journaling, I decided to use the multitude of supplies I have and do a paper scrapbook, paper and glue style.

Actually spent New Year's Eve day cleaning Ryan's room.  Started to clean my office area to make room for planned intense scrapbooking of 1000 Japan photos, but wound up cleaning his room when I went in to pick up his dirty laundry and wasn't sure what was clean and what was not.  He does his own laundry sometimes but since he was working all day I decided to help out.  Yikes, he's still got a lot of his childhood toys that we have to figure out what to do with. 


This was a very smoky New Year's Eve, one of the most smoky I remember in recent memory.  Not much in the way of tradewinds so the smoke just STAYED.  And there was a LOT more smoke than usual, with neighbors launching aerials that looked like a Fourth of July show.  I videotaped it with the Flip so we'll see if I can get that uploaded.  The increase in fireworks was probably due to the Oahu fireworks ban that begins January 2, 2011.











And then we had mochi soup after midnight.  My mom bought ready-made mochi that my sister roasted/grilled on the stove.  It's cool how they puff up and smell/taste like arare.









My dad made the soup broth and this is what we had (this is Craig's bowl since I take mine with no kamaboko).  Yummy!

I had wanted to go to watch the sunrise later that morning, but my guys were not enthused at the idea.  So being the dork that I am, I posted my last blog entry at 1:11 am on 1/1/11 and went to bed.

My Aunty Dot invited us for lunch today, New Year's Day and prepared a feast of homemade food for us!  What a treat...brought back memories of our family gatherings on my mom's side of the family for every occasion.  Since my grandma and Aunty Yosh passed away, things changed and we stopped getting together.  Everything was great but I especially love her potato salad and shrimp tempura!  So nice to spend time with my aunty and cousins today.  Thanks, Aunty!

So that was how we started the year.  I am starting Becky Higgins' "Project Life" as of today.  2011 will be a year full of milestones so I'd like to capture what our life is like this year.