[E] Best Christmas Ever!

I in general hate holidays (I especially dislike Thanksgiving and Christmas these couple years) - in school, I hated the holidays because I was a foreign student, and I didn't get to "go home" when everyone else went home during holidays; after I got married, I've been hated the holidays due to family drama (I think people should just be happy to see each other instead of feeling butt hurt of this and that :p). 

This year, the Christmas was sooooo much better! I had my first white elephant gift exchange experience, many of my coworkers were super festive, I got sweet email & ecards from friends/family, I received fun gifts from bosses, coworkers, and my sister & brother-in-law, I went to snowboarding with One USA Unit and my brother-in-law on the Christmas morning, we all went to dinner at Wonderful Coffee Friends' house (their cooking was amazing!)...and...ZERO drama!! Hell yeah...thank you Jesus, seriously lol

By the way, 4 days weekend is always a bonus!

[E] Merry Christmas!

聖誕快樂！

Merry Christmas!

This is the 5th Christmas with One USA Unit

We "celebrate" Christmas by going snowboarding

I don't snowboard enough to actually improve my skill,

and I am not really brave to go downhill super fast...so

I got stuck at the flat area a lot lol

I just couldn't be able to convince myself not to slow down...ugh

Poor husband always needs to wait for me to get myself back to the "hill" area

I feel bad for him but I also like that he's always on the other side waiting for me :)

[E] My First White Elephant Event

Today, I went to my very first white elephant event at work, and it was hilarious!! Everyone wrapped their gift so nicely!!! We all know there are tons of craps under the nice wrapping paper/gift box. The gray box with red ribbon in the center at the bottom of the photo is from me. I used a Neiman Marcus box that I got from my sister last year to put my awesome white elephant gifts in. (My sister did give me the stuff from Neiman Marcus last year, and the box is super cute so I saved the box).  I forgot to take a photo of what I have in the box before I sealed it :( but here is the list of things I put in there:

[E] Tokyo Banana

My sister & brother-in-law brought us yummy treats from Japan! 

Hubby and I hope to visit Japan next year for a week or two :) 

[E] Treats at Work

Yummy!!!! It's fun holiday season at work :-D

The question is what should I do to the Santa head?!

[E|C] Hotpot at Home

中文在後頭喔！

We like eating hotpot in winter, and we used to go out to local Chinese restaurant(s) to have hotpot. However, the price has gone up so much that we don't think it's worthy to eat hotpot outside anymore (it'd cost like $40 for 2 people). We don't have meat slicer at home, but we found a local Asian market that sells thin hotpot meat at a reasonable price. For $40, we can get tons of fresh ingredients from Asian market (the above photo only shows half of the ingredients we bought)! It was so fun and easy to make tasty hotpot at home :)

[E] Life

Only few people know I blog, which is good...so I can write whatever I want. Recently I got the admission offer for a part-time MBA program, and I have decided not to pursue the degree. Someone around me recently got diagnosed cancer. The person is my age, the person is nice, and the person is hard-working...People around the person were guessing that the person has cancer, but the person had never talked about it until this week...I am sad when the person actually told us the news. Life is full of surprises and challenges, and we don't know how long we are going to live...I feel that it's time for me to focus on hanging out with the people around me instead of going to school after work. I know I can continue improving myself without a 2-year commitment.