Grandma's Big Mac Day

Visiting Grandma on her birthday.

Tricia's first Big Mac ever.

Michelle's second Big Mac ever, sort of.

Mark likes his burgers with tomato, lettuce, and onion only.

Today was Grandma's birthday, and I figure one of the best ways to celebrate her life is to eat her beloved Big Mac. So we visited her and Grandpa, then went to the McDonald's drive thru. To our great surprise, McDonald's is having a special on Big Macs, 2 for $3.50! I'm convinced Grandma had something to do with this timely promotion.

Happy Birthday, Grandma!

Noggin Noodlers

My white elephant present from Allison. It is ruining my life.

Christmas Party 2008

Watching the Laker game


BBQing in the rain


White Elephant


Family Photo

It was a typical Christmas party for our family. We started by watching the Lakers beat the Celtics. Then we watched Eight Below and challenged ourselves to fight the tears. Meanwhile, my mom and Tito Melvin barbecued in the rain, Tito Melvin in his raincoat, and my mom in her rain boots. RJ stealthily collected more chocolate chip cookie cheesecake cups to satisfy his sweet tooth.

We enjoyed a bountiful dinner by a roaring fire that burned Grandma Perla's scarf, sending Tita Susan into a deafening burst of laughter. Grandma's perfectly fine; her scarf, however, will never be the same.

This year's White Elephant was fun because it seems our group is slowly growing. Jessica, Mark, and Andrew joined in the gift-stealing--I hope they didn't think we were too weird. All of the parents waited impatiently as we prolonged the game with more and more thievery.

As soon as the game ended we were all rushed to pack up our gifts and advised to force ourselves to urinate to prepare for the ride home.

Some of us stayed behind to reminisce our unusual childhood pastimes--preparing garden berry soup, various animal rescues with craftily crocheted harnesses, sacrificing new white shoes to reunite a lone duckling with his family, and other interactions with the animal world that, in retrospect, were somewhat cruel.

When Andrew and I finally left, we had to scrape the ice off his windshield before we could get on the road. Ice on windshields in sunny Southern California, who would've thought.

It was a Merry Christmas indeed.

If You Give a Mouse a Cookie

One of my favorite books when I was growing up was If You Give a Mouse a Cookie. I went on Amazon to order a copy for RJ and Celeste and discovered that there's a whole series of If You Give... books!

Christmas Lunch with Grandma Eping

We took Grandma Eping to Tasty Garden in Alhambra so we could see her before Christmas time. Nice pic of my dad with his mom. Ninety-three and still quick like a cat.

Balikbayan Boxes

Ate Mahal sent me this hilarious video about the Filipino tradition of balikbayan boxes. Unfortunately, the video is all too familiar to me. Enjoy!

Finals Week Update

Tuesday: Physiology complete
Wednesday: Nutrition complete
Thursday: Speech Pizza Party canceled
Saturday: Statistics complete

Freedom!

Studying for Statistics

My statistics book has some interesting facts scattered around the margins, seemingly to keep one interested in the largely un-interesting subject of statistics.

Unusual stat: There are 1,929,770,126,028,800 different color combinations for Rubik's cube and only one correct solution.

Scientists think that a person is never more than 3 feet away from a spider at any given time.

Sixty-three percent of people would rather hear bad news before hearing the good news.

Tofu Ice Cream

A la Chabuya. Yum-o.

Christmas Pictures

We finally decided to use this one for our Christmas card.



Check out my dad's cool hat. Can you believe he's 52? He's diligent about maintaining his youthful appearance.



Andrew, our reindeer friend, and me.

We went to the Avenue of the Peninsula outdoor mall to take some pictures for our family Christmas card. We didn't exactly decorate the house for the Christmas season this year, so we had to find a cheerful, holiday scene elsewhere. I like the cool reindeer they have sitting on the benches throughout the mall.

This year we decided not to get a Christmas tree, opting to bring our 25-year old ficus tree inside as a substitute. I recently learned that my parents bought this ficus tree when they moved into their first house in Gardena, where I grew up. I remember my mom scolding Allison and me for tearing off its leaves to make our backyard "soup" for the chickens.

It was difficult to refrain from buying a fresh tree, but I decided that we're usually so busy with finishing up the fall semester that we hardly have enough time to put into decorating. I was considering purchasing a plastic tree that I could reuse year after year. However, after some research I decided against it because (1) many fake Christmas trees contain PVC, and plastic is of course, a petroleum byproduct, and (2) they don't have that fresh Christmas tree smell.

In the course of my research I came across a new trend in the Christmas tree industry: renting. Some companies will dig up a tree, roots and all, plant it in a pot, and deliver it to your house for the holiday season. When the season is over, they'll come back for the tree, bring it back to their farm, and re-plant it so that it can continue sucking up carbon dioxide and supporting local ecosystems for another year until the holidays come around again. How cool is that?

But for now, our family ficus tree will suffice.