We didn’t put up a Christmas tree at our apartment, would probably do that next year. On Christmas eve, we had a family gathering at T’s aunt and uncle – Carol and Ray’s house. About 30 family members showed up. This is my first time celebrating Christmas as a family, as my own family are not Christians and do not celebrate Christmas. We had a gift exchange. We spent some wonderful time together, and for me meeting some of them for the first time. We went for midnight service at parents in law’s church before we called it a day.

On Christmas morning, we went to the in laws’ place earlier in the morning, had breakfast and opened all the gifts in the stockings and under the tree. We had a blast opening all the gifts. My in laws are spoiling us with all the gifts!!

By the time we are done opening all the gifts in the stockings, it’s almost time to go for lunch, we have to continue the gift opening after lunch. We had a buffet lunch at the dining hall of the retirement center. It was a holiday special meal and boy, we all ate too much!

The brothers are not particularly close but they seem to get along better this days. All of us included the folks were invited for pizza popcorn dinner at aunt Carol’s place today. They invited us for Thanksgiving dinner on next Thursday. It will be a big Thanksgiving gathering among 20+ family members.

Pumpkin pie is one of the must have dishes for American Thanksgiving celebration, which falls on the last Thursday of November.

The women at the international spouses meeting had a little adventure with pie making this morning.  Merilyn who organized the cook out had us met at the kitchen of a church. She prepared the store bought pie crust and filings. Everyone had great fun making and baking the pies.

I was late and missed the fun of making pumpkin pie with them, but was in time for pie eating. They had made extra pies and we were able to bring one home each!

Teresa shared the story of the first Thanksgiving, the pilgrims and their Native American friends. I learned something new about the history of America. :-)

We will be celebrating our thanksgiving with T’s parents at his uncle’s house. T’s aunt will cook the main dish and the turkey, but every household will bring a dish. T suggested I bring a non spicy Malaysian/Asian/Chinese dish. I haven’t decided what to bring to the lunch party. Most of the dishes I usually cook need to be eaten piping hot, and do not taste good when it’s cold, which are not so party friendly. Do you have any suggestions?

T’s uncle and aunt live about 25 minutes away from where we live. They run a farm corporation with thousand acres of corn, wheat and soy field. Their home is on the farm. T’s uncle is in his 70s and he still works in the field! It’s harvesting season right now and they have been really busy. When they told us their workers have been working 120+ hours per week, I poked at T who worked about 45 hours a week and complained about over working.:-)

We had two large pizzas with meatball and mushroom toppings. They were very delicious, but pretty greasy and high calories. T somemore brought home the leftover to eat for lunch!

We chit-chatted and played the dice game Farkle after dinner. It ’s a very fun dice game with simple rules. The cover of the container said it’s a game of guts and luck. Really, through the game, it’s so obvious who would take chances and who were the conservatives. :-)

T’s mom was having such good luck with the game, she kept getting three pairs, two triplets and straight. We had a good laugh and the game ended with her reaching 10, 000 points, way ahead of all of us!

However, candle lights are hard to capture on pictures. I do not have the camera skills to do that!

My niece happily posed for me with hair wet and missing front teeth.

The other models wouldn’t pose for me, could only captured their backs. :-)

The lantern party ended at about 10 p.m. The children wanted to continue, but we  couldn’t as there was no more candles.

We are sad but glad that her sufferings ended. She was a kind aunt who concerned about everyone and remembered every occasion to buy gifts for everyone. Her kindness and generosity will be missed.

In fact, mom brought all the food from today’s Hungry Ghost prayer, so we could have dinner at my sisters’ place. Both sisters just got off work when we arrived. Our super impatient mom got down to business immediately and have dinner served right away! We chit-chated after dinner, my parents dozed off before 9.00 p.m and me too, soon followed suit. 9.00 p.m is really too early for a night owl. :-)

This Chinese herbalist doesn’t use the traditional herbs that need to cook for long hours, the doctor actually gave her some herbal medications in pill forms! He recommended her to see the acupuncturist at the same building to expedite the recovery.

Mom thinks the acupuncture helps and she feels less pain after the half an hour session. So, we are going back tomorrow for another session.

The MRI showed the disc between two of the bones on the spine (L5 and S1) has extruded and pressed against the nerves. The nerves happened to be the ones that control the leg movement. That’s why mom has been having leg pain. The extrusion is actually quite bad and the only way to repair such condition is going for a surgery according to the orthopedic.

The orthopedic said there is no medication to cure this kind of problem, he can only give pain killer for pain relief. Since mom is not keen to go for surgery and it may be a while for the pharmaceutical companies to come out with the right drugs for this kind of health problem, we will bring her to try some alternative medicine in the next few weeks i.e. acupuncture, Chinese herbals and chiropractic .

The children are going to stay with us for 6 days. We are looking forward to see them and enjoy the time with them. They are good children, they can play together pretty well, of course the cat and dog fights are inevitable.

They are also very independent children, they do not need much attention from the adults. In fact, they can be little helpers around the house. Their mother has trained them to wash dishes, sweep the floor and pretty much can take care of themselves, we just have to feed them regularly. :-)

She is her usual impatient patient who will not wait for the medications to work. Every time someone mentioned her sister’s husband’s mother’s sister ..you got the idea… was healed after seeing this and that doctor, she wants to go see the same doctor. The end results: she has seen 8 doctors, got back 8 packs of medications, and she is still in pain.

It took a while to persuade her to see our friend who is an orthopedic. He thinks she may have some problem with her spine or nerves, he gives a 10-day medication to relieve the symptoms and if the pain persists by the time we see him again on Friday 30th May, he recommends going for MRI (magnetic resonant imaging) to diagnose the problem.

One interesting observation, we all know the doctors are very busy people, but none of the doctors we have seen in the last few weeks own a PDA! Looks like no tech geek among doctors in this small town. I bet they probably have not heard of PDA loaded with medical software that allow them to have access to online medical reference and drug guide.

This kind of PDAs apaprently are very popular among healthcare professionals who are more tech savvy. One of the PDA software companies – Epocrates has sold over 500,000 copies of its medical reference software to healthcare professionals.

This announcement was paid for by Epocrates.

Since their youngest daughter is already 8 years old and our family is not going to have a baby anytime soon, so it’s better for them to give to someone who needs them!

My fifth uncle is three years younger than the forth uncle. He is a smoker, lives very unhealthy lifestyle and never exercises, he is diabetic since his mid 50s. His diabetes gets really bad the last two years, my cousin has to inject insulin to his body system everyday to control his diabetes right now. This diabetic supplies are not cheap, luckily he is rich!

In fact, he would have died two years ago if he has no money to go for a major surgery to remove a tumor found in his brain. The tumor was so big that it had started to press on some nerves and caused numbness in his left hand and left leg. He had to go through physiotherapy to learn to walk again after his surgery.

You could say it was a near death experience for him. You would think he would live more healthily after that. But he said: I would rather died if I have to abstain from so many food and can’t do so many things. :-)

Though they were born in IL, both of them have lived most of their adult lives in sunny California, high on their wishing list will be one of the Air O Swiss humidifiers, the cold and dry weather is something they need to get accustomed to again!

He got a part time job with the newspaper(writing a column), they have funds allocated to sponsor him a new laptop. Since he needs only the basic desktop publishing and word processor, he had suggested that he uses the old one that the big boy currently uses and we can have the new laptop!

So we are looking for deals online right now. The big boy and I are both excited about the newer and faster laptop. (Excitement, which by the way is an understatement!)

Don’t you think this is wonderful for someone who would like to maintain independence after surgery? It’s also a nice little stool to have around even if you don’t need it in the shower for it’s true intent!

Imagine, if you have a small built in shower and you can’t shave your legs and you just need to prop them up! Great! When you don’t need it, it is small enough to sit right outside the shower stall and throw your clothes on them, sit and put your shoes on and do your make up. If you need it in another room for whatever…it’s also light enough to drag around.

Her mother brought her to the studio to see other children at the ballet class and showed her the beautiful Dance Shoes, hoping to entice her into taking up ballet. But looks like her mother my sister in law can only continue to admire these cute little pinky ballet shoes on Just For Kix.

If you ask me, I think it’s never a good idea to impose your unfulfilled dreams on the little ones, it will backfire one day even if they obliged now. :-)

Ever since my brother was promoted to be a manager in a multi-national company, he received many hampers and gift baskets from the suppliers and sub-coordinates during the festive season every year. His small family of four usually couldn’t consume all the goodies, he would pass some to my parent and us his siblings.

Last few years, he used to get a lot of junk food in all this gift baskets. But, this year he received quite a few that has expensive wines and liquor. Since he is not really a hard drinker, he kept the wine and gave the hard liquor to my uncle who loves to drink.

Everyone in my family loves fruits, how we wished the people would give my brother some fruit baskets like the ones from The Fruit Company.

It’s not very often we get to sleep late, laze around the house, watching soaps on DVDs like no tomorrow. We have watched enough Hong Kong and Korean soaps for the year, I think.:-)

The Korean dramas were in Korean with captioning or in Mandarin. We had dad downloaded them for us quite some time ago but didn’t have the time to sit down to watch them. When else but CNY is a best time to go on a soap marathon? :-)

We would start with my mother’s fifth brother’s family, the uncle that we are closest and keep in touch the most. My fifth uncle insisted that everybody received an “angpow” from him though my brother and I are supposedly disqualified because we are married. We would stay for an hour, amazed at how fast the children have grown up and lamented about how we are getting older.

Our next stop was my mum’s eldest brother and his family. We are not very close with this uncle and most of his children are very successful and rich, they don’t stay at his house during CNY, they stay in the hotels! Except for the eldest cousin who would talk to us and would ask the same old questions about where we work and live, the rest of them would continue their Mahjong games. Our eldest uncle is 80 years old, widowed and remarried when he was in his 60s. He looks so healthy and doesn’t even have a trace of wrinkles or pigmentations on his face. He runs and swims everyday!

Our last stop was my mum’s forth brother and his family. Our forth uncle and aunt have two daughters and a son, all of them work or live overseas. Only the son was back for CNY. Our forth aunt is the kindest and most generous person, she gave us so many things to bring home, it defeated the purpose of bringing her any gifts. My mother and fourth aunt shared the same concerns, they both have children in their 30s and late 20s who are singles. My two sisters got their fair share of “concerns” for being unattached in their late 20s. It’s just so much a dejavu! :-)

It’s noon by the time we have done with all the visiting, that ended our half day vegetarian diet, we came home to our carnivorous CNY lunch. How many of us can resist all the sumptuous mom’s cooking?  Need a miracleburn after the festive season? :-)

Currently, he is going through growth spurts and have extremely good appetite, he has grown so tall, all his long pants look like Capri. It’s also due to long hours in school and a sedate lifestyle that mostly spent in front of the idiot box and computer. He has put on consider amount of weight in the last year, he has a belly now.

His mother was complaining that he needed a new pair of shoes every three months! Even his karate uniform needs to be replaced since it’s too tight and obstruct movement now. You know the karate uniforms are usually loose fitting and have rooms for growth. But, he has outgrown the uniform that he has since he was 7 years old. I don’t think he worries about being overweight, but his mother wants him to watch what he eats and his dad teased about buying the best diet pill for him. I do not know about the diet part, but I think the karate practice is good in keeping him active once a week.

Guess what was the first thing he got for himself with his first paycheck when he started working ? Yes, he got a huge aquarium! Over the years, he had accumulated a few glass and acrylic aquariums. He even spent thousand dollars hiring workmen to custom made some stainless steel racks for the aquariums!

Two years ago, he started rearing saltwater fish. It was rather amusing to see him working on his fish tanks every weekend. He was taking apart a fan, fixing it above one of the fish tanks, trying to create sea breeze in the house. The most amusing part was, he and his wife went for a vacation, only came back a few days later to find salts everywhere in the house and the fish of course have died.

We have no idea whether it’s because the filter or the pump was malfunctioning or the fan stopped working. However, he quickly cleaned up the whole house to avoid getting more grumbles from his wife. We were quite amused by all his craze for his pet fish, actually.

My trip to PJ was mostly to meet up with old friends and to visit my sisters’ newly bought condominium. I really like the place, they have done a good job furnished up the place, make it into a cozy home. The kitchen cabinets are still in very good shape considered the fact that the place is more than 10 years old.

Though the condo is not a big unit, it’s spacious enough for three of them (my two sisters and brother). The location is also very strategic, it’s within walking distance from public transport and that’s very convenient for the first sister who doesn’t drive and often work late. The common areas in the condo are also very well maintained and the security is well managed, the only down side is: the monthly maintenance fee is rather steep and is on the high side. I only wish when we move to IL next spring, we would be able to find a condo or an apartment as nice as this one.

All my siblings were home yesterday for the Tong Zi Festival (Winter Solstice). Mom cooked some customary Tang Yuan (glutinous rice balls). They are easy to make, but most of the adults in my family do not fancy this sweet balls cook in syrup, they were for my niece and nephew who like sweet stuffs.

However, we were looking forward to eat the vegetable glutinous rice dumplings that mom also make on the same day. Mom cooked the vegetable dumplings in chicken soup, very yummy, especially on cold days, one of the comfort foods that we miss very much.

They have found some nicely made and affordable window treatments. They were able to add a hip, modern style to their interior without paying a fortune with the ready made curtains that look custom made. The kitchen curtains that they have gotten really brighten up the whole kitchen. Though they do not have a budget for extensive interior decorating after spending their whole fortune on the down payment of the house, I am sure with a little creativity, they can add an extra bit of flair to their home with the fun retro or funky contemporary patterns like those available on www.contempocurtains.com.