Hope everyone had a memorable Christmas! We’re spending the holidays quietly at home this year, since my due date is only about a month away now.
Christmas Eve among the “stars”
Mio on Christmas morning – the excitement is palpable.
This was Mio’s third Christmas.
Unwrapping presents.
Look at that smile!
Mio received the most gifts! She seemed kind of overwhelmed after a while.
Her favorite was an educational Anpanman toy from my parents. Once she opened it, she had no eyes for anything else!
Mio with a bug eye viewer from Tarrin and Jason. Thank you to all of our friends who sent gifts for Mio all the way from California — especially Tarrin & Jason, the Pou family, and Aileen!
Christmas Day also happens to be my birthday, and this year I turned 31! We had a delicious dinner with the family (on Christmas Eve we had ham, but Christmas we had Peking duck for dinner — my favorite!), with cake afterwards. Here is Mio helping me blow out my birthday candles! (This is her favorite part of birthdays… she gets pretty upset if you don’t let her participate in blowing them out.)
Thankful to grow another year older with a wonderful husband and this precious girl!
Christmas is only a couple days away, and I can’t believe how fast this month has flown by! In addition to the holiday season, there’s always a lot to celebrate in our family during this month because both Dan and I have our birthdays, and I love that people come together more during the holidays and the end of the year. This year has had its share of challenges with a tough pregnancy as well as navigating Mio’s tumultuous toddlerhood, but as I spend time with family and friends and reflect back on the year, I know that I have so much to be grateful for! Good health, wonderful friends and relatives both near and far, and our growing family that brings smiles and laughter to every day. And of course, there’s so much to look forward to in this coming year and beyond!
Some pictures from the past couple weeks, as we wrap up the year…
Mio after her final art class at the local rec center. She thoroughly enjoyed her 8 weeks of arts and crafts!
She pressed one of her crafts against the inflatable penguin, saying “Here you go, penguin!”
We enjoyed a delicious dinner on the Roof Terrace followed by a performance of Shear Madness at the Kennedy Center. It was a holiday event with Dan’s company and was nice to get an evening out without parenting responsibilities for once!
Celebrating Dan’s 31st birthday on the 13th!
“Happy birthday Daddy!” Mio was so excited to help Dan blow out the candles.
With the girls at Ashly & Danny’s housewarming party!
Congratulations Ashly and Danny on the beautiful new home!
An early birthday dinner out last week with some girlfriends, complete with amazing desserts! Thank you Michelle for planning it. Can’t believe I’ve known these ladies for 15 years!
Mimi knows me so well. Love this nail polish set! It has all the perfect shades, especially for the holidays.
Mio brought home so many cute crafts and gifts from preschool! Now the dilemma is how to keep the chubster occupied during winter break…
Mio’s very own My Dear Darling penguin! Thank you so much Akiyo for such a beautiful handmade gift.
Mio was in love!
A sweet video of Mio playing with her penguin doll:
A couple weekends ago, a couple of my dearest friends threw me the most beautiful baby shower for our second baby. After all the baby shower love we had received when we were expecting Mio, I really didn’t expect any sort of shower or celebration this time around, and I’d even read that it’s bad form to have a baby shower for subsequent babies beyond your first child. But my best friend Debbie insisted that she wanted to plan an intimate get-together on a small scale to celebrate the arrival of baby #2, especially since she wasn’t able to plan one for Mio’s birth (since we were in California at the time). She enlisted the help of one of my other closest friends, Hanna, and together they threw me a truly lovely storybook-themed baby shower! Everything was so beautiful and had so much detail and thought put into it, but at the same time the pace and tone of the shower was really cozy and relaxed, which I loved. Here are some snapshots from the celebration!
Beautiful flowers and storybooks as decorations for the shower.
Hanna, who I became close friends with while we were both studying graphic design in college, designed the lovely invitations and the printed decorations/labels for the shower.
 The front of the folded invitation: I love the detail in it, like “Misono’s Recipes” and “Mio’s Schoolbox” incorporated into the books and boxes of the design.
Back of the folded invitation
The inside of the baby shower invitation… Gorgeous!
A lovely bookmark to accompany the invitation.
There was no shortage of delicious food! Both Debbie and Hanna are amazing in the kitchen, and the refreshments and desserts they prepared were both beautiful and mouthwatering…
An amazing spread of delicious food!
All the food was labeled/named with children’s book references — it was so cute!
Strega Nona’s Chicken Alfredo Pasta and Cloudy with a Chance of BBQ Meatballs!
Charlie and the Chocolate Green Tea Cupcakes
If You Give a Mouse a Chocolate Chip Cookie with Miso Buttercream Frosting
The dessert table with the chocolate cupcakes with green tea frosting, and chocolate chip cookies.
Debbie is amazing at making homemade jam and preserves. She prepared these jars of orange cranberry preserves with grand marnier for the guests to take home as favors. Hanna designed the tags to match the invitation and the rest of the decor of the shower!
Catching up over delicious refreshments
Supplies for onesie and bib crafts! My friends know me so well. This is just the kind of activity I love to do!
Working on handmade onesies and bibs for the baby.
The bib I worked on.
Elisa’s adorable strawberry bib
With Pat. So glad she could make time to come to the shower, even as a busy mama of two! I have much to learn from her as I prepare for our own second baby.
Showing off our creations.
Hanna, Debbie, and I with our completed bibs. Loved Hanna’s sushi bib and Debbie’s giraffe bib! So creative. 🙂
After the crafting fun, it was time to open gifts! Dan and I really didn’t need anything this time around, since we already have most of our baby gear and all the baby clothes from Mio (especially since we’re having another girl — the perks of having children of the same gender!), and knowing this, my girlfriends gifted us books for the baby. Such a great idea, since you can never have enough books! I love that we now have so many more books to add to the girls’ library.
Reading everyone’s thoughtful cards and opening presents.
Thank you everyone for the thoughtful gifts! The ladies also all chipped in to buy me a beautiful baby mobile that I had been looking at on Etsy.
A group picture together. Thank you everyone for coming!
The beautiful tassel garland that Debbie made! It’s definitely going in the baby’s nursery.
Can’t thank these girls enough for all that they do for me!
Thank you Debbie and Hanna for planning and hosting such a beautiful baby shower! I’ll remember it always. Our second baby is so lucky that she got to have such a lovely celebration of her own to welcome her into the world. I’m so blessed to have friends like you in my life, along with all the ladies that attended the shower. (Special thanks to Dan, too, for staying home and watching Mio so that I could have a relaxing time at the party!)
Our family had a very delicious and relaxing Thanksgiving weekend! Here are some pictures from the past few days…
Our little cutie on Thanksgiving, with the painting she made at preschool.
We brined the turkey this year! 21 lbs of moist deliciousness!
Complete with sides, many of which the hubby prepared…
Great job Dan and Mio on the pumpkin pie!
So much to be thankful for…
…especially these two. They are my world!
Mio and I, stuffed after Thanksgiving dinner.
The day after Thanksgiving brought a lot more hustle and bustle to the house. My brother Ted and Elisa had spent Thanksgiving Day in New Jersey, but came to join us for dinner on Friday, as well as Dan’s sister who visited us from New York.
The Yokoyama day-after-Thanksgiving dinner. Gotta have our sashimi fix!
Spending the weekend with Hyo. It was so nice having her visit!
Chicken masala pasty from The Pure Pasty for lunch on Sunday. Delicious!
“All aboard!” Mio playing at the red caboose train that I used to play at as a child in Old Town Vienna.
Some more photos of our little cutie…Â When I put her hair in a milkmaid braid, she pulled on my bathrobe and called herself “Queen Mio.” 😛
On Saturday, our friends Xiaolu and Ryan threw an impressive Halloween party complete with detailed decorations, pumpkin carving, great food and games. It was a potluck so there was no shortage of delicious food, and our whole family had a great time celebrating one of our favorite holidays with friends.
Dan hard at work carving his pumpkin!
Scooping the inside out. Dan’s pumpkin carvings always impress! I forgot to take a photo of the completed carving, so I’ll have to post it later this week!
The Hwang Super-family! Loved their family costume.
Mio was Snow White. Thanks to my cousin Yuko and her daughters, we always get the cutest hand-me-downs, including this costume. 🙂
Mio and Ellie all dressed up.
Franken-Snow White!
Princesses Kailee and Mio
Sweet girls!
Aaron (Lightning McQueen) joined in!
They were just the cutest bunch, monopolizing the couch.
Mio had so much fun with her little friends at the party, and Dan and I had a great time catching up with friends and playing board games with them, too! Xiaolu and Ryan were amazing hosts and thought of everything, and by the end of the night there were well over thirty guests taking part in the revelry. Mio was so excited that she didn’t want to leave — I think Halloween is quickly becoming one of her favorite holidays, too!
