Dan’s company had a holiday party at the McLean Hilton this year, and it was grand! It’s nice to get dressed up and go somewhere without the kids once in a while, and we thoroughly enjoyed the festivities!
Main course of filet mignon. My favorite part, though, was the ginormous cocktail shrimp they had among the hors d’oeuvres (not pictured). Heaven for a shrimp lover like me!
My favorite kind of bar = a hot chocolate bar! Dan got the Olaf and I got the Elsa and they were both amazing.
Fun in the photobooth ♥
Chocolates from Dan’s company as a gift for him helping them prepare for the party. Yum!
I’m thankful that Dan is such a hardworking husband and father — it’s thanks to him that we can provide for our girls, and we can enjoy company events like these from time to time. His company and his team are so wonderful too, and he loves his work — I’m so happy for him that he found this opportunity that brought us back to the East Coast two years ago.
This Valentine’s Day, Dan was extra creative and put a little extra work into how he presented me with some of my favorite chocolates and messages of love. ♥ I was a little perplexed when I found these balloons in Mio’s room in the evening, with an accompanying note and needle that instructed me to pop the balloons.
Popping balloons is one of those things I kind of dread doing, but it was worth it to find what was on the inside… here’s a video! (Excuse my screams.)
A little hand reaching for the candy…
Sweet messages of love from inside the balloons!
Hubby gets an A+ for creativity!
Thank you Dan for a lovely Valentine’s surprise! 😀 He also treated me to lunch and dinner this weekend, so we could satiate our cravings for Thai and Vietnamese…
Eating at Natta Thai. Unfortunately, we’d eaten all our food before I remembered to take a picture.
Lovely blossoms from the hubby! (The lilies have yet to bloom…)
So I had one of these chocolate liqueur cherries that Dan got me and I now feel tipsy. Is that even possible? 😮
We didn’t do anything particularly special on actual Valentine’s Day because we both had to work, but on Sunday, we had an early Valentine’s dinner and movie date. We went to see The Vow — yes, very typical chick flick movie… but it was actually not bad! (Surprisingly it was Dan’s idea to watch it — he surprised me with the tickets!) We had a delicious sushi dinner at Ray’s Sushi in Hayward following the movie.
My delicious rolls: Titanic Roll and Under the Sea Roll
Dan's seafood yosenabe
A special thanks to the grandparents (Dan’s parents) for watching Mio while we went out on our date night! We love spending time as our family of three, but it’s nice to have some time as a couple again once in a while. 🙂
On Christmas Eve, we went to lunch with a bunch of my girlfriends from college — we went to Bon Chon Chicken in Centreville. I’d heard of how great Bon Chon was from all my friends in Virginia and had to try it! True to its reputation, the chicken wings were some of the best I ever had! Great flavor but not too greasy! (I ate mostly the soy garlic flavor ones because the hot ones were too spicy for me… although Dan was all about the spicy ones!) It was great catching up with familiar friends… felt like I got transported back to the good old college days! 🙂
Delicious ddukbokki! (The chicken was so good, I forgot to take a picture of it...)
Mio is all smiles!
The girls surprised me with a birthday cake! Red velvet… so delicious!
Mio is dying to dig her hands into the cake...
It was great seeing everyone and catching up! Thank you everyone for the delicious birthday cake!
Later in the afternoon, Miyoung and Mike came by to visit us at my parents’ house. Miyoung and I had a great time having a couple hours of girl talk while our hubbies played video games together and Mio napped.
Miyoung brought by these lovely macarons… they were almost too pretty to eat!
Look at all the colors!
I love macarons!
They were so delicious... between me, Dan, and my sister, we killed them all before the day was over.
Some more random pre-Christmas photos…
Mio playing with a magnifying glass. This just might be my favorite picture of the year.
Huge box of chocolates from a family friend to our family. The box is bigger than Mio.
Mio gets to spend her first Christmas in Virginia! What will Santa bring...?
