Category: holidays

This Christmas holiday, Ray’s parents and brother, Eugene, visited us in NYC.  They arrived a couple of days before Christmas and it was a wonderful time together. We walked around the city, hung out at Rockefeller Center, saw the big Christmas tree, and the everything was very festive.  Many buildings in the Midtown area, especially on 5th Avenue, were well-decorated and it was just a delight to be here this time of the year.

On Christmas morning, we opened presents. In the past years spending with the Pengs, Eugene would normally be the designated person  to facilitate the gift-opening process; he would hand the gifts to each of us to open and we took turns.  This year, we decided to do things a little differently.  Ray and I have a little basketball hoop in our apartment and all of us took turns shooting the basket. We could only open one of presents each time we get a basket in.  It was a lot of fun and we got some great laughs. The gift-opening process took a big longer than previous years… 😉

Below… Ray opening one of his gifts…

Of course, our dogs were never ever left out of a Christmas.  They always had their own gifts! 🙂 We learned our lesson from past years to never leave dog treats wrapped up under the tree because Pok’e and Cappy have very keen noses and they could sniff through the gifts and knew which ones were treats.  Last year, they opened their gift days before Christmas arrived when Ray and I left our apartment and came back an hour later to find both of them eating the treats.  This year, we hid the treats wrapped and kept it in the closet until Christmas morning.  It’s always a lot of fun to watch them unwrap their gift…. below, they wait patiently for their gift.  They just knew it was for them.

They went through the wrap pretty quickly and had a blast eating their treats…

One of my friends, Lisa, gave our soon-to-be daughter a gift a few weeks prior. This is our baby’s first gift from a friend… a very cute monster stuff animal.

After a wonderful fun morning, we all relaxed and just hung out for the rest of the day. That night, after dinner, we walked around Times Square.

Ray’s family went back to Boston for a couple of days before coming back to celebrate New Year’s with us.  On New Year’s Eve, we had a couple of people over also.  My sister Audrey, my friend Valeria and her boyfriend, Walid, came over to see the ball drop at Times Square outside of our apartment.  Times Square was packed with people by the late afternoon and streets were getting closed off for the celebration by 6 p.m.  We were fortunate that we didn’t have to wait outside for hours before midnight to watch the ball drop.  We hung out at the apartment and had some food and drinks and went out to the sidewalk 15 minutes before midnight for the big hoorah!

It’s amazing how people come from all over the world to see the ball
drop every year and what they would do to get up as close to the ball as
possible.  There was a crowd in Times Square by 3 pm that day! That
means standing around for 9 hours in the rain and cold before
midnight!!!

There is a terrace on the 4th floor of our building and we just hung out there for a while to see the craze and frenzy that was going on downstairs.  We could see snipers across the street on top of the Hershey’s store… security was definitely very tight. This crowd was downstairs of our apartment by 6 pm… the bathroom situation must’ve been tough. They had to stay in this blocked off area until midnight. We did see some people being escorted in and out of the area by cops… probably to and from the bathroom. It was also cold and drizzly outside so we felt really bad for the crowd.

New Year’s Eve also happens to be Ray’s mom’s birthday.  We had a cake for Mr. Peng and it was so nice to be able to celebrate her birthday with her.

We all went downstairs to the outside of the building 15 minutes before midnight for the ball drop.  The elevators in the building were jammed with people and it felt like forever before we got downstairs… Whew!

When midnight stroke, the ball dropped and people were throwing things everywhere and just celebrated and welcomed 2010!!! There was so much energy in the air and everyone was just so happy and … drunk! 🙂 It was definitely a night to remember. Ray and I have never been in Times Square for New Year’s before and this was such a fun and memorable experience.  Who knows where we will be for New Year’s 2011…

We have much to be thankful for this year.  A lot has happened, starting off with Ray’s work bringing us to New York City, to the experiences we’ve had living here so far, to taking a couple of wonderful vacation trips and then finding out we are expecting our first baby together. We are so excited that we are going to be parents! At first, it was a little scary to know that we will soon be responsible for the health and well-being of another human being, but at the same time, knowing that it will be a great experience to raise a baby together.

Unfortunately, with the downside of being pregnant, meaning horrible morning sickness, we decided to have a very low-key Thanksgiving this year.  Initially, we wanted to invite some friends over and take advantage of the location we are in to watch the Macy’s parade earlier that day and have a huge home-cooked meal later that afternoon and into the evening. But with the sickness constantly looming over me day and night (whoever created the term morning sickness was either oblivious or trying to understate the situation), we couldn’t risk hosting a big party this year. We decided to have a small family gathering at the last minute with those who lived in the city.  That was all we could handle.

However earlier that morning, Ray and I still had to fulfill our volunteering obligation. I had signed us up for a volunteering opportunity to serve meals for the elderly and homeless many months prior. Of course, I had no idea I would be pregnant then and be dealing with morning sickness. It was just going to be several hours, so we sucked it up and was so glad that we did.  We helped serve meals at a church near Columbus Circle, not far from our place.  This is something I hope we can continue to do, to show our appreciation for what we have and to give back and help out those who need it.  However, due to the Thanksgiving parade, it took us quite some time to the church.

The annual Macy’s Thanksgiving parade is usually held along our street, on Broadway, and would’ve passed our apartment.  We technically could’ve watch it from our window or patio. However, this year, due to the city’s plan to increase green and pedestrian-friendly areas, parts of Broadway were converted to hang out spots and there were permanent structures in place that prevented the parade from commencing through this area.  Therefore, the parade was rerouted this year to the street on the other side of our building. Before Ray and I headed out to the volunteer event, we managed to watch several floats, bands, and balloons pass by from one of our windows.  My cousin was also kind enough to offer to come by earlier to watch our turkey in the oven while we were gone.

Ronald McDonald was one of my favorite! Pretty cool pose. I had to take a picture of the pink castle so I can show my niece Meagan at some point. She is very much into princesses and the Disney collection.

Ray has been the designated turkey carver since 2005, when we moved out to California.  He has gotten pretty good with all the practice!  Dinner was very delicious and we all overate, but I’m sure that was to be expected on every Thanksgiving.