Holiday Wrap Up

***CAUTION***

This blog is really ridiculously long!

Okay so here is a hopefully sort of quick update about our holidays. We will begin with Christmas Eve...

On Christmas Eve we went over to my parent's house. They had some friends over and my mom made her special curry! (She makes it from scratch and it is awesome!) So after we ate some yummy curry we went into the living room and played some Christmas songs with the hand bells accomplanied by the guitar. It was great! I love doing this on Christmas Eve. Of course Joseph wasn't into it but I told him that when we have a family this is definitely going to be a tradition and then he will HAVE to participate. But for now he gets to pass on it.

CHRISTMAS

For the winter break all of Joseph's brothers came to town (Joseph has four brothers which makes five boys in his family.) This was the first year in abotu eight years that they have all been together (There is two years in between each sibling and almost all of them served missions.) So it was a pretty big deal. It was a lot of fun having almost everyone under the same roof at my in-laws'. So Christmas morning we woke up and went downstairs to open presents with everyone at my in-laws'. Joseph and I were pretty dang excited because this year we made our niece, Lizzie, a WALL-E costume. Right now she loves WALL-E so we thought that she would ove it! We also bought her these WALL-E arms that are sort of like those extended claws. So we worked really hard on her costume and we pull it out on Christmas morning for her and she says that she hates it. For a little girl who is only 4 years old she really hurt Joseph and mine's feelings. She we left to go to my aunt's house all sad. I think that Lizzie actually felt really bad about it because when we were at my aunt's house she called Joseph's cell and apologized and later when we went back home she came running up to us with pictures and presents that she made. So it made me feel a little bit better that she felt bad for what she said. Finally a couple days later she did put on her WALL-E costume and she loves it now.

When we were at my aunt's house we got together with the whole Shinoda clan and hung out opening presents and talking and eating. Then later we decided to go see a movie. So we all decided that we would go see The Curious Case of Benjamin Button. I really liked that movie but it was a little long (3hours!) I only wish that I knew it was going to be that long so I could prepare myself and Joseph.

Blasting forward to New Year's Eve...

So for New Year's Eve we ate dinner with Joseph's family and his aunt and uncle came over with their family. We had a delicious Mexican dinner and we got to do out crackers. FYI those are these tube things that you can buy at Costco. It is some kind on English tradition where you have this tube that is sort of shaped like a tootsie roll and you have someone hold one side and you both pull on it. Then a little prize and a paper crown pop out. So we did that and played some games.

Later we went to a party at our church building for young married couples. It was a lot of fun because we rented a blow up boxing ring and everyone brought game systems, board games and snacks. Joseph and I were some of the first to get into the boxing ring. We decided to box each other; you know spouse on spouse. It was a major hit because later everyone started boxing their spouses. We are such trend setters. I found it a very healthy way to get all my anger and fustration out on Joseph. Then when it got closer to midnight everyone stopped playing games and we got out the Martinelli's to countdown. Before we ended our countdown one of the husbands made a friendly reminder that you can only kiss your spouse. It was pretty funny.

On New Year's Day I was a mochi making machine. It is Japanese tradition to make mochi on New Year's Day and eat it. So that is what the Shinoda family did. It was fun. we got the whole family together again and we hung out at my grandpa's all day.

On the 2nd Joseph, Tim (Joe's bro), Erin (my sis), Catherine (cousin), Chris (Cat's bf) and I went to Knott's. We had it a lot of fun. It was not crowded at all so we pretty much got done with the park in 1 1/2 hours. But we decided to stay almost the whole day so we could ride everything twice. I think that one reason that it was probably not so crowded was that it was super cold and overcast. Who would want to go on a bunch of rollercoasters when it is freezing outside? We did. Then we took a little break and went to eat at this great fried chicken place which is well known at the park. It helped up get out of the cold for a bit. That day was pretty fun.