Christmas was a blur

December is always a very busy month for the normal household. For our household it's a total blur. The baking begins almost immediately for a cookie exchange party with friends, goodies to send to Hawaii, goodies for the co-workers and Costco employees and finally goodies for us to munch on for the holidays. This year I went through the following: 4 cartons of eggs (Costco sized), 4 5 lb bags of flour, 3 5 lb bags of sugar, 3 boxes of Baker's chocolate, one container of oatmeal and 2 4 lb bags of brown sugar (Costco sized). I'm not even mentioning the semi-sweet, white chocolate and butterscotch chips. I made everything from biscotti to brownies to sugar cookies, macadamia nut bars and chocolate crinkles. Didn't even attempt the gingerbread house again (it's been in my pantry for 3 years now...time to throw out the gingerbread and keep the candy (we don't eat it, it's just solely for decoration). After the baking frenzy was the wrapping and packing frenzy. I sent over $175 worth of stuff (mostly flat rate boxes) to Hawaii, the week before our lovely snow storm blew in. Thank God I started Thanksgiving weekend or I would've been treking to the post office in the snow.

Anyway, now comes the next big holiday for us Japanese folks. In Hawaii; New Year's is a BIG deal. If you are Japanese, you must have your mochi, noodles, sushi and sashimi. So tomorrow begins the annual trip to Uwajimaya in Beaverton. What's more exciting is that I found a new Korean supermarket called HMart that just opened in Tigard. So we'll hit that one first to see what they have on hand. Another place I found out about is called Fubonn Shopping Center off of Division in Portland. It has tons of places I want to check out besides the supermarket. They even have a Hello Kitty store! Now how can I pass that up...the kid loves Hello Kitty (just like me!).

Speaking of Hello Kitty, the girl was lucky to get a Hello Kitty cd boombox. I can't believe that a 4 1/2 year old knows how to operate it. Almost as hilarious as watching her operate the TV remote control or the Ipod. It's such a cool time to be growing up with so much technology in your midst! At Target I saw a HK mp3 player and almost bought it. We got the girl a cd boombox because she loves those CD story books. So we bought a couple for her and she LOVES them. We also can borrow those from the library. Another great buy was the Leapster 2 at Costco. She can sit (if we let her!) and play that darn thing all day. But mom gives her a break from it as it's better to have her do imaginative play than sit and squint at a tiny screen all day.

She also got a Fisher Price Little People princess/coach set I snagged from Kohl's at a ridiculously low price on Thanksgiving weekend. More Cinderella stuff of course to add to the collection. We tried not to over do it this year. I still need to go through all her old "stuff" and toss/give away stuff. Her clothes closet will follow...it's like someone pushed a button and she grew 5 inches. Everything from long sleeve shirts to jeans seem to look way too short! "Opihi pickin' jeans" is what we'd call them in Hawaii! I have to buy more of the Levi's I spotted at Costco a couple weeks ago (if they are still there!). Another hot buy after Christmas was the Leapfrog Tag book set at Costco. For $17 and some change I got the tag pen, two books and the case. Retail? About $50! What a steal. I didn't do much after Christmas shopping this year except for Christmas wrapping and ribbon. Thank goodness I stayed out of the malls and stores; just way too darn tempting to blow your moolah!

Today I worked for a half day (I was supposed to be on vacation!) as I felt guilty about staying home the week of our snow storm. I called home to say I was on my way but no one answered. Strange, I thought. I pull into our street and the hubby and girl are outside blowing bubbles of all things. He said that he had to get her out of the house or she was going to burst into a million pieces. So with the break in the weather, they pulled some weeds, rode her bike and then she wanted bubbles. Such simplicity. I can hardly stand it.

The hubby and I said we weren't going to get huge gifts this year, since we bought our Vizio 22" for the bedroom and Adobe Photoshop software. But I did get some nice Pyrex baking dishes and a nice cake pan! The hubby got a neat Fly pen (similiar to the Livescribe Pulse pen but cheaper). It was a Target steal at $30 (regular $80) during Thanksgiving weekend. The only thing it doesn't do is record audio like the Pulse does. They had the Pulse pen at Costco for $199. It is so cool. You can write notes or draw with it and then upload it to your computer. You can play games and it has other software you can buy too. We haven't opened it to try it out yet.

Anyway, I'm looking forward to 2009!