Christmas and New Years

Christmas, for obvious reasons, just wasn't the same this year. My grandfather died just about 2 weeks before Christmas, so that made the celebration sad. While we was hospitalized, my grandmother picked up a bug and when my aunt came down after he died to be with my grandmother, she apparently got the bug as well, so they were both very sick for the entire week leading up to Christmas.

That changed the whole Christmas layout.

We came down on Christmas day, doing lunch at Grandmas, then opening presents. We had Christmas dinner on Christmas and did the annual DC tree trip on Christmas as well. Usually we do Christmas Dinner and the DC trip on Christmas eve. In the middle of the day, we went and visited the Levy grandparents. Oh, it was so good to see everyone. I snuck away several times to try to hold back tears. But I felt so blessed to be able to be with the family.

I was able to give out most of my China gifts. I can finally say now that my purse was stolen when I was buying the ladies of the family pearls at the Guangzhou Pearl Market. I couldn't say what I was doing before because I didn't want to lead on that I was buying my family pearls! hehe I didn't give Heather pearls, I gave her a pure jade pendant that says "little sister" in chinese. I got the "big sister" version.

I got a new ipod, which was excellent (also stolen in the purse snatching), and it's a pretty purple. I received some great gifts and thank everyone for the gifts.

Terry and I lit Hanukkah candles, even though we had most of our apartment packed up. But we tried!

Terry and I spent NYE dinner at Orologio. Basically, it was our first NYC date together, and our last real NYC date together, so it was nice for us.

Then we went to the meatpacking district to a club with a bunch of Blue Sky people. It was a lot of fun (even though I'm not a club person) and we had fun!