Thanksgiving and Christmas!

"Let us give thanks to the Lord, Our God..."

Tom and I are very blessed to have spent all of the holidays together. We spent Thanksgiving in California and Christmas in Virginia - classic split time across the country, of course.

For Thanksgiving dinner, we watched Elf and ate a delicious turkey dinner with friends from Tom's missiles class. The rest of the time I was in Cali, we just watched movies, played some tennis, and went shopping! We got some great deals on Black Friday :)

The picture to the right was taken at my parent's house in Virginia. I convinced everyone to dress up for Christmas dinner even though we weren't leaving the house hehe. Below is a picture of the whole family! Lola and Lolo flew out to visit. Andrew was in town from college, and well, Steph, she's always there... (sorry Stephanie! You'll be able to leave someday...it comes faster than you think! lol).

Over Christmas break, I learned how to make lumpia and pancit from Lola! One of these days I'm going to have to make it by myself for my Tom Tom. I'm glad to know a little bit more about my Filipino heritage! Food is a huge part of culture, so I'm getting there.

We got snowed in for a couple of days after Christmas (shown below). Virginia Beach area is definitely not use to blizzards, so the streets around my parents' house weren't cleaned for a few days! We did manage to get out a little to build a snowman and have a snowball fight with my sister! Thankfully the snow cleared enough for us to drive over to Rich and Caroline's house to watch the AF Bowl game and play Euker! Woohoo! Love Euker! Except that Rich and Caroline beat us three games in a row...lol. Oh well. :)

While in California Tom and I made this collage to remember our honeymoon! He put it up on the wall behind his dining room table...what a cutie he is!

The BFMOC (my tech school) class decided to do a White Elephant exchange before Christmas break.

The family around the Christmas table! Very thankful to the Lord for such an awesome family, as well as, all of the delicious food! We had turkey and ribs for Christmas :)

Picture of the snow outside the house! It looked so pretty! But only because I didn't have to go drive in it or walk to class in it or march in it or pretty much do anything at all lol.

Tom and I drove up to Northern Virginia for a few days so I could show him all of my cool hangouts in Woodbridge lol. While we were up there, we got to spend a lot of time with DP and his wife, Evelyn! He was my lacrosse coach from high school. They were very kind to let us stay there, especially last minute! It was so nice to catch up with them too. hehe. One evening we went to dinner with some of my besties from High School at this sweet Thai place I wish I had known about sooner! Left to right: Kristen, me, Shanaynay, and Genevi-ev! hahaha. Love you guys!

We also went over to Eek's house for some Xbox Kinect! hahaha awesome! This is a boxing game that we were playing...we also did some dancing games which were hilarious! I'm really bad though...no surprise there lol.

All in all, we had some great memories over breaks! For New Years we went to a country bar with Rich, Caroline, Genevieve, and Corky! It was great to celebrate the New Year surrounded by such great friends. I wish I had pictures of that, but unfortunately Gen and Caroline have all the pics! Please post them! lol.

I know I have said this a couple of times but I truly feel so blessed to have such great friends and family around me. Love you guys!

Jess