Merry Christmas and Happy New Year!!

The holiday season is known for being a busy time of year, but this year has has seemed extra busy!! There was Thanksgiving, and Christmas, and New Year's. Family came to town, I shot a friend's wedding just 3 days after Christmas, and then that friend's brother had a baby (the same day as the wedding!), which I then took newborn photos of! (Whew!) And in the midst of all these, I took some holiday photos too! (I also may or may not have an exciting side project I'm working on too! ;D but more on that later...)

Needless to say...because of all this, my blogging has grown a bit behind! But it's a new year and now I have LOTS of material to blog! ;) 

I hope you all had a fantastic holiday with family and friends. Here are a few photos from our Christmas this year.

For Christmas dinner we had Shabu-Shabu, also known as hot-pot, where you have boiling soup placed in the middle of the table and gradually add in all sorts of yummy vegetables and meats to cook together in the broth. So delish!!

I got Joe a knife set for our kitchen in the hopes that we will cook together more in the new year, and he bought me my own calligraphy set (in the background of photo-right) to fulfill my life-goal of learning calligraphy! (It's SO cool!!!). 

But I think the true highlight of present-opening was watching our little bro, Lukas, try to open his present from us. Each year we attempt to trick each other with a gift. This one looked big from the outside....but only because Joe tirelessly wrapped it nearly 100 times in newspaper layers. What started off as a beautifully wrapped, relatively large gift, quickly turned into a living room full of shredded paper to reveal a multi-tool pocket knife within.

I'm pretty sure his effort was worth it though. Lukas spent the rest of the evening trying to locate the 30+ tools inside it and figure out what they all did. :)

Well, merry (belated) Christmas everybody!! And I wish you all a happy and productive New Year! I have so many goals and exciting plans for 2014, but with so many projects going on at one time, it hasn't fully hit me yet that 2014 is actually here! Perhaps my new year will start in February. ;)