happy new year i hope everyone has a…

happy new year! i hope everyone has a prosperous year of the tiger, success in all your endeavors, and most importantly, a year of happiness and good health!

新年快乐！恭喜发财，希望大家虎年一切都吉祥如意，事事顺利，身体健康！

so i went home on friday for new years, and since it was a 3day weekend, flew back to la on monday afternoon. a few pictures below pretty much summarize some of my time at home! wish i took more. i need to get in the habit of bringing my camera everywhere i go!!

so every year for new years we put out a plate of goodies/snacks that constantly refill & change up the variety.. lots of other melon candies & water chestnut/lotus root/haw candies. we stuck to the plum & dates & peanuts & butter sesame candies. i guess my mom  was also lazy & bought american chocolates. hahahah

new year goodies!

new years breakfast was composed of the 8 treasure soup (like八宝饭，but汤）with sweet rice cake in it! we eat this every year..

sweet rice cake for new years breakfast

good morning gili!

rice cake in the 8 treasures soup. you gotta eat all 8 ingredients to guarantee good luck for the new year! with longyan (dragon's eye fruit), peanut, lotus seed, dates, 白果...

chinese plum & date candies

our family has a tradition of doing the traditional 拜年 , bowing to the elderly who is handing you your red envelope.. so we bowed & said our wishes to each other for the new year :)

mom & grandma exchanging 红包

with our red envelopes :) they didnt all hold up theirs!! hehe look at gili

our family eats vegetarian on the new years because of religious reasons (believed to be a good start on the new year), so we always have the huge new years dinner on new years eve.. here is a picture of a vegetarian taiwanese snack we had on new years.. so good!!

素肉丸

i cant believe i forgot to take pictures @ new years eve dinner! i even brought and charged my camera ahead of time! :( pretty much had the usual new years soup, crab, lobster, fish, chicken, and lots of vegetables, rice & noodle dishes. and i wanted to put up pictures of my cute little nephews.. they’re growing up so quickly! feeling older everytime i go home. teddy’s starting kindergarten soon! feels like yesterday he was born

anyway, now for random pictures! tonys mom brought over this yummy taiwanese dessert:

taiwanese taro mochi dessert

night sky on new years!

decided to bake all of a sudden… the usual pumpkin cranberry bread! finally getting a better sense of how our oven works. i hate moving & finally getting used to how the oven works or how weak/strong it is & then we move! happened 2x! :O

baking pumpkin cranberry bread

the bread turned out well :)

the next afternoon i took a bunch of photos of flowers before i left… my camera does an amazing job of capturing the color & texture! 12 megapixels… pretty good :O)

grapefruit tree

i have so many i didnt upload… they’re mostly vertical ones. it’s bizarre because in iphoto they’re all vertical, but when i upload vertical photos onto wordpress they turn out horizontal & i cant turn it.. (or am too lazy to figure out. yep that’s it!)

but anyway, today is the 2nd day after chinese new years… i should be going back to 娘家, too  bad i just came back! going back early march for my mom’s bday, and then the cruise to mexico for Spring Break!

wayyy excited.. .but i feel like this is going to be the most hectic, stressful, about-to-pull-out-all-my-hair month second to may when it’s finals! 2010 school year’s almost over guys! crazy how everything’s going by so quickly.. and BB’s almost crossing. this is their iweek! currently chewing on a watermelon candy from their goodie bag. i hope they weren’t like our class (in the way we handled our candy..)

okay, back to studying. i brought back so much food from home including sticky rice／糯米饭，肉丸，牛健。。。going to be delicious!!! :O9