a new year

It might seem strange to be wishing anyone a happy new year when the year is already 1/12 over(!), but I guess I have no choice since I've waited so long to post. Anyway, here's my long-overdue first update of 2007! I realized this morning that if I was to put off posting just one more day, I'd have missed the month of January completely. So in an effort to record for posterity all of the recent blog-worthy happenings in my life, I choose to update!

Some hight lights in the month since I last wrote: the visit of my nieces and nephew (and sister and brother-in-law too... hehe :)), Salome and Kaiser's beautiful wedding, a new year's trip to Oklahoma (which lasted a whole four days longer than planned because of a very well-timed ice storm), and the start of my student teaching at ICS.

Here are the highlights in pictures:

Family pics:
Nice teeth, Anna! She was so much bigger than when I saw her over the summer!
Gabe and Anna playing with their dad before bedtime.
At my mom's birthday party. Olivia is all about peace these days... or victory?
Happy birthday, Mom!
Chocolate tall-cake -- yum!
Anna wants a bite too, but will settle for a spoon.
Tam-Lee wedding:
Strange that my first picture under this sub-heading is of food and not of the bride and groom, but trust me, this picture is wedding related! And following the laws of chronology, it must come first. This was my meal at Sal and Kai's rehearsal dinner. It was the first time I'd had ostrich, and it was delicious. Yay for Star Cafe!
Shopping for flowers the day before the wedding.
Getting ready the morning of the wedding.
The bride and groom. Nice socks (and shoes)!
Right after the ceremony -- this picture is of "Kaiser and Salome's HK friends"
Outside the chapel with ma famille.
At the banquet -- Sal posing with the lovely fake wedding cake.
Sal and the bridesmaids.
It was a beautiful wedding, and I felt honored to be a part of it. Congratulations Sal and Kai!

Oklahoma trip:
This is Ryan and Sam posing in their sweaters. Even though this was officially my first Sweater Party, I really think the yellow sweater took the party to whole new heights (check out the real rabbit fur and criss-crossing chain complete with crucifix). It was something that I found on Lion Rock Road and Ryan's friend Sam was kind enough to wear it (heaven knows that I didn't want to). I had a pretty sweet sweater myself, but forgot to take pictures of it (or of me wearing it). And in case you're wondering, yes, that is a real mustache.
I'm such a sucker for anything remotely resembling a dare... here are some specialty sodas that I sampled at the sweater party. In case you can't read the labels, the flavors are (from L-R) turkey and gravy, antacid, dinner roll, sweet potato, and pea. Antacid and sweet potato were OK, but the other three were pretty vile. I'm glad I just had a sip of each...
The life of a super dog is not an easy one. Here's Joey, Lisa and Patrick's dog, after a long day of fighting crime and rescuing small children.
We went out to eastern OK to where Ryan's grandmother lives. Here she is teaching him how to make a Moravian star.
"Ice Storm 2007" officially kicked off on Friday, the day before I was supposed to fly out, which resulted in the cancellation of my flight, my rescheduled flight, and then my re-rescheduled flight. So that meant that I had no choice but to miss some classes at HKU and stay four extra days... life is tough. After a wonderful weekend of sleeping, eating, napping, eating, and watching movies, it was quite an adventure to drive through the slush to Pizza Hut with Lisa and Ryan to pick up a couple pizzas for dinner. Here are Lisa and I after successfully completing the mission.
Here's Ryan scraping the ice off of his car. This might seem like quite a mundane activity to capture in a photo, especially to anyone from a colder climate, but to me it seems incredibly exotic (and therefore very photo-worthy).
A view of icy OKC from the air.

I slept pretty much the whole way to Chicago, but then suddenly woke up, looked out the window, and saw this. What a view!
And after a few hours in O'Hare, followed by a *slightly* longer flight, I made it safely back to HK.

I'll try to update again soon. Thanks for getting to the end of this lengthy post!