Thanksgiving Week

okay, i’m just warning you guys ahead of time… i have a LOT of pictures to post. and by a lot, i mean A LOT so get ready to load this page if you have slow internet connection.

i took the pics with both my SLR and my point and shoot camera so the quality will vary. the ones that are on flickr (ones that you can click) are the ones taken with my beloved SLR :)

anyway, pics and stories after the jump:

On Tuesday, i had a (sort of) thanksgiving meals with a few friends. it was my first time having an actual hot pot and it was YUMMY!! we had two rounds of it. we also had two bottles of wine between the four of us that night but i believe most of it went to my sister *laughs*

the pot was divided into two parts: the spicy soup and the non-spicy soup. you can guess which one’s which. we put in veggies, meatballs, fishballs, taro, beef, etc etc and gobbled it all up. we had a bunch of left over at the end of the night

On Wednesday, Nico picked us up and we went to my uncle’s place to have a not so traditional thanksgiving meal. it was a mix of whatever guests brought to the table, so we had really really random foods, but mostly asian food as you can see below. it was yummy nonetheless!

he’s quite handsome isn’t he? :)

Around 5PM, Nico and I excused ourselves to go to his cousin’s place, where we had our share of traditional thanksgiving meal with home made turkey, mashed potatoes, stuffings, corn and the works. his mom made these cookies that i just know would take me one whole session at the gym to burn (and then some) but they were so damn good that i had three ^^.

to be honest, that night was quite a blur because we spent the whole night playing Call of Duty 4. Nico, me and his cousin Jonathan seriously spent four hours playing each other wirelessly using the download play feature. i now understand why it was considered one of the best DS games… and why Nintendo DS became one of the top selling console this year and last year.

On Thursday, I went to BJ’s with Nico and tried their new soup for brunch. I forgot the full name but it was a tomato bisque of some sort. it was really really good. quite possibly my new favorite soup there!!

I also had half of Turkey cobb sandwich but i just swallowed everything up and stared at the remains later, realizing i forgot to take pictures of it :P

after brunch, we marathon watched Californication, which i had been DYING to watch. we stopped two episodes short of completing every episodes that is currently on air right now, and got ready to head up to.. BIG BEAR! :D it was a long windy road to get up there but well worth it. Nico got us a nice cozy cabin with a private jacuzzi!

sorry for the messiness. i took the pic right before we left today. ^^

the kitchen, were i cooked ramen and heated up canned soups :P

the tiny dining area right across the kitchen.

and the jacuzzi across the bed!! :D

right outside our balcony, facing into the woods. i kept half-jokingly saying that bears would come in at night and was secretly really afraid that would actually happen :P

we arrived pretty late that night so we just finished up our Californication marathon and ate canned soups i brought for dinner, then went to bed.

The next day, on Friday, we had plans of visiting the Arrowhead village so we got up and visited the local Starbucks to get drinks and snacks (since i was STARVING) before the long drive.

i actually decided to wait for lunch and only got a drink, pictured above. it was white chocolate mocha.

then we were off on our way to Arrowhead! Nico was nice enough to stop for me to snap up the panoramic pic above. i wish i had brought my other lenses because the view is just absolutely BEAUTIFUL! i snapped a bunch of pics, but i only selected a few to be posted up :)

okay, going off topic for a bit. i’m SO glad i started shooting RAW. when i was taking the picture above, i forgot to set the ISO speed to a lower speed, causing the picture to be over-exposed. thank god for RAW processing though, i was able to salvage most of the picture… otherwise you would be staring at a white blob.

we got to Arrowhead village after another long windy road around the mountain. the trip got me feeling kinda sick with the constant turns, but it eventually went away after i had some food in me. we went to a restaurant at the lake where we both got the Soup & Salad bar… soooo yummy! their potato salad was one of the best i’ve ever had. i didn’t like their soup very much, except for the split pea and ham soup. we also got calamari for appetizer but i didn’t take any pics of the meal because as i mentioned before, i was really starved.

after lunch, we got in line to take pictures with Santa. there were already quite a few people in line and we ended up waiting about 30 minutes.

This is a picture of a random tree while we were waiting in line! i love how this one came out

there was this reaaaally cute dog behind us! this is my poor attempt at sneaking pictures of the dog. the owner had a Canon DSLR too :) i think either XS or XSi, as seen on the upper right hand corner.

a dog i was stalking while we were in line. i called him Marley because I am currently obsessed with the upcoming Christmas movie, Marley & Me. i read the book back in 2007, and i was quite touched. i’ve watched the trailer three times today alone :D anyway, when we were done taking pictures with Santa, Nico went up to the owner and asked if we can pet the puppy. he turned out to be quite friendly and welcomed the petting very much ^^ I didn’t want to impose, so I only petted him for about a minute.

we walked around a bit and checked out the village. Nico stopped by this small bakery to have cinnamon bun and hot chocolate. i didn’t have any since i was already full, but i took a couple bite of the cinnamon bun and it was really good… i don’t even like cinnamon!

We met the village carolers on our way up to the parking lot and i took quick snapshot above. After a quick stop at the grocery store for ramen and canned soups (could you tell i love soups?), we got out of the village around 4PM. the sun had already begun setting at that point, which makes a great subject for my SLR :D

then we got home, had ramen and canned soups for dinner, then lazed around in the jacuzzi / watched a marathon of House MD before passing out. we left around noon after q quick brunch at IHOP… and now i am back in LA, not quite ready to get back to the daily grind. can’t vacations last forever? :(

anyway, to end this post – when we were taking pictures with Santa, he asked me what i want for Christmas. i told him i pretty much have everything i want. Santa replies that it is still okay to wish for something more, because it is Christmas and you can have whatever you want. So I thought about it some more… i honestly could not think of anything else. I know I don’t have much and there are a lot of things i could wish for, but I think as you become older, superficial things no longer matter. I am just truly thankful that I have love, great friends and family. that’s something money can’t buy:) ♥ i’m a lucky girl

I hope everyone had a nice thanksgiving! I sure did :)