A very belated happy holidays from me!

I knew I hadn’t written for a while but I didn’t realize it had been two months since I last posted! About two months ago I started my internship and also at my job…those two things were stressing me out big time. The good news is I still am continuing both my internship and job (whoo-hoo for not being fired lol!), and I’m not as stressed as I used to be. It’s crazy that it really did take two months for me to not be so stressed out every night. My time at work, or at the internship is still stressful, but I don’t go home bummed out over what I did wrong, or still sulking over what somebody said to me all night.

So now that I’m a little more comfortable with those things, I’m trying to go back to studying for the OATs and my application for school. I cleaned up my desk (which means a lot when we’re talking about my desk. I love knick knacks so I have them all over my desk…I sacrificed boxing some of them and recycling a lot of papers to clear up some breathing room on my desk), in hopes that this will motivate me to sit here more and get some work done.

Since I wasn’t able to blog during all of the major holidays, here’s a summary of them!

Thanksgiving (Nov. 28, 2013) was another wonderful day of delicious food. As usual for the last few years, I made the stuffing, mashed potatoes, glazed butternut squash, gravy, and sweet potato casserole. My mom made the turkey – which was delish (tip: always bake it in an oven bag, and go for fresh & organic turkey). My family had a Thanksgiving lunch together, and then I went to my boyfriend’s family’s party for their Thanksgiving dinner (yep, I was a little too well-fed that day).

Black Friday was fun, too. I usually go with my boyfriend hunting for deals, but in all honesty, we never really find anything. It’s kind of just fun being out there with all those people. We got the real deals mostly online. Oh yes, I did a ton of online shopping. Got most of my gifts figured out from shopping as well. It wasn’t Black Friday in particular where I purchased most of my gifts, but it was more of the fact that on Black Friday I went out shopping and got a lot of gift ideas out of it.

My 24th birthday passed on Dec. 22nd, and I’m at the point where I don’t really go around telling people “Hey it’s my birthday this weekend, and I’m turning __!” anymore. After 21, the years just seem like numbers to me, and I feel like time is a-wastin’. Haha. But I celebrated my birthday with my boyfriend and my family so that was really nice. We went out for dim sum for lunch as a family, and that night my boyfriend took me out for dinner and dessert. Has anyone ever tried chicken & waffles? A weird idea at first, but very delicious. :9

The day after my birthday we had a trip to San Diego, where my friend lives with her boyfriend (both are professional chefs). After a day FULL of eating out, we came back to their apartment for dinner and ate more food. They cooked a full dinner for us and dessert. It was pretty exciting since I had never got a chance to sample any dishes my friend made even though she finished culinary school already. Since one of my friends and I had our birthday the previous day, that night, my chef friend & her bf surprised us with massive chocolate mousse desserts (everyone else got cute, small ones in shot glasses for comparison). That was a nice surprise.

I didn’t really do anything for Christmas, but for lunch I cooked pasta while my brother put a beef roast in the oven for our family to eat together, and then went to my boyfriend’s family’s party again for dinner. As you can tell, I did a heck of a lot of eating, and I should probably take it easy to lose some of the weight again. I really enjoyed seeing my mom open her gifts though <3

 

 

And finally for N.Y.E. and for New Year’s, I spent it with my friends, at one of my friend’s house. She hosted it especially since she was only visiting home for a little while before she went back to Japan to continue her teaching program. It was great seeing her and everyone else; a lot of good laughs were had. It felt very strange going back to stress and work after everything being so eventful/fun, but here’s to a promising 2014!