Sad to say, 2014 did not have me repeating as HORSE champion. The good news is that we had more players participate this year. Harrison and Tom joined the group this year:
Thomas, Bryan, Scott and I rounded out the rest of the group. You would think Bryan (who plays the most basketball out of the group) would do well, but he was FIRST one out!
Scott was the 2012 HORSE champion and regains the crown again. Boo.
I knew I saw a picture of Grandma on New Years. Here it is with some of the sushi that she made in the background:
HAHAHAHHAHAHHAHAHA!! I realized it wasn’t a good picture after I took it but that didn’t stop me from deleting it, but here is a better picture:
As usual we headed over to Grandpa and Grandma’s house for our New Year’s feast. This year, Aya and I went over a bit early to help out for the first time. (well, not Aya’s first time…usually Dawn and Aya go over to help but this was my first year helping…usually I am in supervisory role and taste tester).
Aya and I had a little assembly line going to make won-tons:
Stacy even made ONE of them:
Dad was outside grilling the meat:
and then inside doing the spam musubi:
Grandma was too busy making everything else to be in the photo’s….or for some reason I didn’t take a picture of grandma cooking.
Aya and I fried the won-tons but after several oil burn mishaps of me burning Aya, I was relegated back to picture taking duty:
Dawn filled her usual role as fryer with Aya and did the shrimp:
The first pics of 2014 of the fam-bam! Stacy is either practicing her sign for a made 3-pointer, or she is signaling how Uncle Bryan camps out in the key at Sunday night basketball:
Jack in a collared shirt:
Toshihiro & Uncle Bryan:
Cousins:
After the tree was all decorated we set up the timer on the camera to take some ‘nice’ pictures. As usual we hardly took any nice photos:
We need however manage to take a lot of goofy photos…that all turned out nice:
I guess it is hard to mess up when you are goofing around:
If only we could put in the effort for a nice picture:
But we are too good at taking pictures like this:
Merry Christmas everyone!!
I think this was the first year that the kids could actually help us decorate the Christmas tree. Stacy was doing the low branches:
Jack did the middle:
Aya did the lights and the top section of the tree:
And Jack put the ‘star’ on top this year!
(Yes, Jeff if you are reading, my dad picked up and delivered the tree for us this year…AGAIN…hey, it is tradition!)
This year we participated at the Community Center Undokai Day. It cracks me up because Jack reminds me of the thugs in the original Karate Kid movie that beat up Daniel-San when he wears this outfit:
It was a fun day with various activities for all ages competing against one another:
Even some basketball shooting contests:
And then DODGEBALL!!
My parents needed a family picture for their Christmas card so we went over one night to take pictures:
This one ended up being a good one of our family….too bad we already sent out our xmas cards:
Of course we had our usual photo outtakes:
The other night we heard all these sirens going off and talking on the loudspeaker. It turns out it was the Culver City Police Department with 5 squad cars blaring and a truck pulling Santa. I have seen it in the past but usually it drives by our place. This time it stopped right in front of our place!
I was totally unprepared…I thought they were going to drive away before we got outside and I left my camera at home so a neighbor snapped the picture for us.
Normally we go to Westside Pavillion to take pictures with Santa but this year we happened to be at South Bay Galleria right when the Santa photo booth opened so we took pictures there:
I was able to ‘sneak’ in some pictures of the kids with Santa:
Jack seemed happier playing games:
Of course his DEAL or NO DEAL:
Some air hockey against mom:
Stacy on the other hand wanted to go on the Ferris wheel:
She loved it! Aya not so much. Aya and I rode the London Eye which was way higher but this little Ferris wheel made Aya queasy. Apparently, it goes around too fast for Aya. Good thing we rode it BEFORE we ate our Thanksgiving lunch!
For the last few years before Thanksgiving lunch at Aunty Paul’s house we go to Boomers for a round of miniature golf. Jack was pretty frustrated this year because he isn’t very good at it:
So far Stacy has down pretty well with her eye hand coordination but as you can see golf is not her thing either:
In between the kids are arguing about who gets to go first or who is winning, Aya and I try to play as well:
This year Aya got one hole in one, but I got TWO hole in ones!
The apple does not fall far from the tree! One of my favorite events was when Jack took gymnastics and threw the ring not realizing it was going to swing back and it hit him in the head. It was hilarious!
I was watching Stacy at gymnastics and normally she doesn’t goof around like Jack but today she put the ring around her head:
Sure enough the teacher saw her and told her to take it off but it got stuck around her head:
What’s wrong with these kids???
We celebrated Jack’s 8th birthday with the family:
Grandma asked Jack wanted he wanted to eat for his birthday and he picked lasagna, bread and a chocolate cake:
Group photo:
Happy Birthday!!
Another season of SBY is in the books. We had a pretty good season, I think we came in 2nd or 3rd place.
From one season straight into the next season, as CBO starts up the next week. We went from having just 4 teams to 10 teams in the league so it should be very competitive this year. Hopefully Jack continues to play well, although a lot of these kids in the league are getting better and better.
