Have Yourself A Cabo Wabo Christmas

The de Joya, Chuidian, and Pastor families gathered in Elk Grove to celebrate Christmas together. It was also the 3rd Annual Cabo Wabo Christmas. Here's a picture of my dad, taken in the inaugural year:It's now 2 years later and the tradition is still going strong.

Tita Yeyet made an incredible Christmas Eve dinner of Kare-Kare, grilled pork chops & roasted tomatoes, Dungeness crab, and Lechon, followed by a spread of desserts. It was a raucous night with 4 doggies and 3 cats in the house (Mollie quickly showed them who was boss!), and family members all taking turns at the dining table.
Afterwards, the cousins stayed over at Erica&Chris's house. This year, the "kids" would be in charge of making Christmas dinner, and we had quite a menu planned. It was the first time we'd be attempting dinner for our parents, and we have a lot of expectations from prior years feasts to live up to! It was a lot of work, but a LOT of fun, and it looks like we're going to be doing it this way from now on. Already looking forward to Cabo Wabo Christmas #4!

Click HERE for our pics.

Holidazed

Every holiday season, my family makes a pilgrimage to this house on 34th Avenue & Quintara, a few blocks away:

picture from http://sunsetstyle.blogspot.com/2008/12/merry-chirstmas.html

It's a delightfully animatronic winter wonderland, replete with tinny xmas music and ice-skating teddy bears. Whenever we drive up and pull over to park, there are at least 3-4 other carloads of families doing the same thing, gawking from the car &/or walking up to stare at the house in awestruck wonder.

I got that picture from a blog, SunsetStyle, which chronicles the quirky personality of our little beachside neighborhood. It's a pretty brilliant blog, and there are a TON of crazy-looking homes within a 3-block radius of ours. Ah, the Sunset...

Fugly Sweaters Galore!

"... don we now our gay apparel..."

We held our annual Tree-Trimming Party, in which our friends come over and make the ornaments that will adorn our tree this year. Taking inspiration from our 1970s-1980s childhood memories, we christened this as our Ugly Holiday Sweater party. Our guests came bedecked and bedazzled in their fugliest holiday finest (and we said, the more obnoxious, the better!)



Justa came over early to help prepare the holiday spread (thank you Justa!) There was soooo much food, which kept arriving all night long as more people arrived! Our friends looooove to eat!

Click HERE for our pics. Fa la la laaa, la la la laaaaaaaaaaa!