Christmas and New Year

About a month late, figured I would post a few pics from our holiday celebration. Again, keep in mind the dominant theme of 2011 Christmas and New Year's Eve was the fact that we were moving, but we still had wonderful friends around who made sure we took time for some fun. At the BEST New Year's Eve party ever, we got to release lanterns just like the ones on Rapunzel. They were mesmerizing. And huge. About as tall as an adult person, swirling colors in the sky until the flame ate up the tissue paper. No photos, but see clip art above. =)
Had Christmas Day dinner with a family from my mission. I LOVE these people. Truly they are eternal friends of mine. This is Mr. Lo having just opened almost the entirety of gifts he got to unwrap this Christmas (yes, he really only had a couple gifts, since we saved most of the toys etc. to dole out little at a time during our cross-country drive in January). Note Lo's face looks bored and dull. Really he was just suffering from excruciating herpes simplex lesions in his throat and mouth, only I thought it was thrush at the time. Oops. Have I mentioned he has a tiny mouth and rarely opens wide, so really can't blame myself for guessing wrong on the illness. The doctor forced his mouth open, and then we could see the blistering more clearly...Anyway, I digress.
Our Christmas tree this year was awesome, but didn't get any proper photos taken. Our neighbor let us borrow this tree. Lo undecorated the bottom half quite a few times.

And here is Mr. Lo in the only photo of him with his Christmas jammies.  Happened to be 2 weeks before Christmas when my brother Justin was visiting.  Note the moving boxes in the background. Ugh. Did I mention this is the second time we moved right at Christmas? 2 years ago, right after Lo was born the company transferred us mid-December. I hope to never move at this time of year again.

I should report that we had a yummy ham dinner Christmas Eve with the same family who hosted our Thanksgiving meal. But we don't have photos from Christmas Eve. It was sort of a less-fun evening only because of Lo's cranky/fussy mood (remember I still hadn't figured out he had the Herpes and in fact on this day we all thought his bad mood and drooling/mouth pain was just due to teething 2 year molars).

We had a great time celebrating Chinese New Year since the move and illness plague had all come to an end. But I'll post more on that holiday once we upload a few photos from it.