greeting the new year

JANUARY 2010

We greeted 2010 with our friends in no less than Las Vegas. Yes - a bunch of broke young adults went to Las Vegas with hopes of having fun and setting aside our stressful lives for just a couple of days. Andrew was visiting from Hawaii, and so we took him around – maybe too much. Mhar took him around San Francisco, and with Liezel and Becky he was taken around Los Angeles. When we met up with them on the 30^th, he was bound to explore Las Vegas and probably Salt Lake City in the next 2 days. Carl and Mhar took turns as we took off to Vegas for New Year's Eve. With no hotel accommodations waiting for us, we just braved ourselves and decided we were gonna have fun as we greet the turn of the decade with a bang! We walked down the strip and took endless pictures until we were tired and feet were all numb. Carl and Mhar took a nap in the car, to recharge for another stretch of a couple hundred mile drive to Salt Lake City. Andrew from the islands wanted to see snow, and Carl and I wanted to take the chance to visit Jasmine before she gives birth.

We enjoyed ourselves in the lights and sounds of Las Vegas. The boys, perhaps, had too much to see! We “partied” to the New Year!!! We left Vegas at around 3am.

We reached Draper around 7am. The Milburys made us breakfast and were too kind they let us use their bathroom so we could all shower. Carl and I were very happy to visit Jasmine before she gives birth.

We went to Provo and took pictures around BYU campus,the Missionary Training Center, and Provo temple. We had dinner at Jenneth and Daniel Hampton's home. We had a good time reconnecting with old friends like the Catahans and the Comptons from Hawaii.

We later met up with Carl's mission companion Scott Warner and his fiance Cherise.

We stayed at Shey and Micah Bybee's apartment for the night (unfortunately, the Bybees were spending New Years in Pocatello). We had breakfast the next day at ate Jan's place...and Lui prepared Curry for our lunch!

Utah friends are so awesome! Shey and Micah made it to Salt Lake right before we had to leave for California. It had been an awesome holiday weekend.

Two weeks later, the gang met up again in Southern California for Kohath's 2^nd birthday.

KC Cornelio took time off from her training in North Carolina and paid us a visit. We spent that weekend in Bakersfield celebrating with the Pascuals. Ate Yvonne and kuya Kamille prepared a feast for their little Koko. Koko had a Mickey-themed party. We filled ourselves with pork bbq, pancit, grilled squid, addobo, salad and a lot of karaoke singing on top! It was fun. Of course, no trip to Bakersfield is complete without stopping by for ice cream at Dewar's... so we did that before driving back to LA.

In LA, we took KC around Universal City Walk. It was a rainy and rather gloomy day in sunny California.

The following week, Carl started his new job with Silla Automotive in Compton. He's be working as the company's Network Administrator. You know what they say, “when it rains, it pours”? Our kind of good rain showers was about to come our way...the kind of good rain pouring – its unbelievably overwhelming...