Christmas 2010 (Buffet Dinner and Winter Garden Aglow)

On Christmas Eve this year, Jake and I checked out some Christmas lights including the DeBolt house. The DeBolt house had a Christmas light show timed to music. (Previous light shows from the Debolt home can be found on their YouTube page.) I'm not sure how the light show lasted. There were a line of cars waiting to enter into the home's culdesac. Instead of waiting, Jake and I parked and walked into the culdesac. We didn't stay for the whole show but it seemed as if we stayed for at least 20 minutes. Maybe it just seemed that way because we were cold. We asked this guy that was helping to direct traffic into the culdesac if we could take pictures of the house and he said we could.

My sister Jennifer and her husband Ben have been cooking Christmas dinner for the last few years. We decided to do something differently this year and go to a buffet. We chose to go to a Chinese buffet. In addition to Jennifer and Ben and their two daughters, Tiffany and Kimberly, my oldest sister Kim was there as well as our brother Mun and his son Cameron, our Aunt Tammy, our mom, and our family friends Shirley and Murray. (My dad would have been there but he thought we were going to his friend's restaurant so he told his friend we were coming in advance. When he found out we weren't going to his friend's restaurant, he went alone because he didn't want to hurt his friend's feelings).

This is my sister Kim monopolizing all the clams like she always does. She ate five platefuls.

Cameron turned five earlier this month. His mom Ami and his newborn sister Lilly were celebrating Christmas dinner with Ami's side of the family who's Christmas dinner was during the same time ours was.


After dinner Jennifer, Ben, and the kids, my brother and Cameron, and Jake and I went to Winter Garden Aglow at the Botanical Gardens. Every year during the holidays the Botanical Gardens are covered in lights. This was Jake and my first time going.

I learned how to create this effect on my camera the night before. It took a couple dozen tries. Who know creating a blurry out-of-focus picture was so hard?

(Click to enlarge.)
This is the view overlooking the city.


For Christmas Jake got me a couple filters to my camera and the remote release and I got him a pair of jeans and a shirt from the Gap. The only jeans he likes are from the Gap.