Summarizing January and February

It has come to that!! LOL

I've been receiving concern emails from families and friends, wondering why there hasn't been much updates on my blog lately.

SORRY!

I owe it to myself and to YOU to update this more regularly....otherwise, it's gonna be one of the gazillion sad abandoned blogs after just a few initial enthusiastic posts (I must've contributed a big handful to those lost in the big blackhole of the blogsphere!).

So before I jump right back in (with both feet)....I thought I should give you a run down of Jan and Feb events.

Jan was a lovely start to the new year. We were blessed with fabulous weather.....little snow, many warm sunny days. RG was on winter vacation so we spent lots of time together, doing fun things whenever we could. We also took advantage of the great weather to explore nearby towns and beaches.

Chinese New Year was early this year on the 23 Jan. Being away made me miss home, my parents and our annual CNY celebration. So this CNY, I decided to go all out to recreate the festive mood here in the US of A. I made bak kwa (grilled the pieces outdoor in the snow!), pineapple tarts, huat kueh, nian gao and for CNY eve dinner, we had a sumptous steamboat dinner, just the 2 of us.

The nephew also came to visit briefly end Jan during his 1 week school break. We did fun stuffs like shopping at Wrentham Outlet Mall and also checked out a mega supermarket in New Bedford where he got ingredients to make a lovely dinner for us. Even though his visit was a short one....it was wonderful having him.

In Jan, one of my photographs of a moonlit night over the harbor made the front page of our local town publication. I received a gift card for my photo...token amount only but there's nothing more joyful to see my work in print...front page nevertheless!

RG also received good news for his tenureship and now that things are looking more "permanent", we have embarked on a more active househunt again. Most of our weekends were spent at houseviewings or talking to builders. Hopefully, we'll be able to find something real soon and finally set some roots instead of having to move from rental to rental every year.

February was kind of a whirlwind. We saw many more houses, spoke to builders and actually started thinking of house designs and our ideal floorplans if we really wanna build from scratch. Nothing has been finalised yet but we are exploring all possible options, leaving no stone unturned.

We also went on a 2-week trip to the states of Louisiana and Texas. The trip was planned to coincide with Mardi Gras 2012. We wanted to experience the craziness of Mardi Gras in New Orleans where it all started. We spent 6 days in New Orleans, 2 days in Baton Rouge, 2 days in Galveston, 3 days in Houston and 1 day in Lafayette. There was quite a bit of driving and a little rushed throughout but we made the fullest use of our time in all the places that we had visited. It was an exhausting trip but an extremely eye-opening one. I'll probably blog more on our trip later....together with the photos.

By the time we got back, it was almost time for RG to return to work as the new semester commenced end Feb this year.

This year, I have quietly made some new year resolutions but I feel I should share them...so that they don't fade away as I get bogged down with mundanities or become lazy.

My new year resolutions are:

- Get shit done first (doing all shitty stuffs first so that the rest of the day will be a breeze) 

- Eat healthy (meaning, less processed foods, more wholegrains, vegetables, lean meats)

- Use less of dishwasher (save energy, water and $)

- Sew more stuffs

- Recycle more (turn trash into usable products) 

- Blog more regularly

Well....I guess that's it for Jan and Feb. March updates to come soon.