Akemashite Omedetou Gozaimasu!

Happy New Year!! I know I have failed to post for the past few months but I'm hoping the New Year will kick me back into gear. Even though my New Years resolution(s) isn't to post more often, I will surely try to blog more often. It's a good way to get my thoughts out.

So, this year has been full of blessings. That doesn't mean I haven't had conflicts, negative thoughts or bad moments, but I'd rather not dwell on went wrong and be happy for the things I've been blessed with instead. To find happiness, you need to look past the unhappiness. At least, that's what I believe. More often than not, it's easier said than done.

Honestly, I feel people in general has been my biggest challenge in 2010. Feelings were hurt or misinterpreted which often results in both parties feeling hurt, upset and possibly betrayed. But, we celebrate the coming of a new year for a reason. We remember the fond memories, leave behind the bad and work harder to find our way to happiness with those that we love and cherish.

Onto the good stuff though! Peter and I are now officially married!! We certainly are enjoying married life and trying to settle into a routine. Life still seems as busy as ever so even though we live together, I still urge for that special bond. We've been going on "dates" more often and I didn't realize until recently that we've really gotten closer. Some of our hobbies are merging and we're gaining back the long hours of communication we used to have before the long-distance took over our relationship. Peter doesn't feel any change with marriage, other than the ring on his finger but I feel so much closer to him than ever before. I'm glad he's my husband AND my best friend. I think many relationships miss that aspect. The only change I'm not used to is calling him my husband. Evidently, it makes me feel old, haha! I do love signing my new name though! In fact, our company has just introduced a new product and I'm in charge of the press release. I recently signed 'Laura Sohl' 200+ times on a cover letter going out to publications to promote our new product. What's more fun is people don't expect me to be Asian based off the last name.

I am one tricky ninja. No doubt about that.

Peter and I decided to host Thanksgiving this year which turned out to be wonderful! The girls and my mother-in-law decorated Star Wars cookies (my talented mother-in-law somehow managed to turn Darth Vader into a Basset Hound and Yoda into a Chihuahua). My brother came up to help me cook and he was a great help. I needed the extra hands in the kitchen. I also gave him the daunting task of carving the turkey on my butcher block of a cutting board with no well around the board to catch the juices, oops. I gave him our Shun carving set we got from the wedding and warned him, "be careful, it's very sharp!" He only cut himself...once, I think. Thanks to Michelle, he fashioned a Hello Kitty bandage on his thumb!

Peter and I also got our wedding photos!!! You are more than welcome to view them here. Just sign the guestbook and you're on your way! Frank DiMeo did a fantastic job!! Probably the best vendor we worked with out of the whole wedding. If you don't have the time to sort through 1000+ pictures, just go to the blog post Frank made up for us here. He wrote such a lovely blog post about our wedding and posted some beautiful pictures! We used one of the photos on our Christmas card!!

Thanks to Michelle, I actually picked up a new hobby called Amigurumi. You can google it and you'll find a lot of cute dolls that are crocheted out of yarn. I've really been getting into it, though after stressing over some dolls I wanted to finish for Christmas, I took a little break. I will be getting back into it soon though because I have to finish my mom's doll and my sister bought me some fun amigurumi pattern books for Christmas. I'm pretty excited to get back into it. After all, I have a ton of safety eyes to use up!

Peter and I have also been working on our honeymoon to Japan. We have planned out our itinerary, places to visit, tours, transportation, etc. We sent it to my dad's colleague in Japan and he's going to look over it just in case part of our trip seems unfeasible. We will be there for two weeks at the end of May and so far, these are the places we will be visiting:

Tokyo (full tour), Akihabara, Shibuya, Ueno, Ginza, Odaiba, Mt. Fuji, Hakone

Fuji Speedway

Osaka

Nara

Kyoto

Ikaho Onsen Town

Mt. Haruna/Lake Haruna

It is a ton to do and we'll feel like taking a vacation from our vacation but it's going to be totally worth it. We are really looking forward to exploring, eating, shopping and just being tourists! We have a lot to do still before going to Japan. Some of the ryokans (Japanese Inns) we are looking to stay in don't take reservations this far ahead of time. We also need to order our JR Rail passes (but not too soon), try on some walking shoes (I convinced Peter he'll need them) and look for some fold-away duffel bags to carry the enormous amounts of souvenirs we are going to acquire on this trip. We are insanely excited! And to be honest, holding off for nearly a year is completely worth it. We've been saving for this trip, it's going to be well planned and the vacation days we've saved will actually be worth the 12 hour plane ride it's going to take to get there!! We have to give special thanks to Mom & Dad for booking us first-class seats to Japan using their points as their wedding gift to us. We are truly blessed to have so many wonderful people in our lives.

Well! I think that's a pretty good blog post. We are looking forward to a very happy new year together and wishing everyone a wonderful year 2011 full of happiness.

Much love. <3

P.S. I'm not typically the one to remember anniversary dates or to be all mushy about it, but Peter and I will be married for 6 months on January 24th. My, how time flies!