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December 2023

The December update will be filled with family photos (sorry!) because they stayed for most of the month! Because my family (at least half of them) live in California, I typically get to see them once, maybe twice a year, so it's always a fun time when we are able to get together! I hope y'all had a Merry Christmas and have a Happy New Year!

It was my mom's 40th anniversary since deciding to follow Jesus, so we celebrated a little! We got her an embossed journal, some flowers, and a nice cake from 85C. Whoo!

We went out to Nickelrama and got Nora so many prizes, including this Dora balloon wand. It was my first time and it was a blast!

On my birthday, Steph's parents came over and we had some hot pot. Our table is definitely not big enough for everyone, so some of them got to sit on the couch and be served food instead of having to work for it themselves. It's been so long since we've done hot pot at home, I forgot how much of a production it is.

Our family celebrated Christmas on the 26th. This year we got to include David, Angela's boyfriend (who is also an apprentice with FOCUS), and got to know him better!

A picture at church with my family (minus Ariel and them, they arrived later).

My friend Jacob had a bachelor party where we got to throw axes. We had a double-elimination competition at the end and he ended up winning and being crowned the lumberlord. 🤣 I've known Jacob since we started living together back in 2019. He's been a great friend to me as we've had many late-night talks about whatever we have on our minds (so much so that some roommates asked us to not talk to each other that late so often...). I'm so excited for his wedding in January!

We had a dinner for all of the church staff (for our DFW Metro Family of Churches) and the senior FOCUS staff. It was an encouraging time to hear updates of all of the cool things happening at all of our churches spread throughout the area and to get to see some faces that we hadn't seen since the last dinner!

Merry Christmas from the Uengs! I had Steph take this picture with me right after she got out of the shower because I knew if we didn't take it right then, we would never take it! Hopefully y'all got our Christmas card!!

Merry Christmas from me and Henry Pham—we matched at church with our Grinch paraphernalia.

My family sitting around the mahjong table. If you ever want to learn, just let me know and we can set up some time! :-)

This is my friend Daijon! He has been such a great encouragement to me over the past few years as we meet every week and get to know each other better. (Have I posted about him yet?) Here he is joining me at my in-law's Christmas dinner. Can you tell he's having a great time? 😊

Lunch with all of the families! Everyone got together on Christmas evening for a dinner as well, but I don't have any pictures of that. But this is all of our families (peep my parents on the left, Steph's parents in the back, and Emily's parents on the right) together. This is what I personally love about Christmas, is the melding of all of the families and friends and getting together to enjoy time with each other!

Here is me with my in-law's family!

Occasionally I'll play some games online over Zoom with friends. On Christmas Eve, I wanted to see who was up and didn't have much to do—so I hopped on a call and invited a few people. In the end, we had a small crew and we were just messin' around. ♥

This is the second half of Jacob's bachelor party. We got to see Jacob's new apartment and play some tabletop games. We tried to play a quick game of Betrayal... but is there such a thing?

This is me with my niece, Nora. She's something of a celebrity around my group of friends and everyone was excited to get to see her when she came to Texas! I was scrolling through my photo album on my phone and realized the last 20 files or so were videos of Nora.



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