new year's is for the dogs (literally)

much like the last few new year's eves, we kept it super low-key and stayed home.  the old lady and the old man, being child-free 20-somethings, did go out with friends with the help of the hub who acted as their uber for the night (rideshares are insanely pricey on NYE, as one would imagine).  

we'd headed to our local japanese market earlier in the day and picked up all the goodies to do some DIY sushi rolls, which the bean was pretty excited about.  while the hub stood at the counter, slicing up all of the fish, he had quite the captive audience.

and he did a fantastic job as our sushi chef - check out this platter of fresh sashimi!

while we were happy to snack on some of that deliciousness as-is, the bean had also been looking forward to trying out the new sushi making set they'd gotten for christmas.  the old lady had seen it on instagram, and thanks to the magic of amazon prime i'd ordered it four days before christmas and still got in time to wrap and put under the tree.

so you just spread some rice out on each half of the maker, top with all the goodies, insert the pusher and snap it closed.  then you push it out onto a sheet of nori and voila:

as for me, i wanted to have some seared pepper salmon and took out our trusty little cooking torch to get the job done.

we stuffed ourselves silly with a ton of sushi, and then we had some of these peanut butter-stuffed pretzels that i'd made earlier in the evening.  

the dogs were all snoozing way before midnight, although june was the last holdout with all that puppy energy in full effect.  eventually though, she finally passed out too.

one last family selfie for 2022:

and then juney woke up in time to join our first family selfie of 2023.

the next day, while the hub went off to do some 4x4'ing with friends the kids and i headed out to little tokyo to have some delicious udon at our new favorite place.  of course, since it was a holiday we ended up waiting for awhile before we were seated.

but was it worth the wait?  oh yes.

happy new year indeed.