Welcome to 2009!

By MAGGIE WANG

We spent the last few days of '08 in Las Vegas with the kids' four grandparents, savoring that the Lakers (and Kevin) got a little holiday break in the schedule.

We stayed at Toshi A-Gong & Alice's A-Ma's home in the Spanish Trails area, while A-Gong & A-Ma Ding (the blackjack couple) stayed at the Hilton.

Sedona might look a bit funny here trying on her snowsuit for a sunny stroll with Toshi A-Gong to feed the ducks, but ...

... soon enough, it was time for her first snow!

Yay! We drove around 40 minutes from Vegas to go up a mountain and get a big, broad area of snow for Sedona to play in.

She was clearly fascinated by the snow -- so much so she was unable to smile for the camera here with all her handlers.

Kevin lifted Sedona out of the snow so she could focus and do this family photo. Kevin grew up with snow in St. Louis and I got to start skiing when I was young, so we definitely have appreciation for this stuff.

Maven enjoyed it too -- just chilling most of the time, although she did take one run on our "sled" here. Yeah, we weren't quite fully prepared, but we were innovative with me grabbing the bottom of our Bugaboo as our seat and Kevin finding someone's deflated plastic floatie for a slick surface. It worked (as the video to come will show)!

Maven enjoyed the snow enough to put some in her mouth.

Wahhhh! Too cold!

Sedona had many runs down the hill, going time after time until she got her left hand squished into the snow a bit when finishing a tumultuous one-time ride with Daddy on board. Nevertheless, the next day Sedona woke up asking to play in the snow again and asking once we headed off in the car for lunch if we were going to see snow again.

Alas, she had to deal again with our usual Western U.S. winter weather, which looks like this. Sedona still enjoyed going out with the geese in the backyard with Alice A-Ma.

When inside the house without all her usual toys, Sedona got some use out of her DVD player -- and so did Maven. Soon enough, though, we were back out of the house to hit a park that I'd spotted on our drive to the casinos the night before.

You know Maven loves swings!

Sedona had a ball at the playground, starting out with her coat and shades on but not keeping them on for long as she embraced all the activity.

She is getting much more daring.

Maven seems to think A-Ma Ding serves her well as a makeshift swing!

Pretty cool artistic candid photo taken by Kevin. It's great that our parents are longtime friends.

Here's Sedona in her new roller skates! She loves them so much; she is always asking to be in them, and she used them a lot at this park.

Bye-bye, super-cool park!

We ended the trip with some excellent "extra spicy" and yummy Louisiana crawfish and shrimp at Hot & Juicy Crawfish. It was live crawfish at $10.99 a pound, which is a CRAZY price compared to what I'm used to in Texas ... but it was so yummy. I'm still craving it.

The best part was watching A-Gong Ding really take to the crawfish. He had the sauce dripping down his chin and was sweating like crazy but thoroughly enjoying it. It was so fun!

It was a great trip -- and reasonably profitable in light of Kevin's work at the blackjack table -- and only an indication of all the wonderful and fun things that are going to happen in 2009. I am truly looking forward to an amazing year full of great memories with friends and family. We were blessed in 2008 with our Maven but know that 2009 will only bring more experiences, prosperity and memories.

We wish all our friends and family an outstanding 2009!