Dear friends and family,

Talking of the year-end letter for 2012, the first thing that comes to mind is the Mayan prophecy of 12-21-2012 as the end of the world.  One wonders if it makes as lot of sense to work on such a year-end letter in case the ominous prediction becomes true.  Anyway, below is a photo of a counter-down of the last days before the end.  When we took the photo at the Xcaret archaeological park in Mexico, it said 51 days remaining for all of us.

We believe there are a lot of things to do before the final day and below are records of interesting things we did in reverse order:

12-01-2012, we joined annual Mayor's Holiday Festival for Senior Citizens with Lena to celebrate the holidays in style!  At the Festival we were dancing, having diner and entertainment, taking pictures with Mr. & Mrs. Santa and Mayor Brown.  For years, we enjoyed it every time when we joined Lena there.  This has been making Lena very happy!

The week before, we bought a Kitchen-Aid stirring machine with a food grinder.  Next day, Jim made “LaoBing” (Beijing-style pancakes) with the help of the machine and he was so happy with the food and became so energetic that he washed our Lexus and Mini Cooper even without Lily's requests. :)

Last month, we mail ordered the Kettler outdoor ping-pong table.  It took Jim about 2 days’ spare-time to assemble it after the big package arrived.  Now we can play ping-pong at our spacious porch to enjoy the standard new table or up-stairs (using the old table on top of the pool table.)  It is especially beneficial to play ping-pong under the sunshine, with much fresher air around us.

Between 10/27 and 11/3, we visited Cancun, Mexico.  The resort home “The Royal Mayan” by the charming beach was truly impressive.  We thought the Cancun beach is even more beautiful than the ones we saw in Hawaii.  While we were on the white-sand beach, the super-storm Sandy was hitting New York and surrounding areas very badly; Mendy who’s living by the Hudson River was very lucky since she was not as severely impacted as many others.  During her first year living in New York, she ran into Hurricane Sandy, which is America's biggest storm in 70 years.  This helped her gain some real life experience against natural disasters at the early stage of her life.

10-31-2012, while we were on the tour bus in Cancun, Yi, Lily's elder brother called from China to inform us of Lily's niece Xingxing's giving birth to a boy.  He is the first one from the 3rd generation in the family from Lily's point of view.  For Lena, it means 4 generations living together in the family.  It is noticeable that the boy was born exactly one year after his parents’ wedding.  That was really something to congratulate upon!   

In August, to celebrate our family birthday season and Mendy’s employment with Goldman Sachs in New York, we had one week East Coast trip which covered a reunion in New Jersey and Boston with Lily's ex-classmates at college.  We also had the chance to see the Niagara Falls (from the American side this time).  For Mendy’s birthday, we spent many, many hours at day and night to create a movie of 18 minutes, which recorded the touching moments we shared in the last 13-years since she joined us in 1999.  And we dined together at Olive Garden on Time Square to celebrate our birthdays which are meaningful and unique in their own ways (Mendy’s 1st birthday in NYC and Jim’s 60th anniversary). We also had the new experience at the Airbnb family hotel after the tour.  This was another perfect trip beyond our expectation.

5/4/2012 was a very special day for Mendy: after obtaining a bachelor’s degree in accounting at the end of 2011, she got her Master’s of Science in Finance.  She completed the combined program in 4 years and secured the employment by Goldman Sachs a year before her graduation. We all (including Jason from China) went to UF at Gainesville to join her special graduation ceremony and gave congratulations to Mendy for her extraordinary hard work and the extremely exciting results of her efforts.

In February, Mendy’s participation in a half-Marathon in Orlando attracted us to that city one more time.  Watching the half-marathon is quite inspiring for us, to see everyone who sets out to achieve a goal that takes the determination, effort and attitude of running a marathon.  The 13.5 mile running is indeed an inspirational journey of physical endurance and personal achievement.  This experience will have far-reaching influence on her whole life and her professional career ahead.

As you can see, our activities the year round are truly family-oriented with Mendy in our heart.  The high-light was the above-mentioned video Lily created for Mendy’s birthday this year.  Together, we are looking forward to a more bright and fruitful New Year in 2013, despite all jokes we had about the final day of the Mayans.

Our warm holiday greetings to you all with the hope that you have had a healthy and joyful year and more of the same in the New Year ahead!