Picture this...

...'cuz I haven't nabbed the pictures yet, but I think Baby Sis had a wonderful debut.

As I had mentioned before, everything pretty much came together at the last minute. That meant that none of our preferred hotels had any banquet halls available for us. Still not wanting to have to stress/slave over food preparations we didn't want to rent out a hall or gym, either. So we ended up at Sakana Grill since the birthday girl adores sushi. Plus, with all the current family parties going on we'd rather not have another Chinese food buffet on our hands *groans*.

Another problem with the whole last-minute thing of it all...a significant number of family members were away on vacation or simply not available that night. So it was just a small party, I think it ended up being 72 people. Not as big as my "debut" at all. Practically half the size, actually.

Since we were at a restaurant there was no "program." That meant no cotillion (that's alright 'cuz I didn't have one, either), no serenades, no speeches, none of that. They did, however, have a photo op where my sister was dressed as a Japanese princess and my brother as a Japanese samurai (hey Ang, think of you and Daisy at Sumo Lounge and you'll get the picture).

Posie is a world of help at things like these. The girl put together all of my sister's giveaways, took care creating the decorations AND found my sister a birthday dress at an insanely wicked price. There's no doubt in our minds that Posie will make an amazing wedding planner in the future.

After dinner and dessert the party was continued on at our house for some karaoke goodness. As usual, the "grown ups" all gathered in the kitchen for some card games and mah jong. Yeah, there is no way you can get food out of the kitchen once that happens. You can't even get through the kitchen. It gets so hot in there and nothing's even cooking!

It was a great evening, I saw some cousins that I haven't seen in a long while and some godparents that don't stop by often. Even met some new transplants to Calgary that just moved here from the Philippines the week before (I had been working when they had their welcome party.) The family just keeps growing. My co-workers, when I told them about the size of my sister's party, likened it to a small wedding. If only they knew that wasn't even all of us!

I can't believe it's been 7 years since my own debut. I feel like going through my photo album now.