Best of 2011

This New Year's Eve, as we celebrate and remember the blessings and highlights of another great year, we hope you enjoy this VM Family Best of 2011 List:

Best Book: Unbroken by Laura Hillenbrand

Best Movie: (Okay not really a movie, but probably the thing Dave and I most enjoyed watching this year) Arrested Development.

Best New Recipe: I discovered Pinterest, and thus a new addiction, this year.  I'll share the 2 best recipes I've tried (multiple times now!), thanks to Pinterest.  One is dinner, one dessert: Panko-Crusted Chicken Stuffed with Ricotta, Spinach and Tomatoes and S'mores Bars.  You're welcome.

Best Family Visit: A four-way tie between Uncle Chris, Uncle Kyle, Anna and Heather

Best Outing: Carmel over Spring Break where we were delighted to find it was seal pupping season!

Best Way to Celebrate an Anniversary and Birthday: Disneyland!

Best Teacher: Mrs. H. who made sure Ella had a wonderful year in kindergarten.  Ella maintains a relationship with this favorite teacher still this year.

Best Way to Worship God: This one doesn't change from year to year-- the Redwood sanctuary and fellowship of friends at Mount Hermon wins again!

Best Hike: All the way around Pinecrest Lake during our family camping trip.

Best Display of Bravery: Delia taking her first ride on the tube this summer.

Best Baseball Game: Dave and I vote for the nostalgic Cubs game, Ella and Delia vote for the entertaining Giants game.

Best Vacation: The 2 wonderful weeks we spent with family in Chicago and Michigan

Best Song: Anything Ella plays on the piano! (A close second: Party Rock-- the marching band edition on You Tube! :)

Best Investment: Our membership to the awesome Monterey Bay Aquarium, where we learn and marvel at something new each time we visit.

Best Costumes at the Harvest Party (in my biased opinion): Delia as Little Red Riding Hood, Dave as the Big Bad Wolf and Ella as Rapunzel.

Best Part of the Preschool Program (again, in my biased opinion): Delia as a "Sneaky" Angel.

Best Surprise: An unexpected weekend in Chicago where we ate pizza, visited a world-class museum and saw SNOW!

Best Lesson Learned this Year: As God nudges us to explore a new ministry opportunity and challenges us to ask ourselves if we'd be willing to leave our beloved home to move back to the Midwest, our biggest lesson this year has been that of discerning God's voice, seeking His will and submitting in obedience.  We've been extra intentional about prayer, finding the ways He speaks through our various studies of the Bible and listening the wise council of our must trusted friends.  It's always amazing to see God working and we'll be excited to share what trials He brings us through and what blessings He has in store for the VM Family in 2012!

Vacay in Monterey (Part 3)

While Heather ran on the beach and Anna worked out in our hotel's fitness room, Dave and I took the girls to the super fun Dennis the Menace Park.  This park, with its climbing wall, suspension bridges, garden maze, tunnels, different playground equipment and "mail package slide" (as Ella calls it), is Kid Heaven!

When we all met up again, it was time to check out of the hotel and check out the Monterey Pizza My Heart for lunch. 

The last part of our experiential Christmas gift to Anna and Heather was a day of hiking around Point Lobos in Carmel.  We saw this favorite hiking spot as we've never seen it before-- shrouded in fog!  While the sun shone in Monterey, this State Reserve along the coast and cliffs was actually in a cloud!  It was pretty cool to walk around.

We took a new Cypress Grove Trail which wound through a forest of old, gnarled Cypress trees.  The fog and twisty trees made us feel like we were in another world!

The best part of Point Lobos is that you are never out of sight of the ocean.  I just love, love, love hiking while enjoying these sea views! 

Vacay in Monterey (Part 2)

Another gift we gave this Christmas was a handheld GPS device to Dave.  He's been wanting to get into Geocaching for a while, so this tool will allow him to develop this new hobby.  Our trip to Monterey provided Dave with lots of opportunities to test out his treasure-hunting skills.

His first find was a pretty easy one-- a heart shaped box hidden under a rock ledge out on the cliffs of Lover's Point.  The picture is blurry, but in the log book Dave wrote "First find on my birthday!"

The next few caches we searched for were much harder to find.  But the whole family got into it and Anna commented on how reading the coordinates and decoding the clues made her feel like we were in Goonies!

After our adventures in geocaching on the beach, we had to revisit the Monarch Butterfly Sanctuary to see if they were still hanging in gobs from the Eucalyptus trees.  They were!  There even seemed to be more of them!

 Delia thought using the binoculars to study this guy on the ground, less than a foot away from her, was a good idea.  We were laughing pretty hard.

I hope you are not getting sick of Monterey posts because we absolutely do not get sick of seeing the amazing things this place has to show us!

Vacay in Monterey (Part 1)

Anna and Heather are here!  Anna and Heather are here!  Our Christmas gift to them this year was an experiential gift-- a 3 day mini-vacation in our now-favorite getaway spot, Monterey.  And our gift was everything we were hoping it would be, highlights including the indoor swimming pool at our hotel, some great eats at fun restaurants, late night talks in the suite, plenty of beach time and, of course, a visit to the Monterey Bay Aquarium.

Jellies!  We predicted Anna would like these best.  We were correct!

Seahorses!  This exhibit is always amazing. 

Touch pools!  Delia gets up close to a mushy sea cucumber.

The wave room!  The girls were pretty excited to share this exciting experience with Anna and Heather.

Sting ray petting!  Usually the rays are hanging in the out-of-reach part of the pool.  On this visit, one was brave and friendly enough for us to pet him!

Ocean views!  Slipping outside to gulp in the salty sea air and watch for wildlife in the bay remains one of my favorite parts of the aquarium.

Merry Christmas, 2011

As Ella recited from Luke 2 in church this morning:

"And while they were there the time came for the baby to be born.  And she gave birth to her first born, a son.  She wrapped him in strips of cloth and placed him in a manger, because there was no room for them in the inn.  And there were shepherds living out in the fields nearby, keeping watch over their flocks at night.  An angel of the Lord appeared to them and the glory of the Lord shone around them and they were terrified..."

The baby has been born, the Lord has come!  We wish you a Christmas that shines with the Glory of the Lord!

Love, Dave, Jen, Ella and Delia

JOY!

After last night's present opening extravaganza, a huge thank you goes out to our always-thoughtful, always-generous family members.  I think I captured the JOY! on everyone's faces...

Delia gives Ella the Disney Store doll she was wishing for.

Ella gets Marble Works from Grandma and Grandpa.  Now she can recreate that cool ball drop we saw at the Museum of Science and Industry!

Delia busts out some meowin' music on her new kitty keyboard from Grandma and Grandpa.

Playing pretend camping is gonna be waaay more fun with this fake fire and marshmallow roasting sticks from Uncle Kyle.

Ella will get more practice illustrating with this Learn To Draw Princesses book from Grandma and Grandpa.

Kristen gives me, and my family!, a delicious gift in this long-wanted cookbook.

Dave reads the note Ella wrote to go with the Sharks/Blackhawks hockey tickets she gave him.

Delia gets her monster feet on, from Auntie Kris, Uncle Eric, Cole and Miles.

Delia opens her last gift...and it's the #1 thing she wanted this year!

Ella opens her last gift...and it's undies!

Just kidding (it's her own fault for being so darn fun to tease!).  Her big gift this year was a keyboard to practice her piano skills on at home. 

Thank you, Grandma, Grandpa, Uncle Chris, Auntie Karen, Calvin, Aidan, Theoren, Uncle Eric, Auntie Kris, Cole, Miles and Uncle Kyle!

The Tradition List

I recently heard a speaker at a Christmas dinner challenge us to not be afraid to cross things off our Christmas to-do lists that added stress and detracted from the meaning of Christmas.  Though I appreciate this message, I couldn't really come up with any family traditions that I felt kept us from being joyful at this time of year-- the opposite in fact!  The things we do are not done to just keep us busy, they have special meaning and are done to truly celebrate this wonderful time of year.  I hope that some day the girls will continue these traditions with their own families!

VM Family Christmas Traditions List (some of which you've read about already):

1.  Roaming around the Christmas Tree Farm to choose and cut our own pine.

2.  Learning about the terror and delight of Sinterklaas and Zwarte Pete.

3.  Beaming with pride as we watch a daughter perform in the Preschool Christmas Program.

4.  Snuggling in front of a roaring fire and a lit Christmas tree to watch Dr. Seuss' How the Grinch Stole Christmas.

5.  Hosting and planning fun winter outings with a visiting family member.

6.  Reading aloud Barbara Robinson's The Best Christmas Pageant Ever.

7.  Letting the girls browse the CRWRC Gift Catalog for their teachers' presents (this year it was desks to Honduras, they've given library book sets, chalkboards, fruit trees and goats in the past.)

8.  Going on a Dollar Store shopping spree to fill boxes for Operation Christmas Child.  The girls carefully and thoughtfully pick out the goodies themselves. 

9.  Shooting Red Rider BB guns, seeing the stuffed reindeer and coloring the Christmas hunting picture at the Bass Pro Shop.

 10.  Creating a gingerbread masterpiece.

11  Being entertained by the kids playing bells, speaking lines and singing in the Sunday School Christmas Program.  Listening, with all the kids on the stage, to the Christmas-themed children's book Dave reads aloud each year for his sermon.

   

12.  Reserving a night for cookie-making, hot-drink-sipping, kid-playing and adult-conversing with good friends Jeff, Amy, Jonathan, Grace and Benjamin!

13.  Popping some to-go popcorn then driving around admiring Christmas lights.

14.  Savoring the sounds of the season.  Listening to The Messiah.  Practicing lifts and jumps with our own little ballerinas after they've watched The Nutcracker Ballet (this year we've been hooked on a "Battle of the Nutcrackers" marathon on the Ovation channel!)

15.  Cooking a fancy dinner and opening the gifts on Christmas Eve. Talking and caroling with far-away family via speaker phone, getting toasty by a fire made from last year's Christmas tree.

16.  Baking dozens and dozens of cookies that our church staff serves to the whole church on Christmas morning.

White Christmas

This season God gave our family a bit of a surprise that I think most of you know about.  Part of this gave us reason to be in Chicago for a weekend.  And, of course, any time we have reason to be in Chicago we jump at the opportunity to spend time with family!

On Friday night we all gathered at Chris and Karen's house for some Giordano's Pizza.  There was much laughter and play among the cousins.  The kids even busted out a VM Family Talent show, starring Ella on the piano and Calvin on the recorder!

 On Saturday morning, the girls woke up at Grandpa and Grandma's house with that familiar and magical wonder of seeing the world outside the window covered in a new layer of soft snow.  While we hoped to avoid extreme weather and keep our travel plans the way we booked them, the girls were desperate to see some snow.  The white dusting we experienced on Saturday was just perfect!

Obviously, we had to run around the front yard catching some snowflakes on our tongues and throwing snowballs!

Also on Saturday, Mom and Dad took us to the always-incredible Museum of Science and Industry.  We were especially excited to to see a new Dr. Seuss exhibit and their Christmas Around the World celebration.

 The Dr. Seuss exhibit was SO COOL!  We saw original paintings and illustrations from some of his famous stories (like How The Grinch Stole Christmas, pictured below) and learned quite a bit about him personally and his famous work.  Did you know his real name is Theodor Seuss Geisel and that "Seuss" does not rhyme with "goose" but instead "voice"?  Or that Green Eggs and Ham was born out a $50 bet between Dr. Seuss and his publisher that he couldn't write a coherent and entertaining story using 50 words or less?  Or that The Grinch is actually a bit of an auto-biography describing Dr. Seuss' personal annoyance with the commercialization of Christmas?  While we adults soaked up all these interesting facts, the kids loved building crazy Seussical instruments and seeing an Oobleck demonstration.

For 2 years now, Ella has had school lessons about Christmas Around the World, so we knew she'd love this grand exhibit at the museum.  It features 60 trees all decorated in their county's traditional garb with descriptions by each of what that country's Christmas traditions entail. On The World Stage there is one cultural act after the next and we got to watch Irish dancers. 

 We were excited to find the Netherlands tree, covered in klompen, Sinterklaas and Delft ornaments. 

Every half hour in the great hall that housed the World Trees, it would snow!  Soooo awesome!  Now we can say we truly had a "White Christmas"!

We spent several more hours roaming around all the famous Museum of Science and Industry exhibits-- the model trains, the fairy castle, the chick hatchery, the always-moving development of an in utero baby exhibit.  Dad said this museum is Illinois' #1 tourist attraction.  We remembered why after yesterday's visit!