Happy Birthday, Dave!

Just wanted to put up a few pictures of our Christmas Birthday Boy opening some of the gifts you sent him last week...

After a whole season of eating sweet, indulgent foods, by the time Dave's birthday rolls around, the last thing any of us feel like is birthday cake (well, maybe I shouldn't speak for dessert-loving Delia...), so Ella and I brainstormed a way to give Daddy a special birthday treat that was somehow healthy too.  She wanted to make him her own Edible Arrangement with fruit, I scaled that idea down a bit to just a fruit platter with dark chocolate fondue.  We put the candles in some banana and pineapple pieces!

From Heather and Jeff Dave received the registration to a 12 km race through San Francisco in March.  The race will even take him across the Golden Gate Bridge, but that is not the coolest part of the gift-- Heather and Jeff have bought tickets and plan to come out to run it with him and then stay for a week!  This was all explained in the card Dave is reading in the above picture.  He is really excited.  We all are!!

 Dave is wearing his new Cubs sunglasses while opening some Cubs-themed gifts from Kris and Eric and the boys that he loved and has been already enjoying.

And Dave is showing off these great new Ghost running shoes from Mom and Dad.  He wore them for a run the day after opening them and said it took approximately 4 strides to feel the major difference!

For his birthday, I took Dave out on a date like last year.  We saw the movie Finding Mr. Banks and then had a delicious Italian dinner with a restaurant gift card from Anna.  My past 3 posts have been bragging about the big-time spoilage our family has enjoyed, courtesy of y'all.  Let me just take one more opportunity to speak for all 4 of us and say, "Thank you!" You have packed our Christmas and Dave's birthday full of good things and special treats!

One Last Christmas Post

Anna gave the girls some very generous gift cards to the American Girl Doll Store for Christmas.  It was not a surprise that, when asked what they wanted to do the day after Christmas, the girls' desire was to immediately spend their dollars and check out the brand new Bay Area AG store.

  

Not that we shop at this extravagant store on any type of regular basis, but it might be fun to have one a little more nearby than LA or Seattle!  The girls do love it and the family in our life has been generous to treat them so much over the past 2 years!

 The above picture is to satisfy your burning curiosity about what the ladies room at an American Girl Doll Store looks like! :)  It is very pink.  And it does have these clever hooks, in the stalls and by the sinks, that kids can hang their dolls in.

We didn't want to make a long drive for just a trip to the mall, so this day had another fun destination too-- Christmas in the Park in downtown San Jose.  Christmas in the Park takes about an hour to walk around.  It is 100 trees decorated by local schools and businesses, an ice rink, rides, and over 30 of these "booths" that feature animated scenes of iconic Christmas (The 12 Days of Christmas, a Gingerbread House, Santa's Workshop, The Nutcracker, a Nativity, and a choir singing the Messiah, to name a few).

 The girls loved this Caribbean Christmas scene with frogs singing reggae music and playing steel drums.

 This was probably my favorite scene-- Downtown San Jose's Circle of Palms all dressed up in lights for Christmas.

Having read the book together last year, this was a fun stall too-- Scrooge and Marley's shop from A Christmas Carol.

This Christmas in the Park was a fun find!  We'll keep it on the list of fun outings to take during Christmas Break and maybe revisit it some year.

A Very Merry Christmas!

God's greatest gift of His son gives us not just life in Him and assurance of our salvation through His grace, but also a fabulous reason to celebrate! :)

We kicked off the Christmas festivities yesterday with our annual cookie making.  The pastoral staff serves the whole church goodies on Christmas morning, and we've taken to spending our Christmas Eve day baking and decorating about 10 dozen bars and cookies.  Since the girls are impatient to open gifts at night, this gives us something to do to pass the daytime hours.  Also, I've grown pretty fond of how this encourages us our family yet again to give before getting.

  

Then we dive into the mountain of presents that has been growing under our tree each day as the FedEx and UPS workers deliver gifts from our family.  We were over-the-top spoiled once again with abundant presents that were thoughtful and just perfect for us.  I think the girls' faces in the following pictures show their excitement and gratitude...

THANK YOU, EVERYONE!!

We had fondue for dinner and closed the night out playing with all the new toys.  I tried on my new pants, scarves and boots and read about picnic recipes and hiking trails in California.  Dave made a fancy cup of coffee.  We loaded pictures onto the digital frame.  The girls wove Rainbow bracelets and colored Smencil pictures, then they got McKenna and Kaya ready for a grand sleepover.  We're having a lot of fun! :)

And today has been just as lovely of a day!  Dave preached a great "What happened to the sheep?" sermon.  A new turkey cooking method did smoke out my entire house and cause all the alarms to sound this morning before church, which the girls did not love, but the dinner was salvageable and actually pretty good.  Lily loves these holidays too because it means dropped meat scraps for her!

When you get things like bikes and scooters for Christmas in the Midwest, you just have to pack it away until spring, but we spent today trying out the new Razor scooters from Uncle Kyle, and with no coats!

"God's Great Gifts" seems to be a reoccurring theme for us this season. We are certainly thankful for the gift of each of you and the impact you have on our lives!  Merry Christmas!

Zoo Lights

On Monday night we got use out of the zoo membership once again when we checked out Zoo Lights.  Though all the animals are cozy inside their night houses, the zoo is still a fun place to visit because it is ALL decked out in lights!

The highlight of the night was the train ride.  This ride is 15 minutes of pure Christmas wonder as you ride through tunnels of light and past impressive light displays.

After the train, we let the girls pick one more ride and they chose the tiger rollercoaster.  Pretty different from the last time we were members at this zoo and Ella was just getting over her fear of rides!

 And, speaking of fears, Delia was happy to keep her distance from Santa.  Ella enjoyed meeting him, though, and telling him what was on her wish list.

You know us-- without any trips or vacations planned this break, we're trying to fill the days with small outings.  This night was perfect and a lot of fun.  Thanks again, Mom and Dad!

"I've Got a Golden Ticket!"

Dave is great about reading chapter books aloud to the girls.  He's been doing this since they were young.  Since he has so many meetings at night, it does take a little while to get through a book, though.  So, for the past few months, we've been sharing Roald Dahl's classic Charlie and the Chocolate Factory.  Besides hearing the book, we've also watched both versions of the movie, comparing and contrasting the old and new, discussing which movie stayed closest to the book and debating about which one is more magical and which Willy Wonka character more fun to watch.

The girls were delighted to discover candy bars with golden tickets in them in their klompies on Sinterklaas Day! (Click on the below picture to read the Golden Ticket-- I took most of the wording right from the book and think it's pretty fun!)

The Golden Tickets gave the girls the gift of an outing to our nearest "world of pure imagination"-- the Jelly Belly Factory.  We were excited to kick off our Christmas Break with this family adventure yesterday.  

We've been here lots of times, but this time did seem more special some how.  Maybe because we've been watching and reading about candy so much lately, or maybe because we gave the girls permission to pick out whatever they wanted this time, or maybe because the factory was running at full speed during yesterday's tour (something we've never actually seen).  Whatever it was, we stayed longer and had more joy than usual!

We decided to just go all out and make it "Kid Day" by ending our day with an hour at Jump Highway, one of those warehouses with wall to wall trampolines.  These types of places are always a huge hit with our girls.  They did seem to have an extra bounce in their bodies after the Jelly Belly experience too! Imagine that! :)

"This was the best day of my life!" Ella told us on the car ride home (though, perhaps that was sugar and jumping adrenaline talking).  It was fun to spoil our kids with a day all about them at the start of this break.  Delia has volunteered to cook, clean and give me lots of snuggles over the next 2 weeks in return! :)

It Is Good to Be a Teacher at Christmas!

My family has been most impressed by the bag full of gifts I've unloaded the past 2 days...

I won't be spending any of my own money on Starbucks for the the next year.  Nor will I be buying hand soap!  And we now have enough delectable treats in the house to keep a good sugar buzz going all the way through break.  One mom even sent me home with a huge stack of warm, homemade tortillas!  These tokens of appreciation mean so much, but what was most special was the kids' artwork and the parents' notes of encouragement and thanks.  I'm blessed by my job once again! :)    

Room Makeover: An Early Christmas Gift

This year the girls' big Christmas gift from Dave and I was an update to their bedroom.  Lately it seems a lot of our time is spent at the dining room table, doing school work.  And Ella has definitely moved out the dress-up stage and into more of a writing and illustrating stage.  We went through the dress-up and kept just the favorites for Delia in a smaller tub that now lives in the closet.  We also removed the old glider, that rocked a million miles when the girls were babies, but doesn't do much besides hold stuffed animals anymore.  We rearranged some stuff on the wall.  And after these purges and changes, we moved in some new furniture: white desks and blue chairs.  

I love the way the room makeover came out.  In the past week, Ella and Delia have practically been living at their new workstation-- enthusiastically tackling homework and cranking out even more artwork than normal!

Before:

After:

The VM Family Christmas Letter

Merry Christmas, Dear Family and Friends!

We trust that if you are here it is because you are a regular visitor to our blog.  But, perhaps you found this blog address on our card this year and are new here.  Welcome!  As I've done in the past, I thought I would just write our Christmas letter via the blog.  It's been a big year for our family and we're excited to share how God has once again blessed us in the year 2013!  (If you're interested in the longer story, just click on the link.)

Family Highlights:
We had the opportunity to take some fun trips again this year.  The two long weeks we spent in Michigan and Chicago, reconnecting with family and seeing sights that hold a special place in our hearts, were probably our favorite.  We also spent some time in Lake Tahoe right before our school year started, a long weekend in LA with Anna and Derek, a few days in San Francisco over Spring Break, our annual week in Mount Hermon and a few days camping at Pinecrest.

We had lots of family visitors this year!  Grandpa surprised the girls for a Grandparent's Day visit.  (Auntie) Kris and (Uncle) Eric celebrated an anniversary in CA and stayed with us.  And (Auntie) Karen made her yearly visit with one son, this time our oldest nephew Calvin.  There is perhaps nothing we find more valuable than spending quality time with those we love most, so these visits from family, along with the new memories we made, were true high points.

One other family highlight from 2013 was adding Cutie the hamster to the VM Bunch. :)

And now, in our own words...

Dave's Highlights:
As I think back on this year, there are a few things that stand out.  In the spring, I got my first passport and used it on a trip to Guatemala, where our church has started a mission partnership.  It was a beautiful country, a great trip and a wonderful opportunity to see what God is up to in another part of the world.  We celebrated a special landmark this summer in our 10 year anniversary of moving to California and serving at our present church.  I don't know that I ever thought I would be here this long, but God has really blessed us with a wonderful home.  I think that was confirmed again for me by what the rest of my family wrote about their year, the church family we love, the school that is a big part of our lives, etc.

Jen's Highlights:
After a year of online studies to begin earning my certificate in Early Childhood Education and to meet the state's standards for becoming a preschool teacher, I was offered a position teaching preschool 5 hours a day, Monday-Friday, at the school the girls attend.  I've been teaching my sweet little students for 90 days now and am still finding great joy and purpose each day.  I am in awe of God's timing and praise him constantly for the blessing of a job that not only fits my schedule so ideally, but also perfectly matches my gifts and interests.

Ella's Highlights:
"This year was a very good year.  It seems that I've been growing faster than usual because I am not the smallest in my class anymore!  I got my ears pierced for my birthday in Chicago.  I keep improving at piano.  I love reading and discovered my favorite book of all times, The One and Only Ivan.  One of the best parts of my year was New Year's Eve when I had a dance party with some good friends and I won the MVP mirror ball! Blessings to you!"

Delia's Highlights:
"Every day I grew bigger.  I went all the way across the ropes course at Mount Hermon.  I finally learned how to ride a two-wheel bike.  I learned to read and write and spell at school, but I still like recess and snack best.  I lost my first tooth.  My favorite thing that we did this year was going to Discovery Kingdom for my birthday.  I hope you had a good year too!"

From the big things, like celebrating 10 years of thriving ministry, new career paths and safe travels in foreign countries, to the small, like laughter with friends, the magic of learning to love reading and the perseverance to develop musical gifts, we have once again seen God at work in our lives this year.  We pray that each of you may have the same evidence of God's faithfulness and that your hearts may be blessed this season as you celebrate His goodness!

With Love,
Dave, Jen, Ella and Delia