My Best Christmas Gift

In between the two holidays I just wrote about, we had the pleasure of hosting my sister and my cousin and her fiance, Heather, Anna and Derek.  Literally, "in between"-- we made airport runs on Christmas Day and New Year's Eve day.  We have not done a Christmas with my side of the family in 4 years, so this was much anticipated and did not disappoint in delivering wonderful, joy-filled, fun new memories!

We started our time together with our family Christmas, sharing fondue for dinner and opening even more presents.  Everything opened was loved, but we were especially delighted by the guinea pig slings Auntie Heather gave the girls!

The next night, because I happen to know someone with a key, we let ourselves into the newly remodeled youth room in our church to spread out for a night of Just Dance competition, hallway hockey, and an epic indoor snowball fight.

Then, we celebrated Dave's 39th birthday with a Monterey outing.  Our aquarium membership expired on the last day of 2015, so we fit this one last trip in.   It was a good way to go out-- insanely busy for Christmas Break and somewhat exhausting.  But, it's been another wonderful year of learning about and marveling over God's amazing ocean creatures and we've had a blast sharing this favorite place with so many friends and family members this year.  

Of course, we had to make a stop in the butterfly grove.

And then we had to share our new favorite Monterey discovery with Anna, Heather and Derek-- the bagpiper at Spanish Bay!  The sky was putting on an especially pretty show.

And the bagpiper's show wasn't bad either. :)  I got a short video of him playing Amazing Grace on that last green.

We also did an outing to our new downtown ice skating rink.  I think this was the best thing we did with our company!  For the whole hour and a half that we skated, I had a huge smile on my face!  We 5 adults are all Midwesterners, growing up on the ice.  It was super fun to get back on it and help our girls in various combinations get stronger with each lap they took around the ice too.  The rink played fun music and wasn't too crowded, we'd recommend this place!

Check out my sis, she can selfie and skate at the same time!

We skated in a huge, soooo fun, family chain for a bit, but this was a little dangerous for the other skaters, none of whom seemed too sure on their feet. :)

Ella wanted a picture of her and Derek in their rival hockey team shirts.

On the day we had to make some Bay Area airport runs, we built another stop at LucasFilm in.  Anna and Derek love Star Wars as much, possibly more, than my girls, so this was a cool stop for them.  Especially since it was a weekday and the lobby full of Star Wars memorabilia was open and we could check out and pose with things like costumes and light sabers used in the movies!

Not pictured are games of Trains, countless books the girls read to our guests, making Ollie Bollen, everyone falling asleep to a Christmas movie each night, back massages, laughing until we couldn't breathe to Jim Gaffigan in the car, and fun meals out at Gott's and Pizza My Heart. This week between Christmas and New Year's was a sweet, sweet time to spend together.  It was great to get to know Derek even better and as wonderful as it always is to laugh and hang out with Heather and Anna.  We're so thankful they took the time and paid for the flights that got them to our house.  Time with them truly was my best gift this Christmas.