Christmas and New Year's

Oh what fun we had with this year's holidays!  On Christmas Eve we did our traditional opening of the gifts from the fam.  Everyone was so thoughtful and generous to us and our girls and, once again, we are feeling very spoiled and very thankful.

We opened, tried on, read, and played with hockey sets, and Star Wars necklaces, and guinea pig earrings, and hedgehog crafts, and books, and new running shoes, and karaoke machines, and Zoomer robot dogs, and handmade shawls from Guatemala, and Wii games.  After all this excitement, the girls settled in for a Christmas Eve sleepover under the tree with their Kindles and in their new monogrammed sleeping bags.  You were all so good to us!  Thank you!

Then a week later, we celebrated again.  This time, the end to a good 2015 and with our church friends, as we've grown accustomed to doing each year.  This year's NYE Party theme was "Singing!".  We started with a few rounds of the Lyric Game, divided into teams.  Then, once we were all warmed up, we broke out the Karaoke machine for the rest of the night.  It was so fun to watch various duos and groups take the microphones for their turn in the spotlight!

Then, an impromtu, 2 hour long dance party broke out!  There was line dancing, swing dancing, some slow dancing, even the Macarena!

Our favorite Karaoke CD ended up being the one full of classic, fun to sing songs, so we heard everything from YMCA to Ice Ice Baby being performed.  Our 2 pastors (aka Slash and Axl Rose) even treated us to some air guitar playing and Sweet Child of Mine! :)

We even got a little 11:45 pm concert by the banjo, mandolin and guitar players in the group!

I've said it at least 5 times before, but there is no better way to close out one year and ring in a new one than in the company of good friends sharing laughter.  A fun theme providing a night of singing and dancing made this another memorable New Year's Eve!

Wishing you all a 2016 full of good times that never seemed so good (Bum, bum, bum...)! :)

A Whole Buncha Christmas Stuff

Today is our first official day of Christmas Vacation!  On my to-do list: Updating the blog.  So, here is a look at a few of the things that kept our December busy:

 Piano and dance lessons.  Now that I babysit Anja AND her little sister during Ella's piano lessons, I have been enlisting Delia to help!  Delia and Anja play creatively and hilariously together, allowing me to give Annika all the attention she needs.

 Fun with friends.  Our new youth pastor Patrick is a major 49er's fan.  We had a super fun Sunday having him over to watch the Bears game.  I was quite entertained listening to my two pastors scream at our TV all afternoon.  It was an awesome game to watch with a rival!

  

Parties.  We had a great time at an Ugly Sweater Christmas Party for our church's young married group.  We had a lot of laughs playing the bowl game and voting on who had the ugliest outfit.  And we SCORED on the white elephant gift exchange: microwavable slippers for me and a selfie stick for Dave!

Sinterklaas.  On December 5, Sinterklaas made his annual visit to our home, filling the klompies with small gifts that help tide the girls over until Christmas.  

Christmas Parades.  Delia's dance studio once again participated in our town's Festival of Lights Parade.  Being in an older class this year, she didn't ride on the big float, but instead walked behind it and performed a choreographed dance to the song "Rockin' Around the Christmas Tree".  She was SO excited about this, it was fun to watch!

 Elf on the Shelf.  Jingles, the elf Delia bought with her marble jar money last year, has made her reappearance this Christmas.  Once again, we are each taking turns setting her up for one another.  One Friday night we finally watched the movie Elf together as a family, so this is how the girls found Jingles in the morning.

Sunday School Program.  Another annual tradition is our Sunday School students leading our congregation in a night of worship.   They dress up as Nativity characters, play instruments, sing Christmas songs and recite scripture.  It's adorable.  Ella played "It Came Upon a Midnight Clear" on the piano and both girls dressed as angels.  

 (This was a pic a friend sitting behind me took and sent of the girls hugging each other while singing.)

School Christmas Parties.  Ella, Delia and I spent our last days before break having lots of fun at school.  In preschool, I teach two classes, so I get two days to party!  On our party days we get together  as a big group to sing and play instruments (the picture is my preschool class ringing bells) and then we decorate cookies.  It is high energy, but happy, happy, happy!

 Gingerbread decorating.  As we do each Christmas, we got together with Jeff and Amy and their kids for a night of dinner, games and catching up.  Amy had this awesome gingerbread project ready to go for the kids and it was a hit!  

As you've just read, it's been a busy season-- and these are just things I have pictures of!  We start this Christmas Vacation feeling a bit weary and definitely ready for a break.  I've actually been leaning into Amy's perfect words this morning:  "I'm so thankful that Jesus already "did" Christmas  for us - even though I feel the weight of all the things on my to-do list, Christmas will happen without my help." 

San Francisco Tour

Then the next day we did an unofficial walking tour of SF.  We started at a place I've been wanting to take the girls for a while-- LucasFilms in the Presidio.

Because it was Saturday, there wasn't much we could do here besides walk around the grounds, but that was still fun and totally free, so we're glad we stopped!  We especially liked seeing the famous Yoda Fountain in person.

And we liked peeking inside the windows to the lobby (which is open to the public on week days) and seeing some cool Star Wars costumes and memorabilia.  LucasFilms reminded me a lot of a college campus, it was a pretty place to just stroll around.

Then we popped right next door to the Palace of the Fine Arts and continued walking.  Built for some World's Fair that SF hosted, and never taken down, it's become a pretty well-known landmark in the city and it was another cool thing to see.

Just a few minutes down the road was our favorite walk to take in the city-- the Fort Point Path.  We've started taking all our visitors down this path because the views of the Golden Gate just don't get any better.  A super treat on this day was discovering that Fort Point was actually open to the public!

We've never toured it and found it completely fascinating-- both the history of defending the Bay through various wars and the stories of how a modern day "army" of people keep the bridge painted, inspected, safe and paid for.  If you can time a visit to SF with a day Fort Point is open, we TOTALLY recommend it!  Again, all free!

The best part of Fort Point was climbing those 3 flights of stairs and finding yourself RIGHT UNDER the Golden Gate!  I actually got a little weak in the knees when we came out of the stairwell to this view.  It felt like we could touch the underside of the bridge!  And it felt like if we leaned too far over the fort's wall, we'd fall right into the Bay!

Exploring winding tunnels, prisons, and hidden gunpowder rooms were other fun parts of Fort Point and what kept the kids interested in what might have otherwise been boring history.

Unfortunately, after Fort Point, our plans did become thwarted by insane crowds on this second day in the city.  We tried to find lunch at a couple different places, but driving around for 30 minutes yielded not a single parking spot.  It was the Saturday of a holiday weekend and once we got back on the beaten path, we battled a million people.  So, we decided to just call it a day and head home early.  We stopped for both lunch and fancy ice cream on our way and, honestly, were not even all that disappointed.  The things we did get to see and do over our 1.5 days in the city were all really fun!

Day Off School; We Still Learn!

One fun thing we did while Kyle was here was an overnight in the city.  It's been several years since we've enjoyed San Francisco with Kyle, so this was a great outing!  We went on Black Friday and started at our favorite hands-on science museum, the Exploratorium.  When we described this place to Kyle, he said he was imagining a children's museum, but was surprised and delighted to discover that each exhibit (and there are, like, 6000 of them!) is interesting to play with, regardless of your age!

Love this one-- we listened to music with our teeth.



We had some fun with various mirrors.




We tried on some fun new hats!  (And also experimented with pinpointing the location of sound.)


We reviewed what we've been studying in school by checking out the models of cells.  (Things I never thought I'd hear my kids excitedly exclaim on a day off of school: "Look it's the mitochondria!!!!")


We experiemented with how distance changes perspective.


We learned about comets by observing dry ice replicas of them (a favorite of the day!).


We learned how color can affect our feelings.


We tricked our sense of touch with hot and cold poles.


We got all giggly slapping Dad at the slow-motion camera exhibit.


We watched math movies in the math cinema. And actually gave them a thumbs up!  On a day off of school!


We tried out some our dance moves with colored shadows.


We played "Papa Bear, Mama Bear and Baby Bear".


We creeped ourselves out by combining faces in the 2-way mirror.


We spent a looooong time watching the slinky walk down the conveyer belt.

And much, much, more!  A trip to the Exploratorium is exhausting because there are so many things to see and learn.  And using all that brain power all day really wears you out! :)



We found some neat places to eat too.  For lunch, I packed a picnic and ate on benches in the sun with a great view of the Bay Bridge.  And for dinner we discovered our favorite Napa diner actually has a location right next door to the museum!  SO perfect, especially since I've been craving the yummy food this diner serves ever since Mom and Dad got to visit it on their jaunt to Napa last month!



We ended our day with our hotel's Happy Hour (Ella's first Shirley Temple) and some time swimming in the pool.  This was a very nontraditional Black Friday, but it was fantastic.