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.

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!