Christmas and Leading Up

Even though December was busy with lots of fun activities, I am going to just condense it all into one convenient blog post!  Most of these things are of a Christmas-y nature, so it works...right? :)

 I had a very nice night going out to a Christmas dinner with some of my co-workers.  We ate a great dinner, saw a little Christmas program, and I even won a fancy prize basket!

 Another night in December, Dave and Ella went on a super fun father-daughter date, one that I found that was seemingly made for them-- Harry Potter night at the hockey game!  Ella got to see owls up close, drink butter beer, hear the movie's theme music all night, and get assigned to sit in the Slytherin section of the rink.  And they both loved watching their favorite sport together!

 On December 5, Sint made his annual visit!  Some traditions we don't outgrow, even though Sinterklaas brings much more grown up stuff now like wallets, scarves and card games.

Our church girls' group hosted its annual Christmas party this year too, which was awesome.  Our theme this year is "Be a Blessing" so we leaders tried to think of ways to use our party to intentionally do that for others!  We decorated a long trailer and had the girls go Christmas caroling around town.  Whenever someone came out to hear us, we ran up and gifted them a jar soup mix we had made.  The counselors' gift to the girls was items from the around-the-world gift catalog-- a sewing machine for people in Cambodia, garden and nutrition kits for people in Africa.  It was a neat thing to be a part of!

 We had lots of nights of snuggling by the tree and fire with the attention-loving puppy!

In December we also broke ground on what will be a new preschool facility for our school!  Dave was honored to be asked to speak a blessing and a prayer over the service.  He did a great job dedicating our efforts to the Lord and reminding us of Ephesians 3:20-21.  It was super cute when the 40 preschoolers we had on campus at the time of the ceremony each let a balloon go into the sky.

And speaking of preschool, here are a few other fun moments from right before break-- our last days where we get all the classes together to sing (above) and a time of fellowship and good food where our administrator takes us all out for lunch (below).

And here we are at Christmas Break!  Christmas Eve fell right at the start of it, so it felt like we were opening presents right away!  The girls are always most excited to give and get the gifts they pick out for each other.

 This gift was a favorite this year--  a gift certificate for Ollivanders (the wand store at Harry Potter World in LA) from Auntie Heather and Uncle Andrew!  We are slated to take this trip this summer after we finish the book series we've been reading together the past 5 years this spring!

 Auntie Kris sent comfy cozy new bathrobes and perfect books (that have already been read!).

And we sensed a bit of theme from Grandma and Auntie Karen! :)

Our favorite gift to give this Christmas was a Costco membership to Heather and Andrew.  All by itself this sounds boring, but we also made a 25 page book for them showing all the ways we like to use our membership for things other than just bulk groceries!  We got a few funny looks as we took goofy pictures all around the Costco on a busy Saturday, but we had a good time putting this together. 

On Christmas Day we got to join Jetta's family for a feast,

 a bike ride through the country,

 and target practice with the pistols! 

 With the many special services, four babies baptized, and one congregation member passing away on Christmas Day, Dave has been at church pretty much this whole break.  We haven't had tons of whole family time, but one night we were able to go check out some Christmas lights and get some fun dessert.

With no real big plans this break, I and the girls made a wish list of little things we wanted to be sure to do with our precious time off.  It contained mostly friends they wanted to have over-- which was a perfect way to fill our days!  Ella's friend Ansley shared ugly sweater cookie decorating and the new "Be a Broadway Star!" board game with the girls.

 (Some middle schoolers were invited to audition for the big high school musical performing this spring and these girls were actually cast!  Ella is even a featured part, playing the little sister of the lead!  The play is Annie Get Your Gun, so they were excited to watch the movie together too.)

And Kate, Cailyn, and Maya shared some roller hockey, laser tag, and a sleepover with the girls.

Ella's 5th grade teacher has stayed an important part of her life, continuing to mentor her and take her out about once a season to catch up and process life.  We are SO BLESSED that Ella has this wonderful example of faith and voice of truth speaking into her life.  We LOVE Mrs. VS!  This break, Dave baptized her first born, a daughter, and we enjoyed celebrating with their family after church!

On New Year's Eve, we joined with Jetta's family, and other friends from church, to once again ring in 2019 with Oliebollen, a million excited kids, and a hilarious charades/impressions/tune humming phone app game called "Heads Up".

I'll post about the 2 big events of break-- a bedroom makeover and our one family outing next, but as you can see, our December was full of friends and opportunities to eat, laugh, play, and celebrate with some of our most important people.  Though most of this happened just in our home or others', it was a grand finale to the year 2018!

Andrew & Heather Visit!

Just over a week after Karen and Theoren left, Andrew and Heather arrived to spend Thanksgiving week with us! We had another wonderful visit full of fun times and new memories.

Their weekend started with a round of laser tag at the laser tag place.  We had the entire arena to ourselves and had the best time running around, screaming, and shooting each other!  Ella was quite the sniper and killed us all.  We considered our round at Laser Quest to be just a warm up, though, and continued the competition at church.  Here we played in the pitch black sanctuary until late at night.

The next day was Thanksgiving and it was full of all the good food, long walks, family games and leftovers that make this day a favorite holiday.   We had many blessings to count at this year's table with the addition of Uncle Andrew to our family and the host of wonderful new beginnings my sister is embarking on this year.

Our Black Friday was spent giving our brains, instead of our wallets, a work out as we returned to The Tech.  Now, yes, we had just been there less than 2 weeks before, but this is the sort of place where every experience is different so it was just as fun to explore it with new family members!  The highlights of the day were abundant!  One was watching Heather get FULLY into the VR.  She was giving us quite a funny show moving her whole body around in the world only she could see!

Or having Andrew guide us through the Body Worlds exhibit with his unique surgeon eyes and experience.  It was fascinating to hear him describe how he operates and what some of the challenges and details of orthopedic surgery are!

Or watching each girl team up with their aunt/uncle for a multi-step experiment that had them injecting new DNA into petri dishes of E coli to form colorful mold spores visible under microscopes. 

Or trying to best each other in another attempt at the egg drop experiment.  No mushy, cushy "love mobile" for me this time-- and it did actually work!

Or the best highlight-- seeing the IMAX Panda movie in The Tech's state-of-the-art theater!  You can probably guess how one panda-loving member of our group felt about this! :)

After The Tech, we strolled around a cute Christmas festival happening right outside the museum.  

The next day, we patronized my favorite shop in town for some Small Business Saturday shopping.  This was just lovely, as we had an excuse to buy from and support my business-owing friend, and enjoy free mimosas and Gouda cheese samples while we did it!

Heather and I were realizing that we haven't been together for Thanksgiving since our college years!  What a treat to share this feast, this holiday, and this long weekend with them!  Every time we get to know Andrew better, we like him more and more.  Heather and Andrew are an AMAZING aunt and uncle, indulging my girls in countless games and conversations.  We were so blessed to host them this season!

Karen & Theoren Visit!

We've been very blessed this November to have lots of family visitors!  It's such a gift when our loved ones take the time and money that is required to fly out and spend a little time with us and taste a bit of our lives.  Through the years and the many many visits we've enjoyed, we always relish the challenge of finding the perfect outings for our guests, mixed with the perfect amount of time to chill at home and reconnect.  Here is a glimpse at some of the fun times we shared with Karen and Theoren...

They arrived on a Friday, when the girls and I were still in school.  Dave, his sister and nephew shared a fun day in Sacramento together, then met up with us at night for some In & Out!  (The girls were in Dress Rehearsal Week, so they were very busy with play practices, even while our family was here.)

After burgers, fries and shakes, we raced around the go-kart track!

On Saturday we tried a new destination, one I was hoping our tech savvy nephew would especially enjoy: The Tech Museum in San Jose!  It was super cool and we're excited to be members and continue exploring it all year!  The Tech is full of hands-on exhibits that teach you many things about science and technology.  It ended up being perfect for a group full of middle schoolers-- definitely recommend if you're in this same stage of life as us!  Above, Delia models with one of the real plasticised human bodies in the "Body Worlds Decoded" exhibit.  

The kids built LEGO creatures and then scanned them on the computer and were able to animate them!

Ella and Theoren tried the virtual reality exhibit.

We all enjoyed a lab project that had us extracting usable ink from fungus and mold samples.  We were then able to make actual art with it!

In the space exhibit, everyone took a turn trying to hit targets in the rocket booster simulator.

We tried out just about every major earthquake that has hit our globe in the earthquake simulator.  So interesting to FEEL and compare and contrast the length, strength and intensity of the earthquakes of Haiti, San Francisco and Taiwan!

The kids built a social robot that was able to do all sorts of tricks!

We played around with fun screen and video technology.

And we spent a long time building egg drop machines.  Here your "egg" was a small computer sensor box that determined if you'd succeed or fail in keeping it safe after a 10 foot fall.  Above, Dave engineered something pretty cool.  He succeeded.  Below, Karen and I went the "Mother Bird" route and just packed and padded the crap out of ours.  We failed.

Our day at The Tech was SO fun...as you can tell from all my exclamation points in describing the exhibits! ;)

We weren't far from Apple Park at this place in Silicon Valley, so we quick stopped there on the way home.

After an entire Saturday spent learning, we enjoyed a Sunday of relaxing at home.  Theoren introduced us to Drawful, the hilarious and interactive drawing game you all play together on your own devices.  We played this for HOURS.

And we took a so funny stroll down memory lane when we pulled out the old high school Octoberfest videos to giggle and exclaim over!  Our kids may not have been as amused as their parents, but oh the memories!

Monday was a day off, but the girls still had 6 hours of play practice on this day, so we made the best of it and brought the family in for a dress rehearsal sneak peek!  This actually worked out so great, as Karen and Theoren were going to miss the performance.  Love that they could still enjoy the run through!

Even with the fun food, the go-karts, the fancy tech exhibits, and the dazzle of the play, the best part of the long weekend was just the time to catch up and reconnect.  I've said before how thankful I am that our siblings are literally our best friends.  What a joy to watch our kids find this same satisfying friendship with their cousins!

Alice Videos

Since the pictures don't capture the catchy-ness of the songs, or the fun of the choreography, here are a few short videos too.

(A Stage Mom friend took this one and sent it to us.  As professional of a production as the kids give us on stage, they are still goofy, energetic, wiggly middle schoolers.  Here's a peek at what's happening behind the curtain during intermission at dress rehearsal!)