Happy New Year!! Time to blog about December 2015. Oh boy. This is going to be a picture-full post since I had my camera out a lot taking pictures of our advent activities, plus my birthday, plus Christmas. Such a busy month!
This is the collage of my most "liked" pictures of 2015 on Instagram. I think I see a theme. Roz has been the main focus of the year. That and the other kids being little weirdos. Sounds about right.
Here are a couple cute baby pictures before getting into the advent calendar stuff.
Blue-eyed sweetie. She's been smiling so much! We're all wondering if she's smilier than the others. I doubt it, but with the attention of her two favorite little people, she has a lot to smile about.
To cut down on the picture dump, I made some collages of our advent adventures:
First we decorated: 1) Make snowflakes 2) Make popcorn wreaths 3) Make tissue paper ornaments 4) Downtown Atascadero tree lighting/see (wave at from a distance) Santa (Everett's shy around Santa) 5) See tall ship/musical holiday walk around the lake
Everett shouting, "I'm the king of the world!" Still not sure where he picked that up. We haven't been watching Titanic. I felt like a genius heading to this park directly after seeing the tall ship, so they could actually play safely on a ship.
More decorating: 6) Get a tree/decorate while watching Elf 7) Cosmic Kids Yoga (the polar bear one and the penguin one--which upset Everett because penguins don't live in the North Pole. Oops!!--but yoga lady Jaime made the same mistake!)
Taking a break to share Everett's Superstar board! He was the Superstar in his class the last week before the break. It was really fun and made him feel very special. There were 10 photos total, but I took this picture Monday when we went in for his conference (he's doing great!). Second picture are the 10 pictures he chose to share (from the extra photos in the collage box).
8) Make glass and crayon ornaments 9) Make pomander balls
Getting ready for my birthday party: 10) Make cookies (with Aunt Sue!!) 11) Decorate cookies 12) Decorate gingerbread houses!
13) Cambria Christmas Market 14) Donate Toy 15) Donate food 16) Make a card for a friend 17) Pick out yarn for crocheted Christmas gifts 18) Drive to look at Christmas lights 19) Watch animals at zoo open presents (meet Santa!) 20) Make gifts for the birds 21) Fire and roasting marshmallows for the solstice 22) Make a card for Mike the mailman 23) Wrap presents 24) Make snacks for Santa
As you can see, I couldn't keep up with pictures every day. And I'm ok with that.
I turned 33! We threw a gingerbread house decorating party! It was so fun.
Rachel was smart to take a picture of us. Moms sometimes don't get in the pictures otherwise. And if there are no pictures, were we actually there?!?
As usual, we couldn't have done it without our parents' help. My mom and Aunt Sue especially had a great time shopping for candies and other necessary items.
Aunt Sue came to the genius realization that it's a pain to travel here from Colorado for Thanksgiving or Christmas, so she comes for a week at my birthday, helps celebrate, helps decorate and get festive (last year she helped us decorate our tree, this year we wanted that done before the party).
Cousin Bob also came back to visit, so glad he was able to share in the celebrations.
My mom made sure I got a pineapple upside down cake, even if we had to wait a day. They gave me a super comfy blanket too.
Couple cute miscellaneous pictures.
Everett and his friends being silly on the disc golf course. A mushroom and angels according to Brian.
I wanted to jot down a couple things Lydia has been saying. "Check it out!" and "that's funny?" She's trying to figure out what is and isn't funny. She cracks us up all the time, so "yes, funny."
It's finally time for Christmas pictures!! Phil and Gion had us over Christmas Eve for pizza and gifts!
The kids were such fun ages for Christmas this year. Everett totally gets Santa and receiving gifts. And he was excited about everything he got. He's still working on generosity and giving, but we're getting there. His teacher told them, "Christmas is about giving not getting," which actually really helped with his outlook. Lydia was basically surprised by Christmas. We tried to explain what would happen, but she had no frame of reference. She kept asking Gion if she could take her gifts home to her house. Roz couldn't even rip gift wrap, but she enjoyed watching the commotion.
We missed Auntie Katie, but she sent awesome gifts, and we thought of her often throughout the evening.
Christmas morning at our house! I thought they'd dig into their gifts first thing, but they were so busy playing with their gifts from the night before, we eventually had to say, "ok, we have gifts to open!" I over-think Santa, that's just something I do. I'm not even sure I feel comfortable "doing" Santa at all. In previous years he's brought a little something from the antique store. But that wasn't going to fly this year, especially with Everett. So Lydia got a stuffed rabbit, since she'd asked Cory the Santa for a "babbit." Everett got something he had been asking for, a transforming Ninja Turtle, and he decided that Santa must have read his mind because it was a gift he really wanted but didn't write on his list.
This is his list. It says: "Dear Santa Claus, I want a crane and a boxcar and a garbage truck and two circuits: one an airplane one, and two a one that has a blue light."
Those are all really big gifts! And I like Santa to bring smaller things. He got about half of what's on the list from his grandparents and us.
Rozzy surveying the scene. Besides a couple of gifts for each other, we also had gifts from Wendy and Ash and Dixie and Jason to open! Lucky, spoiled people we are.
After gifts at our house, we went to my parents' house for brunch and more gifts! Oh boy! Roz just scratch, scratching on her big gift. We know how incredibly lucky we are to be so close to our families who we enjoy spending time with.
Phil and Gion invited us all over for a delicious Christmas dinner and some relaxing crocheting and reading time (you can just barely see Rosalind's head under the table).
Singing Christmas carols together, Everett proving he can build Lego sets for two full days in a row, trying out the disc golf bags I made the kids (get out of the house and take a break from Legos!!), and playing with Christmas toys--adding a new Hot Wheels set to and old one.
A picture from seeing Star Wars at the drive-in. And a family selfie from New Years Eve. Happy New Year!! On Monday, Phil and Gion made it possible for us to go to the theater to see Star Wars and then to sushi at Toshi's. It was a really lovely afternoon/evening. Then on Wednesday, Phil and Gion kept Lydia overnight so we could take Everett to see Star Wars at Sunset Drive-In in SLO. It was great. The perfect choice since he had so many questions (he had just seen the original three for the first time), we knew what was going on, and it was actually really warm and comfy in the car.
2016 should be a great year. No more pregnancy and three kids to focus on and have fun with!
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