Merry Christmas

Christmas is always a favorite time.  We do most of our celebrating with family on Christmas Eve.  We get together with Grammie and GranDad and cousins.  This year my Sister-in-law came from France.  It's been six years since I've seen her.  The last time she say My Girl she was only a couple of weeks old.  A lot changes in six years.

 

On GranDad's request we had a little Christmas concert.  We took our keyboard over and the kids played a few of the songs they have been learning.  They have been taking lessons for a few months now and did a great job.  Buddy Boy's favorite was Carol of the Bells.

 

My Girls opted for the glockenspiel for one of her songs.  There may have even been a bit of a dance party once the kids started playing with the self-playing features on the keyboard.

 GranDad documented the evening's events.

After a delicious dinner we opened a few presents.  Anything sparkly is always well received.

Buddy Boy got vintage opera glasses from France.  They are perfect for the boy who requested spy gear.

 

Christmas morning was also nice.  Buddy Boy was pleased with his gift of cold hard cash.  He asked for either $600 or an ipad.  He didn't get either of those, but this was a start.

 

 

 My Girl requested a Dora Rocks guitar.  She still dreams of being a rock star.

The rest of the day was spent like this...

and this...

We stayed home since My Girl had a stomach bug that bothered her all day.  It wasn't any fun to have a sick kid, but at least we were able to spend a relaxing day at home.

Christmas preparations

We spent a bit of time getting ready for the holidays.  Buddy Boy helped with the lights, all five strings of them.

 

He proceeded to put on the Christmas stockings.

This wasn't the first time.

2008

 

One evening while Buddy Boy and Dad were watching the Empire Strikes Back, My Girl insisted on making graham cracker houses.  We had some frosting left from the Birthday celebrations and had a collection of sprinkles, marshmallows, and a few candy canes.  This is what we did.

 

We had a little party at church.  After dinner there was a fun program.  It started with Five Strummers Strumming.  The two on the right introduced the kids to Rawhide years ago at a summer pioneer program.  They still sing it.

 

Then the kids did a Nativity play.  It started with the younger kids singing as the stars.  Then the familiar story.

 

We had several mischievous shepherds and a flock of hungry sheep.  The oldest girls all wanted to be the sheep.  My favorites were the angels.  Such a cast of characters.

Live Nativity

For years I've heard of friends visiting the live nativity sponsored by a local church, but we had never been, until this year.

The kids got to sign the census and pay "taxes".  Camels don't come cheap.

 

There was a metal worker, a pottery station, a jewelry station, and booths for food, wine making (plastic grapes, thankfully), wood working, perfume, spinning wool, and others I'm forgetting.

 

The first wise man rode a real camel.  Quite an impressive beast, but even outside you can sure smell them.  Every half hour the story starts again as the wise men, Mary and Joseph make their way to different parts of the city and finally to the stable.

The kids and I had a great time.  It earned an enthusiastic thumbs up.  It is already on the calendar for next year.

 

Merry Christmas!

Christmas party party party

Here are (more than) a few pics of our Christmas fun.

 

School Christmas music programs.  Dad and I had to divide and conquer on this one.  Both schools had their programs at the same time.  I took the The preschool has some really cute songs.

 

Graham cracker gingerbread house/castle building.

Snow cake designing and constrution.  My Girl has been planning to bring a Christmas cake to our Christmas Eve party for weeks, but didn't come up with the final design until that morning.  I did my best, but I don't have the pans for a proper stacked cake.  Something was also funny about the royal icing I made.  It never really set up.  That may have been due to the extremely high humidity lately or a faulty recipe.  Most of the snowflakes crumbled, but I managed to save enough for the cake. 

 

Snow flakes made from the left over house icing.

Edible markers left over from Halloween made great marshmallow snowmen.

The snow cake with the malva pudding and stollen in the background.  That topped of the chioppino - crab feast.  Always delicious.

Here is my yard tub with the 3.5 inches of rain we got from Friday night to Sunday afternoon.  By Wednesday afternoon we were up to 4.75 inches.  Not exactly accurate, but any way to stack it, that's a lot of rain.

 

Buddy Boy modeling my nephew's top hat.  It isn't a costume really.  But my nephew's 13 so you can't really tell what he's thinking.  He wears it to school and and around town.  It's a lot of look on a gangly kid.

 

 

The kids got stuffed toys made by by other nephew, the 11 year old.  The kids named them Tuff-Tuff and Ding-Dong.  Very cute and much loved.

 

                                         

 

Spy gear night vision goggles came with the laser trip wire, which was carefully set up later that night to see if they could catch Santa.

Santa brought roller skates.

and Heroica Legos, which are apparently not carried in any store anywhere.  Thank heaven for Amazon resellers.

and carboard.  Really, it was on the list.

 

See.. Here's the list for the Good kid.

 

My wish list

Dora cup and dish set

Cinderella bike

cardboard

beachball

roller skate - Good kid.

My Girl got a RC car for Buddy Boy.  He quickly turned it into more spy gear.  I won't show you the movies.  It's fifteen minutes of shaky carpet and ankles.

 

So that wraps it up.  It was a great Christmas.

Temple lights

We went to Oakland to see the lights on Temple Hill.  We got there before dark.  It reminded me of the day we were married there, wintery, slightly overcast, late afternoon.  We checked out the visitor's center and went up on top of the temple.  This is the only temple that I am aware of that has a roof garden.  It's beautiful.

I told the kids that on the day we were married we sat on this bench and had our picture taken.  Buddy Boy took this photo.

Have we changed much in the past nine years?

Us...

Them... You can see where they get it.

It was a fun afternoon.

After a nearby dinner we headed back to see the lights...

...and run around the fountain some more.