California Christmas

 We are off to England for Christmas, and Melanie and Nick are heading back East on Tuesday to celebrate with his family. 

Therefore, we held our California family Christmas on Saturday, with food, fun, gifts and a cider-making contest.

Along with Grandma, Grandpa, Mel and Nick, we were joined by Uncle Bill and Aunt Patty.

 Stace and I had the girls open some of their gifts from us on Saturday, and we'll take some others to England. We let them open up their newest Beanie Boos, a sparkly dolphin for Violet and a raccoon for Cora.

 Cora experienced the joy of watching others open her gifts to them - she gave me a necklace with bird pendant, because I love bird-spotting, and to Stace she gave a bag of one of his favorite treats.

















You spend money on gifts, and all they want to play with is the box - or bag.

Spence and Seb received some lovely gifts, too, from Grandma and Grandpa. We were reminded how much Spencer loves catnip!

 The other fun of the evening involved fermented apple juice. Bill and Patty, and Stacey, spent hours juicing apples to create their blends, which then fermented for weeks.

On the day of the contest, a surprise entry came in, from my mom.

Nick, Melanie and my Dad participated in a blind tasting, and each chose a different brew. Therefore, a new judge was needed. Because Stace, me, Bill and Patty knew the tastes of the ciders too well to judge, we brought in my mom.

To her later shame, she (unknowingly) chose her own cider as the winner.

You can see Bill's shock and horror when he removed the label from the bottle brought in by my parents, only to find ANOTHER label. It was store-bought!

We all had a good laugh, and my mom went home with the coveted tin mug that represents the cider-contest trophy.