Introducing...

 After two days in the hospital, my sister gave birth to my beautiful new niece Eloise Iris on Wednesday morning, the first birth of the year at Henry Mayo. She's a big girl - 9 pounds, 5 ounces and almost 22 inches long!

 And, she's beautiful.

Violet is absolutely in love! She can't wait to be old enough to babysit.

Since I'm 9 years older than Melanie, it was sweet for me to see her with her. So much like me at that age - I was so excited and proud to finally be a big sister.

Awwww!

Birthday Fun

My birthday came around again, and JT, Callie and Jonah came out to celebrate with me. We met Stace for lunch at Egg Plantation - gotta get your free omelette when you can!

You might notice Cora missing - sadly, she'd been up sick the night before, all night long. She spent Friday in bed. We all took turns with food poisoning or a tummy bug this week.

After our lovely lunch, we went over to Hart Park. We walked up to the mansion, mainly to check out the bison.

I've loved this lady for over 20 years! And, it was 20 years ago she joined me and some other friends and family on an epic 21st birthday trip to Vegas. Good times.

This young lady is pretty darn special, too. She is so loving and sweet, especially when she gets some time with Mom or Dad without her sister around.

Later, we got a snack at the Habit, and got a cake mix and frosting at Ralphs. Violet had a plan! She made me a yummy cake, though she didn't like how it looked so we didn't get an official photo with it.

JT got me a perfect birthday card!

Later, we went out for Chinese at Mandarin Wong, one of the oldest restaurants in Santa Clarita. My parents met us, but we forgot to get a photo! We really enjoyed the food and the experience - I think we have a new favorite!

New Year Happenings

On Monday, we'd eaten out, and Violet and Stace both were sick that night. Violet ended up with a low fever and fatigue for much of Tuesday, leading us to cancel the New Year's Eve plans we'd made with JT and Jim.

By Tuesday evening, after some more ibuprofen, Violet was up enough to come out and play our new game Splendor with us. We then watched one of the Men in Black movies.

On Thursday, we went back to the Ice Station with Cora's girlfriends. It worked out so well that all of her favorite girls could make it!

Victoria was able to come, too, which made Violet so happy.

I'm so, so happy that Cora is developing friendships with these sweet young ladies.

Christmas Break Tidbits

The day after Christmas, we decided to go ice skating. Cora's friend Violet was free and able to join us - yay!

They still had the Christmas music playing, so Stace fit right in with his Santa hat.

We'd had a cold storm in the region, dropping the snow levels low. Our valley was even more beautiful than normal!

We happily received and purchased several board games for Christmas. With the girls getting older, we're hoping for some new family activities we can do together, and we had a lot of fun playing games at Thanksgiving with my Washington family.

With a new Star Wars movie out, we rewatched the 7th and 8th installments at home, and then watched the 9th movie in the theater. We all loved it.

Stace and Violet went on a long bike ride, played tennis, and visited the ducks at Bridgeport.

Cora tested for, and was awarded, her orange belt in karate.

Moving on up! We're proud of you, Cora!

We also took the girls back to MB2 Raceway.

Go, girls, go!

Here was our Winter Break Bucket List - we hit most of them.

Christmas Fun

 Christmas evening was fun, with gifts, a big meal, dessert and a family game.

 Our last Christmas with Melanie and Nick, pre-children - kind of! That child was certainly part of our celebration, kicking her mama from the inside throughout the night.

 We gave Eloise this big, which Mel mistook for a pope hat. Nope.

 Violet was happy to get a mini Google speaker for her room, so she can play music and set an alarm. Oh, wait, she's not actually excited about setting an alarm...

!

 Cider!

 Oh, the yum. Not shown: the other half of the meal!

 We laughed our way through Stace's silly video of himself and his co-workers as Elves. Oh, and we watched the movie Elf, too.

And to cap the night, we played and laughed our way through Telestrations.

Merry Christmas!

Christmas Eve and Morn

 We finally did our traditional walk around the neighborhood, tallying te houses street-by-street that are decorated for Christmas.

This helped cheer us up a little after we'd found out that Nan and Pop weren't going to be able to join us for the holidays due to illness. So sad! Thank goodness, again, for Skype/WhatsApp.

 On Christmas Eve, Melanie came over to bake cookies. All was going well, until we smelled a weird plastic-burning odor. Turns out Mel, in the throes of pregnancy brain, thought our Ikea cutting board was a silicone baking mat (shown behind the failed cookie attempt.

This was the funny part - all else went well and it was a great afternoon.

 We enjoyed church in the evening, and then watched It's a Wonderful Life before bed.

In the morning, we had fun watching the girls open their "big" gifts, with Nan and Pop taking part via Skype. Violet got a new bike!

 She loves her new geared mountain bike, which should last her into her teenage years.

And Cora got her first laptop, perfect for writing the books she's always working on, and for playing Roblox online with her friends.

Magical Fun

 One of the perks of being related to the Witch and Mrs. Claus is getting to go to employee special nights at Magic. Last week, employees were allowed to bring a guest to the unveiling of a long-awaited new ride, West Coast Racers.

My mom took her favorite thrill-seeker.

Even with it being an employee night, the line took an hour.

Cora said it was a fantastic ride! I'm looking forward to going, myself, someday.

Also, two other attractions were open, one being the bungee jump ride that normally costs $10.  Because of the cost, we've never done it before, but Cora made sure she was practically first in line. Here's my dad's video of the fun - not for the faint of heart!

Earlier this month, we all went along to the employee family Christmas party. This is a great night for us all - Cora especially loved walking onto Twisted Colossus. 

She even convinced Stace to ride with her, after I had my turn.

Christmas Fun

Christmas time is full of fun activities and traditions!

I had fun with my Mom2Mom friends on a recent Friday night at our annual cookie night and potluck. We ate, had a gift exchange game and of course traded cookies. The girls were excited about the indoor snowballs I got in the gift game, perfect for family warfare.

Tiffany had our Meadows mommy group over for appetizers and fun on another night.

And this past Friday night, my Mom2Mom friend Charlotte invited us to her annual Christmas party - it was lovely! Stace and I got caught up with Kristen and her husband Shannon, who we haven't seen in a while because they moved to Orange County.

Another tradition is Stace creating a lawn ornament decoration - this year, he and Violet made several!

They thought of Christmas mice, and Violet made them small, to stay in scale with the others. Didn't she do a fabulous job painting them?

They also made a Christmas tree, complete with lights.

So festive!

And, we decorated indoors too. Our tradition has been to let the girls do the tree, and so they did.

Merry Christmas!

Finally, we've been going to Rachael's gingerbread house party for a few years. My girls do an amazing job on their houses! These girls are meticulous.