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...

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 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.

Week in Review

My church nursery friend Briana held a birthday party for her son Saturday at an indoor Nerf gun place, and I took Cora along because I figured she'd like it. She did!

Cora and Violet love Nerf guns, and with the black light, it also was similar to laser tag, which Cora loves.

On Sunday, I picked up this gigantic cat tree from a friend whose cat didn't use it anymore.

We vaccuumed it and sprayed it with Nature's Miracle, to try to remove as much "other cat" scent as possible, and it seemed to work.

Both boys have taken to it!

Stace had a great review at work, so we celebrated with dinner out at Presto Pasta.

Violet had her class party Thursday afternoon. She had fun decorating/eating her cookie!

The kids also made cards - here's Vi with her friends Cayden and Santiago.

Christmas Shows

Violet had her holiday chorus concert Wednesday night. Before it began, Stace joined the other parents getting photos up close, but Violet was having none of it.

You can see Melanie and Camryn's reaction to Violet's refusal to look at her dad.

The concert was sweet, with Christmas songs by the chorus and the orchestra.

We then went to the Canyon Theatre Guild to watch Elf: The Musical, with our friend George as the lead, Buddy the Elf.

He and Melanie have been friends for almost 15 years, after being in lots of shows together. He was so excited to see her and her pregnant belly!

The show was hilarious, and we all loved it.

Christina and her girls came too, along with Christina's sister Tiffany. It was a fun, Christmassy night for all!