At Euan's house

On Wednesday, Stace watched the three cousins so that Sue, Jenny and I could go out shopping.

I don't know who had more fun with Euan's birthday present, this detailed farm set - the children or Stace. He and Cora had quite an involved game going on when we ladies returned to Dean and Jen's home.

 Stace also took the little ones to the playground a few doors up from Euan's house.

The week before, we all went into Yeovil and Violet fell asleep in the car. Nothing that Prince Euan couldn't fix with a kiss.

That's about the only kind of kiss Violet's been giving out, sadly. Our affectionate sweet toddler has been acting very 2 1/2 lately, saying "no" to nearly everything, especially to requests for kisses and hugs.
I think the word "no" is preferable to her favorite word before we came to England - "poo poo." Well, hmmm... Maybe they're equally annoying.

Family time

 We've collected some nice photographs of the family over the past 10 days. In no particular order, here they are...

 

 
This was from New Year's Day at Clarks Village, a shopping center with outlets in the nearby town of Street. It's a fun place to visit with Christmas money in hand.

This year we purchased Cora her first pair of Clarks boots, and a new suitcase. Cora spent some money she earned by doing chores for Nanny and Pop, at the Cadbury's shop. And we all had a nice lunch and coffees.

It was a very pleasant day out, and nice and dry for a change. (England has experienced lots of flooding over the past couple of months, and the levels/moors look like lakes. It seems like it has barely stopped raining since our wet June trip.)

New Year's Eve

 As is our tradition, we spent our New Year's Eve night at Dean and Jenny's, with all our family and Jenny's family.

We eat, drink, and generally make merry in a very family-friendly type of way; this year we had four children under 10. And this year, for the first time, everyone stayed awake to see in 2013, even the 2 1/2-year-old and new 3-year-old.

The favorite part of the party for our favorite 2 1/2-year-old was the doughnut and other cakes. This kid and her sweet tooth!

Stace and the girls and I spent the night, and the girls slept very well. Actually, since I last blogged, everyone has slept very well. 

 Cora has been playing Nanny's Wii every day, and she is surprisingly excellent at the sports. She even gave Matthew, Jenny's nephew, a run for his money at bowling, tennis and golf.

 Violet and Euan, cousins and friends. Euan has a little toy vacuum/hoover, and in it is a mini dustpan and brush. Thankfully Dean had a real dustpan and brush for Violet, so they could each happily brush all the party-goers without fighting over the brush.

 Cora and Matty also had fun playing the Star Wars version of Angry Birds.

Just after the countdown to 2013 - I'm getting used to watching the party from London, rather than the "ball dropping" in New York City.

Happy New Year to all our friends and family... may 2013 be a blessed time for all of you.

Christmas in England

On Christmas Day, we visited Big Nan at her new home in Somerton, a residential home where she is very well looked after.

Cora read to her the letter Santa left, which explained that he had delivered her No. 1 request to her Valencia home.

Yes, we are now the proud owners of a cotton candy machine. (Thanks, Juliana and Maya, for the brilliant idea...)

(Another sidenote: listening to Cora read her letter aloud gave us all such an amazing feeling. Cora's reading has advanced leaps and bounds over the last few weeks.)

 We celebrated Christmas twice in England, with a lovely roasted pork dinner on Tuesday and a larger family celebration (and turkey dinner) on Boxing Day. That's when Big Nan and Dean, Jenny and Euan joined us here at Nan and Pop's house.

 Here we are after the meal and the Christmas crackers, while the little ones rested upstairs watching an Ice Age Christmas special DVD.

 Then it was time for presents! In this scene, the children are opening up gifts from Dean and Jenny - Tinkerbell costumes for the girls and a sword/shield set for Euan.









Our fairies looked so cute. I hope the costumes still fit next October!



















All tired out from the celebrating...

We've had an interesting few nights of sleep this trip. Amazingly, both girls slept through the night our first night here. The next night wasn't any good, though.

Wednesday night wasn't too bad, with Violet waking up a couple of times but settling down quickly. On Thursday night, jet lag hit Cora hard, and she was wide awake for several hours. Meanwhile, Violet slept thoroughly, from 8 p.m. until 10 a.m.

But, on Friday she didn't get a nap during the day as we were out and about. Friday night, Cora slept fine, and Violet was awake from 2:30 a.m. until about 8 a.m. Hopefully we'll all get on track now! 

Christmas Travels

 We're on our biannual trip to England to visit our family and friends, and every good trip starts off with Grandpa taking us to LAX and then taking a "ready to fly" photo.

The girls were so excited this time around about going to see everyone, and both had fun helping us pack our bags. They talked for days about when we'd be leaving, what we'd do on the airplane, and who we'd be seeing in England.

We'll have to get Violet her own little suitcase - she really liked pulling Cora's Dora case, and Cora wasn't always thrilled to let her. I think it's time for Cora to have a more "big girl" case anyway, so perhaps we'll pass the Dora case to Violet.

 As we were in line at the Air New Zealand counter, we learned the disappointing news that our plane was to be three hours late because of electrical trouble.

We always check to see when Sue and Gord's plane is going to land, but somehow we didn't think Sunday morning to check if our departure was going to be on time.

 At least the airline comped us for $20 each for a meal at one of the terminal's eateries. Of course, that only sounds like a lot of money until you get into those eateries...

Still, we were glad for the meal and the diversion, with several hours to kill with an un-napped toddler.

 For once, all those diversions we packed into our carry-on luggage came in handy. (Typically, the personal television systems on our long-haul flights serve to entertain the girls, and we don't need all the books/coloring/games.)

I was glad we brought the laptop, too. Free wifi let me update the ol' blog, and gave the girls some youtube time when they were squirmy.

We were more than pleased with Air New Zealand. The girls and I shared a "skycouch," the term they give three window seats that have flip-up leg rests, forming a solid couch space for lying down on. I was actually able to lie down flat in economy - imagine that!

And for the first time in years, Violet fell asleep four hours into our flight, instead of waiting until eight hours in. She didn't stay asleep the whole time, but did get a good four-hour nap. Cora slept, too. Hallelujah!

So, our trip in was very smooth. Gord and Dean drove the girls home from Heathrow, and Stace and I took the rails. With the long delay at LAX, we were late for the train we had purchased advance tickets for, but a charitable employee at Waterloo Station stamped our tickets as a Christmas good deed, so we could take the next train. Such a good start to our holiday!

California Christmas

 On Saturday, after packing for our trip to England, we had family and friends over for our California Christmas celebration.

We hosted Uncle Bill and Aunt Patty, cousins William and Elizabeth (and Jerry of course!), Grandma and Grandpa and Auntie Mel, and the Roberts. Patty made a giant lasagna and sausages, Genia brought salad and Mel made garlic bread. 

Here, Uncle Bill plays bingo with Johnny.

 The five children had their own gift exchange game, where they passed around presents while John played music. When the music stopped, each child unwrapped one layer of wrapping paper from the gft s/he was holding. There were five layers of paper, and therefore five rounds of gift-passing.

 Dear Genia - best neighbors we could hope for!

 After dinner, we opened crackers...

 ...before we opened gifts. Cora was very pleased with her own version of Annie, one of Ave's very favorite movies. Here, Johnny is bursting into the photo to show off his new Transformers mask.

 Then the grownups played a White Elephant gift exchange game, filled with lots of laughter.

Beautiful cousins.
Our night was so much fun, and we owe lots of thanks to everyone who came and helped cook and clean up! We love you all and Merry Christmas!

Christmas fun

 The weeks leading up to Christmas have been full of Christmas fun.

On Saturday evening, after a Christmas  party at Colleen and Rigo's, we got together with my parents, Melanie and Nick. Since Nick was flying out to his family on the East Coast in the week, we met up early to look at Christmas lights and to exchange presents.

Here, the girls try out their new animal hats, courtesy of Grandma and Grandpa.

 A group shot while looking at pretty Christmas lights, one of our favorite family traditions.

 Later in the week, William flew down from Washington to visit Uncle Bill and Aunt Patty. Since he's been at college, far from the Rosen's old neighborhood, we haven't been able to see him much.

 So, I took the girls up to visit on Wednesday after school. Cora, Will and Uncle Bill went on a nice walk around the neighborhood and to the beach, so Cora could use her new roller skates. These were a present from me and Stace.










We also made Christmas ornaments and candies. It was a lot of fun!

 That night, we had Pioneer Club, and here are Owen an Violet dancing and singing along with the big kids on stage.

(Owen has a cast because he fractured a bone in his wrist during our Cookies with Santa event.)

 On Friday, Cora's class decorated gingerbread houses. Every student needed an adult helper, and Grandma was able to come and help for a little while before she went off to Magic Mountain to pose as Mrs. Claus.

Here, Cora poses with her classmate Gabe and his little sister Sarah.

Cora has many plates of candy in front of her, because she was the very last student to finish her house. She had a plan, and she was very careful in what candy went where. 

After school, we all went to the park for lunch and playtime.

Now, we have three weeks off from school! What will we do with ourselves? I know! We'll fly to England!

A good week

 Here are some odds and ends from our week...
On Sunday morning after church, Stace paid the local gardeners $2 each to rake the leaves on the patio.
(Where we live, yes, the leaves fall in December. Or at least the ones in our yard do...)

Ave and Cora worked hard for their money. Violet enjoyed sweeping too, though she doesn't quite get the concept of aiming the leaves toward the growing pile.

 On Tuesday afternoon, we visited Juliana, Maya and Natalia for lunch. We had a great time catching up, as always.

The girls got along so well - even the toddlers! Violet and Natalia had a great time together, were happy to see each other and avoided getting into squabbles.

As you can see, the big girls spent some time beautifying themselves, with nail polish, dresses and makeup. I'm really not sure where Cora gets this particular pose from, but she does do it a lot.

Whoa, Nellie, they were made up!

On the way home, Cora told me that she doesn't like dressing up like a princess anymore, but this was different, because these were beautiful fancy dresses. (She did add, though, that she still likes wearing her Ariel dress.)

On Thursday, Violet's class held a Christmas party. Here, Liana and Violet enjoyed the feasting - cookies and oranges, two of the four food groups for us lately!

This class marked the end of the fall session, so here Violet poses with Ms. Diane. I'm happy that Violet loves her as much as Cora did (and I do!).

 On Friday, Genia and the kids came over after lunch to watch Christmas movies and make some goodies.

Spencer got a lot of love. Sebastian stayed quietly hidden in our bedroom, as he tends to do when the house fills with noisy children.

 OK, this should be an interesting candid photo of the girls dipping pretzel rods into white chocolate and candies.

Or, it should be a happy shot of them smiling, while doing the same.

But Violet did something to annoy Cora as I snapped the pic, and this one just makes me laugh. Sisters!

 On Saturday, after Cora's final soccer class of the year, we four went out to lunch together and then braved the masses at Target for some Christmas shopping.

Here, the girls were helping pick out presents for a few of their friends.

And here, Violet said she found the perfect gift for her best mate Owen. Owen would look smashing in a sparkly turquoise top, don't you think?