It's been a wonderful (and as usual busy) couple of weeks, but I finally have time to write about it all! I hope everyone had a fantastic Christmas!

Home for Christmas
Our Advent celebrations continued with daily scripture readings, lots of Christmas music, Christmas movie viewing, and last but not least lots of Christmas baking! I procrastinating cleaning by baking cookies, so our house was far from spotless and Daddy accused me of trying to turn them into fat hobbits, but the treats were met with rave reviews.


Daddy's family came to out to us this year, and rented a house near the ocean. It was great to see everyone and show them around our current location! We visited Fisherman's Wharf and the aquarium, spent some time on the rec trail (about a block from their rental house), had lunch on Cannery Row, and hiked Garrapata again. About the time we reached the peak, it started raining. The hike down was far less pleasant than the way up, but we have a great story to tell! The girls were very excited about trying out their new Camelbaks though! Of course, the novelty resulted in multiple trail side potty stops.

Most of the family at Fisherman's Wharf (Aunt S is the photographer)

It can be really tough to catch Monkey on camera, so I had to
share this great shot of her at Fisherman's Wharf!

Goose is trying out her new skates on the rec trail!

The girls also brought their new scooters to the rec trail.

All this, along with the usual Christmas traditions, of course: tamales for Christmas Eve, new PJs for the girls that night, and stockings and presents in the morning. We even had a Christmas tree--we brought the girls tree over to the rental and redecorated it in the living room. They were quite gleeful about pretending to be Grinches as they carried the tree, the ornaments, and all of our presents out of the house!

In addition to all the touristing and Christmassing, the family was also in town to witness Goose's first piano recital (she did a great job--no hesitation in stepping up to the piano in front of a whole crowd of people!) and to celebrate her birthday (on the same day as the recital, no less)! She was very excited about this birthday--being 5 years old opens up a whole slew of new activities that she was too little for before.

Daddy's family headed out the day before Christmas Eve, so it was just us for the holiday celebrations that Daddy dubbed "stockings and Star Wars." Over the course of those several days we did a movie marathon and watched all 6 Star Wars episodes with the girls (We're taking them to see Episode VII in the theater next week). We also pulled out some Christmas traditions from my family for our second Christmas: I evolved the Christmas Eve meal from crab soup to seafood chowder, but Christmas breakfast remained the same--breakfast casserole and Jesus birthday cake (coffee cake in a bundt pan). We also filled each other stockings (each family member spends $1 or less per person and sneaks a gift into each person's stocking). The girls bought gifts individually this year and loved it!

We were also excited because we got to celebrate Christmas Eve in our own church this year! (I actually think this may be the first time in our marriage that this has happened.) The service centered on the Advent Wreath, and our family presented and lit the Candle of Hope. Bug and Goose also said a brief prayer in unison to close our section of the service.

Happy New Year!
At the last minute we threw together a New Year's Eve celebration with girls: We watched a movie, ate snacks, and declared it a Happy New Year on East Coast time with a couple of Netflix countdowns.  No, we didn't trick our kids into thinking it was midnight; they knew we were celebrating at the same time Grandma and Granddad were. Plus, our trio would never make it to midnight happily, and Goose had a race the next morning.

The Resolution Run

All bundled up and ready to go!
It was unusually cold (32 degrees!)
when they set out this morning.

One of Goose's Christmas gifts was the entry fee for the Resolution Run--a 5k on New Year's Day. She was really excited to finally be old enough to run in a "real race" where they officially keep track of kids' times. She joined 900 runners (in the 5 and 10k combined) this morning and took a full minute off her PR to make it 35:09. When I asked her how the race went, she responded, "I passed a lot of people!" No kidding! She placed 172nd out of 633 total runners in the 5K; she was 79th out of 362 females of all ages; and 9th out of 20 females aged 12 and under. In fact, she was the youngest runner by a year, and the kids who placed ahead of her were all 9 years old and older. This girl can run!