We had such a full Christmas season of family visits, parties, concerts, shows, movies, games,
food, fun, music.
We spent a lot of time watching our current fav basketball player, #32. He's worked hard on getting more minutes playing and has had some great defense and several buckets. Love watching my kids play so much more than the "professionals".
I didn't get a pic of the Lauren Daigle concert I got to go to with a few friends, which was just beautiful, but here we are the next night getting a treat out with Nanny and Pa to see the Chosen Christmas movie. So good to get in the spirit of the holiday with music and the story of Jesus' birth.
The next night, we continued our holiday fun with our first time attending the Baker-hosted Asian Christmas party with families from her Bible Study. I enjoyed so much seeing old friends like my coworker Jenny- first time since pandemic started- and meet some really sweet people for the first time. Many of the children here skate with the girls and it's so nice to have some times Allie can be in the "majority" with lots of people who look like her.
The Bakers and Matt's parents kindly took the girls (this is church that morning) while I was taking the boys to a one day lacrosse tournament. I hadn't seen Joshua and Gray play lacrosse much lately and it was fun to cheer them on and see their improvements. Basketball and growing up even more has clearly had an impact on Joshua. The weather was beautiful and I even got to read a book between games. :)
Week 2 of December fun included watching Julia in her Christmas band concert. At the start of the school year, none of us- Julia included- were sure if she'd even be able to get a note out, but she has really picked it up and enjoyed memorizing the Christmas songs. She loves the band director so much.
The girls got covid shots-- Julia her 2nd and Allie her 1st. Between those and flu shots and boosters it feels like someone is always getting a vaccine these days.
Joshua's games start right after school so Gray usually just walks us over and meets whoever is watching. Nanny and Pa are great cheerleaders and Mimi and GG got to see one too.
We had a very Nutcracker week/weekend with rehearsals and performances 4 days in a row. Our little soldier charmed the crowd with her waves to us as she led her line of soldiers past and her little white bottom when she fell and stood up right in the spotlight. Loved watching her so much!
Julia really rose to the occasion in spite of some unusual circumstances. She wasn't supposed to do her doll solo till Saturday but found out she was going to do it Friday...while she was on the ice in her other costume, just a moment before her song. My favorite number was Julia and Addie's group skate. So cute and they got to show off some of their best skills. Another favorite moment was right before the synchronized skating team took the ice. One of Julia's sweet coaches, a beautiful senior in high school waved in our direction and I saw Gray wave back. I was thinking what in the world was that about, but turns out she was a helper in his math class. Who knew? I also loved watching Gray's friend Will as an audience member. It is a looong show and in typical teenage boy fashion, he survived by finding the humor in the mistakes, like the nutcracker doll falling over on the ice. It was such a great Hillsborough community event. It was a really full weekend and wore Allie out, but I felt so thankful to watch the beautiful skating together with several close friends. Having all our daughters out there doing the same thing they love is so much fun.
More parties! We did our annual ornament and cookie party at the Stewarts' house...but this year got to see some extended family of Matt's too, which was great and full of stories and laughs!
The next day, another party! The girls got to go to Nanny's for a Christmas tea! This was followed a few hours later by our annual adoption group Christmas party, at our house this year.
I put together a box of leftover Christmas decorations and let the kids make some of our guests into Christmas trees! One of the dads even had a decibel app to measure our clapping in order to choose a winner.
We played a few other games including a roll the dice and follow the directions game that had the dads telling a Christmas story of their own while holding their noses. :) We finished up with the traditional white elephant, but this year had a twist of rock, paper, scissors challenge if you want to steal a gift.
All that partying had us chilling in a box the next day. Sooo tired. We also learned that some of our crew can't handle two parties in a day. One of them woke us at 1 a.m. throwing up due to eating enough sweets for the whole family herself. Good times.
That night came the arrival of Rick (along with Mimi and GG) to start the Christmas celebration...though we clearly had been doing quite a bit of that already. :) We had dinner at Jeannie and Hunter's new house. It has already been so great to have them here and just drop in on each other every day, take walks, let the kids play, etc. We just need the rest of the family to move in the neighborhood!! :) Anyway, we had a delicious dinner and relaxed time to talk and catch up with Rick, whom we hadn't seen much (or at all? Everything runs together!) over the pandemic. We got a fun game on his phone that plays a song backwards, has you imitate it while it records you, then plays the recording forward so you can guess the song. Boy did we have some laughs with that! (Especially when Julia told us she thought we were speaking a real foreign language that somehow turned into English when played forward. Ummmm???)
Christmas Eve Matt gathered dads and sons for an epic afternoon of basketball in the park. They seemed to have a lot of fun and remained mostly uninjured. :)
Meanwhile, some of us non-ballers walked over to a place behind our neighborhood where the kids like to go see donkeys. I had never been and it was so cool to see!
Love this picture of one of the guardian donkeys in front with the sheep in perfect group formation behind, staring at us together. We had a big dinner that lots helped me cook at our house that evening, then played some games together with Christmas songs.
Christmas morning began with a big breakfast, zoom call with our cousins in South Korea and London, and The Chosen "Shepherd" episode before we opened gifts with Mimi and GrandGene and Rick. The kids did their thrift store gifts for each other again this year, which is proving more and more difficult for shopping for the big boys, but Matt helped Allie find this fun shirt.
Gray got his first phone!
Julia and Matt sadly got a bad cold and weren't feeling up to par Christmas Day...though Julia took a big turn for the better upon opening her ipod case and receiving her hand-me-down-from-Joshua-and-Gray ipod. She is thrilled to have a way to communicate with her extended family and friends on her own.
Joshua's big gift were these Air Jordans. He is such a shoe guy and will only wear these on select special occasions. Can't say I really get it.
Allie wanted this bike a year ago but wasn't big enough for it. She was excited to receive this year, but a little scared because it is still pretty big for her. Her favorite gift is pictured below...
Mimi got a surprise gift from GrandGene- a beautiful SC necklace.
And we got these for them, since they now have 6 grandchildren that are/will be Orange students. We got some for Nanny and Pa too, but didn't get a pic.
And here it is...the sloth electric toothbrush. An afterthought when I saw it on clearance months ago. Her favorite gift.
Jeannie took this pic of all of us (Joshua somehow evaded this) to send to friends of Rick in Europe. This was our first year staying here the whole Christmas holiday and I kinda loved it. The kids were a little reluctant to give up going to Mimi and GrandGene's, but once they got here were fine with it. We just missed having the Leightons! I really enjoyed walking the neighborhood with GrandGene and Jeannie, getting a lot of relaxed family time, playing games, and floating around between our house and Jeannie's, and later, Nanny and Pa's...
We went to Nanny and Pa's for Christmas dinner. This was not the beautiful Christmas photo of the kids I had in mind, but it's all we got this year!
Stacy was great to set up Minute to Win it games with matchups selected for all the family. Here Andre and Matt are attempting to move cotton balls with only their vaseline covered noses. Matt exhausted his vaseline and had to resort to snorting them in to transfer them. Lots of great entertainment!
Lydia and Pa had to move the cotton balls with a spoon in their mouths. Post games, we had a nice big dinner and opened many gifts. It was a big crowd this year with the addition of some significant others of the young people and Grandma and David. Nice to see everyone, but sad that Matt didn't stay long due to his cold.
Another attempt at a beautiful family photo before Mimi and GrandGene hit the road. Don't look too closely. :)
This second week of Christmas break has begun strangely, though I guess typical for "covid times". We had the "is it a cold or covid" angst about Julia and Matt's sickness and weren't able to get a test till Monday, with the results not coming in till Tuesday night. Lots of "what if" and "should we/shouldn't we" stuff till we got that negative! I was also down and out yesterday with lots of body aches and chills due to my covid booster. I had been cleaning out and getting organized around the house, but screeched to a halt and just laid int he bed for a day. Thankfully today we are back on track and celebrating Julia's birthday as planned! Ready to enjoy the rest of our break.
