Skip to main content

Christmas, Part 2

Once we made it Grammie and Grandpa's house, it was smooth sailing! The girls LOVED the sunshine and we took as many opportunities as we could to play outside and soak up some Vitamin D! 

Hard at work picking oranges for a snack.
Taking a tractor tour around the Orchard.
We walked to a nearby park and tried out the see-saw.
Zonked out after the park and ready for a nap!
We are starting a tradition of baking Christmas cookies and Evie once again loved helping Grammie make these treats. This year, we made Gingerbread cookies. No need for sprinkles this time, but she liked cutting out little baby Jesus' just the same. 



On Christmas Eve morning, we took our annual walk through town and then horsed around some more outside before dinner. Seattle supposedly got some snow showers so we were very happy to bask in the sunshine! 
All smiles in my Christmas red!
Matching Christmas dresses!
Playing outside with treasures found in the garden.

Nora and Daddy

That evening, Scott's extended family came over for dinner. It was a big crew this year with some folks driving in from Mexico for the holidays! As always, it was a yummy dinner and it was so nice for the girls to see everyone. Evie only vaguely remembered her cousins (once removed) but  warmed up to them right away and was chattering happily pretty quickly, and even fell asleep against Aunt Susie! 

Apps before dinner

Nora was a bit shy and stuck close to Mom and Dad.
After dinner, we made sure to leave Santa some cookies and milk.

I'm sad I didn't get pictures of the girls unwrapping their gifts Christmas morning, but trust me when I say they had fun. :)

Eagerly waiting for the unwrapping to begin!
Enjoying a ride on one of her new presents!

Comments

Popular posts from this blog

Family time

I had to do a quick trip to LA towards the end of July to say goodbye to my Uncle Pang, who passed away a few weeks earlier. I have fond memories of fun cousin time at his house in Palos Verdes and Uncle Pang taking us to the beach when we were younger. I remember how he delighted in making us kids squeal with laughter by pretending the car ride was a rolleroaster - we'd take sharp turns and all of us kids would slide to one side of his Volvo station wagon or he'd slow the car down to a roll and we'd all chant that we couldn't let the car stop and it would inch slowly forward at a stoplight.  Although it was a sad reason to get together, I think he would be happy to know that the weekend was also a wonderful get together with family. Because it was fairly last minute, none of the kids flew over which meant us "adult cousins" were able to have long talks and linger over food. Kin and Meredith were able to host a summertime bbq at their house and we had a nice t

Japan trip

We got back from Japan about a week ago and we're still talking about what a great trip it was!  Japan has never been super high on my places to visit but for a lot of reasons (I've never been, it's clean, it's safe, it's different) we took the plunge and booked it as our summer vacation this year. It helped that our friends, the Wongs, went last year, raved about it and loved it so much they were going again and we were able to coordinate so that some of our trip overlapped with theirs. It helped even more that the yen is at a 10-year low (maybe all time low?) against the dollar, which, aside from airfare, made everything quite affordable.  Look how low the yen is! We lucked out that it kept falling after we booked our tix in Dec. Since this was our first big overseas trip since COVID and with kids (or, lets face it, SINCE kids), I dove into prepping for our trip - including trying to keep up my Duolingo streak of learning Japanese for at least a few minutes everyd

Miss Evie becomes a teenager

EEEK! We officially have a teenager in our house!  I can't believe our little Evie is now 13 years old. I can still see her as a little girl saying "Swiper no swiping!"  For her birthday this year, she and a few of the neighborhood girls went to get their nails done at the salon nearby. She doesn't remember the last time she got her nails professionally done ( back in 2016! ) so she was pretty excited about it. She picked a very pretty teal color. Afterwards, the girls had some cake.  To celebrate her actual birthday, her ask was for tv time, shopping and sushi. So after a morning spent hanging out in from the tv, we headed to Bellevue Square mall where guess what? She got a phone! Technically, I got a new phone and handed down my old phone to her. We spent a good 3 hours doing all the transfers but she was very patient about it and grinning from ear to ear when we went to dinner that night.  At 13, Evie has become a very stereotypical teenage girl - she loves clothes