Christmas At Last!

We spent the week of Christmas down in Southern California. The week started with a beautiful memorial tribute to the life of Grandma Smith, who finally succumbed to her melanoma. She was an amazing lady who touched the lives of many.


Later in the week we took the kids to Kidspace, to hang out and play. Lots of great exhibits and all my kids wanted to do was ride the tricycles! Ok ,we did get a bit of climbing in, too.At the top! You can't really tell, but this is us at the top of the three story high glass platform climb. Each step was like a large, transparent drum surface.

Christmas Eve was a raucous gathering as usual. Lots of rowdy cousins and after 2 bottles of Jagger, lots of Rowdy adults, too. I was so wired from all the Red Bull (House specialty=Jaggerbombs) I was up till 3 am! Or maybe I was just excited to see Santa!
The ornament tradition is still holding strong, only lots of people bring hideous ornaments now, including this gaudy peacock feather insect. But when it was my turn to choose, I asked megan if she thought we should steal the cute snowman, but she had other ideas: "Oh, Mom, can we please get the butterfly?" Yeah... we can get the butterfly...Merry Christmas! Add that to Megan's new princess dress and we had true couture fashion on our hands!

Christmas morning brought a whole new round of excitement:

Fireman jackets and boots,
Dora band-aids,
and the coveted Snuggie!
And then just some post-holiday, snuggling.