Merry Christmas 2023

My friend Bonnie, her husband and two kids joined us for Christmas Eve this year.  Bonnie's daughter Sophie went to elementary school with Leo and danced with Serafina  Anyway, it was a super fun evening with delicious food (both Bonnie and Tom are excellent Italian cooks), a fun game and a silly present swap.  We had so much fun, in fact, I took no pictures except of Serafina's impressive napkin folding.  Just like Thanksgiving.

We had my mom over Christmas day for more delicious food.  Again, no pictures except of this incredible yard decoration that I saw on my way home.  Yes, that is a Christmas toaster.  And yes, I want one or some other amazing holiday-theme household appliance lawn inflatable.  

 

Christmas 2022

We had a nice, quiet Christmas with my mom.  On the 23rd, I made a bunch of cookies to distribute to friends and neighbors.  After we made the rounds in the neighborhood, we headed to a drive-thru light display.  We were the last entry time at 9pm and even though it was a chilly night, there was a festive energy in the air as people hung out their windows and stood up through the sunroofs of their cars. Serafina had her head out of my car's sunroof and was yelling "Merry Christmas" to everyone.  Tom and I weren't sure what came over our usually subdued child, but it was a fun outing. 

Here are some pictures of the cookies I made. Chocolate chocolate chip in the front and orange molasses ginger in the back.  

And of course a giant (messy) batch of Mexican wedding cookies. 

Even though there were still plenty of cookies around, both the ones I made and those we were gifted, Serafina said we still needed to make our traditional butter cookies for Santa.  So I whipped up the dough and we pulled out the sprinkles.  

We had a nice Christmas Eve dinner with my mom. 

Christmas is quite different with teenagers.  We didn't have to get out of bed until 8am!  They are also more low-key about everything.  There was no squealing or jumping up and down.  But there was a lot of gratitude for gifts and that's all I would hope for. 

Mousse gets excited about his gifts.  

He loves new toys. 

Christmas Day was lasagna day.  Tom made two full-sized lasagnas - one veggie, one meat. Here's all the noodles he cooked. 

And here's the end result.  They were amazing.  My mom came back over to enjoy them with us and then we froze a bunch for later. 

 All and all, a very nice Christmas holiday. 

Family Gingerbread House Competition

We decided to put a little twist on our annual gingerbread house decorating tradition and make it a competition. I bought a gingerbread "village" that included four little houses, one for each of us to decorate.  Then we invited my mom over to judge our work.  

We all had the same supplies to work with, and there was no time limit.  Here's Tom and Leo hard at work.  

Serafina and Nana.  

Here's the line up of houses.  

Nana choosing a winner and ranking the remaining houses. 

Here's mine.  I had structural issues and went for a monochromic aesthetic.  I came in 4th place. 

Serafina came in third.  Nana declared it "a bit messy".  Serafina was offended. 

Leo placed second.  Though his incorporation of a gumdrop chimney was appreciated, Nana described it as "a little sparse".  

Tom was declared the winner!  

 

Winter things

A big storm rolled into Northern California earlier this month, so we weren't able to go to the lake house like we planned.  We'll get a chance to spend time up there after Christmas.  In the meantime, we've been trying to have some fun and enjoy the holiday season.  

I took Serafina, Sunny and Leo with me to Cost Plus for some Christmas shopping.  The girls found this Barbie Dream House gingerbread house and talked me into buying it.  

They were quite proud of their masterpiece.  

Serafina and I went to see her friend Rozalynn dance folklorico at a Christmas Festival.  Their friend Arya was also there to cheer on Rozalynn.  

We also went to see Arya dance in a Nutcracker.  She was awesome and it was fun to see all the 6th grade friends again.  From left to right: Serafina, Arya, Rozalynn and Mia. 

Speaking of Nutcracker, I was asked, along with several other veteran moms, to come back and help with the elementary school Nutcracker because the last time it was performed was December 2019. 

Leo came along on Monday night to help.  I had him pose with the former Vice Principal, recently promoted to Principal, Mr. Fuller while he was in his sheep costume after he took the stage with all the little kids.  There are sheep in this version of the Nutcracker so they could give even more kids roles since Nutcracker is a very popular activity. 

Here's all the directors after the final show.  Well, all but the head director that tested positive for Covid right before this show.  She's the one that got me to come back even though I didn't really enjoy my time.  It's just not the same when you don't have your own kid in the production.  

After a brief recovery from the Nutcracker performances, we got to see Leo appear as a "special guest" at the middle school winter concert.  The music teacher called me herself to ask if he could attend the concert and demonstrate to the middle school kids how high school musicians perform.  

I'm sure she called everyone, but these are the five that showed up.  

They sat in the front while different groups of kids took the stage.  They know all the songs that were played, but when they did know and join in on a song, they sounded great. 

The concert was in the school cafeteria, which is also where Serafina had her school dance the very next day.  Yes, day.  Immediately after school, the winter dance took place in broad daylight.  According to Serafina, no one really danced and it wasn't all that fun.  But from pictures she took with her friends, it looks like she had a pretty good time.  

Here she is with her school besties Bella and Sidney. 

Silly photo booth pictures. 

She took some time this weekend to volunteer as a Teaching Assistant for the dance studio's Christmas Party.  She's a TA during the week for a pre-jazz class and some of her little friends were at the party.  Here's an adorable selfie. 

Merry Christmas!

 We had our traditional Christmas Eve with my mom and lots of seafood for dinner.  Tom branched out and made calamari.  I missed the calamari course because I was on the phone with my cousin Dillon, but that's okay because I don't eat fish or squid.  I didn't take any pictures while my mom was here, but after she went home, we made our annual butter cookies for Santa. 

Serafina doing some decorating. 

Leo decorating. 

Here's the end result. 

I found a picture from the first time we made these cookies in 2012.  Look at those little goobers!  So small and cute. 

I didn't take any pictures of the kids opening presents on Christmas morning, only Mousse with his Baby Yoda toy from Tracy and Maya.  Ha!  I guess that's the new era we live in. 

He was so happy. 

I made them pose for a picture after dinner though.  Serafina has on her new Christmas pajama pants and new slippers. 

I told Leo to give me a good smile and this is what I got. 

New ornaments!  Beautiful Santa Mermaid from Sheila. 

See's Candies centennial ornament from Santa. 

There were renters at our house that were supposed to leave on Christmas morning.  On Christmas Eve, there was a power outage that impacted the entire Donner Lake neighborhood.  The power came back on around 5pm and the renters were gone.  I guess they didn't want to be stuck there in the dark, even though the heat is gas.  It turned out that they were smart to leave when they did because the highway closed early Christmas morning and it still hasn't re-opened.  We were supposed to get a new group of renters today, but they probably can't get there with the highway closed.  So much snow fell that when we checked the cameras this afternoon (after another outage), the snow pile in front of the house was almost to the roof!  

Best Secret Santa Ever

Both kids did a lot of gift exchanging at school.  They picked out presents for their friends, Leo's friend group and Serafina's mentor class both did a Secret Santa, and Leo's class did a White Elephant.  

For Serafina's class, the kids filled out preference sheets talking about their hobbies and favorite things. On Friday when they exchanged gifts, Serafina discovered that her friend Arya had her name, and Arya followed Serafina's preferences to the letter.  Apparently, Serafina wrote that her favorite thing to eat is cake and all she wanted was a whole cake for herself.  Arya came through, and honestly, I don't think Serafina could be more thrilled.  Here's a picture a friend snapped of her walking around school with her whole cake.  

At home with her cake.  She had used a candy cane to take have a sample while still at school. 

 Arya's mom cleverly had the cake delivered to Serafina on the Halloween cookie tray I had brought to her house on October 31st.  She kept meaning to return it and this was the perfect opportunity.  The tray was just the right size.