Gingerbread house gift

A very nice family at church were amazing and gave us this lovely homemade gingerbread house kit.  I got the impression that we weren't the only ones they know that got one; they're awesome like that, spreading the love.  They gave us the constructed house, royal icing, and candies galore.  

It was so fun, especially since we hadn't done one of our own because I somehow can't get my gingerbread recipe to bake up right.  

Oh, and they threw in a bag of homemade, quality caramel corn.  

Dana Point with the Mussos

Our good friends, the Mussos, came to SoCal in December for a few days.  We let Piper skip school for a day so we could play with their family.  It was thoroughly enjoyed by us all.  Good dinner, good company, sunshine and sand.  

Thanks Mussos for coming for a visit!  Let's do it again soon.

Deck the halls...

The family all got into decorating the Christmas tree, even Rick.  It was so fun to pull out all of our ornaments from years past - ones made by Piper, ones from vacations, ones made by my Grandma Dody.  The only unfortunate part was our poor star tree-topper.  It's supposed to light up but it died.

"Festival of the Trees"

Growing up I used to attend the "Festival of the Trees" with my mom.  It's now known as the Torrance Memorial Holiday Festival.  The main attraction is a couple dozen or so live trees that have been professionally decorated.  They are then auctioned off.  They also have a gift shop, musical performances, and a snack bar.  It goes on for about a week.  My mom used to decorate a tree on behalf of her hotel, which then was auctioned.

Well, it would so happen that my mom got tickets to go this year but couldn't go.  I took the two kids and man, I had flashbacks of my childhood.  We had dinner, admired the trees, and got pictures with Santa.  

I indulged Simon in a bag of popcorn and after a little while he complained that his lips hurt.  All the salt in the popcorn had dried out his lips and made them sore.  Poor kid.  

Piper loved the tree covered in dolls and nutcrackers.  My favorite was the "nature" tree with moss and mushrooms.  We also bought four new ornaments to add to our collection. 

By the way, the trees had already been auctioned off but they still display them.  They show how much they were bought for.  The cheapest tree I saw was $1200.  They had one big mega-tree still to auction on the last night.  It had tons of gadgets on it - a Kindle Fire, a Nintendo DS, a Blu-Ray player, a GPS, etc.  Sheesh.

The USC tree.  There was a UCLA tree too.  We took this picture to show to one of Piper's friends at school who is a USC fan.

My favorite tree

Wrapped presents

Trip to San Fran

While we were visiting my sister, we took a day out to spend with Jeff, Rick's brother.  We went down Lombard Street and also toured the Penny Arcade, Fisherman's Wharf and Ghiradelli Square.  Rick's boss also gave us his tickets to the Stanford football game.  It was loads of fun!

Thanksgiving 2012

We traveled up north to visit my sister and her family for Thanksgiving.  She had something like 42 people at her house, half of which were kids.  She pulled it off in spectacular fashion and I was happy to help.  Because of the busyness of the day we only got this funny shot of Simon modeling a paper pilgrim's bonnet I had made.

Both kids loved playing with their cousins and enjoying the festivities.  A few memories for them of the day: 

• Simon pitched a fit at dinner because it was nap time and he was so not happy that we wouldn't give him any more Martinelli's sparkling cider, or as he calls it "apple soda."
• Piper refused to be in any photos so unless Nan has some we are essentially picture-less.
• We sat with all of the kids because there were no seat assignments and I told Rick to pick any table.  Little did we know that all the other adults had chosen to sit in the other room.  It was just fine though as we practically had a table all to ourselves for the meal.

Here was Piper's kindergarten feast at school.  I think she may have just eaten the cornbread and not the pumpkin pie.  She's sitting next to her best friend Jazmin.

Halloween

Piper's school had a school-wide costume parade on Halloween. The kindergarten teachers and an assistant dressed as Goldilocks and the Three Bears.  

This photo was at our ward's Trunk or Treat. 

Such a funny kid.

This is the only Halloween picture I got of Piper since she refused photos before actual Trick or Treating.

Our trunk decorated for Trunk or Treating, lots of cobwebs and spiders.

Simon was DJ Lance for Yo Gabba Gabba!