Richard Whittington and His Cat

Piper's school had a concert at Christmastime but given the diversity of the school, in lieu of any holiday program, they performed Richard Whittington and His Cat.  Not familiar with him?  Neither were we but it was a hoot!

Piper told us that she was one of the leaders and she was first down the aisle to go up to the stage.  Then she got to sit in the middle of the group.  She was just hilarious.  Very animated and not at all intimidated.  My mom was able to come with us and she got a big grin and a high-five from Piper as she exited down the aisle.  Piper was very proud of her performance.

In case you were wondering, the kindergartners were lamplighters.  They entered chanting, "6 o'clock on a Friday morning.  6 o'clock and all is well."  She'd been practicing all week.

(Photos are courtesy of my main photographer - my mom, Vicki Allred)

Family Christmas portrait

The best we could do in a pinch.

Christmas 2011.

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!