Christmas Eve, Part 2

After Grandpa Dick and Linus left, we had some down time before our next Christmas event. By down time, of course, I mean that I made tons of food and attempted to clean up my house.

This was our all time low for our traditional Christmas Eve dinner, but the food was good, and we had a nice time, nonetheless.
After dinner, we opened a few gifts. The church had been given some random gifts to give out, one of which was for an 18 year old girl, so Maria scored.
Grace opened the one gift from church and a couple gifts form my parents. He biggest gift was an easel, which she loves and draws on all the time. I will have to post some of her drawings as they are super funny and cute. We really didn't spend to long at the house as we had the service at church to go to. I didn't take too many pictures either, as it all seemed to go by so quickly. I can't complain though, because at lease I am not 9 months pregnant, at the end of a donkey ride, trying to find a place to spend the night. :)
One last picture before heading to church.......stay tuned, more about that to come.

Christmas Eve Part 1

We had so much fun on Christmas Eve and Christmas that I think I will break down and do a series of post. I think it should be easier to follow that way.

Christmas Eve was a busy day that started out with a visit from Grandpa Dick. He brought Grace a present, some sticker books, that are super cool and she loves. Thanks, Grandpa Dick!

For me he brought the Christmas cheer of seeing his stinky dog Linus. I say this sarcastically as Linus and I are not very close. Some would say we have a love-hate relationship. He does most of the loving, and I do most of the hating. Tess, (our dog, who I affectionately call the "cold blooded killer") on the other hand, really enjoyed meeting Linus. Ironically, he made her look rather dainty, and that is hard to do.

Here are the men and their dogs in the back yard. I really like how the rain has brought out our "seasonal grass" (ie weeds), it really makes the back yard very pretty.
Aside from the snowflakes on Grace's shirt, this picture really isn't very Christmasy, but it sure is cute. :)

Birthday Pictures

I figured as tomorrow is Christmas Eve, I should go ahead and post my birthday pictures, as I am sure I will be posting about Christmas soon.

We started out my birthday morning by a trip to Starbucks. We just got up and went, which explains the sleepy eyes and messy hair. It rained all day, which is unusual, I have mostly had sunny birthdays.


We spent a restful afternoon and then headed down to my parents to drop Grace off and we headed downtown for a dinner date. I love Cafe Sevilla, my favorite Spanish food restaurant. It was so fun to be downtown in the rain.After dinner we picked Grace up, as my parents had somewhere to be. We headed over to Gunnar's mom house for a visit and to exchange some Christmas presents. Grace loves all Grandma Carol's jewelry and make up. She picked out the earrings she wanted to wear, although they were as long as her whole neck. She got to try on Grandma's rings too. All in all I had a great birthday. It was a happy fun day all around.

It's all fun and games until someone looses a finger

At Carol's house the other night, Grace greatly enjoyed playing with the Nutcracker collection. Thankfully, we left with all her fingers still in tact.

We wish you a merry Christmas!

We went caroling in the retirement mobile home park Sunday night. It was a lot of fun, but very cold. A good group from our church came out, and we had a great time together.

Carrying Grace was actually the best move I made all night. She worked like a little heater to keep me warm. :)

Country Christmas

Last weekend we attended a country Christmas celebration at Bates Nut Farm. We were laughing because it felt like it was something straight from Little House on the Prairie (which we are huge fans of). There were people singing, a living nativity, and a play put on by the Valley Center community theater.

Grace's favorite librarian is the wife of the Luthern church pastor. She is super sweet and we love seeing her when we go to the library. The Lutheran church put on the living nativity, and Katie hooked Grace up with some angel wings. We also got to take pictures with Mary and baby Jesus, which was fun.

Mother and child, and mother and child.

It wasn't the real baby Jesus. My little angel is so cute!

Before we headed to the play, we got Grace some pop corn. She was very happy about it, and we were unable to get her to quit eating it in order to take a picture. At least it didn't go to waste.
Three people from our church were in the play and there was a pretty good group of us that came out to support them and see the production. While we were waiting for the play to start, we walked around the little mercantile with our friends the Hansen's (yes, the spell it the wrong way).
Grace loved the play. It was "Scrooge." It was only an hour and a half and she sat really well and paid attention the whole time. I had to explain some of it to her, but she seemed to get the main plot . There is the Cratchet family. Mr and Mrs. Cratchet both go to our church. They are not married in real life and so Grace was super confused and worried about where Mr. Joel's wife was and why he was acting like Ms. Cheryl was his wife. So maybe a few of the details were lost on her after all.

Grace's drawing

Grace drew a picture of my dad yesterday. I thought it was super cute.She said he was standing on his house.

Shade Structure

Pretty much Gunnar is turning into Pa Ingalls. Or my dad. Or Bob Villa. Or maybe even Tim the Toolman Taylor. In any case, his handy man skills have hugely improved since moving out to the country. Well, technically, he did not use much lumber before we moved here, so I am not sure if his skills were just hidden or if they are recently acquired. Pretty much the only thing left are a good pair of suspenders, as it is a well known fact, that in order to be a good handyman, you need a good pair of suspenders. I could go on and on about my feelings about suspenders, but I think instead I will share with you Gunnar's latest house project.

One of the down sides of Valley Center, is that is gets HOT. Although we are in December, it has still been hot. Our back yard unfortunately, has no shade. We have planted a bunch of trees but they will take time to grown. So Gunnar decided to build a shade structure for the cement pad off the garage. We hope that this will make this space more user friendly and conducive to socializing and spending time together.


I didn't manage to get any pictures from before he started, but I got their pretty soon after he began.
He has the beans laid out there, and is attaching the brackets to the garage.
At this point, I headed to the mall with Grace to meet up with Ann and Elena for a fun day of sister/cousin time.

By the time I got home, Justin, a teenager from church, and Alberto, one of the deacons, were over helping out, and a lot of progress had been made!

I really like this picture of Gunnar. There is something so manly about standing on a ladder and pounding nails.

Gunnar and Justin worked nailing the slats on, while Alberto handed them the level, and supervised.

Lastly, as the sun was going down (so I didn't get any good pictures) they added the shade cloth.

Finally all done! The whole thing went up in around 4 hours. Here it is the next morning. Gunnar sat there and did some of his morning reading.



That night we lit a fire in the old Franklin stove that is down there to be used as an outdoor fire pit. It was warm and beautiful and we drank hot chocolate while the sun went down. Gunnar and Grace sat down there and read while I got dinner ready.
I look forward to many happy times together in our backyard patio.

Christmas on the Prado #9

I think I mentioned last year how much I love Christmas on the Prado. This was our 9th time. Crazy! I absolutely love it.

In past years (as you can see in the link above) we have worn green elf hats. They are getting very thread bare, so this year I decided to step it up and make new hats. It is a lot of pressure to make a hat for Maria as she is so stylish and I wanted to make something she would like. Plus it needed to be Christmassey and not look too homemade. I was so excited with how they turned out. We tooks lots of pictures, mostly becuase I was so excited about them. Plus, Maria and I have never avoided taking pictures, and we were waiting for Gunnar to finish talking to my dad about shade structures so we could go.



Our first stop was Starbucks. Grace has a matching hat too, but Starbucks was really the only place we got her to wear it. It was really warm (notice I never needed a sweater), so I don't blame her. I was determined to wear the hat since I had just spent two days crocheting like a mad woman.
We didn't take a stroller, which was a good call since there were SOOO many people. It is much better when it rains.
Grace was trying to ride piggy back. It was pretty tough thought becuase she is so tiny she barely fits. Maybe next year.
We sat on the curb to eat our international food. Gunnar and Grace got schawarmas and Maria and I got Paella.
We went by the Old Globe theater display in honor of Gunnar's mom who is in the Globe Gilders. We saw the grinch and all the Hoo-Ville decorations.

We managed to get Grace to wear her hat for just a few more pictures.
My favorite thing is a room full of Christmas tree displays put on my the San Diego floral socity. The trees are so beautiful and unique. There was one with dried grapefruit slices that was super cool. Grace liked them too.
There are Gunnar and Grace taking a breather. Grace kind of had that shell shocked look a lot. It was either all the people/lights/noise or maybe the fact that she was too excited to take a nap earlier.
Trying to get out of the parking lot there was a TON of traffic. I took pictures of the girls in the back seat. They crack me up.




Cheers! And Let the Christmas season begin!! :)