They Grow Up So Fast: December

Our December was festive, but not overly busy this year, which was really nice.

It began with the Monrovia Christmas Parade on December 1st. The parade is always on the night of the first Thursday in December. Why they do a community parade that involves like half the kids of the city on a school night boggles the minds of most people I know. But, we go every year. This year, neither kid marched in the parade, so we found a spot, sat down and enjoyed the whole thing.

The police department had various officers (I'm assuming) dressed as Star Wars characters. Chewbacca poked his head out of a swat team truck and Darth Vader rode a segway. Hilarious.

I don't quite know what the lion is about, because a bear is more symbolic of Monrovia, but since lions are my school's mascot, I had to photograph it.

Ashlynn's school looked pretty good!

Construction at my school is coming along. I love the process of building new structures but I am sure tired of the dirt, inconvenience, and most especially, the noise.

Lights went up on our house. Carter now loves going up on the roof with Eric, which wasn't the case a couple years ago.

Soccer finally finished after Ashlynn's team was defeated in their first playoff game. It was a season of ups and downs for Ashlynn, so I think we're pretty glad to get a break from soccer. We'll see if either kid continues with it.

Ashlynn did manage to win the very popular team banner in a raffle. It is presently hanging on the wall of her room but will likely be passed on to her coach's daughter, who loved the banner too.

Ashlynn's middle school orchestra had their first performance of the year at the Christmas party for the Monrovia Tennis Club. I thought it was interesting and true that her teacher pointed out the importance of the performance. He told them that they represented some of what public schools offer and some members of the club send their kids to private schools, not realizing how good the schools are.

We bought our Christmas tree for the living room at Home Depot, as we have almost every year (with the exception of a few years the school had a tree fundraiser). This year, for the first time, we had two trees in our house. We've always had a real tree in the living room, viewable from the street. But, for years since we added on, we've talked about how nice it would be to have a tree in the family room, near the fireplace and stockings. Early in December, I spotted a fake, unlit, narrow one at Target for $64 and bought it and $20 in lights, which was a fun surprise for the family. We've made the new tree our "travel tree" and look forward to adding more ornaments to it as we continue to travel.

Carter loves Christmas, and while he can have a hard time making choices, was convinced that this tree was the one!

The kids are getting to ages when they are actually pretty good about decorating the tree and we don't have to fix placements.

My friend, Kristen, came over and hung out one day. Carter amused us with his elf costume and we convinced him to wear it when we picked Ashlynn up from school that day. Hee, hee!

We enjoyed Carter's school's annual holiday program. Each grade performs two songs, which are always cute. Carter was featured in one of third grade's songs. The song was "Hip Hop Reindeer" and Carter was one of Santa's eight dancing reindeer. When they announced try-outs a few weeks prior, he was really confident, so it was great that he was actually chosen. He was a little cautious at the start of the song but got going and did an awesome job.

Ashlynn, Lydia and another friend from church, Samantha, prepared for performing at the Christmas Eve service at church with a number of rehearsals with their private music teacher. Each girl played a different part, so it was a good challenge!

Ashlynn, Lydia, and Sophia also performed for the Clifton holiday music concert. We were really impressed with the orchestra and all the music groups, knowing that many of the students who performed had only started a few months before.

We managed to pick the worst spot for actually seeing Ashlynn while she performed (she was behind the director), so my only shot was as she walked out.

A week before Christmas, Carter's dream of sleeping under the Christmas tree came true. We kept the lights on all night and he was delighted.

All three of our districts had school into the week before Christmas, but because of my days off, I was able to help with Carter's class party and craft afternoon.

Carter and I are the only ones who like egg nog in our house. I'm glad to have a buddy to justify buying a container of it every Christmas.

The one activity Carter most wanted to do before Christmas was bake and decorate cookies, so we made gingerbread ones and he had a blast decorating.

We had quite a few gloomy, and sometimes rainy, days this winter. Here's a nice view of the San Gabriel Valley from a walk I took with Pippa.

The joy of being on winter break:

I did get out one evening with some friends for a wine tasting to celebrate Christmas together.

Since the weather was gloomy, we had a number of fires in the fireplace. I gave Pippa a comfy spot, which she seemed to enjoy!

As we do every December, we got together with the Mountain family. Some years we've done some activity together, like go to a holiday event, but this year because of rain we just hung out.

The girls battled the boys with Nerf blasters. So Christmassy of us, huh?

We started our Christmas Eve celebrating at church. Ashlynn, Lydia and Samantha performed their two songs before the start of the actual service.

They sounded great!

Carter, as part of the kids choir, was up front for the whole service. Everyone was very impressed with how well behaved that group of mostly boys was!

My favorite part is holding lit candles while singing "Silent Night". This year felt a little less special as it was still pretty light outside, it was freezing cold, and most especially, it was breezy so our candles kept blowing out. We enjoyed the moment the best we could!

As soon as we got home from church, Carter got drinks for everyone (milk for Ashlynn, water for Eric, and egg nog for Carter and me) and then grabbed his bean bag chair, blankets, and favorite stuffed animals and plopped himself in front of the fire. He wanted to savor the time!

Since we celebrated Christmas Eve as just the four of us at home, we asked the kids what they wanted to eat for dinner. They chose breakfast for dinner. All four of us worked together in the kitchen and created a meal of pancakes, waffles, bacon, and hash browns.

After dinner we hopped in the car with Pippa and drove around town to see Christmas lights.

Before bed, the kids decorated cookies for Santa and Ashlynn left him a note on the fridge about the milk.

On Christmas morning, Pippa was the first to get her gift from her stocking... four new balls! She was pretty excited.

The kids and their stockings

This year, the kids got bikes. Their old bikes are the ones they got when they were five, so the time had come. Their faces speak for themselves!

Carter got us these fancy candy rings from the school holiday shop. Hee hee!

In the late morning we went to Eric's dad's house to eat lunch and open gifts with that side of the family. We went home for a few hours and then headed over to my parents' house for dinner and gifts with them.

Gift tag for Eric and I from my dad:

This crew goes along with my selfies:

After a few days of hanging out at home after Christmas, we had a little adventure into Los Angeles on the Gold Line train. We stopped for a bit to look around beautiful Union Station.

We took the Metro Red Line to Pershing Square. We decided to walk around, before meeting up with our friends, the Mountains, for lunch. We happened upon the Biltmore Hotel, which is really beautiful on the inside.

A block or so west of the hotel is the Los Angeles Central Library. Upon noticing the card catalog, we explained to the kids how that worked. Gosh, times have changed from when Eric and I were kids.

The children's area is charming!

Ice skating in Pershing Square was fun to watch.

Our lunch adventure was to historic Clifton's Cafeteria. Its decorations are fascinating. The getting food part was not quite what I expected. Eric, Carter and I ended up ordering pasta, and we watched one cook carefully prepare our meal in three separate pans from scratch. I was impressed and it explained why the line took so long!

The little boys

The big boys

From Clifton's we walked a few blocks to The Last Bookstore, another interesting place.

After the Mountains headed back home, we walked a few more blocks to Grand Central Market to get ice cream from McConnell's. It is a delicious place that opened their first store in Santa Barbara.

The line was long (thus, Eric's sad face), but it was worth it!

While we enjoyed our ice cream on the curb in front of the Grand Central Market, we looked across the street to our final stop of the afternoon, the Bradbury Building.

It's a nice looking building on the outside, but it's even more interesting on the inside.

We ended 2016 with a quiet evening at home. I made soup, which Carter initially rejected and chose to go to bed early instead, thus the photo of three of us.