A California Christmas (Part 1)

As we promised, here are the details from our Christmas trip to California. Enjoy!

So usually for a couple of weeks during every Christmas we make our annual trip to visit our families in California. And every year we always have to be extra cautious about the snow as we travel. In 2010 we had snow all the way through Idaho, Oregon, Nevada, and some of California all the way until we got down into Sacramento.




And just when you thought that the long stretch of road from Oregon to Winnemucca and beyond couldn't get any more boring....well....guess again...


Yep...about 2 hours of good ol' fog....

But again, the good news is that those crazy road conditions were only during our 2010 trip. However, our hopes still weren't high for our 2011 trip. But somehow, some way, Mother Nature decided that there would be no snow during the course of our most recent trip, and we were blessed with the company of the sunshine instead:



When we finally reached California we stopped at Aaron's Uncle Jeff and Aunt Yolanda's house. We also got to see our old friends Tink and Bob (2 of our family's dogs). And anyone that knows Bob - you'll know what I mean when I say he's still the same ol', same ol'. =)

After our visiting with them we stopped to get some dinner before reaching our final destination of Brandy's Dad's house. We immediately went to the one place that we had been missing so much:



Hungry?


After our In-N-Out fix we made it to Brandy's Dad's house on Friday night and had a wonderful time hanging out with him the for the remainder of the week before Christmas. Brandy's family even ended up surprising her with a baby shower during our visit!...but we'll tell that story later.

During Christmas Eve we had a huge party with Brandy's family, and by huge, we mean about 30 people-huge! It was so much fun though and it was nice to see everyone again.

It started out with a pull-string Christmas Pinata for all the kids:


Aaron's turn:


Everyone gathering their Christmas Candy loot:


And a few family-friendly Christmas games. This is a picture of a candy cane game in which a person has one minute to pick up as many candy candy canes as possible - the catch: you can only use one candy cane in each hand as your tools.



Aaron playing with his cousin Chris. They got along so well and had so much fun during this night! If you notice Aaron's excessively rosy-cheeks and sweaty, matted hair throughout any of these pictures it is because him and his cousin Chris were busy chasing each other around the house the WHOLE night! Needless to say...Aaron slept really well that night after the party.


Santa even made an appearance and gave everyone at the party a Christmas gift!


Every year we have a gingerbread house contest between all of the families. Each family gets exactly the same bag of supplies and 15 minutes to complete a gingerbread house. Brandy's dad judges the houses and selects a winner. Since he was unable to choose his favorite this year (due to so many great entries), he resorted to picking a number out of a hat. This was the winner! $100 in prize money!


Aaron opening gifts at Brandy's mom's house Christmas night:


Again, this is only part 1 of our trip. So....to be continued.....

Happy Halloween!

Although you may be inclined to look over your shoulder and double-check the date on your calendar, please rest assured that it is, in fact, January 2012, and yes - you are seeing Halloween content in the midst of all of these Christmas posts. We were going through our many, many pictures and realized that we never posted pictures of Aaron's Halloween 2011 costume. So here are a few pictures Matt took of our little Sock Monkey during our trip to Boo at the Zoo in Boise. If I remember correctly, Aaron's costume cost about $10 to make. All the fabric was either clearance fabric or remnants. And somehow it all worked out even though I didn't have a pattern to sew by. I simply took one of Aaron's old jumpsuits, turned it inside-out and traced the outline onto my fabric. The hat took me a couple of tries without a pattern, but the end result came out great I think. His Halloween pail was originally an orange jack-o-lantern, but with a little bit of extra fabric and a lot of hot glue, it morphed its way into a Sock Monkey.

Christmas Parade

So this time around we have an excuse for updating our blog so late - we have been out of town visiting our families in California for the past few weeks. We had a great time, and we'll get to all the details about that trip a little later.

For now we thought we would show you pictures from the Christmas Light Parade that we went to before we left on the trip. It was so much fun and the floats were really elaborate. We left in the early afternoon to attend a Christmas event that was being held at local fire station. They gave the kids tours of the firehouse and firetruck and served punch, hot apple cider, and cookies.



Rumor had it that Santa was going to be making an appearance there, which he did...only, Aaron had more interest in the "Firehouse Dog" than Santa. Here he was giving him a high-five:






Aaron sitting in the firetruck:



For the record, although Santa did not receive a high-five, we did all take a picture with him. Unfortunately the printed picture is still hiding somewhere in our unpacked luggage. And since I have never used the scanning feature on our printer, I'm not even going to bother going down that road of frustration just for one picture at the moment. Anyhow, it was a great little event they put on for the kids - a nice prelude to the fabulous parade that was about to begin.

Now, maybe it's because I am indoors for a large chunk of the day, or maybe it is because we are home-grown Californians, but geesh - I completely forget how dang cold it can get here in Idaho at night. Luckily the bright lights and fun music of the parade distracted us from our frozen flanges for about an hour. I have to be honest - we were expecting to see some 20 minute long, rinky-dink parade consisting of a few cars decorated with lights and maybe a marching band or two, but I will admit I was totally surprised at how much thought and Christmas spirit that was put into these floats. For example, the first float blew us away; It was a whole stage set up with the Pinocchio theme. And get this - Pinocchio (a real boy) (...no pun intended) was actually hanging from some kind of large mechanical device that would swing him off of the side of the float and dangle him there in the audience for a few seconds at a time. It was such a neat thing to see and really set the tone for the rest of the parade.



Since we couldn't show you all of the 100+ pictures Matt took of the floats, here are a few of our favorites:





The marching bands were awesome! Although you can't really tell in the picture, not only was the music great, they were also lit up from head to toe with lights and glow sticks:






Of course the Grinch had to be there to steal Christmas:




Although you can't really see it in the picture, this float was set up to look like a mock-crash - an out of control jet-ski that crashed into a Christmas tree. Very clever!:






If only all school buses could look as cool as these...:




An awesome Winnie the Pooh float:





This was supposed to be Alvin and the Chipmunks. Even though I don't remember Alvin having a mustache, it was still pretty cute to see three grown men singing karaoke and dancing around just to get the spectating kids to smile:


Needless to say, be will be going back next year. And this time we will be prepared with chairs, blankets, and a few large thermoses of hot chocolate!

New Pictures - Finally

As we promised, here are a few more pictures. As of right now, they are all of Aaron, but we thought we'd show you how big he was getting. One thing's for sure - He's no longer a baby.


Here is Aaron experiencing his first snow during this winter season. The snow didn't end up sticking, but he had fun in it anyway.


Playing in Grandma's rock garden:


I believe he was saying "Coldddddd" here:


So Daddy took him in to warm up and continued to take a few more pictures. Aaron was obviously happier to be inside where it was nice and warm:




Below is Aaron's gingerbread house that he made all by himself! Ok...so he had a tiny bit of help from mommy - but just a tiny bit. We made it using his left over Halloween candy (You know - the stuff no one ever really eats - like the Smarties [What are Smarties? - Exactly!], Peppermints, the cheap candy that comes from the value bins at Winco, and candy that comes in a clear plastic package without a label, aka mystery candy). Anyway, it all came in handy along with left over gram crackers, a bit of milk and lots of powdered sugar, and whole lot of imagination and fun - and Viola! Aaron's Gingerbread House!:






Finally, he are some fun shots of Aaron having fun in our new family car. It's a 2003 Honda Pilot. We bought it in early November of this year and we absolutely love it!







That's it for now, and plenty more pictures to come!