Christmas 2007

A Few Highlights from the last couple of weeks in December....


Watching Nina and her schoolmates sing at Mrs. Judy's Christmas party.
Riding the monorail to the carousel in downtown Seattle and viewing the Gingerbread houses.


Making Gingerbread angels, houses, trees, and stars.


















Finally moving the girls back into their bedroom on Christmas Eve, after a three month family sleepover in the living room. Our floors are finally finshed.

Christmas morning

Waking up at 3am, going to San Diego and spending Christmas Day with Shamu, Babcia, Martin, Chris, and Clement at Sea World.
We now understand why no one sits in the front rows labeled wet zone. Just ask Rollin, you really do get wet, and it's pretty frightening for a little guy.
















Getting a surprise visit from the "real" Santa in California. He showed up on his way home and dropped off more gifts for the girls. They were stunned and weren't quite sure what to think. But I can tell you they definitely believe in Santa Clause.





















Learning that Sela has simplified her Christmas list for next year. Mom, I only want one thing from Santa next year. It will be real easy for him. Just one thing. A real live dolphin. Hmmm....

Meeting Boozer, the Serafin family's bull mastiff. Quite a dog. Huge, lazy, gentle, friendly and spoiled. He sleeps with a blankie. We all loved him. Nina misses "Boozie."



















Playing tennis at Babcia's house with the girls, and Martin, who is very good for only playing a handful of times.

Celebrating Nina's 4th Birthday with a bang. She had her special day all planned out in her head, and I'm really glad I asked her about it the day before. She wanted decorations and little balloons all around. She wanted to eat pancakes for breakfast and pizza for dinner. Musical chairs for the game. A carrot cake with frosting and fairies on top. Between Tina and I and the uncles, we gave her the party she had been dreaming of. She woke up to the dining area decorated with streamers and balloons (thanks Chris!) and pancakes. We went to California Pizza Kitchen for dinner and came home and ate cake and opened presents. Martin read to Nina from her new book until her eyelids got very heavy.





Nina loved the snow white dress-up from Tina.

















We played musical chairs the next evening with Martin providing the very lively music on the accordian. Everyone played along and it was so much fun. We let Nina win the first one and she was quite pleased.





















Bringing home 60 pounds of citrus in the form of the sweetest tangerines, lemons and oranges. Chris was so kind to pick all of these for us from the orchard at the Vista house. They are to die for and I want the supply to last forever, but we have already made a huge dent in it!














Discovering that after all that planning and shopping, the favorite toys, hands down, are three boxes we used to bring extra stuff home from San Diego. The kids have played with them every day since we've been home. They made three little houses and Nina has even slept in hers. They order snacks from them, and they have literally spent hours playing together, all three kids. They've also had some fun the vintage scarves I found at an estate sale for Nina. It's amazing what they can come up with using a simple box and some scarves.


















Well, these are a few of the fun moments of our incredibly busy December. Two birthdays in December makes things a little crazy. Come January 1st, I feel like I've just run a marathon. We love and miss you all, especially the family we weren't able to see this Christmas. You were in our thoughts.

The Night Tree

One of our favorite children's holiday books is The Night Tree, by Eve Bunting. It's a simple story about a family who make a yearly trek into the woods and decorate a tree for all the little woodland animals. They make popcorn garland for the tree and bring other goodies for the animals. Once they decorate the tree, they sit down and sing Christmas songs and have hot cocoa. Then it gets cold and they head home imagining how happy the animals will be when they find their special tree. We made a little tree ourselves for the animals this year which was such fun for all of us.

Sela and Nina made garland out of popcorn, dried fruit, and orange peels.



Destroy
We packed up the goodies and followed Zig and Rollin around the yard to choose the perfect tree. Sela carried her lantern she made out of paper mache.


Hot apple cider kept us all warm, and happy in Nina's case.


After finding just the right tree, it was time to hang the garland.

Nina and Rollin sprinkled popcorn and nuts around on the ground.



We sang some songs and the girls danced around the tree. Then we headed back into the warm house. The best part of it all was driving home from church today to see several happy squirrels gathered around the tree filling their little tummies and enjoying an early Christmas.

Advent Activities....

Each day the girls open a little envelope with a simple Christmas activity written inside. Some have been simple, like making cookies for friends or choosing toys to donate to charity. Nina's favorites so far have been endulging in Peppermint Ice Cream from Thenos Dairy and going on a night walk and having hot cocoa with whipped cream and peppermint marshmallows. Sela loves the crafty ones like making dough ornaments or snowflakes. Tonight the activity was a visit to the Bellevue Botanical Gardens Light Display. It was so cold, but it was clear, and I was ready for a little girls night out. I am so sick of cleaning. Our floors are finally finished and I spent all day putting the closets back together. So, at 5:30 the girls and I headed out. The light display was really impressive, and we had so much fun walking around. We sang Christmas carols to cheer Nina on the long walk back to the car. I knew she was going to complain about being cold, not wanting to walk, being tired, so the singing worked great. She was happy and sang loud the whole way back. We stopped by Whole Foods on the way home. We have so much fun going there late at night. We just take our time and try on makeup and perfume, and the girls play with the little toys. We ate dinner at 10 pm and came home. Bedtime was easy tonight.

Be careful what you wish for

I wished Zig would join me in doing a deep cleaning.... one involving all of our pillows, comforters, duvets, etc. Trying to maximize his time, he thought putting two huge down comforters in the dryer was a good idea.

It didn't work too well.


Still smoldering an hour later, in the rain.










Well, I guess you could look on the bright side...we have two less down comforters to clean. Oh, what a weekend.

Sela's Birthday Weekend

Sela's 7th Birthday arrived with a bang. We had a great weekend full of anticipation and celebration. Friday night Sela performed with the Hollywood Hill Primary Choir at the Woodinville Light Festival. They sang a beautiful Christmas song, a lively Hanukkah song, a lovely Winter Solstice song, and a funny song about Christmas socks...clearly the children's favorite. They joined the Senior choir for Silent Night.






Then we met Mrs. CLaus and walked around looking at lights and trying to find Santa. We finally found him in the Retirement home where lots of festivities were taking place. Zig and I both thought it was such a great idea to have Santa in the Retirement Home. All the residents were mingling with people from the community which brought the excitement of Christmas to them. I loved that aspect of the night. We rode the little train back to the car and headed home.
Nina and Noah
Nina and Mrs. Clause
This was a very nice Santa.
Rollin no likey Santa
My friend Suzanne and all the kids















Sela's birthday party was Saturday. We met for icecream at Coldstone with 8 of Sela's friends and then walked over to see the movie, Enchanted. I have to say I was really surprised, it was such a fun movie! I know Zig enjoyed it as well. Rollin ran all over the theater, but that was to be expected. We filled little purses with movie snacks for everyone which was fun for the girls. This was definitely the easiest birthday party yet, and I think it might be Sela's favorite.
















Sunday it snowed again and since we live on a hill with only steep roads getting off of it, we missed church. Last week it was cancelled and I'm not sure about today. It looked scary though once we got on the road so we came back home and Zig taught a little Christmas lesson to the girls while Rollin napped. The girls got mad at me for taking pictures during "church" but I couldn't help it with Nina acting as Mary again. She takes her role so seriously.