Monday was Christmas Eve and we were ready to celebrate with family. My parents came over first and played with the kids. They even took them for a nice walk to the park down the street. It was really cold that day too. Then Kareen/Andy/Leah arrived and they joined in on the fun.
Back at home, Will was cooking up some delicious prime rib and Kareen helped with the (my favorite) horseradish cream. I was feeling adventurous and made bacon wrapped green beans. Add to that a salad (that, of course, was barely touched) and some scalloped potatoes, and Christmas Eve dinner was served!
Yummy deliciousness. I thought it was a bit too rare but my brother was a big fan and Will assured me that this was how I like it at the restaurants! (I had complained that his prime rib was usually too well done for my tastes of medium rare.) I must have eaten a million of those bacon wrapped green beans though. They were so delicious, especially with the sweet sauce we drizzled on them before baking them in the oven. For dessert we had apple pie and my mom made her tasty mochi cake. Boy, we were stuffed!
Love it when the holidays come around and we host my family our house. Of my parents' place, my brother's place and our place, I think ours is the most kid friendly. Lots of toys, and pretty kid-proof so lots of running around. The kids have a great time hanging out and playing with their grandparents and cousins.
After dinner we opened presents between the cousins. Leah couldn't wait to open her present! Will and I hadn't even wrapped Tyler and Katelyn's presents yet - we are total procrastinators (Will worse than me!). We'll have to try to work on that in the new year.
Cousins, ready to open presents! Tyler got cool Star Wars Legos (ones that he actually doesn't have yet) and Katelyn got a My Little Pony remote control little car.
Afterward we FaceTime'd with my older sister Grace who was visiting her in-laws in Dallas. Technology is grand, isn't it?
Merry Christmas Eve!
And then a group family photo! I post so many variations of the same photo because they are all acceptable and that way they get put into the Save folder instead of being lost into the black hole of the million of photos we take. Everyone did a good job looking. :)
Whew, what a great fun day. We are very lucky to be able to have these family get-togethers.
Before Kareen left to head back to her in-laws, the girls took a quick little bath together. Check out Katelyn's tan from Hawaii! You can clearly see where her swim bottoms ended and where her thighs were exposed to the sun!
Big brother/cousin Tyler with Leah and Katelyn. :) Almost time for bed!
Video of Tyler and Katelyn on Xmas Eve:
We put the kids to bed and they talked about Santa coming. I'm not sure how I feel about the kids believing in Santa. Sometimes I'm not sure if Tyler does or not. Because, really, does the idea of Santa even make sense? Plus I would hate for them to have a moment later when they feel lied to when they find out Santa isn't real! Anyway, once the kids were in bed, Will and I started the long task of wrapping all their gifts and assembling Katelyn's Cinderella bike. We tried not to go too crazy this year on gifts, like we have done in the past. We have too many toys, enough is enough!
Christmas morning Tuesday. The kids totally slept in! And when they woke up, they headed to our room and got into bed with us, just like any other morning. No mention of Christmas Day, presents, or Santa. Will and I got to sleep in and didn't even get out of bed until past 9am while the kids kept themselves occupied watching cartoons in bed with us. I casually mentioned a little about 'something downstairs' and still nothing from the kids. It wasn't until Tyler started saying he was hungry and we were in the hallway at the top of the stairs that they noticed that there were presents under the tree. Then the excitement really started! Present opening time!!
Avengers pillow for Tyler!
Katelyn loved this Ariel pillow. She sleeps on it every night. Like literally puts her head on Ariel's face and snuggles into it and sleeps.
Angry Birds Space game! I had actually bought this as a gift for another boy but saw Tyler playing with something similar at a friend's place and he loved it so much so I had to keep it.
Legos!
There was a theme to all of Katelyn's presents this year. Princesses. I had ordered a bunch of stuff from the Disney store online when they had free shipping plus 30% off their sale items. I couldn't help it! I must have been feeling a little guilty that she was playing mostly with Tyler's Lego toys and action figures all the time. This Belle stuffed animal is possibly her favorite present of all. She takes it wherever she can and always snuggles up with it under her arm. Now she has 3 friends in her crib - Aurora, Ariel and Belle.
When Katelyn saw this, she yelled, "Baby Belle!".
Video of the kids opening their presents:
Her grand finale - all the Disney princesses! I got this set of 10 for only $60! Score!
Video of KK opening her princess present:
The kids and their haul. We only opened a few of them and they were fine with playing with those. I think it's just the excitement of unwrapping presents that is all they really need. Open a few for them to actually play with and they're good. The rest will go into hiding some place until a birthday or something. Haha! (I'll be honest, some of the stuff Tyler opened were presents from his birthday last year. He didn't even remember since I had hid them away and just re-wrapped them! I know, we are awful parents.)
Oh wait, we can't forget Katelyn's new bike! The box at Costco said for 3-5 year old and I figured since Katelyn was such a tall almost-3 year old that the bike would be fine. Wrong. Way too big for her. Maybe we should have lowered the seat. Anyway, we decided to return it and get her a smaller one. I want her to be able to learn how to ride it without training wheels and she's just not tall enough yet for this one.
The rest of our Christmas Day consisted of... well.. sleeping! Will and I took many little naps and woke up enough to get the kids fed and change the movie on Netflix. It was a very nice and lazy day. In the afternoon I was texting with my mom and they volunteered to watch the kids so we could go see a movie! I had mentioned how hard it was for us to see a movie the night before when they were here. Perfect! They carpooled down to Irvine with my brother's family and watched all three kids while Will/I and Lindon/Michelle went off to watch The Hobbit. Yay! We headed to the AMC at the District only to find that they were having a power outage. Weird. Luckily we found another time soon after for a showing at Foothill Ranch. We got back after 9pm and the kids were doing great. My mom told me that Tyler and Katelyn were really easy to watch now that they were older. (Landon, on the other hand, is another story. His age right now means he never stops moving!).
Wednesday the 26th. Another nice and lazy day. After the whirlwind of our Hawaii vacation just a couple weeks before, we were eager to really have a nice and relaxing holiday break. I think this day consisted of a lot more naps as well. I was adamant that the kids needed to get outside and work off some energy though, so we let them ride their brand new bikes and scooters around the neighborhood. We had checked out Irvine's new Walmart yesterday and got Katelyn a smaller pink bike. She's kind of uncoordinated on it, but she's starting to get it. Only thing is that she'll get going and then pedal backwards and the bike will come to a screeching halt since that backward motion works as a break. We'll have to keep practicing!
Tyler really liked his new Spiderman scooter. I'm not a fan of Spiderman and I try to discourage Tyler from liking it too, but this scooter was on sale at Target a few months back so I couldn't help myself. He is so excited to have a scooter finally!
We played at the mini park down the street too.
Video of KK on her new bike:
Thursday 12/27. I was really determined for us not to be bums anymore. If I don't have a plan to do something, I'll sleep all day! Which was fine for a couple days but I was starting to get antsy walking around in my pajamas all day. We headed to Boomers that morning - Tyler's favorite place! The kids rode the teacups.
Video of the teacup ride at Boomers:
After teacups, the kids went on the bouncy frog ride. The sign said minimum age 4 years, so I was really iffy about letting Katelyn on it. The ride attendant didn't even say anything so on she went. It was her first time on one of these bouncy rides I think. She was really excited to go with Tyler, but then seemed to have a mixture of fun and fear as the ride bounced up and down.
Video of the frog bounce ride:
Then the train ride! They like sitting in the first train.
And carousel! That's one good thing about Boomers, they have lots of dinky little rides that the kids really enjoy. Plus we go early in the day so the place is almost empty!
Tyler still enjoys the carousel I think, even though he probably won't admit it!
And the grand finale? Go-Kart racing! Absolutely Tyler's favorite thing to do here. He'll laugh hysterically as we drive super fast and take sharp turns. Whenever I take him, he always yells, Faster! Faster!
Video of Tyler and Daddy go-karting:
After finishing all the outside activities, we headed inside for some video and arcade games. The kids love getting tickets! I like that we can load the tickets onto our game card so that we don't need to hold onto them and we can actually try to accumulate something better than little trinkets of junk. Haha!
Katelyn even hit a ticket jackpot on one of the games! You press a button and it drops a ball from up above, which then falls into a spinning hole indicating how many tickets you win. She got the jackpot of 400+! Whooohooo!
After Boomers, we headed next door to Irvine Lanes. We had won 2 free bowling games in a raffle years ago, and finally got around to using them. What a cheap prize though. Games are only about $4 each, and we still had to rent shoes! We decided that Tyler and I would use the free games and paid for shoes for each of us. We only needed one game, anyway. The kids lose interest pretty quick! I am a horrible bowler (Will says I even got worse from before, how that's possible I have no idea because I have always been bad).
The kids ate some chicken strips for lunch while we were there.
Tyler likes to bowl! Although it will probably not be a family past-time for us because I am SO bad at it.
Strike! Yay! We had it programmed so the bumpers would come up whenever it was Tyler's turn, and he used this metal thing that allowed him to roll the ball straight down the lane. Hmm, maybe I should consider using these aids as well...
Katelyn didn't mind at all that she wasn't bowling. She was there for moral support. :)
The final score. Yes, that's 66 for me. I am THAT bad.
Family picture! Yay, we got out of the house and weren't bums! :)
Thursday evening we met up with the Garners for dinner. First we met them at Woodbury Elementary where the kids rode their new bikes and scooters around. But it was SO ridiculously cold that we didn't stay long and headed off to dinner. We had been meaning to get together to exchange Christmas gifts but things kept coming up. The kids are always happy to play with their friends. But they were really excited about opening more gifts after Christmas!
The kids actually got bonus gifts since I told Jen not to get them anything additional since they had gotten us a family gift. But my words were ignored, which the kids were very happy about.
Tyler got more Legos! Apparently he already had this set. Perfect since I'll secretly give it back to the Garners. :) Our family gift was this dual-screen DVD players for the car. What I had gotten taken away at the White Elephant exchange a week before. How sweet is that? Totally too much though! They had changed our gift last minute after the White Elephant, haha!
After dinner we all had dessert at Tutti Frutti even though it was freezing outside. Something very interesting is going on in these girls' yogurt bowls!
Then a little playing outside for the kids to burn off some steam. Kaden and Tyler are so cute together, hard to believe how much they've grown since they were together in the toddler room.
Friday! We headed to Stonegate park in the morning to meet up with my friend Linda and her son Kobi (who is in Tyler's kindergarten class). Will got to come along for the playdate too! My friend's husband had the day off but when I asked her if he would be coming she said he was going to the gym!
Tyler and his friend Kobi. They play well together.
Peekaboo!
After the playdate, the kids took a nice nap and then Kareen and her family came over. Yay, we get them for 3 whole days! It's always more lively and fun with them around.
And of course, a very spirited game of Zingo. Instead of grabbing the tiles, the kids had to raise their hand first to get their points. Katelyn was quite a poor sport in the beginning.
Video of some Zingo action:
Tyler's still loving the Legos and his minifigures.
Later in the afternoon, we all piled into our SUV and headed to a local park. 7 people in the car! It would be much easier to use the 3rd row if the kids weren't in carseats and we could slide the middle row down to get in and out. Instead, Kareen and I have to do some gymnastic maneuvers to climb in and out from the back!
We went to Northwood Park to burn off some energy before dinner.
It was really cold, the kids were all bundled up.
Dinner we tried out a new Korean BBQ restaurant called Honey Pig BBQ. Yum! Super close to our place too. Not all you can eat though. Their side dishes were spicy kim chee and spicy bean sprouts. Not my favorite.
Afterward we took the kids to walk around Irvine Spectrum for a while. Out late, special occasion. :) The kids of course loved the Apple Store.
Then it was back home to get the kids ready for bed. Love watching Katelyn and Leah play nicely together.
Saturday morning, bright and early, we headed down to the San Diego Zoo with Kareen and her family. Didn't get there as early as we would have like though, and the zoo was pretty packed already! I am one of those crazy people that like to be at an amusement park BEFORE opening so as to avoid the crowds for a bit. We have season passes and have only gone once so far.
The kids were very happy for a big outing.
We even paid $5 for 3 biscuits (x2) for the chance to feed some giraffes! Definitely a fun experience. I was not expecting such long black tongues though! Kind of freaked me out, and it TOTALLY freaked Katelyn out! She was cringing away the whole time. But it was one of those rare opportunities so I'm glad we did it.
Lunch was FREEZING outside. Tyler had a good time playing thumb war with Uncle Andy. I think there may be some cheating going on, haha!
The little girls played some patty cake too!
Look, a bear!
Love the girls together.
Of course, you can't visit the San Diego Zoo without seeing the pandas!
Oops, Katelyn bonked her head on the railing.
Sea otter fun.
Safari Tyler.
Afterward we introduced Kareen&fam to our favorite Chinese restaurant - 101 Noodle Express!
Sunday, after naps, we headed over to my parents' place in Hacienda Heights for mini family reunion dinner with some of my aunts/uncles/cousins and grandmother. Tyler introduced his second cousin Miles to some Jedi Star Wars light sabers.
My grandmother with 4 of her great grandkids! She has 11 grandkids and currently 11 great grandkids.
Then we headed over to Diamond Plaza in Rowland Heights for a fancy Chinese 10 course dinner. It was so cold, good thing Katelyn was all bundled up.
My brother and his family met us there.
Baby Landon, my nephew! He never stops moving!
The kids had fun with their various electronic devices. Only way to keep them occupied with 10 courses of food.
Cheese!!!! Katelyn likes making silly faces for the camera.
Katelyn and her second cousin Miles!
My dad and his oldest brother. Apparently they were wearing the same jacket that night, haha!
After dinner we hung out at my brother's place in Rowland Heights for a bit. Katelyn loved that their cat Taffy likes to snuggle under the covers on their bed.
Then the crazy hyper fun started for the kids. They were playing with these little magnetic toys that they fashioned into microphones. After watching Tangled earlier in the day, they were crazily singing the song "I Have a Dream". It was hilarious. Rock Stars!
Video of the kids' performance:
What a week! New Year's Eve festivities for next week's post!
No comments:
Post a Comment