Christmas - Part 1

There is A LOT to report, so I'm breaking our Christmas celebrations up in to two parts; this is part one.

On Christmas Eve we rolled our traditional homemade sushi - nothing says Merry Christmas like sushi! I have these cool chop sticks that are connected by a rubber man on the top and I'm getting pretty good at them. The crunchy shrimp were the easiest to pick up, but I even attempted the salmon! 

I dictated my letter to Santa to my mom and she wrote it down for me.  I think I did pretty good because A) Santa left me a cookie, B) My dad got a pj shirt, C) My friend Poppy - aka Popster - got a guitar, and D) I got a candy cane - even though I don't like them.

 Christmas morning I ran into the front room to find this...a REALLY loud and fast race track that shoots cars and they smash into each other.

I made my dad a gift for Christmas. My mom let me wrap it myself. I used an entire roll of tape to make sure it stayed shut.

 Ta-da! It's a Christmas tree painted with MY hand prints. Pretty cool, I know.

 My mom got a bunch of stuff and is showing some of it off here - a new hat, a vest, and a cool book she can read to me.

 Christmas afternoon we went over to the Keenan's house for the "Running of the Children." Aunt Chris hides Christmas pictures down the path and we run as fast as we can and try and find them. After we exhaust ourselves running, we return to their house and get a chocolate treat as a prize. I think I ran more than anyone...

 Aunt Chris made me a race track out of a gigantic piece of felt. She even got a spice rack for my "watcher" cars to hang out in the grandstand as the "racer" cars zoomed by. She's awesome.

And this is just "Part One" - stay tuned for Christmas - Part 2!

Tis the Season

We've been enjoying December and all of the Christmas fun it brings with it. I'm not too into Santa Claus this year and if you ask me what I want for Christmas, I'll tell you a candy cane. So really, with just a candy cane on my wish list, I don't have any need to sit on the lap of a big stranger who's dressed in red fur and makes loud laughing noises. Don't get me wrong, I've seen him a bunch this month - at the neighborhood Christmas party I walked by and accepted a candy cane and in San Francisco I walked up, gave him a high five and again, accepted a candy cane.

So when my parents had an idea of visiting his workshop at the National Christmas Tree, I said, "no thank you." But my mom reminded me there are three people in our family and that SHE wanted to stop in the workshop; so I obliged. I did state aloud, "I won't go near Santa if he says, 'Ho Ho Ho'." Really, is that necessary? But as we walked through the workshop and checked out all of the cool stuff, I suddenly felt a bit brave. As we approached Santa and my parents offered to have me walk past, I said, "I'll stand on the step." And then before I knew it, the big guy scooped me up and plopped me on his lap - TRICKY! No words were exchanged, but he gave me that look that he knew the candy cane was on my list so I think we're good.

Last night we had friends over to go caroling. Unfortunately rain started falling about 10 minutes before we were to start strolling the neighborhood. So we all grabbed a Christmas hat and an instrument and decided we could have a sing-a-long indoors. I chose the ever popular "Christmas helmet" for my hat and the popular "Christmas maracas" for my instrument. Each kid also got to pick their favorite Christmas carol - jingle bells, frosty, etc. I picked the internationally, well-known ABC song. So while it doesn't exactly mention Christmas, every letter in the song is needed to spell all of the Christmas words - so there, don't judge. And besides, it was one of the only songs everyone knew all of the words too. It turned out to be a great night with lots of holiday cheer!

 

My Parents' Rivalry

My parents are pretty supportive of each other UNLESS the San Francisco 49ers are playing the Miami Dolphins and then, well, it's every man for himself. Luckily this only happens once every four years. This last weekend was "once every four years," so we flew to San Francisco for the game. (Four years ago they flew to Miami - at least those are two pretty good places regardless of the outcome, right?!)

We made a weekend out of it and had a great time seeing friends and San Francisco all decorated for Christmas. Here are some of the highlights....

On the first morning I decided to get up at 5am - hey, it was 8am DC time. So we headed to the Golden Gate Bridge so I could run and run and run (and besides, it was the only thing open that early!) Their jumping was a bit out of sync - maybe because it was so early....

 

 Then down to the Wharf and Pier 39 to enjoy the decorations, the sea lions, and meet up with friends.

Saturday night we went to Union Square with Lisa and Josh - they're awesome.

Sunday was the big game. I was given a choice and chose to wear my 49ers t-shirt on top of my Dolphins t-shirt (sorry dad, the Niners are having a solid season). We tailgated with the Brills; I was the shortest tailgater.

Then inside for the game. Our seats were awesome - my mom said something about spending all of my college money to buy them. That's okay, who needs college when you can watch football from the front row!

Slow first half and then the game got really exciting. The best part was all of the action happened at our end of the field. I zonked out in the 4th quarter but woke up to tell my dad, "The Niners won, the Dolphins did not." He seemed to already know this and didn't need it repeated. My mom however seemed surprised by this information and ask me to say it over and over and over again. Go Niners!

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Here's the annual posting of me and my little red wagon. The wagon is TINY. And when I was born, I could fit inside of it, which is hard to believe because my dad's hand is almost too big for it. Just three year's later, I tower over it. It's a great way to determine my growth. The doc says I'm now in the 17% for my height (that doesn't count my hair height) and 75% for my weight - so i've "grown" in both. Let's hope the height number goes up more this year than the weight!