Merry Christmas & Happy New Year!

What a fun and crazy holiday season! We have been extremely lucky and were able to spend time with lots of family and friends, and Claire has loved every minute of it. The exception to that was Santa- Claire is by no means a fan of his yet! She has figured out who he is and says "Santa" or more like "Sa-suh" whenever she sees a picture of him, but the real thing was pretty tramautizing. Hopefully next year will be better!





We went to December Nights for the first time this year. It's a big holiday festival held in Balboa Park that's massive! Supposedly over 300,000 people were there this year. The park is decked out with lights and decorations, all of the international houses are open and serving food, plus all of the museums are free. It was quite a crazy experience with all of the people and food. We decided it wouldn't be fun if Claire wasn't confined to a stroller, I'm sure we would have lost her at some point! Brandon, Claire, Aunt Emily and I also ventured over to look at the lights on Garrison St. It's a neighborhood in Point Loma that goes all out each year with their decorations. We all decided we could never quite give a good enough description of how amazing these houses are. Some of the homes block out their windows and put displays in them, they look like storefronts! One house even had Santa sitting at their front entry, of course this wasn't very exciting for Claire. The good thing was, she really liked the lights and all of the motorized displays and blow-ups.

Claire had lots of fun Christmas Eve with all of the other kids running around at the Withers'. She was very intrigued by the guitar and got a huge kick out of being a human bowling ball. Between that and climbing up and down the stairs repeatedly, she slept very well that night!
Christmas morning was very exciting to wake up and have books waiting under the Christmas
tree for her from Santa. Never mind the tricycle sitting next to the books, that was only interesting once Mommy and Daddy put the books away for later! Eventually the tricycle was a very cool thing. Claire wasn't overly interested in opening presents with just Mom and Dad, but once she saw everyone at Aunt Emily's opening their gifts, it became very fun. It was so neat, she helped herself to gifts under the tree that were not for her. Thanks again to Aunt Em for understanding and not being bothered with re-wrapping gifts!

The day after Christmas we all went to the Wild Animal Park with the Lee crew to see the lights in the park. I'm not sure if the kids or adults had more fun...We saw a black light puppet show, Makani and Claire went sledding down the 'snow hill' and the lions were wandering around in their exhibit. The male was putting on quite a show with his roaring, I definitely wouldn't want to meet up with one of those in the wild!

Our New Year's Eve was mellow, but plenty of fun. We went over to Jay and Bobbie's for great food, playtime for the kids and as always, a very good time. There was a lot of running around with the kids, they played hard the entire time. It was an early evening, which was very nice for myself and Claire. She was out within 5 minutes of leaving the house and I think I was out on the couch within 5 minutes of getting home! B did wake me up to watch the ball drop, so I guess I officially rang in the New Year. It's a little different than some of the past New Year's celebrations we've had!








All in all, it's been a fantastic holiday season. We're looking forward to the new year and plenty of new memories with Claire. We wish all of you a fantastic New Year with plenty of good health and good fortune!

Turkey Trotting

We made yet another trip to the east coast, this time for a little business and an early Thanksgiving in Plymouth, MA. The trip was loads of fun for everyone and we had wonderful weather to top it all off! The trip began with our first successful red-eye with Claire and as usual, she was a trooper on the plane. We then went to Hopkinton to visit Aunt Carie, Uncle Clint, Aubrie, Charlie and of course Sweetheart! Claire had heaps of fun playing with Aubrie and Charlie, they both are such great kids and it's crazy how fast they're turning into young adults. I'm grateful Claire has good role models to look up to.
After our stay with the Clements we were met in Plymouth by Gramma, Papa, Uncle Shaun, Nicole, Great Aunt Nancy and Great Uncle Jim. The weekend was spent laughing a lot, chasing Claire around and of course eating good food as in typical holiday fashion. Plymouth was a charming little town and as we were told, the rock really isn't that big! Claire had a blast with all of the attention and didn't quite understand why she couldn't go in the water at the beach. She definitely enjoyed the ducks and dogs in the neighborhood, plus all of the walks with Papa were great! It was nice to spend the holiday with everyone and just have time to unwind and enjoy each others' company. There were plenty of special memories made that weekend, and as usual it was a hard farewell. We're already looking forward to our next time together.

The next Thanksgiving was spent in an RV! Brandon, Claire and I rented a motorhome in Oakland and then headed north. We spent the first night in Bodega Bay at a pretty benign campground without fire pits, who knew you had to bring your own?! The area was beautiful with a ton of fishermen. Crab is currently the hot item to catch, so we took advantage of it while we could. We got to take in some amazing views at Bodega Head and then made our way north along the coast.
The views were phenomenal and we were both surprised how untouched the coast was in that part of California. There are a lot of very lucky cows up there- they have ocean front property to graze on every day. We also saw sheep, chickens and goats, in fact B almost ran over one dumb little goat who decided to cross the road in front of a first time RV driver! Don't worry, we didn't hit him, but goats aren't much smarter than sheep! We passed through quite a few small little towns, most would have made Clifton Springs look pretty big!
We spent the next two nights in Caspar Beach, just north of Mendocino. Shortly after we pulled in, a couple asked us if we would like any urchins. Brandon and I were both a little puzzled by the question, but it turns out the two had been diving that day and brought back a bucket of urchins, along with crabs and some other seafood. We took a few and B got to work cleaning them- not an easy task by any means. I decided I still really don't like them no matter how much of a delicacy they're supposed to be! The area was great, we took some hikes while there and Claire spent some time swinging at the playground. We headed up to Fort Bragg and were disappointed that one of the breweries we had hoped to check out was closed, but we had a nice lunch and enjoyed wandering around the town. Mendocino was very charming and they had the most inclusive grocery store we've ever seen. You could get anything from bananas to fishing lures to plumbing needs. There was even a little kitchen wares section, but to top it off there was a lady wandering around in the store wearing a gas mask- we both wondered if there was something going on that we didn't know about!
From the coast, we headed inland. Along the way we stopped in Boonville to check out another brewery, which was also closed. Fortunately they had goats and horses, which easily entertained Claire. We also stopped in Ukiah to have lunch with Miss Debbie. She made us a wonderful meal and Claire had a fabulous time running around and playing with toys. The Belfanti's live in a beautiful setting and we had a good laugh hearing the stories of the random animals they have had in their backyard! With full bellies, we got on the road again and headed to Clear Lake. Nothing too exciting, but it was a nice area and they had some very friendly ducks. Claire definitely is not afraid of ducks and thought it was a lot of fun to throw bread to- or at them!
The last part of our trip was closer to the Bay area. We stayed in Forestville and spent time in Healdsburg, Santa Rosa and the surrounding areas. B was very happy to check out Bear Republic and Russian River breweries and I loved the quaintness of Healdsburg. Claire made a new friend with one of the campground cats, she was friendly enough to let herself in to our RV! B and I had the living daylights scared out of us by the same cat the night before and a boy looking for his cat named Chad, not good to run around the campers in the dark and jump out at people! We all had plenty of good laughs and enjoyed spending the time with each other. B and I were amazed at how many new things Claire picked up in just a week's time. She's talking all the more and has gotten to be quite a dare devil. She thinks she is ready to drive too, thank goodness that won't be possible for awhile. We were pretty surprised when she put the key in the ignition and chuckled when the wind shield wipers came on when the motorhome was started!

Both of our Thanksgiving holidays were great and loaded with fun times. We hope everyone had a special Thanksgiving and ate lots of yummy food. Enjoy the start of the holiday season!