Christmas Time

 

This Christmas season was busy as usual, but we enjoyed a lot of family time together and had a wonderful Christmas season.  We did all the usual things... we saw Christmas lights, made gingerbread houses, watched a lot of Christmas movies, decorated Christmas cookies, went skiing and Grinch night.  We also got to try out the Giving Machine  for the first time.  It was fun to go to the village and let the kids choose what they wanted to donate.  Craig wanted to buy a goat, I choose recreational equipment, Brooklyn choose bedding for a women's shelter and McKay got diapers and wipes.  It was really a great experience and I hope that they continue to bring the giving machines to Boise.  Brooklyn and I went to the Egyptian Theatre and watched White Christmas with Diane, Paige and Audrey. Such a cute movie.  McKay also had a Christmas program at school, always fun to hear the songs they sing.

This year Stan and Diane decided to give experiences again.  Brooklyn choose going to the Nutcracker for the first time and McKay choose a sleigh ride to feed the elk and a dinner.  Brooklyn was so excited to get dressed up and go to the Nutcracker with all the adults.  I think she really enjoyed it and is looking forward to it again next year.  I think McKay made a wise choice, I think he would have liked the nutcracker, but I think he had a lot more fun with the sleigh ride.

Brooklyn wanted to have a Christmas party with her friends.  The only night that would work for my schedule was the same night as the Mountain West Conference Championship.  We gave her the option of party or football game and she unexpectedly choose a party.  We thought for sure she would want to go to the game.  So I stayed home with her and her friends and they ate pizza, decorated Christmas cookies, drank hot chocolate and watched a Christmas movie.  I didn't realize how loud 8 6th grade girls could be, but they did seem to have fun (and I completely forgot to take any pictures).  Craig and McKay had a blast at the football game.  BSU pulled out the win against UNLV.  After the game the BSU fans rushed the field and pulled down the goal posts and even threw them into the Boise river.  McKay of course wanted to head down on the field too.  After Craig got home he informed be that he lost McKay down on the field.  McKay was so excited to get down on the field that started weaving in and out of people and he said he even crawled through some peoples legs.  He really wanted to get to the players.  Once he realized that Craig was no longer with him he headed back to where they came onto the field and luckily that's where Craig waited for him.  Luckily I wasn't there, because I would have totally freaked out.  But when I asked McKay what he would have done if he wasn't able to find Craig he said, "Well there were a lot of police officers on the field, so I would have just asked one of them to help me." Smart kid for sure.

The weekend before Christmas we headed up to the cabin, we hadn't been there since the start of August.  Luckily there had been enough snow that we were able to go skiing on both Saturday and Monday.  We grabbed dinner at Pueblo Lindo on Saturday and lunch at My Father's Place on Monday.  It was so nice to sneak away to the mountains for a few days.  We headed home Monday night so that we could be home for Christmas Eve.  Christmas Eve morning after a quick workout we headed out to Idaho Ice World to go ice skating with the rest of my family.  The kids had a blast and I managed not to fall once.  After ice skating we headed to Missy's house for lunch and to let the kids decorate cookies for Santa.  That evening we went over to Stan and Diane's for a prime rim dinner.  My mom and Tucker joined us and we all filled our bellies with delicious food.  We then went through the nativity with the kids before heading home.  After the kids went to bed we got the stockings out and headed to bed ourselves. 

 We told the kids they could come into our room at 7:00am and that we could head down around 7:30.  McKay was right in at 7:00 and Brooklyn shortly after.  We then headed downstairs to see what "Santa" brought.  Neither Santa or mom and dad gave a ton for Christmas since we were taking them to Hawaii a few weeks after Christmas.  A lot of their gifts had something to do with our trip like swimsuits, sunglasses, etc.  After Santa gifts we ate our traditional Christmas morning cinnamon rolls.  My mom then came over to watch the kids open their gifts from here (new basketball shoes) and the rest of their gifts.  After we were finished opening gifts we took the rest of the morning slow before heading over to my mom's house for brunch.  After a yummy brunch and time with cousins we then headed over to Stan and Diane's and ended up eating leftovers from the night before.  It was a wonderful Christmas day filled with a lot of family and love.  We are so lucky to have so much family close and to be able to have our kids so close to their cousins and grandparents.  We truly have a village and it is amazing.  It was such an amazing season celebrating our Savior's birth.  Each year I do my best to get as much of the busy work of Christmas done before December, the Christmas cards, neighbor gifts, decorations, etc. so that we can focus more on the real meaning of Christmas.  I never know if it is enough, but I hope the kids will have good memories when they look back on the Christmases of their childhood.

Brian's family was in town for Christmas and it was so fun to see them.  Shortly after Christmas Lisa and her family came to down for a week.  The kids had a blast with her kids.  Stan and Diane took everyone to the tubing hill at Eagle Island.  It is always fun to see the kids with their cousins.  Overall it was a fantastic Christmas and lots of memories were made!

San Francisco

 

Craig and I had the opportunity to take a quick trip to San Francisco the first weekend in November.  Neither of us had ever been before and we had put off going because we had heard that the city had kind of gone to crap.  We finally decided it was time to check it out.  Our main reason to go was for a 49ers game and then figured we would work the rest of the trip around that.  We flew in Friday morning and had most of the day to check out the Pier 39 area.  We dropped off our luggage at the hotel and then walked to Pier 39 for lunch and then walked around the pier until we could finally check into our hotel.  Craig then realized he had the time wrong for the Sacramento Kings game that evening, it was actually an hour earlier than we thought and he figured out that it was going to take 3 hours to get there.  Not ideal for me, I hate being in the car especially since we had already been on the plane that morning and I also had to skip my workout because Craig convinced me to not wake up extra early to workout before our flight, because we would have plenty of time at our hotel before the basketball game.  I was in a little bit of a bad mood on the drive to the game, but did take a little nap while Craig dealt with California traffic.  We found our parking garage and made our way to the arena.  The Kings were down quite a bit heading into the 4th quarter but made an awesome comeback and took it into overtime.  They ended up losing, but it was sure an exciting game.  Luckily the drive back took less than half the time.

Saturday morning after a workout and breakfast we went to go check our Alcatraz.  While we were standing in line to get on the ferry over to Alcatraz, we figured out how close we were to San Jose, which is where BSU was playing that evening.  Craig bought tickets on his phone on our ferry ride over.  Alcatraz was one of the few touristy things we really wanted to do while we were there.  We did an audio tour and it was really cool to hear about some of inmates and what life was like there. After we got back on the ferry, we grabbed a quick lunch from some street vendors and then headed back to the hotel to get ready for the game.  Of course the one time neither of us back anything Boise State, is the time we decide to go to a game last minute.  We always have something with us, so this was very weird.  It took us just over an hour to get to San Jose.  The stadium looked like a high school stadium, it was quite small and didn't even have bleachers on one side of the field.  We sat in one of the end zones and we were so close to the players.  The game didn't start out pretty, but luckily BSU figured it out and ended up winning the game.  I'm glad that we ended up going and our car didn't even get broken into while we are at the game, so definitely a win-win.

Sunday morning we slept in a little.  After grabbing breakfast at the hotel (which was a pretty dang good buffet) we headed back to the room to get ready for the 49ers game.  We drove to Levi Stadium and had a quick walk from our parking lot.  The stadium was beautiful.  We first went to the team store and got the kids each a sweatshirt.  We then found our seats and then checked out the rest of the stadium.  We then paid way too much money for lunch before the game started.  There was a great fly by at the start of the game, since it was just after veteran's day.  They were playing the Seahawks, but ended up losing.  It was still a lot of fun to watch and to just actually be there.  I even brought along Craig's 49ers jacket from when he was like 12, there was an old gobstopper wrapper in one pocket and a ton of sand in the other pocket.  I don't think it has been work for over 20 years.  On our way back from the game we drove down Lombard Street a couple of times.  It was so crazy that people actually live on such a zig-zag street.  After we got back to the hotel we grabbed a quick dinner at Pier 39 and some yummy salt water taffy for the kids, before walking over to Ghirardelli Square.  Sadly at this point I had some massive heart burn so I didn't even get anything chocolate related.  On the bright side, it saved me probably about 1,000 calories, so not the end of the world.

Monday morning after a quick workout and breakfast, we headed to the Golden Gate Bridge.  It was super windy, but we still walked just over halfway across.  It really is quite amazing and it was fun to learn about how it was built.  We then drove over to the Pink Ladies and then checked out a couple cathedrals before heading back to the airport.  It was a quick trip, but we filled every minute of it.  We fit in 3 games, lots of driving, and all of the touristy things that we wanted to do, so I would call it a very successful weekend.  The flight back was easy and the kids did great with Nana and Pops.  We will see where we end up next fall for our weekend of games.