Our Last Sunbeam

In January 2014 Holly began attending Primary at church. That means she "graduated" from the toddler nursery and into the "big kid" class. The littlest big kid class is called Sunbeams.  Those three-year-olds are always the most wiggly children in the room, but they bring a lot of cheerful light--just like real sunbeams.

Holly took a little bit of time to warm up and stay with her teachers (some weeks more than others), but she really did love being in her large class with many of her friends and was always happy to wave to her teachers, Sister Slaugh and Sister Peters, when she saw them elsewhere in the church. 

(I have to make a note on this hair of Holly's. It's like feathers, I tell ya; thin and wispy. On this day, I think she had a pony tail that was falling out by the time the photos were taken.)

And here are just a few snapshots of Holly from January 2014:

Learning time on the iPad, for sure.

A cutie-pie shot of Holly waiting for everyone else to finish at a museum:

Finally, an action shot of Holly riding her scooter to preschool at her friend Max's house. During the 2012-2014 school year Holly and I participated in a co-op preschool with 5 other moms. We took turns teaching preschool at our own homes two mornings a week.

This photo prompted my mom to ask, "Think she has enough patterns on?" It is a pretty colorful and cheerful ensemble. That's how I would also describe Holly's personality. She adds a lot of color and cheer to our family. 

Christmas 2013

We feel lucky and blessed to be able to have lots of presents on Christmas morning. We know it's not the real reason for the season, but enjoy the joy of giving and then seeing people light up in delight as they open their gifts.

Here's a photo of all the "loot" before the kiddos descended.

The presents from Santa: Gunnar got a putting green, Maggie got a karaoke machine (which I found at a garage sale), Adah got some PVC pipes for making into backyard hurdles, Holly got a La La Loopsy doll.

And I surpised Damon with a guitar! The year before I gave him Guitar for Dummies to try out on a kid-sized guitar that we had. That quickly proved to be a lousy instrument for any real musical progress, so in 2013 I got him a "real" guitar.

Happy gift receivers:

Here's Maggie in her cupcake hat. This girl loves all things cupcake.

Nana and Gumpin (Jillaire's parents) gave all the kids their own colorful headphones. They are just perfect when we're riding in the car or we have multiple screens going in the same room. Wait...uh...did I just admit to that in a public forum? Eh...who are we kidding? Sometimes Gunnar doesn't want to watch whatever "girlie" movie his sisters have chosen (poor guy is often outvoted), and he gets his own computer or iPad time. (But, I swear, that's the only time. wink wink.)

Maggie does a little drawing in the aftermath of gift opening:

Adah stretched out in her own room with her new sketch book, pencils, and horse drawing how-to book.

Christmas night we had our traditional tamales, beans, and rice--just the six of us,

...and six little reindeer friends. (Maggie decorated these rootbeer bottles with her fun violin teacher at the end of a theory lesson earlier in December. She guarded them until Christmas day when she gave one to each member of the family.)

December 2013 Moments Not to Be Forgotten

I got my first smartphone in November 2013. While I sometimes felt like the last person to finally get one, I really knew that I wasn't. I'm typing this in February 2015 and Damon is still a hold-out.

Anyway, once you always have a camera on hand, the photos multiply. It's so easy to quickly snap a photo of those cute and funny things your kids are doing. It's so easy to make a record of so much. It's a treasure and a great resource for remembering the past--a gift to a tardy blogger like myself, but it can also be a little overwhelming. How does one create a post, a story, for each one of these adorable, silly, creative, fun moments? Answer: One doesn't. One just lumps them all together in a post that can capture a dozen individual (or small group) moments.

Holly as Hello Kitty, as rendered by big sister Maggie:

We finally said goodbye to our trusty red wagon, a hand-me-down gift from our White Salmon neighbors the Andersons. It was warped and troubled after too many times being out in the rain and too many trips loaded full of kids, blankets, rocks, dirt, patio pavers, or rummage sale donations,

Three cute kids all dressed up for church. (Not sure where that 4th cute kid was.)

 You've heard of a jack-in-the-box? How about sisters-in-a-box?

If I remember correctly, she fell asleep in the car and then transferred to the Jo-Ann's shopping cart.

I made these baby Jesus crafts with Holly's preschool friends:

And these paper plate Santa masks:

Silly Holly, all wrapped up in our Christmas blanket:

In early December, we visited the annual Christmas Creche exhibit. It's a display of hundreds of Nativity scenes donated to the event by people in the greater Silicon Valley area. It is hosted by the Menlo Park Stake of the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints, in partnership with some of the neighboring stakes, including ours here in Sunnyvale. We were not permitted to photograph the many wooden, ceramic, glass, metal, and other scenes. It is an impressive collection set up in several beautifully decorated rooms throughout a church building. Small musical performances are on-going in one room and there are concerts by local choirs and musical groups in the chapel each evening.

We were allowed to photograph in the children's room, where a marvelous tent was set up with dress-up clothes, I believe with the intent to recreate characters from the Nativity, or at least from Bible times. My children loved it, especially Adah. She didn't want to leave, and when we returned in 2014, she made a beeline for the dress-ups.

 

My Favorite Christmas Tradition

Note: This post is about the Christmas tree two Christmases ago. We're talkin' 2013, folks. Yes, I'm that far behind on this blog.

I love buying and decorating the family Christmas tree. I have fond memories of scouring Christmas tree lots with my brothers looking for just the right tree--one that had well-spaced branches for hanging ornaments and plenty of room for "loot" underneath. As an adult, it's remained a favorite. During our years in White Salmon, we visited a charming U-cut Christmas tree farm that was such a perfect Norman Rockwell experience.

Now, we live in Silicon Valley. Capitol of the tech industry. 300 days of sunshine. No Christmas tree farms---at least none with campfires, log cabins, and $20 trees. We have driven by some farms south of San Jose and have heard you can get a permit to trudge into the mountains to cut down your own, but we haven't quite been able to figure that out and make that commitment yet. Nope. We went to OSH:

This is the hardware store just about a mile away, in a shopping center with a grocery store, two Indian restaurants, and a Starbucks. While not quite as quaint, the family council over the right tree is still just as important and yields the same result: the biggest Christmas decoration in the house--and one in which the whole family is invested. I love it.

I don't just love picking the tree. I love decorating it. That's because every ornament on our tree comes with a story. After several years of beating back the kids and trying to divvy out the ornaments into their person-specific piles while sequestering the kids in another room, we finally figured out a way to organize the ornaments pre-hanging. 

Everyone gathers round me on the floor near the tree. I carefully unpack each ornament and say whose it is and where we got it. Then that person gets to put the ornament in their own small area, be it a couch cushion or the lid to a box. Some of the ornaments are family ornaments and once all the others are distributed, we take turns choosing one ornament at a time to go in our pile. When all the ornaments are assigned, then we go for it: everyone just starts hanging them up.

Here Maggie hangs up a fairy ornament that was given to her at birth by, Vaishali, one of Damon's classmates at Cranfield University in England. Our ostrich Beanie Baby is to remind us of our time in Chandler, AZ, which celebrates its history as a center of ostrich ranching by holding an Ostrich Festival every year (or at least it did when we lived there). The stocking on the right is one of 6 (or more?) that hung on my family's tree every year growing up. They all had different designs, and when my brothers and I moved out of the house, my mom gave one to each of us.

It's been 2 months since we decorated our last Christmas tree and 14 months since these photos were taken, but I still feel all warm and fuzzy inside just thinking about the happy feelings I have when choosing and decorating the tree with my family and all the fond memories of people, vacations, and Christmases past that are represented by our ornaments. The Christmas tree really is my favorite Christmas tradition.