Anderson Week

The week after Christmas we played with my Mom, Katy, Becca and Ruby. Mom and Katy were off work so we got to hang out and go on fun excursions every day. One day we went to Capitola and played at the beach. It was a it chilly, but the kids loved playing in the sand. Danny went surfing and the rest of us girls watched the kids and enjoyed Pizza my heart pizza. 

This girl was feeling especially photogenic.

 I DIE when they do this. Danny told them to hold hands when we went on a little walk down the beach and they were determined not to lose each other. I have about a hundred pictures of this.

 Ruby LOVEs pizza. She and Lucy had matching hair that day. They were both ridiculously pleased.

 Katy used her library card to get us free tickets to the Discovery Children's Museum in Sausilito. The kids had a great time.

 We used our Thanksgiving Point passes to get free tickets to the Lindsey Museum. The kids loved seeing all the animals.

 We had a great New Year's Eve. We rang in the new year by counting down and banging pots and pans at 7:13 PM. It was awesome.

 Danny took our kids back to Leiningers to bed and the rest of us enjoyed a Cazookie and card games.

 Last Dr. Pepper of the year! I'm back to no soda...it is miserable.

 The next day we moved into my Grandma Joyce's house. We have been adjusting to a new place and the babies are taking the opportunity to climb on every table, open every drawer and pull out every book. It has been wild. They were also sick so the first few days were rough as we moved in. We are finally feeling settled and moved in. Lucy started school in Ms. Datzman's kindergarten class at Walnut Acres and loves it. While she is at school the babies and I go on errands and play at the park.  Real life is back:)

Christmas

Our new tradition on Christmas Eve is to take the ferry to the Ferry building in San Francisco and go ice skating on the Embarcadero.  Most of the Leininger family met in Oakland and all went together. We had so much fun. I even did a little skating this year.

The babies enjoyed walking around and chasing the pigeons while the rest of us skated (Danny and I took turns watching them).  I love this girl's face. 

All the kiddos.

Christmas Eve!  The Blodgetts came over and we ate dinner, acted out the nativity and sang a few carols. At bedtime Lucy wrote a letter and set out cookies for Santa Claus and carrots for the reindeer. She was SO excited.

 

On Christmas morning we endured the Leininger hot chocolate torture and checked to make sure Santa had eaten our cookies. Afterward we opened our eyes and found our presents! Santa brought the babies a kitchen! They LOVED it and played with it the rest of the morning.

Lucy was excited to find a dollhouse! Just what she asked Sants for! (She told us that she would ask Santa one because it would be easy for the Elves to make and then I could save the money. Perceptive child.)

Santa brought me a double BOB! I could not be more excited.

Love her happy face.

So this is not all my Christmas pics, I took most of them on Danny's phone and need to find a way to get them on my computer.  We had such a great day. We opened presents leisurely all morning with a nice break for breakfast. We were ALL spoiled. I have never had such a Christmas. Danny and I don't usually buy each other presents, but he went wild and gave me lots of presents this year! About noon we went over to my house. Santa thought we were there and brought us a family trip to Disneyland! We are super excited. We had an incredibly fun Christmas season. I miss it. Fortunately we had one more week of fun before real life began...

CA at last! Pre Christmas:)

By the time we got to the Leininger's we were super excited to be in CA for Christmas.  It was such a relief to finally be moved. We threw ourselves into having fun for the week before Chrsitmas.

 We decorated gingerbread houses with the Blodgetts

We went over to the Anderson's and ate my favorite thing: gingerbread dough. A few cookies were actually made.

On Saturday we had a big Leininger Family Christmas Party complete with outdoor bouncy house! Lucy and her cousins had a riot. There was a pinata, crafts outside and treats in the garage and the bouncy house in the backyard. The adults enjoyed the kids being busy and chatted, exchanged Christmas gifts and a white elephant exchange.

We have carried on the Leininger tradition of receiving a new ornament each year. I try to have each ornament represent the past year somehow.  This year Lucy got a Merida ornament, the babies' got glass crayons and Danny and I got a U of U ornament.  Danny surprised me with a special set of "ornaments"- flip books of my instagrams from the past year. What a fun thing to look through each year!

We enjoyed an evening at Grandma Joyce's house singing carols and playing the Toy symphony. The kids LOVED playing the instruments.

We all love walking around Walnut Creek at Christmas. Here is my stylish girl playing around the tree

This has been the year of the candy cane. Danny told me he LOVED candy canes. I had no idea. He spent the whole season with a candy cane in his hat ready for eating. On one outing to the mall Joyce had had enough sitting in her stroller and was complaining loudly so Danny let her try a piece of his candy cane. It was all over after that.

Up Next-Christmas!

The Last Days in UT

Those last few weeks in Utah were (as Lucy says) CRAY- CRAY! Danny was able to take most of his finals online so he was able to be home and packing a lot-thank heavens! I mentioned that we sold our couch and brought the love sac upstairs. We used it for a week and then realized that we'd just be putting it back in storage when we got back to CA. It has been in storage most of the time we've had it. We decided that living in California we would probably never have the space a love sac requires, so we decided to sell it.  I wanted a rather expensive item from Santa Claus this year, so that helped me make the decision to sell it.  For several days Danny and I relaxed in the evenings by watching TV on the floor. 

On the last day we brought in the beds and the girls watched TV like this while I cleaned and Dad and Bryce packed.

Danny is such a great packer. He was so proud of our truck this time around.

Here it is after all the boxes but before the furniture. 

When renting a truck I got what I thought was the same size truck we had coming over here. In the end I think I got a smaller one. Or maybe we just underestimated the amount of stuff we had. We got rid of the couch AND love sac so I thought we'd fit. The point is-we didn't. Danny had to dismantle the great wardrobe boxes he'd bought and packed and throw things into trash bags, then we had to DI what would fit-a dining table, the four chairs I loved and refinished, my show rack:(, end table and two lamps. Fortunately our landlords are missionaries in a poor branch and were able to give our things to people in need-so that helped a bit.

In the end it was all okay because we were moving...

It was a crazy moving day and Bryce really saved us. These boys really earned their ribs from Pat's BBQ.

We stayed with my aunt Diana and the next morning Mom and I took of with the girls in the van while Danny and Bryce took the truck. We left at 4:30 AM and drove almost straight through to Truckee to beat a storm over the Sierras. There was a lot of ice on portions of the road so it was slightly scary, but we made it safety and the girls were ANGELS. I was so relieved:)

We went straight to Grandma Marilyn's house to stay for two weeks over Christmas. It was so nice to be in a decorated, clean house again!