Merry Christmas from our family to yours

Hope your holidays are merry and bright.

We lit the luminaries at my folks’ house last night like we have for decades. It’s always a fun time with family, friends, and neighbors. I think we started the tradition when I was around the girls’ age. And have done it ever since.:

Now all the “kids” have kids:

Afterwards, TubaDad and I easily finished up our last-minute Santa duties because the girls fell asleep on the way home (YES!!!). Luckily my mom had two new nightgowns stashed at her house so we could get them all prepped and open to the idea:

Good thing the girls had put out the cookies and reindeer chow earlier in the day, because they certainly weren’t up for anything other than snoring when we got home. Their notes crack me up. I think that they think that Santa might be a little slow on the uptake and require extra help, ya know?:

We woke up bright and early (ouch) this morning to the sounds of two veryveryvery excited little girls galloping down the hall.

Santa brought them jam-packed stockings and the electronic pups they had asked for. Ah the joy.

And they were thrilled to find the notes that Santa and Chippey left for them. I’m actually going to miss that little elf dude. We had a lot of fun with him (in a lazy oh-crud-I-forgot-to-move-the-elf-tonight-hurry-throw-him-somewhere-funny kind of a way).

My folks came over later to open even more presents, and my NASA-engineer dad was immediately pressed into duty installing one of the girls’ gifts. Can you see what it is?

Oh yeah, that’s right. The cousins in Texas sent over a zipline, which was successfully hooked up after my dad thoroughly explained the meaning of catenary to us. Frankly I didn’t follow the discussion very well, and in fact am quite proud that I even remembered the word.

Alrighty, I’m off to rummage through the Christmas rubble and see if I can find those Peanut Blossom cookies that I hid from the rest of the family. Merry Christmas! 

Rudolph pancakes for Christmas eve breakfast!

On tap for today: showers for everyone (oh the glamour), final gift wrapping (each girl is wrapping the gift she picked out for her sister), then over to my folks’ house for Christmas Eve festivities.

Oh, and of course, the Norad Santa tracker is up on the computer all day:

We also greatly enjoyed the reindeer cam this season. Cutest site ever! Santa pops in every once in a while to feed and pet the reindeer (he’s there right now in this pic). Course it might be a little hard to explain the Norad and the cam at the same time, so probably best to only look at one right now:

Merry Christmas Eve!

Spanish Consulate, zoo, and the police (I couldn’t think of a snappy title that pulled it all together)

Have you heard of Ley de Memoria Histórica (the Law of Historical Memory)? Well I hadn’t either. Until, that is, my cousin emailed me about it. Basically it’s a temporary Spanish law that allows grandchildren of Spanish citizens to recover their Spanish citizenship without a residency requirement. Well shoot, who wouldn’t want dual citizenship – that could come in handy in so many ways. So la familia and I trooped to the quaint Spanish Consulate in San Francisco and I filled out the required form. (Most of the following are cell phone pics, by the way.)

Nice! The appointment was granted for the end of June, so we’ll see if I get to be the latest citizen of the U.S. and the EU (European Union). It would be kind of ironic if *I* was the one in the family with dual citizenship seeing as how the girls were born in China and TubaDad spends more time working in international countries than anyone else I know.

Anyhow, after the consulate, it was a purdy blue-sky day in the city, so we looked around and decided to go to the zoo. What a beautiful day with the animals. The bonus was that the zoo was all decked out for the holidays, so we got to go ice skating (on plastic ice) and see Santa’s reindeer.

The girls saw their favorite peacock and talked to him (her?) as they always do and even followed him around for awhile.

Then we had a nice dinner and headed home.

That’s when the day kind of went to crap. We were in heavy traffic on the freeway when someone bashed us from behind. Scared me to death – I heard the brakes squealing for what seemed like a minute (although it must have been just seconds) before the crash. We slowly moved over to the shoulder to find that she didn’t have registration or insurance with her and someone had also hit her from behind and had taken off. Lovely... Called the cops and were told to sit tight – on that scary shoulder in the dark with cars whizzing by, ugh!!! That was definitely the worst part for me. We waited for about 20 minutes, then took care of everything with the police and drove home.

We are all ok, the girls are fine, we have new car seats, and the van is in the repair shop until the end of next week. I have to say that I blessed that huge tank-like minivan and those massive, bulky five-point carseats we have the girls in. We are uber-protected in that rig even if it gets a little crumpled. Anyhow, we’re driving a rental SUV that is quite sporty, but has doors that swing out (how do you do that with kids?) and I CANNOT WAIT until we have our minivan back! If you had told me 10 years ago that those words would cross my lips I would never, ever have believed you...

Have a wonderful Christmas eve tomorrow, and always wear those seatbelts. I know, I’m always preaching about seatbelts, but they really are invaluable. Remember TubaDad’s taxi accident? (I’m including that link because I had forgotten all about the EMT story at the end and it made me smile.)

Ahhhh, we got in to see the man in red

Finally got “the money shot.” They told Santa they each want a “life-sized Mulan doll.” (Does that even exist? Gah!)

And just because I enjoy the trip through memory lane (although it actually hurts – seriously real pain – to see them growing before my eyes), here’s our collection of Santa shots, cut and pasted from older posts. Mouseover any pic to see who’s who.

2010 ~ 5 years old
A peaceful Black Friday visit while every other soul in the mall was battling it out in the endless check-out lines, fighting for bargains in sweater departments that looked like they’d been bombed, and running through electronics stores seeking that elusive 75% off big-screen tv that was advertised. 

2009 ~ 4 years old
Santa's the man. After two visits, Ro and Ree are satisfied to just wave to Santa as we walk by. They brought their stuffed animals on the last visit, because each girl wanted Santa to bring her a copy of her sister's toy, and they figured he needed a visual.

 

2008 ~ 3 years old

This was the year the girls finally decided that they loved Santa Claus. They were so infatuated that we had to visit Santa at every opportunity. I think the word "stalking" was bandied about:

Both girls were wearing their favorite shoes of the year in that last one.

 

2007 ~ 2 years old

Sorry Santa, the girls still aren't feeling the love. Pretty much a repeat of the first year. Except this year my mom and I brought lollipop bribes for afterwards, and then I dropped Ree's on the floor and it broke. Trauma on top of trauma. The girls still tell that story. Seriously.
 

 

2006 ~ 1 year old
The first year. We had been home from China for about two months, and my dad and I decided on a complete whim to take the girls to see Santa. They were only on that lap for about three seconds, but it was enough time to make their feelings perfectly clear. Ree considered hanging in there for a millisecond... 

...but sister crying just pushed her over the edge. Best picture ever. At the time, my dad and I were traumatized, and couldn't get them off that lap fast enough. But now, well you know we just die laughing at this shot. 

Ho ho ho!

Still no visit with the man in red

Maybe we’ll try to squeeze it in this week. Need to add that authentic mall-Santa picture to our collection. The girls did visit Macy’s to drop Santa a little note, however.

And in case he needs more clarification, Ro penned this:

Hope Santa comes through with something spectacular...

Cookies for breakfast (for everyone)

Ro decided to make cookies last night while Ree was playing with her baby dolls, so we pulled out our sugar cookie recipe and she went to town. Later (as expected) Ree saw the sprinkle fun and begged to get in on things.

Little peeps did a good job, and everyone (even Chippey, apparently) enjoyed cookies for breakfast this morn.

PS: Another Elf on the Shelf question for you: Does your elf’s hat stay on?! That stinking hat gives me fits. Ours falls off if you even look at Chippey wrong and then it gets lost. I’m thinking of hot glueing it on, but would his thin plastic face melt or bend under the hot glue? Are we the only ones with elfin-hat hate?