Great presents, good food, and adorable children is what Christmas brought us this year!

I never thought staying inside for two days was going to be much fun. But thanks to the fact that I have awesome kids, a husband who helps, and Sarah and Jacob who entertain so well, we had a wonderful Christmas Eve and Christmas day.

Yesterday, while Elijah and I took a well deserved nap, Sarah, Jacob, and the children had fun reading, acting, and cooking. Sarah applied make-up on my kids and transformed them into little Christmas creatures, with Gillian being Cindy Lou Who, Jefferson transformed into an elf, and James playing Santa Clause. I'm so sad I didn't take a picture of James as Santa, but when I got around to taking pictures he was so done with Santa's beard.

After reading a few books, the children helped Sarah with Santa's cookies. Since Jefferson had promised to leave cookies and milk for Santa when he wrote Santa his letter, he was determined to make some delicious cookies. While Jacob was making a very yummy punch (with sherbet ice cream in it), the children made Peppermint Chocolate Crinkles with Sarah. After dinner, we all tried the goods, and were truly impressed, and confident that Santa would be pleased.

We then watched White Christmas, a favorite in our home. After the movie, we sang Christmas carols and read the story of Jesus' birth as found in Luke 2. The children were very excited for Christmas morning, so they went to their rooms with not much ado. Not, however, before they wrote a note to Santa and left him some cookies and milk:

We had told the children not to come downstairs till we called them. We woke up around 8:00am, called the children who were waiting patiently, woke up Charlton who was sleeping later than usual, and allowed them to dive into Santa's presents.

After examining his gifts, Jefferson went to see if Santa had eaten his cookies, and to his pleasure, he had. Santa had even left a special note for all of them.
After that, we were all ready to open the presents our family had sent us. The children were very pleased with our present to them. They played with them for the rest of the day. Gillian got a Christmas Barbie, James a rocket, and Jefferson was happy to receive a helicopter.
We had a good Christmas dinner, played a few board games, talked, watched Holiday Inn, and enjoyed each other's company. Our Christmas was beautiful and calm. I hope your Christmas was just like you liked it.

Merry Christmas!

More parties?!

Yesterday, Elijah asked me if it would be okay to invite his work friends for a simple brunch the next day. I was all for it. As I was preparing the food this morning, I realized that with the exception of Charlton, this month, I have thrown a party for each of my family members, starting with my Christmas/book club party, birthday party for James, Christmas party for Gillian, and Christmas party at school for Jefferson. And today, a brunch for Elijah's friends. I'm telling you I need to find a job as a party organizer!

It was meant to be a simple bacon and eggs meal, but I kept adding to it muffins, bagels with slices of onion, tomato, bacon and provolone cheese melted on it, cinnamon rolls, fruit platters, and Elijah's praline pecans. I'm sorry I don't have any pictures, but we were all so taken by the delicious food, that I didn't think of it till later when the food was all gone. We then all sang some Christmas songs, starting with Sarah and Jacob (Elijah's sister and her husband) as they beautifully sang Santa Baby. One of Elijah's friends from work is form China and we asked him to sing their national anthem, which he did. We could hear the propoganda while he sang it, even though we didn't understand the words. Gillian then sang some songs accompanied by Elijah and the boys. Charlton was taking one of his four hour naps, so we had no one to accompany us with the harmonica. It was hard to sing without him, but we somehow managed. We all had a wonderful time, and I was glad that my last party of the year was for Elijah, since I never get to do anything special for him.

Around 3:30 we left for San Francisco. Sarah's birthday was today, and Jacob was taking her out down town. As for us, I had gotten tickets for a cable car tour seeing the Christmas lights in San Francisco. The tour was okay. I was a bit disappointed that residential areas, especially the very wealthy ones, had very few Christmas trees on display. We enjoyed visiting Fairmont Hotel, Union Square (did you know that Macy's store in Union Square occupies one whole block with six stories high and all of that just filled with items only for women?) Fisherman's Wharf, Haight Street shops, Chinatown, and many more. My camera isn't that good at night, but here are some of the pictures I took on this tour:


After we all got back, we celebrated Sarah's birthday by eating ice-cream cake, and giving her birthday presents. She had a golden birthday today, since she turned 23 on the 23rd of December. Happy Birthday, Sarah! We all love you.

San Francisco, here we come! Oh, wait, we've been there before, many times.

I took Rebekah, Sarah, Jacob, and the rest of my family to San Francisco. I know you are asking yourself how many times can someone go to the same place and still enjoy it. Well, my trick in enjoying the same places over and over again is by seeing an extra new thing each time while showing the same other sights to our visitors.

So, today, I started our San Francisco tour by stopping by Pier 39. There are myriads of unique stores and restaurants located on this pier, as well as one can enjoy a fabulous view of the Golden Gate Bridge and Alcatraz. I wanted to take Rebekah, Sarah and Jacob to see Alcatraz, but the tickets for this entire week were all sold out. We had to be satisfied by seeing Alcatraz from afar. Maybe when they come next time, we'll be more prepared and order tickets in advance.

We stopped at many stores and wasted our money on special Christmas decorations, funny magnets, weird socks, San Francisco sweatshirts, and other unnecessary, but fun souvenirs. We entered puppet stores for the kids, knives store for Jacob, purse bouquet for Rebekah, seashell assortments of products store for all of us, an Irish store just for fun, and many other interesting shops that we wouldn't visit in otherwise. Being a tourist is so much fun!
Then, tired of shopping and strolling, we decided to get something to eat. Hard Rock Cafe was close by, so we entered and ordered some lunch. We had fun looking at all the guitars and other original pieces of the many rock bands and rocks stars. Jefferson and James loved looking at the guitars and choosing their favorites. Charlton made us laugh by pretending he was the quitest and sweetest baby ever. I guess he doesn't to pretend much, because he is quit and sweet.After we finished our lunch, our bodies demanded some more walking to digest all that food we ate. We strolled to the end of the pier and enjoyed the view of the Golden Gate Bridge, the salty breeze, and the funny roar of the sea lions bathing under the sun nearby.

The other new thing I was going to try today was the Arcade Museum located a block away from the Fisherman's Wharf. We had taken the children to the submarine next to the museum before, but had never entered the museum itself, and I had heard it was a fun place to visit. The admission is free, but you have to have money to play the machines. They didn't cost much, just a quarter or so per machine, but, believe me, there were so many fun games and jukeboxes and all sorts of other arcade machines, that you honestly wanted to try them all. They all dated in the 1900's and it was so fun introducing the kids to something that interesting and old.

We had to finish our tour of San Francisco by stuffing our faces with the delicious chocolate from the Ghirardelli Factory. Now, this sightseeing and mouthwatering spot is something I will never get tired of sharing!


I will share with you a secret. I really loved spending time with my children and Elijah's sisters and brother-in-law. I truly had a good time exploring San Francisco. However, my favorite thing happened toward the end of our trip. As I was driving home and going over the Bay Bridge, I see a spectacular view of San Francisco from above. I was determined to take some pretty pictures. The photographer in me made me take the Treasure Island exit and park by the bay. The artist in me couldn't have enough of the breathtaking sunset, the refreshing breeze, and the salty water of the waves splashing onto the rocks and somehow some of it reaching my face. So, when you look at the pictures below, I would like you to have a three dimensional experience by imagining all that I described above. Isn't it glorious this nature that God has provided for us! Now, breath the ocean air!