December 2017 Happenings

In an attempt to recap the rest of December I went through my phone and found all of the additional activities we've done in the last month. At the very beginning of the month Auntie Laurie came to town to visit. G-Momma and Grandma made it into a girls weekend and camped out at G-Momma's place. One of the days Kieran and I were up in Fresno getting my car worked on and were able to meet up with them to do some Christmas shopping. Later that night Grandpa, Jon, and Reed joined in on the fun and we were all able to have dinner together.

That weekend our friend Clint and his family were visiting and his parents had an open house to celebrate their house turning 100 years old and his Mom thriving after a horrible battle with multiple cancers. It was very special to be part of such a great afternoon and of course to see the family and meet Clint's new son, Leo. Unfortunately I failed miserably on the photo front!

The following week I was incredibly ill but Jon was a trooper and took the boys solo to the Electrical Farm Equipment Parade. This is Reed's favorite Christmas activity, so I was bummed to miss out but Jon made sure to document the evening for me.

The next night we joined some of our friends from Clovis to go on a horse drawn barge around the Cindy Lane neighborhood. Allie was so sweet to include us, there is very limited space and a ton of organizing that goes into it. Sorry for the poor picture quality, between being in the dark, being surrounded by lights, and being on a moving barge I gave up on getting pictures in focus early on!

The next week was the HMC Christmas party. I managed to take absolutely zero pictures but was able to get a couple from some of our co-workers.

Two days before Christmas our friend Vince came to town and Jon put together a soccer game. After we were done playing we decided we should all reconvene for pizza and games. The boys and I went home and made a big batch of sugar cookies for the kiddos to decorate and after pizza and cookies they settled in for a VERY cozy movie (seriously Kieran and Clara cuddled the entire time).

After all of the Christmas activities had concluded Pepe and Nonna hosted a Birthday lunch for Papa. Highlights were the kids taking turns cleaning the floors, Kieran jumping the gun on blowing out the Birthday candles, a Chianti cheers, and of course celebrating one of our favorite guys.

Visting The Huies

Back in November Marli and I started plotting to get together sometime before the end of the year. We finally settled on visiting them in the middle of December and we had a great weekend. They have completely renovated their home and it was so neat to see the finished product. The boys had an absolute blast playing with Cole and Caden who are fairly close to Reed and Kieran's ages and we even fit in some Christmas activities while we were in Southern California. First we went to Candy Cane Lane in a cute El Segundo neighborhood to walk around and see all of the beautiful lights and decorations. Then the next day we went to a Winter Wonderland at the Beach event where the boys got to do all kinds of "winter" activities including throwing snow balls at Mom and Dad, which they loved. In between the holiday fun we had some great meals, the boys played a ton, and we got to catch up with dear friends we don't see nearly often enough.