This year for Christmas we took the pleasant trip up (or over and down rather) to CA. I call this trip pleasant because at least this time Chris didn't have a head cold so riding in the plane didn't make his head explode like it did last years Thanksgiving. The only thing we had to worry about was realizing that Jeff is not the only one with allergies. Chris spent a bunch of time coughing and blowing his nose since three cats reside in the home. My favorite cat, Friskey, was a little under the weather as well, since he just can't fight age the same way we can. He has off and on spells of good-ish health, but he's still kicking. To compensate all the cat hair flying around, we slept with the window open ever single night. This would have made sleeping rather cold, except for the fact that my room was created downstairs out of half of the front room and so it has the best heater vent located right over the bed! I've always enjoyed hogging the heat from that vent and found myself enjoying it again while we were there.I didn't take many Christmas pictures since my parents put the whole thing on tape and gave up a copy (thanks guys!) but there were a few snap shots taken of the event. This one is of peeling potatoes. My mom likes it when we help out in the kitchen, and personally I think this task is a good skill to learn since it teaches great hand eye coordination. You never know if you'll take a slice a little to hard and miss that trash can! I sure make a mess of it!
On Christmas day I can't remember who was the first one up, but I do know that it people FOREVER before all gathering into the family room to open stockings. (Alright so it was still early like around eight or nine, but I was way hungry!) You just can't tell an expecting lady to wait on opening up the food before you. I must admit to being the first person to ransack my stocking, open up my cereal and grab delicious handfuls of it behind my Mom's back while I waited for the "OK" to begin Christmas morning. At this moment I would like to thank my cohorts who laughingly helped me to hide my open box of cereal behind my back whenever my mom turned around. :) As noted, you can tell what the first thing was that I continued digging into when everyone else was ready to find what Santa had left us. Chris helped by providing this picture of evidence.
Before we left, we enjoyed buying our first Christmas tree. (yup it's a fake one in a box, so we can use it again and again and again. Storing it is rather fun!) I totally had a picture of the tree that I KNOW I put on my flash drive last night just so that I could take it to campus, use the Internet and update the blog, but alas I don't know where the picture disappeared off to. All the same we decorated with blue, silver, and green balls, and these candy canes that we had help making out of pipe cleaners and beads. This picture features only half of them. I do believe we had about 54-ish of these all over our branches.
Back in CA we took a trip up to the Oakland Temple and watched a musical program, which was great. I got to run into my six grade teacher, and watch as my brother ran the lights from above. He does an amazing job at being in the Tech Crew there and helping out during events. His event he helped at was the past annual Temple Pageant that told the Joseph Smith story. Sadly that has now been discontinued, but we all still love the story.
The pictures below show a bit of the lights that decorate the temple grounds during Christmas. Before we arrived my family helped to put all of these up and it took I think 2-3 weeks to do. Don't you just love the lighted palm trees! Contrary to the Beach Boys you won't find these trees in the sand next to beach, but you will still see them in CA if you look for them.
Ahhh! Isn't that guy on the left cute?!
We had a blast at New Years. We ate a huge meal (I don't remember what it was but it was good! no wait, was it Chinese food?) and then headed off to the ward par-tay for a few hours. There they were serving more food like hot dogs, nachos, fruit etc. And although we were all still stuffed SOMEHOW Chris managed to make his way through twenty hot dogs! (Caution this could be a hyperbole.) We had fun though talking with people we didn't know but who seemed to know me, wandering around and observing the ping pong matches and games and getting Ann to "Go Fishing" for Chris. The only problem with having a younger sister get a toy for someone else is that the fishing people tell those in the back if its a boy or girl. Chris got himself a pink whistle, but that didn't stop him from using it to brighten up the evening.
This is a picture of the ceiling of the the gym. I though they were going to let the balloons fall down right at New Years. Well they did and they didn't. In order to make sure that everyone was out of the gym by ten so that the youth could have a dance until midnight, they pulled the balloons down when it was New York's New Year. What cheating!!! It was still fun to stomp on the balloons and hear them pop and then watch as some kids 'rescued' balloons from dying and held onto them for the rest of the evening. I fancied a clear balloon myself after stumbling over a few others trying to pop them, but then I tossed it and it was quickly grabbed by a little boy who had found a new prized possession for the night.
As part of the event, there was a cake walk... okay so not that but they played musical chairs and divided it up by age. This was good thinking on their part so that the little tikes didn't get squished at all. We (Chris, me and Amy) talked Ann into joining. Whenever Ann made it to a chair at the end of each round Chris blew the pink whistle as loud as he could and cheered for Ann! I don't know if anyone else even heard it since it was loud in there, but it got me laughing! After the adults left, Amy and Ann stayed a few more hours at the dance and then came home right before the New Year to celebrate with family. How nice of them. My mom was glad she didn't have to be on the road AT midnight on this night for obvious safety reasons. We then ended up doing something... watching a movie? playing a game? I need to get my memory checked. Anyway we missed catching exactly 12:00, but it was still a good New Years. I was proud of myself for having stayed awake the whole time and not drifting off to sleep.
As part of our holiday fun we resurrected a Lego dragon who's pieces had been turned into many other castles and creations. There are still a few pieces missing, but you can't tell. After it was complete throughout the week we would randomly find that the teeth would be placed on it's head for horns or the top spike would find it's way to the nose. How that just kept happening I don't know.......
One Saturday we attempted to make our way up to the Aquarium where my family had season passes. However, we soon found everyone else had that exact same idea. The line to get into the place was sooooooooooooooooo long. There was one long line going up the sidewalk for tickets, one going down the sidewalk which contained season pass holders and one long line going nowhere just for show! We ended up deciding against the multi-million hour wait and just took a tour of the surrounding scenery on foot. But first we made a trip to use the one bathroom we could find. As typically described-- wait for the guys bathroom Two Seconds. Wait for the girls line half an hour. If only we could plan on standing in line half an hour before we needed to use the facilities life would be sweeter.
We walked around this duck pond area we had never explored before. As part of the walk we discovered this really old bridge built in 1893. Chris and I made sure to walk over it backwards. You know to ward off bad luck of falling into the water. It was really strong and stable though, so we weren't scared.
We also came across another footbridge located around a tall waterfall. Chris had fun playing hide and seek with me, hence the scared look when I caught him on camera!
He also enjoyed seeing how fast he could reach the top of the waterfall. It wasn't a steep climb up except in some parts, but it made it harder to catch him in a picture. Along these same lines, my brother Adam made it to the top just using the rocks and not the stone steps that I preferred. Such adventuresome spirits! I enjoyed listening to the sound of the water as it fell upon the rocks. For some reason I have always found the sound of trickling water refreshing and rejuvenating, unless it's water from a leak in the bathroom! Someday I'm going to have a miniature waterfall in my backyard surrounded by flowers and trees with a white bench and outdoor nesting tables to relax on, read a book and eat snacks! Maybe, but I do want to create some sort of outdoor retreat where I can soak up sunshine and fresh air.
Here is a picture of the duck pond we walked around. You may notice the king duck, which isn't really a duck but I can't place birds all too well. Seagull maybe? Anyway this picture was taken just a little bit away from a spot farther up the path with a large tree. The tree was amusing since there was a sign next to it telling people to BEWARE. I love how my photographer crazy little sisters missed the sign and stood under it to get a few shots. Above their heads were hundreds of pigeons and the ground was littered with white dirt spots. Don't worry, they got lucky.
Another day, don't ask me which one, since I'll tell you it was "the other day" sometimes even if it was today or yesterday or is going to be tomorrow, but this other day we took a walk along the creek side trail since we'd promised to take Chris to Coyote Hills this year. Ahead of Amy and me are my two older brothers who are walking at their normal speed. They had to stop and turn around multiple times to see how far behind them we were. Man, I used to be able to keep up with them walking super ultra fast! I guess you just have to walk a little bit slower when pregnant. Oh well, that way you get to see more, like those pretty clouds up ahead.
Once we reached Coyote Hills, I was disappointed to see that the marsh lands was pretty much all dried up. Chris didn't get to view the full beauty of the area, only half the beauty. We climbed up to Castle Rock and rested a while and then decided that walking the hour back home wasn't worth it. (I was hungry again) and so we had my mom come pick us up. As we waited Amy and I got a few good movie clips and pictures of my brothers fencing with sticks. Such a classic pose!In the background you can see the tree that we would always climb. (The one with the low-ish bottom branch). We would be monkeys and go all the way up to the top. We would also be scared monkeys and play chicken with predators down below us when they tried to get us to come down. :) Ahh good old childhood memories.
That pretty much sums up our holiday vacation. I'm sure we did other things, like hang out in the house, put together a puzzle and watch football. We also dropped off holiday gift baskets to people in the ward and had an amazing dinner one night with the Allinger (sp) family one evening. You could probably identify the night of that evening fairly quickly. It was the night that everyone wanted to be watching the football game. Um... since I don't really follow football I can't tell you which game. BYU v. Utes? The one game that like determined if we'd be going to some championship or something, that was (is) really important. Yah that one!
The following set of picture are here for peoples convenience and by many others requests. This first one is a picture of me on the night I proposed to by Chris. Yum he made all that food himself! Anyway, it's here just as a comparison picture. You could look at my waist in this picture if you want to. But only take a quick look, I get embarrassed by people who stare!
This next picture I've been getting hounded for and is the real reason the blog is actually getting updated. Yes, I am wearing the maternity clothes that my mom and Grandma Richardson sent me. Thanks to them, I can actually fit into clothes still since I can't fit in my jeans and can't button even the large green corduroy pants that I have anymore! Some people say I don't show all that much still, but I think I do since my belly button is started to reverse....
p.s please ignore the weird expression I'm making. Thanks!This picture is of an exotic fruit!! I know you won't believe it, but we discovered this Tangelo at Macey's. It's a cross between a tangerine and a grapefruit. Good thing it tasts more like an orange because I don't like grapefruit!
The last picture of this post relates to a project I started working on for my SFL 345 class. It was either create a religious item to be displayed in the home, or write a ten page research paper. You can guess which option I have chosen. I decided to sculpt out the Three Nephites. I got this great book from the library on how to make realistic polymer clay people and then got started. Unfortunatly what you're looking at will never be the Three Nephites since I have discovered this size of clay people takes up a lot of clay!! I have since started over in making a miniature version of three people, all of whom do not look like the faces below this text. However, I really hope to have enough clay left over to finish making the first larger person I started to create-- the one who is most complete,--- because I spent three hours on the head and I think that deserves finishing the poor fellow! More info on them may follow eventually someday.
Well it's been great blogging to you all! TTFN!!
