New Traditions

I think we may have a new Christmas Eve tradition--minute to win it style games!

We played a few different games, some for bragging rights, some for money.

And while the games may vary, this is definitely something I want to repeat in the years to come.

Everyone was having so much fun.

And while the kids may have been the most excited about winning the money, Rara was the overall winner of the afternoon. Turns out she's a champ at tossing ping pong balls and didn't do bad scooping up money and present bows, either. We're going to have to watch out for her!

Longest Night

Shortest day of the year/longest night means it's time for our solstice celebration. 

We ended up with a new fire pit for the occasion because earlier in the day when I was cleaning out the logs we'd thrown in a few months ago, the whole bottom started disintegrating! We got a few years of use out of it before it finally rusted through, and we can't really ask for more from a freebie we picked up off the side of the road.

We had a fun group--5 families including a couple of grandma's here for the holidays. Lots of good soups, salad, and bread, too many cookies, and so much fun. This is one of my favorite holiday traditions--love ringing in winter with a warm fire and friends.

Santa even paid us a visit, haha.

Peanut decided to put his gnome beard to use, stuffed his belly, and invited the kids to come sit on his lap. (The kids were all paid actors, though.)

And now the days only get longer!

Where Polo Takes Us

Bug had a water polo tournament in San Jose this weekend--which worked great because there were two other things going on down there that I wanted to hit up. So, first we watched him play.

Well, some of us watched him play--Peanut finished another book. He gets a lot of reading done when we go to these tournaments, and at least he's outside.

Between the games, we ran to pick up a bench seat for the new van--that's the first step in our cargo van conversion and it's exciting to be starting!

Then, after the last game, we drove to Mountain View for their German Christmas Market, which was very underwhelming and overwhelming at the same time. I don't know that it really captures the spirit of the European markets in the first place, but it was kind of small, and there were thousands of people croweded around all the booths and in line at every food booth. We didn't want to wait for almost an hour to eat, so tried to look at some of the stalls and then went to an Italian restaurant down the street. I really hope we can go see the real markets someday--and hope that at least some of them aren't as crowded as pretty much any event we try to attend in the Bay Area.

 

Saved the Best for Last

We've got enough favorite hikes that I can't actually say this is THE BEST hike up here, but Trillium Falls was the most magical one we did that first year and has remained completely enchanting. We always save it for the day most likely to be rainy because we love heading from this meadow. . .

into the drippy, dark forest.

This hike is just incredible.

Definitely our happy place.

Didn't find any wildlife in the creek (I'm guessing it's too early in the winter for newts and I don't think we know where the salamanders actually hang out--still on my list to find one.)

Still can't stop with the mushrooms.

And my favorite tree, with Trillium Falls just to the right.

Lots of water this year.

I stayed up on the safety of the bridge. No slippery rocks for me this time.

But I did feel good enough to keep going at this point, so instead of turning around, I decided to see how far I could go, knowing that at some point, I was going to be locked into doing the whole 2.8 mile loop (spoiler alert--I made it!)

And I'm glad I didn't miss out on all the fungi along the way!

Hand microscope came in handy for the small ones.

We now own two because Daddy-o was so impressed by Peanut's that I got him his own for his stocking this year.

I'm just going to dump a bunch of mushroom pictures here--we did a super slow hike (I think it took almost 3.5 hours to do a little less than 3 miles thanks to my pace), but it gave me lots of time to find all the fun fungi.

Looks like lichen,

but there's fungi on that too!

These people were so patient with my slow pace. I'm glad they got to do some hikes on their own so they could log more miles than I could do, but I'm also really glad I was able to do this hike.

Smallest ones yet!

There were a whole bunch of the tiny ones.

This log was like a mushroom nursery

I made it! The hiking poles were a life saver. I'm so glad my doctor was wrong. He didn't think there was any way I could do even a mile of hiking this soon after the injury, and I'll be honest, if I could have quit after two miles, I would have--my ankle wasn't hurting, but that last 1/2 mile, I was just so tired. I've done almost nothing for close to two months, and it does matter.

I wasn't the only one tired at the end. But both Peanut and I made it! (And don't let this picture fool you--this kid can go from "I'm so tired, I can't walk another step" to running the last 1/4 mile and beating everyone back to the car by several minutes. He just likes to be dramatic, haha.)

It was a good, good day. Daddy-o, Bean, and Bug went out after lunch for one last short hike while Peanut and I chilled at the house, but we had a great morning together.

Had to also document these kiddos who did a lot of dishes this week. There's no dishwasher at the house, and Daddy-o and I were making all the meals, so we put these three on clean-up and they did a good job.

Our last afternoon/evening we dedicated to Jolabokaflod, the Icelandic tradition of books and chocolate. We didn't celebrate on Christmas Eve (and I can't see us ever making that work out because of all the other traditions we have going on for that evening), but this week after Christmas seemed perfect, and we had a lot of new books to read, too.

So we filled up on chocolates and read for a couple hours.

And then everyone but Peanut, who couldn't tear himself away from his book, played a game of Nerts to finish off the night. This trip went way too fast and we could have used a couple more nights, but with the big storm coming in, it's probably good we left when we did. And we'll be back, for sure.

Christmas 2022

Christmas Eve started with brunch with friends. There was way too much good food (and I didn't take a picture of any of it.) But that is pretty much how the holidays go, event after event, until it's just ridiculous how much we have hanging around that week after Christmas, haha.

But luckily there is a lot of fun with the people at all those events, too.

Who doesn't celebrate the season with a little arm wrestling?

Bean and I were both coughing some, so we wore masks because a virus is the one thing we don't want to share at the holidays.

Then, the rest of the day was quiet. We watched a couple movies (Elf and It's a Wonderful Life), worked on a puzzle, read the Christmas story, sang a couple carols while Peanut and Bug accompanied us on the piano. It was really a very nice afternoon and evening.

And then, before we knew it, Christmas day had come! Santa didn't bring anything too huge this year--that seems to be how it goes as everyone gets older. 

Once the room was all ready with a roaring fire, we went to fetch the kids.

The boys had a sleepover for old times' sake (and so we could have spaces for the healthy household members to sleep separate from the sick ones ;)) They had actually been awake for a while, but luckily started the tradition years ago of reading the Christmas books in bed while they wait for us to come get them.

Everyone was happy with their loot. Bean got the Patagonia sweater she wanted (or so we thought--later found out this wasn't the right one and as much as she loved it, she decided it was too white to keep clean, so we'll have to trade it out, haha--even with a specific list, we can't quite get it right!) Bug has a phone that actually works now, and has a good camera, and Peanut has more Lego because he'll never have enough (and the set for 12 Grimmauld Place is absolutely incredible--we definitely needed it, haha.)

I didn't get any good pictures, but I always love how excited our kids are to hand out their gifts and how grateful they are for each other and the thoughtfulness behind what they have given. It's usually how we start out the gift giving after the Santa stuff has been explored.

This year, we had 10:30 church to get ready for, so we had to take a pause to eat breakfast and get ready to go. Daddy-o and Peanut sang in the choir and children's choir respectively, the rest of us enjoyed the program, and then got out of there quickly before Bean or I contaminated anyone. Being sick at Christmas is no fun.

No more pictures of the rest of the day, but it involved more present unwrapping, reading, napping, family calling, Lego building, movie watching, puzzle making, roast dinner eating, and probably a lot of candy eating. There was also a little packing mixed in, but more about that with that next post!

Merry Christmas, 2022!