Christmas Eve with the Buskirks

We arrived in Utah on Friday evening. The flight was uneventful, other than a 40 minute delay. Lugging enormous quantities of bags, carseats, etc. across the airport was entertaining with 2 kids in tow that also wanted to be held... but we survived and had a good laugh. 

Saturday morning (Christmas Eve), I woke up feeling 100% better (a Christmas miracle, I thought) and Caitlin unfortunately woke up feeling 100% worse (lame-o). But we had people to see and things to do, so she cheered up and came along for the ride.

Saturday afternoon was spent having lunch with Shari and the Buskirk family (Allen, Liesl and girls)!

Dinner looked beautiful and was delish. It was the first meal I'd had in 3 days, so I was famished.

The treats were amazing too. I love Shari's mint brownies and other goodies!!

Catie was a big fan of the ice cream... and chocolate brownies. 

The kiddos were darling. I totally forgot to snap a photo, but Andrew and Leah had the best time at their own kiddie table. They are such sweet little buddies.

After food, it was time for presents.

Andrew was especially excited about his "Buskirk Fire and Rescue" t-shirt made using one of the pics we took in Buskirk, NY earlier this year! Great present Shari!

The kids played with new toys, the adults got to hang out and chat, and Sarah and Ella performed for us a bit on the piano. We had a great afternoon.

When the kids started melting down (mainly Cate), we knew the day had been a success!

Hooray for a great Christmas Eve afternoon!

Don't touch those carrots!

This is my favorite series of photos from Christmas Eve... so I had to post them all. I love Maddie's expressions. What a little sweetheart. 

Andrew told Maddie she couldn't eat the reindeer's carrots.

He explained why in a very simple and informative way.

But Maddie still wanted the carrots. (Look at that little sad face... could she be any more adorable?)

And she could only hold it together for so long... though she tried really hard.

I want the carrots!!

Good thing Grandma Julie had a whole load of carrots that the reindeer didn't need to eat.

Christmas in San Francisco 2011

One of my favorite Christmas traditions is heading into San Francisco to check out the Christmas lights and have fun as a family.

This year we skipped the hoopla of Union Square and went down to the wharf.

We had grilled cheese sandwiches and tomato basil soup at Boudin and had fun walking around the piers and seeing the street performers.

We grabbed some cookies since no event is complete without a trip to Mrs. Fields :)

Catie has no desire to be held any more or be in the stroller for long, so we had fun walking around with her. She can actually walk for quite a long time now before she falls. She does even better when we hold her hand. She made lots of friends. What a cutie!

We managed to snag one family photo where everyone was at least looking at the camera.

Then we headed to the must-visit place on our SF checklist- Ghirardelli!

These two made me laugh.

Catie developed a new love for her brother who fed her some of his ice cream. This little girl was in heaven the entire time we were at Ghirardelli. I think she ate more of my sundae than I did.

It wouldn't be a successful family trip without a tantrum or two... after all, who would ever want to leave Ghirardelli to go home and go to bed?

Andrew fell asleep in the car on the way home and our little energizer bunny (Cate) just happily watched Baby Einstein. We ended up turning her seat around forward facing because she was so miserable with her long legs banging the back seat. She was much happier!

Great night! I love our SF Christmas tradition and it was fun to change it up a bit from past years!

You can see our previous trips here...
2010 (with new baby Cate and Shari)
2008 (with 9 month old Andrew)

Nursery Christmas Caroling

Several of the families with nursery-aged kids in our ward got together last night to go caroling.

We started at 4:45pm and went until 7:30pm with a trip for pizza at Mountain Mikes somewhere in the middle. The dads joined us as they got home from work.

Most of the kids are graduating from nursery (class for kids ages 18 months -3 yrs) at the end of the month and so we thought it would be fun to carol at the nursery leader's houses and say "Thank You!" We brought See's chocolates and homemade cards and the kids had a lot of fun! 

They sang Jingle Bells and We Wish You a Merry Christmas and rang their bells loudly. I loved that Andrew actually sang loudly with intense concentration!

They were treated like celebrities and got candy and photos taken at each house... and even got videotaped by some of their teachers. 

I was so happy that all five teachers were home! Their wives or daughters were helpful in "hinting" that they needed to get home early yesterday.

What a fun way to spend an evening at Christmastime!!

Christmas Camera Fun

I had a lot of fun playing around with my camera this morning. This picture of my angel is a favorite. I don't know anything about photography, but I think it looks cool.

I also made Kevin and the kiddos pose for me a bit before church. Let's just say the experience wasn't me at my finest... and my kids (and mostly Kevin) are probably going to start screaming when I take out the camera in the future.

Despite me being a terrible photographer, we managed to snap some fun pictures. I love Cate in this one... just hate my brush lying on the floor in the background. Grr.

I love love love the pics of Kevin with Catie... even though she wouldn't look at me :)

This sneaky little devil kept sneaking over to the Christmas tree and trying to take down some of the ornaments. I snapped a picture of her in the act. I love the sneaky face.

I love this pic too because it is of Catie looking up at Kevin as he went upstairs to get something. She kept grunting and saying, "dada." I think it is fabulous that she loves him so much!

Then I managed to snap some pics of Mr. Funny man who jumps when I say "stand still" and falls on the floor when I say "freeze." What a character!

Such an adorable photo idea... that will work much better when they are older... in this case, him hugging her led to a chokehold followed by a tackle where we had some screaming.

That was when we called it quits on the photo shoot. :)

I also snapped some pics of our weekend creations- Snow Villages! We are part of a blogger Creative Christmas Countdown with 23 other bloggers and this was our Day 19 activity that we are sharing today.  We made a block snow village and a crispy treat snow village. We will definitely be doing both again... especially the crispy treat village. Yum!

Now it is past midnight and I still have lots to do tonight, but I figured some of my blog readers that don't check Facebook (Shari :)) might like to see these cute pics... especially the ones of Cate and Kevin.

Goodnight!

Holiday Fun- Zoo Lights

Last year I think I felt like I had something to prove to myself... so we were going going going ALL month long! Cate was a super easy baby and I had tons of energy and really felt stir-crazy and wanted to be out doing things... so we did! 

This December I have felt like much more of a homebody and really haven't cared to venture out much for festive activities. Maybe it's the enormous piles of laundry that are always piling up that are tiring me out? Or the fact that I look at the piles more often than I do something about them? :) 

Either way, our trip to Oakland Zoo Lights last year was one of our favorites... so we had to go again. It was freezing cold, so I loved whipping out the kid's new heavy duty winter coats for the evening.

We played on the little children's zoo playgrounds, checked out some of the exhibits, watched the lights show, and then headed over to ride rides.

The little guys rode around and around while some of the adults waited in the ginormous line for the train. Two other families joined us for the evening and my favorite moment of the night was when all five little kids were running up a hill hand in hand giggling.

We managed to get a family picture where all four of us were looking at the camera... which is a pretty amazing feat. It is fun to look back at the pictures from our trip last year to see how things have changed since then. This year I definitely dressed warmer! :)

Unfortunately we had a very overtired one year old, so we had to scrap our trip to Fentons (we'll have to go back another day soon!)... and instead we headed home to put the kiddos to bed and then drink our own peppermint hot cocoa and bask in the warmth of our house.

What a chilly, but fun night!