Days 1, 2, & 3: Pre-Christmas
This year we got together at G&G Badgett's before Christmas. The Ostrander group met us up in Oakhurst and together we started the Christmas fun. Highlights included--
- Making and decorating Baby Jesus Birthday cupcakes
- Going on a special pictorial treasure hunt
- Watching and listening to the new train and its lovely whistle--sometimes at the wee morning hour of 7AM
- Tracking Santa's progress on the Santa Tracker
- Shooting the bows & arrows
Days 4, 5, 6, & 7: Christmas Fun
This year we spent Christmas morning with the Claassen family. G&G Claassen, The Ohio fam (Ryan, Amy, & Grace) and G&G Harvin were all at Bass Lake. Fun was had by all (at least in our family). Highlights:
- Playmobil themed Christmas which translated into 3 hours of assembling houses, people, boats, etc on Christmas Eve (and into wee morning hours of Christmas).
- Watching Samuel and Oliver take the nicely pieced together Playmobil's on a trip to China. Yes, all 500 pieces that were painstainkingly put together were torn apart and moved to China in about 15 minutes.
- Walking to the Pines Market for gummy bears (like they didn't get enough in their stockings)
- Love Boat themed gift exchange which included a large range of gifts--from wine, to lingere, to a medical kid.
- Watching the cousins play together. S&O did most of the playing and Grace did most of the watching.
- Trying to keep the 500 small Playmobil pieces out of Grace's reach and making sure they didn't get lost in the shag carpet.
- Managing the meltdowns of Samuel and Oliver (which were numerous and usually revolved around why we can't eat only gummy bears and lollipops for 3 days)
We left Bass Lake and had some much needed down time at home for the evening. The kids unloaded their Christmas bags and relived Christmas again. There were many things they didn't even realize they had received.
Days 9 & 10
We decided we needed some just us family time so we took the kids to Monterey for 2 days. We got an amazing deal at at a nice hotel that had a heated pool. The kids thought life couldn't get any better. Apparently we don't stay in hotels very often because the room and the pool kept them entertained the entire time! Within 5 minutes of arrival they had both set up "offices" and were calling each other on the phones (we had 2 phones in our room?), they mastered opening and closing the safe and we pretty intrigued by the bedside lights. We spent quite a bit of time in the pool. When not enjoying the hotel room, we biked all over town. We did the aquarium, Chinese food, beach path, listened to waves, watched sea otters, and just loved the fact that it was almost 70 degrees on Christmas.
Days 11 & 12
We returned home from Monterey on New Years Eve. Kevin and I actually made it to mid-night but quickly crashed at about 12:02! We spent the next few days recovering from our long vacation and getting ready to enter reality again.
