Saturday morning breakfast with the girls
Pretty simple menu:
- Home made Breakfast Crepes
- Home made Gingerbread Cookies
- Rented Movie (thank you Amazon Prime)
Simple!
Heaven!
Tryphoon's Lair
Tip the world over on its side and everything loose will land in Los Angeles
Filed underfamily
Happy New Year (from the hot tub)...
Only in California, or maybe the Southern Hemisphere.
Jan 1st, after a nice birthday meal for Sarah, we decided to start the new year by jumping in the pool.
The girls both went to the normal pool but quickly came back to the safety of the 100°F of the hot tub. Our visist sadly had to get cut short after Loulou got sick both on Sarah and in the hot tub (muuuuuch better!!!)
01/10/12: This signed the beginning of a week of sickness for almost the entire family (Sarah, her both parents, Sophia and Thia!)
Xmas Morning
Finally, the time has come...
No more expectations, no more counting the days to Xmas, no more threats to be put on Santa's bad list (yes, we used this a lot this year, even pushing to calling Santa on the phone a couple of times, asking him to potentially put one of the girls on the dreaded list).
The Christmas tree is surrounded by packets and boxes. Small ones and large ones. Red ones and silver ones. As if a wave of presents had reached the tree as it reaches a shore.
Despite being up late last night, the girls show up in our bedroom at the crack of dawn, standing right next to me and murmuring "Daddy, can we go downstairs and check if Santa has been?".
Santa did definitely pay a visit to our house last night! He ate a couple of cookies, drunk his Brandy and gave carrots and peanuts to Rudolph and the other reindeers.
There is no delaying it, no cuddle in bed this morning. The mild request turns to an urgent plea and so the best day of the year begins, part asleep, part excited.
Then, the fun begins!
As it is now our habit, we connect our home with both grandparents homes for a live broadcast of the event, and the girls start their dance made of jumping, screaming, unwrapping boxes, opening presents then presenting them to both sets of grandparents, repeating ad-nauseum.
Santa, this year again, seems to have known exactly what everybody wanted and delivered in large quantities.
Next step, Sarah gets in the kitchen and starts preparing the English version of our Xmas Day dinner...
See you in few hours!
O Christmas tree, o Christmas tree
Thy leaves are so unchanging!
Meeting with Santa Claus
With Xmas only days away, it was definitely time for the girls to go and make sure that Santa had them on the good-kids list and discuss some last minute request that might not have been part of their initial letter.
No visit to The Grove or the Americana this year, due to family wide bout of cold. Luckily, Santa stopped briefly by the Valencia Mall, where we caught him between his 2 lunch breaks.
Last report from the girls: we're all on the nice list!
It definitely feels like it's Christmas time
Halloween: check!
Thanksgiving: check!
Next? Christmas...
It is that time of the year
We often find frost on our cars in the morning.
Some trees have less or no leaves.
Our community pool is deserted (but the hot tub is still nice to visit).
Our streets are decorated with reindeers, inflatable Santas and glowing candy canes.
Thia finished her letter to Santa
Yes, it definitely feels like it's Christmas time
Loulou is 3 years old!
I have no clue how this really happened but my little Loulou just turned 3... It seems she was barely walking yesterday and today she is a little chatty box, social animal (a bit shy sometimes), spending time singing and dancing.
For her party, Loulou asked us for a Tinkerbell cake, as Tink is currently one of her favorites. Sounds simple at first glance,muntil the local groceries store effs up the order not once, but twice, resulting in Daddy delivering the birthday cake long after the party had started!
To change from the usual b-days rites routines (magicians, princesses, bouncy castle followed by ready food such as sandwiches and crisps), Sarah decided to create our own Birthday art activity and got all of the kids from the street design, prep and cook their own mini pizza and then eat them... Better, more fun and even healthier! Plus ingot to eat some pepperoni!
Cake time finally came and Loulou spent a long time looking at it from every possible angle, hoping I guess, to see one of the fairies take off and reach for their natural home: our fireplace (they often leave pixie dust behind... You didn't know that?!
Trick or treat?
Opening season for the holiday, Halloween night!
Both girls love it and Thia has been thinking of her outfit for the last 6 months at least! This year, Thia is Hermione Granger from the Harry Potter movies, equipped with official scarf and magic wand, courtesy of the WB shop on the lot. Loulou, this year again is our little witch.
Our biggest issue for the last 3-4 years has been deciding where to celebrate Halloween. Tradition is that we celebrate it with our friends from Pasadena (kids and mums met in "mommy and me" class) but we also have a fab community at home, with tons of kids on our street alone! So this year, we found a way to please both sides and started in Pasadena during the afternoon and continued the evening in Valencia.
Costumes were barely packed, decorations not even stocked in our garage that Thia proudly declared that next year, she'll be Scooby Doo's Daphne!
Pergola
A recent visit to our local Sam's Club (aka the better Costco) saw us leaving the place proud owners of a DIY Pergola.
For those who are not familiar with the name of pergola, it is defined as a garden feature forming a shaded sitting area of vertical posts or pillars that usually support cross-beams and a sturdy open lattice, often upon which woody vines are trained. Or a type of gazebo...
Due to the SoCal weather (Hot) and our house's exposure, we have been enjoying since we moved in our new house a great back patio that we never use, simply because it isn't covered and it is simply too hot to sit outside...
So, once we received the 2 large boxes containing all the parts of the thing, I realized that I might need to enlist some friends to build it... Emails were sent, responses were in. Some came. Some didn't (I have the names).
So Tom and Connor showed up on a bright Sunday morning and the fun began.
SomaFM blasting some Indian - Trans - Chill-out music in the background, buckets of Mountain Dew served and burgers cooked by Sarah and missing tools were the backbone of the day...
When tools were missing, left field replacement were used: need a way to fix these cross beams? Nothing beats Ethernet cables and power cords to achieve secure attachment. Need a way to bend that beam? A Toyota car jack and a couple of Peter F. Hamilton novels to the rescue! Need a Level Bar? There's an (iPhone) App for that!
And after a mere 6 hours, just as the sun was about to set, the last screw was screwed and the pergola put in place. Boys were exhausted and all went home...
Next step: Pergola warming with Tom and family!
Pumpkin Patch
It is now an annual tradition for the family, on the road to Halloween: the visit to a pumpkin patch, where we select a couple of pumpkins to carve, eat some awful food and play at the provided petting zoo...
This year was no exception and the whole family boarded the Eco friendly Prius and paid a visit to the Lombardi ranch, few miles down the road.
Pets were played with. Hot Dogs and Noodle Soup were eaten and most importantly, a pumpkin was chosen, for some carving action later on this weekend!
