Christmas Week

We had a great vacation. We went down to So. Cal. for two weeks to have Christmas with family. Instead of presents this year we decided to have a "Memories" Christmas. We had so much fun and we were really busy. I will post our first week today and our second week later. It was so good to see lots of family and friends.

Really our adventures started the day before we left. Our new exchange student came from Korea his name is Scout and he is 13. And we had a visit from another one of our students, Mari, who is from Japan. It was so good to see her. She is graduating from San Francisco State and going back to Japan. We will definitely keep in touch with her as she is part of the family. Then for the drive, it took us 8 1/2 hours, not bad with 5 kids. Check out the pics below for the rest of the week of fun. We always said, because we used to live down in So Cal., that we would never do the "tourist" thing, especially since we used to work at Knotts and Disney, but we did. It was a lot of fun with the boys.

Mari Our exchange student from Japan

We stayed in a timeshare with my parents in Anaheim

Monday: Mema and Papa Lord took us Ice Skating for Christmas. We went to Anaheim Ice. The boys had no problem staying up, even Breandan. Roller Hockey really helped.

Tuesday: One of our presents to the boys was Disneyland. We had a great time. Breandan is now big enough to go on everything except Indiana Jones.

Breandan was one of the kids chosen to do the Jedi training. We got to learn the light saber fight then fought Darth Vader. He was so excited.

This is Snow Whites wishing well, this is where we got engaged 16 years ago. Now look at our family!

Wednesday, Christmas Eve: DownTown Disney.

Ready for bed Christmas Eve!

Thursday, Christmas Day: We always start our morning with our last advent. It is a great time of focusing on Christ on His Birthday

Santa and his Elf

Mema and Papa also took us to the movies. We went to the movies in the afternoon and saw "The Tale of Despereaux"

Christmas Night we went to Uncle Royal and Aunt Denise's house

Friday: We visited our friend Chrissy and got to meet her new baby Alexander. Her other son Troy was sick so we missed him and Patrick, her husband.

Saturday: To end the first week we went to see Becky (who came up to Chico for school and lived with us for about a year) and her Mom and Dad. Then we went to have our big family Christmas with my Grandma, Aunts, Uncles and Cousins

We had a very busy and fun week.