Christmas Fun

The past couple of weeks have been very busy with lots of Christmas events, and we still have lots to come! In completely random order, we have...

Visited the live nativity at the Santa Clara Baptist church. They do an amazing job, and our family had such a great time. And, I don't think my face is the color of a tomato, but that red light shining above is certainly making it look like it is. 

It was pretty fun to run into so many other families we knew there. Definitely a popular event. Always fun to see my good friend Lisa and her family. 

 Petting the animals was a big hit. It was pouring rain. We have had so much rain the past few weeks.

 We went to our ward Christmas party, and the girls got to sit on Santa's knee. I love having little kids to make holidays magical. Aubrey is adamant that Santa bring her roller skates, and I prodded Cora to ask for a baby doll stroller. Hopefully Santa can get all the requests to Las Vegas for Christmas. I'm a little nervous about that.

 Aubrey had her preschool Christmas party. Cora decided to shove an entire cracker into her mouth as we were taking this picture instead of smiling.

 Aubrey was so proud to sing all the Christmas songs her class has been practicing. 

We watched Cora's little friend Elsa for the day yesterday. Aubrey declared that "I'm the mommy today" and was very doting. She then declared that she wants a little brother. That is definitely not happening quite yet, but I loved to see how sweet she could be. Cora was thrilled to have her friend around. 

 I had to bring cookies to 4 different events the past couple of weeks. So, the girls and I spent an entire afternoon making about 70 sugar cookies. I froze them in bags and have been pulling them out to frost and decorate as needed. I have eaten way too much frosting. Now I remember why I never bake!

 With all the rain lately playgroup has either been canceled or held inside. This picture makes me laugh. I guess I wasn't as good at getting the kids to jump as I thought. 

Steven and I had our yearly chance to live the high life at the LinkedIn Christmas party. It was held at the new Levi's stadium, which was awesome because it is like 10 minutes from our house. The past couple of years we have had to spend a lot of our precious baby-sitter time driving and waiting in traffic, but this year we had all night to spend at the party. We had so much fun, and ate so much food. I'm a lucky girl because I think my date was pretty cute :)

Next up this week we have Christmas in the park, class preschool party, and Aubrey's birthday. Then we are driving to Las Vegas on Saturday to spend Christmas and Cora's birthday with Steven's family. I'm really trying hard to make my girls still feel like they have special birthdays even though they were both born during the holidays, but it does make for a crazy few weeks!

Visitors

My mom leaves tomorrow morning and life will go back to normal. The past week and a half has been so much fun. Steven's parents and my mom both came to visit, and Steven had quite a few days off work. Tomorrow, it is just me and the girls again! Some of the fun we had...

Dave rode with Aubrey on her bike to preschool. Aubrey was so proud and excited to have her grandpa with her. 

Steven's parents made it in time for Aubrey's last soccer game and we had a great night celebrating.

I didn't take any pictures, but we had a great day back in Monteray at the aquarium. And, we were so excited to spend time with Steven's parents since they have been gone on a mission in Germany.

Aubrey wouldn't let go of my mom when she showed up. When we picked her up at preschool, she was standing at the fence just waiting to see Grandma. It was pretty cute. 

Shopping. Of course. Most of the shopping was fun. The 7 trips we made to the grocery store for various things needed for Thanksgiving was a little less than fun. Especially the last trip we made.

 We spent the Wednesday before Thanksgiving cooking and we were down to prepping the sweet potatoes. I accidentally turned on the back burner (which was holding a newly made apple pie in a glass dish) instead of the front burner. The pie exploded over the entire kitchen and we had to stay up late making another. Yikes.

I'm glad we did most of the cooking Wednesday because Thanksgiving was so much fun. We all did the Silicon Valley Turkey Trot. Steven and I ran PR's in the 10k, and the kids did a fun run with grandma. Definitely a Foote family tradition now because running, napping, and eating was a pretty great way to spend the day.

Steven (he beat me by 2 seconds) and I finished 1262/7886 10k runners.  I was 300/3941 women. Coming in 300th place doesn't sound very good, but I'll take top 10%. We have been working hard and it is rewarding to see our speed increase. We still have a long way to go. Some people run so fast! We spent the entire course weaving around people which was tiring, but it was fun to run in such a big race.

The girls made our Thanksgiving centerpieces, including the candle. 

 We decorated the tree and put up the Christmas lights. Let's hope Cora doesn't break too many ornaments this year. Her nickname is "Cora the Destroyer." 

We also had the girls birthday party,  went swimming in hotel pools, fun at bounce houses, park days, and so many other things. Whew. We had fun, and I loved having so many other people around. Between both grandma's I hardly had to change any diapers :) I'm dreading the goodbye tomorrow and the grumpy kids that will follow, but it was all worth it!

Birthday Party

Last night we had a joint birthday party for the girls. Aubrey and Cora are pretty lucky because both of Steven's parents, and my mom were here for their party. And, I was so glad for all the help.

Aubrey is born December 19 and Cora on December 22. Pretty tricky dates for birthday parties. For the past couple of years we have had the party before the holidays and I think that is what we will always do.

We had the party at the gymnastics gym where the girls take lessons. They LOVE gymnastics and were so excited to share that with their friends. I was excited to not have the mess at my house.

 This little girl loves to jump. We gave them their new gymnastics outfits before the party. She kills me in those shorts.

 Lining up with Coach Joey. He was amazing with the kids. Cora had quite a few little friends, but they were mostly with their parents, so it was harder to get them in the pictures.

 One of Aubrey's favorite things to do at the gym is climb to the top of that blue mat and then do a flying leap into the foam pit. It looks pretty fun to me.

 Aubrey got to demonstrate the equipment and she took her job very seriously.

Cora's favorite part of her gymnastics class is the parachute, so they had a great time doing that with friends.

After the gymnastics activities, the kids all lined up to receive medals. It was really cute to see how excited they were.

Then came dinner and cake. My mom and I had a fun time decorating the cakes and cupcakes. And the clipart photoshop credit all goes to Steven. 

 Seriously... when did she grow up so much? She is a little girl now, and I can't believe she is almost 4.

Sisters. I'm so glad they have each other.

Cora was pretty happy to be eating that cupcake. Until the frosting was gone. Then she was done.

The girls have such great friends who got them amazing gifts. Even though they were exhausted, they both stayed up last last night playing with new toys in their beds. Today also has been spent doing lots of new crafts and reading new books. I'm glad my girls have such sweet, cute friends. 

I think everybody had a great time. It was kind of a big production and I couldn't have done it without all the help I had. It was worth it to see their smiles.

Monterey

We just got back from a quick trip to Monterey. We realized that we can't live an hour from one of the best aquariums in the world and never visit. So, Steven took work off Friday and we made a weekend trip out of it.

We drove down Thursday night and got there in time for dinner and swimming at the Residence Inn pool. The girls were pretty excited to be there. They seem to love hotels. I love the Residence Inn because we can shut the door and have our own room instead of sitting in the dark until they fall asleep.

The next morning I went on a run while Steven took the girls to breakfast. Our hotel was right on the edge of farm fields and it was really pretty. The miles flew by and I stopped to take a picture.

We spent the next five hours at the aquarium. Definitely glad we made the drive to visit because the aquarium really is one of the best. I have been to quite a few aquariums, but none this good before.

 Typical of them right now. Cora is a moving blur and Aubrey is a ham.

 I think I heard, "I want to touch it!" all day from Cora.

 The real ocean on the deck overlooking the aquarium. We were lucky enough to see dolphins too.

 Walking to lunch.

 Can never get her away from water.

 Aubrey is at a great age to take to places like this. She had a lot of fun and was fun. Cora... not so much. She just wanted to run everywhere, and we had to drag her away screaming on more than one occasion.

We had another fun night of swimming after the aquarium and the girls crashed at the hotel. Steven and I watched a few episodes of The Office for the second (third?) time. We really need something new to watch...

Saturday we went and visited the famous (and very cool) Dennis the Menace Park.

Then back to Cannery Row for some lunch and the $10 Ghirardelli ice cream sundaes. I can't resist those. Aubrey sobbed real tears when the ice cream was gone.

We spent a few more hours at the aquarium since we bought season passes. It is so expensive to go once... and not that bad to get passes so anybody want to visit and go with us again? The aquarium was way more packed today than yesterday. I'm glad we got to go yesterday to look because I spent today just trying to not lose a child.

And then we ended our day with overtired girls and a lot of this.

We had a great time. I think at some point as your kids get older, vacations may actually seem like a vacation. We are not there yet, and I think I am more tired now then when we left!