Christmas morning

Merry Christmas one and all!!! Well early morning Jack was up at the crack of dawn and ready to open some presents, but sadly had to wait over 3 hours for Molly to arise from her beauty sleep at 9:30. Once she did we had delicious home made cinnamon buns from our wonderful Armon friends. They were quite yummy!!! Since Santa's main delivery will be at my parents, it did not take too long to open the couple of presents that he dropped off here. Jack's big gift was a new ipod loaded with his fav songs and some cool audiobooks. Molly got a Mariposa Barbie which she has wanted for quite some time. It is pretty funny - her wings pop open so she can be a beautiful butterfly fairy. It is also pretty cool since we live in Mariposa county. After opening all the gifties, we sat down to watch The Muppet Chrismas Movie - cute! We also watched the major blizzard going on outside. We called both sets of grandparents to wish them a Merry Christmas and now we are headed outside to play in the snow.

I am very thankful that my dear brother is recovering safely in the hospital after being rushed there last night when he ate 4 rum balls with ground up walnuts (allergic). I love you Josh!!

The last picture is out our front window this morning...can't see anything - white out! But it is so pretty!!

Christmas Eve, eve :-)

Yesterday we went to the Ahwahnee to see Santa, sing some carols with the Bracebridge players and watch the lighting of the Yule log. It was so much fun! The Yule log smelled wonderful and the kids loved seeing Santa, again. Jack has decided the reason he gets so many presents is b/c he has seen Santa so many times. Much to his surprise we will be seeing Santa yet again tonight and this is another Santa that knows their names (so nice to know so many people in the park...I mean the North Pole). So after all that we went to the Loft for Pizza with our friends Mike and Jodi and then headed back to the Ahwahnee for a concert put on by the Bracebridge singers. They did a collection of numbers from many different broadway shows! It was incredible...I thought we were going to have to drag Jack from the room. Such a wonderful day!

1st Day at Badger

Saturday Badger Pass opened for the season and we were there, of course!! It was awesome! The snow was perfect and the weather was amazing!!

Jack's school Christmas program

Jack had his school Christmas play last Thursday and it was a hoot! His class acted out a couple of Aesop's fables. In the first one, Jack was a lion...which he loved! And there was lots of singing which Jack also loved. Molly liked watching for a bit then got a bit bored. She really wanted to be in the play, so they painted whiskers on her face to make her feel like she was included! Cute!

Holiday events!

So now we are up to all the millions of events that happen around here for the holidays. The first picture id of Brian and I at the Christmas party at the Ahwahnee...it was lovely and lots of fun!


Next we had our church Christmas program and Brian and I were the Innkeeper and his wife. We had lots of lines and it was fun!

Jack has now started hockey practices which he really really loves, so that is tons of fun to watch! It is also cold b/c we have an outdoor rink that looks out to Half Dome (very pretty). So Molly and I hang out by the giant fire pit with all the other hockey mom's and dad's.

Next we had Jack's Thanksgiving Feast at school. Instead of having more turkey we had a giant pancake meal!!! It was awesome! It was a lot of fun! We spent Thanksgiving here in the park this year and it was really fun. On Thanksgiving day Jack and Brian went to serve over at Curry Village and then we had our delicious and HUGE meal at our friend's house on Friday - so much food - yum yum!! We took a nice walk after the meal and then played lots of fun games in the evening! All in all a wonderful Thanksgiving.

Halloween

I know I am a bit behind, but I am about to catch up...for Halloween my parents came and we had a grand time. We were characters from Narnia this year and it was fun! Jack was Peter and Molly was the White Witch, I was Reepicheep the mouse and Brian played the dad who went off to war (real creative, but he was out of town a lot before Halloween and that was the best we could come up with). We trick or treated twice - once during the day on our parade to all the offices with Jack's school and then again at night with the gang! Quite a hoot as usual - here are some pictures...The group picture is of all our friends on the meadow right before we headed out to trick or treat for the evening!

Pumpkin Carving!

Before Halloween we get together and carve pumpkins for the Happy Isles Nature Center Halloween night. We had fun this year making cool pumpkins. Molly and I made one elaborate one with a flower theme and Jack and Brian made numerous cool jack-o-lanterns.

A few field trips

So after we got home from our lovely Germany trip it was back to business as usual. Jack had fun trip to a local (2 house bus ride that I wasn't sure I would make) farm where they learned about animals and planting and whatnot. It was very fun. He even got to hold a chicken! They also got to see pumpkins in different stages of growth. And "talk" to turkeys that talked back.



Next Jack had a walking field trip to see the colors changing on the Sugar Maple tree across from Church. It was very very pretty! The kids were able to take turns taking pictures of the tree in all it's splendor. Jack wanted me to take this picture with a leaf on his head. Turned out cute!























Molly had a walking field trip as well and we headed to the village store to see in the behind the scenes workings of a store. The kids really enjoyed getting to seeing behind the cold section where they could look out at the rest of the store. They all got little baby pumpkins to take back to school to paint and then bring back to the store to put in a pretty display.

Germany

Germany Trip

Brian and I had a wonderful trip to Germany for our tenth anniversary! We had a blast. We arrived there on a Tuesday morning and headed for a shower at our friend's house. We had a lovely lunch at a small local restaurant - it was the beginning of a week of more than delicious meals! That night our kind host, Robert made us homemade spaghetti - incredible.

Wednesday morning we headed to Neuschwanstein Castle. I remember loving going there as a kid and I loved it all over again as an adult. It is so pretty and the surrounding area is so beautiful (even in the cloudy weather that day). We took tons of pictures and had a "sad to be an American" moment when a couple taking pictures next to us had to be so white trash - the boyfriend/husband turned to his girlfriend/wife and asked her to pick the dip out of his teeth before the took the picture...which she proceeded to do with out any sort of thought to it. It was memorable, really. After we left that castle we headed to another one of Ludwig's castles - Linderhof. We got there too late for the tour but had a great time wandering around the beautiful grounds of the estate. It was so pretty and I was able to have two pretzels this day which was fabulous!!!

On Thursday morning we got up and headed out to Dachau Concentration Camp Memorial. It was very sad and hard to see, but we both felt it was very important for us to go there. After that we left and headed into Munich for a tour of the BMW factory. It was absolutely incredible. We really went b/c Brian so wanted to go there, but I actually really enjoyed it. It puts American car companies to shame, or it should. I have never seen a more spotlessly clean factory. Makes me even more sad that we are driving our American made car that is so poorly thought through on the inside. But the day was topped off with a yummy pretzel at the factory's cafe.

Friday was probably my favorite day. We got up early and headed up to the Stuttgart area and went to the little town of Böblingen where I lived for three and a half years of my life as a child. It was so fun - we went and found my old neighborhood and we took a picture of my little school. After we left there we headed an hour north to visit my kindergarten teacher and her family. We had a wonderful time. Also I got to have the one thing I had wanted more than anything else to eat while we were in Germany - Laugenbrotchen with German bologna and butter (nothing better in all the known world). It tasted so good and exactly how I remember it tasting!! Yum yum. We took a walk with them though their neighborhood and we got to see Elke's new kindergarten school. It was really fun. I had told Brian one of my big memories of school was all the shoes out in the hallway (b/c when you go to school you take off your shoes and put slippers on for the day). And when we walked into Elke's school - there were the slippers all lined up! It was great! We left these dearest of people around 4 and headed back Böblingen way to the town of Sindelfingen where my dear friend Sandra lives. We went to Kindergarten together and our families did many fun things together as well. We got to her house and got to meet her very nice boyfriend Andy. We had some very yummy snacks and then her parents came over to say hello! I thought I might cry - it was so much fun to be with them all again! That evening after her parents went home, Brian and I went out to dinner with Andy and Sandra to a Chinese restaurant. It was fabulous! We laughed a lot and decided we must not wait another 17 years to see each other. It was hard to say goodbye.

Saturday we went to Salzburg! I also remember going here as a kid and it was great again! We definitely hit it on the right day b/c there was a really cool little sidewalk festival going on when we arrived. We parked the car inside a mountain (yea, I said INSIDE) which was really cool looking. We wandered around all afternoon and bought some fun little trinkets at the festival and listened to some fun folksy music a girl was singing outside one of the stores. We then had lunch in the oldest restaurant in Austria dating back to 803!!! It was so very very good. For dessert we had this thing called Salzsburger Nockerl. It was so amazing we even had the waiter take a picture of us with it!!!

Sunday morning we helped Robert get his sail boat out of the lake. We had a good time doing that and when we were done we got showered and dressed so we could head to Oktoberfest!!!! I can't even begin to describe how much fun it was! We arrived and walked around for a bit before it was time to go into our tent. I was able to get yummy candy coated almonds that I love and a pretzel, of course (I lost track of how many I actually had on our trip). We rode a few rides and then it was time to go into our tent. We actually had a table in one of the tents (which is really hard to get) b/c Robert's family has had a table for years and so in we went to our table and it was a hoot and a half. We sang and sang til our throats hurt. I think the funniest thing was the first song they played was "I'll have the time of my life" from Dirty Dancing - seriously funny. Most of the songs were German but you could almost sing along if you got into it. We had, once again, delicious food. I had spätzle for the third time this trip and it was yummy again!! We also ate tons of gigantic pretzels.

Our last day there we went to one of Germany's national parks. It is called Berchtesgaden and it was so beautiful. We were going to go up to the Eagle's Nest which is near to Berchtesgaden but we missed the last bus to the top. So we walked around the little town and had a great time. We stopped in a deli and ordered a yummy sandwich, we ate more pretzels and we bought more stuff for the kids and a preset from my parent for our anniversary. There was a manger scene that I wanted (my parents have the same one from when we lived in Germany, so it was special) and I found it on our last day!!!

We had a wonderful trip and we can't wait to go back. Next time we want to take the kids and show them around. I would love someday to be able to live there again. Time will tell.

May Lake Campout

So once a year we go up into the high country for a company camp out at May Lake High Sierra Camp. Last year it was very very cold and I was not thrilled with the coldness. This year rocked! It was so much fun! We began our day on Saturday by driving an hour (it's amazing how big the park actually is) to the trail head where we parked and put on our small packs (most of our stuff gets packed in by mule - much better than having to carry it) and started the mile and a half hike into camp. It was a beautiful day and we had a great hike. The kids were excited when we got there to play with their friends for a bit while we grabbed our sack lunches, then we were off again on a small hike to Raisin Lake. Well, we got about half way there and the kids were really hungry and we ran into some friends who had just come from the Raisin Lake direction and we decided (after finding out there were some pretty steep switchbacks) to hang out and eat our lunch and save Raisin Lake for another day.

The high country is hands down my favorite place in the park. Miles and miles of beauty - it is endless. And you always feel like you are the only one in the world when you are up there. Simply amazing.

So after we returned from our pretty hike we all hung out by May Lake and played games and fished and watched the sun sneak behind Mount Hoffman. It was breathtaking. We enjoyed a most delicious supper of Steak and potatoes and asparagus and yummy chocolate cake for dessert. You know I figure if I have to go camping, I definitely prefer having delicious meals that are prepared for me.

After supper we all hung out by the campfire and our dear friend Emily led us in campfire songs and told a fun story about the area.

The next morning we were up early listening to the camp manager blow the conch shell that signals breakfast! Another super yummy meal, this time we had hot cereal and fruit and pancakes and bacon and warm bread and an omelet to die for...need I go on??

We then packed up our stuff to send down the mountain on the mules and we all gathered for a photo. After that we headed down the mountain to another wonderful day in Yosemite National Park!

Jack's class campout

So, Jack's class of 10 (consisting of k, 1st and 2nd graders) went on a camp out last Thursday night! They had a really fun time. Jack's teacher's husband came and gave a fun campfire talk about animals and told a story. Parents went as well, and I volunteered Brian (big surprise, as I dislike camping). They read silly books and had a grand time goofing around in their little tent!

The next day they did some work for the park service and got a special park badge. Jack loves stuff like that. After they were finished, they hiked back to school. It was great!

Molly rides her bike - no training wheels!!!!!

Well we hit a big milestone this past weekend...Molly learned to ride her bike with no training wheels. She did great. Then this week she started pre-school and rode her bike to school and back everyday. She loved being able to ride with Jack.

Today we went on a big bike ride with our friend Syd to visit her horses at the stables. Molly even saved a yummy apple core to feed Bart, her favorite horse. We have a had a great day.

Jack's 1st day of 2nd grade

Well, I am finally caught up...TODAY we dropped Jack off at school to begin second grade. He was very excited to see his room again and get back into the groove of things. So now Molly and I are at home (she starts after Labor Day). Not getting much done (well, updating the blog was pretty big). Molly misses Jack and all her friends that have gone back to school. Her best friends Carter will go back to school with Molly but he is not home today (sad for Molls).

By the way, Jack is holding up two fingers in every picture because he wanted to be sure everyone knew he is going into second grade. We had to talk him out of holding up a paper with a giant two on it (he was so afraid you people would not get it). Funny kid