Christmas morning

Enjoying one of their new books before heading to Gigi & Poppa's house for breakfast and gifts.

Skyler and I got matching aprons from my parents. The kids were given some bean bag chairs (behind Rian) for their reading nook upstairs.

The night before this (Christmas Eve) was spent at Rian's parents. Wallace received his long awaited dream of a Panda Pillow Pet. He was a very happy and grateful little boy.

Skyler on her new bike from Grandma & Grandpa.

And the night before this (Christmas Eve-Eve), I was able to enjoy a Christmas night out with my girlfriends, a tradition us 7 have had for probably more than a dozen years. It was perfect. And the best part? We all fit together in the new MINIVAN. We haven't done that since high school days in the minivans belonging to our moms! So life comes full circle.

Throughout the month our little elf, Leo, has been hiding around the house each morning. The kids loved waking up and searching all over for him. Here are some snapshots of him:

Post Christmas trip to Cambria

Each year after Christmas we take a little vacation with my family to a secret destination. This year my parents revealed it ahead of time in order to plan for a slightly longer trip and farther destination... Cambria!! It was beautiful. The weather was perfect. The view of the coast from our house was incredible. I loved driving around finding ranch after ranch full of rolling hills, grazing cows and the occasional family of deer. The boys went golfing, us girls explored the town, we did a tour of Hearst Castle, watched the elephant seals on the beach, played games and watched movies.

Walking down our street to the beach.




Elephant Seals

Nothing better than a cheese stick and juice box with your Uncle Bumble.

The bus ride up to Hearst Castle was Wallace's favorite event of all.

More Pre-Christmas

At the Grove in LA. Each December we meet up as a family to have dinner, see Santa, watch the "snow" fall and the fountains dance to Christmas carols, get warm drinks and walk around the shops. The Grove is pretty magical during Christmas.

Our annual (extended extended) Wallace Family Christmas party was at the Burgess home this year. Each year Rian and I leave saying how fun it was to hang out and catch up with all my second cousins, hilarious uncles and the rest of this family. I'm so lucky to have such a huge family full of people I love so much. A blurry shot of us kids after dinner:

Uncle Burge jamming on the piano with Skye.

Gift exchange and stealing!

Tee-Ball. Each week we think it's over... but it's stillllll going. Here's Wally during batting practice.

Wallace & Liv on the Christmas train. The far right one is this year and the others are previous years. Such a fun tradition!

We are so thankful to Rian's parents & my parents for all the free babysitting we get, especially during the holidays, allowing us to get out to some parties. Last weekend, the kids made gingerbread men with GiGi while they stayed there for the night.


And while they were decorating gingerbread men, we were enjoying ourselves at the Rasmussen's martini party:

A Lucky Day!

Today my little notepad was featured on one of my favorite blogs, NieNie Dialogues (mine is the black and white pic near the bottom of her post). How sweet of Nie to pick mine out of the hundreds of homemade items sent to her. I've gotten some orders today and it's fun to be mailing off packages to Norway, England, Canada and within the states. I hope they get there before Christmas!

Our Tree

This was back when we picked out our Christmas tree, Thanksgiving weekend. Wally & Skyler loved running through the trees...

a good start to the day

we spent our early morning with sara & beth today. sara fed the kids toast and pulled a splinter out of wally's finger. beth showed me her new gorgeous office. i drank coconut iced coffee. then i mentioned that i'm a maternity fashion disaster and, as if i snapped my fingers, there was a pile of clothes in front of me to take home. i can't wait to try everything on. and i can't wait to go back to that cozy home (perhaps without kids), put my feet up, and relax!