Christmas Eve Eve

It wouldn't be Christmas without Christmas sugar cookies.

This is my favorite picture of Rachel.
She really gets into her frosting of her cookies.

We celebrate Christmas Eve Eve, since the Henshaw's were leaving on Christmas Eve day.

Of course, we had the Olson traditional chicken scampi dinner. Joy had to do Mel's job of the dipping the chicken in the egg and she really missed you Mel!!

Rachel was a big fan of the linguini for sure!



After dinner and singing traditional song from our repertoire, Grandpa Bob read from Luke 2 by candlelight and then it was present time.

We were trying to get all the girls to hold up their pictures and smile. This one is Rachel's response to "Where's your smiley face?"


I had cross-stitched all the girls a Disney princess. They had watched the process and Lizzie even asked me if she could see
the "Snow White cloth" when I was finished. The girls were thrilled with the finished product and Lizzie even asked if I could make her another "cloth". All in all it was a wonderful celebration!

Christmas Fun!

My Christmas vacation began exactly a week early since Shannon had the foresight to have her baby on December 12th. My school district was striking so I left the picket line to come be with the Bowles family and was able to stay for the whole week :-) I got home in time to direct my SCCC concert. It was special this year because we were doing all the songs from our Snowball family repertoire. The kids were so excited to sing for Grandma Snowball. We started with We Need a Little Christmas, then Who Would Send a Baby, with a wonderful boy soprano soloists, followed by A Child is Born in Bethlehem, and end with Silent Night Lullaby with the audience joining in, just like the Snowball tradition. The kids did beautifully and it was a nice tribute for my mom.

Wednesday before Christmas Joy and family arrived and stayed until Christmas Eve. We had a great time. After visiting the great grandparents they came to play at Grandma B's and Grandpa Bob's. (Rachel's mostly excited to see Chloe!) There were presents under the tree to open and start the fun. . .paint with water books and Fancy Nancy's Splendiferous Christmas. Since Joy had told them that I had planned fun things, Mimi kept asking after every activity what we were doing next. Pheww, I was really pressured to keep up the fun!! Fortunately Jules helped me in the fun department. She is truly a super fun auntie!

After visiting with Joy's friend Aimee and her cute little family and a pizza dinner we headed out for a tour of the fun neighborhood with the lights (to keep Mimi happy!!)







Then it was home for hot chocolate with as many marshmallows as you could fit in the cup ;-)

Welcome to our New Blog!

For Christmas this year Julianna gave us a new camera. She even let us open it up three days early when Joy forgot her camera while visiting us. Since Jules is such a wonderful blogger and posts so often . . . she mentioned that now with the camera and ALL these pictures that maybe we should start a family blog and all three of us work on it. So that is what we've done and we hope you enjoy!

Catching Up

ok this is an ugly old picture of me and robin, but it does show what my room use to look like. so please not the blue walls.
Newly painted walls! There is one brown wall and 3 tan(ish) walls. I love the way it turned out, I just need to get some pictures or something up on the walls and the blinds back up.

Having no blinds makes it really hard for me to sleep in. And if you know me at all... you know I like to sleep in.

OK so I started back in school. my original plan was to take 4 classes, but when I went to register I was only able to get into 1. That class was monday night. I had planned on taking my other 3 classes on Tues and thursdays. So I spent all day Tuesday trying to petition classes. I tried petitioning 6 classes but was only able to get one. It is crazy how crowded Fullerton College is. Half the people in each class were petitioners. Oh well. It might be better only taking 8 units my first semester back to get use to school/work/life again. Anyway I will try to keep up with little posts here and there but if you dont hear from my for awhile, that is prob why.

Seaworld

Friday morning my mom, Paige, Aunt Cindy and I all drove down to san diego to spend the day at the Sea World. Months ago, somehow Sea World came up in conversation at my grandma's birthday dinner, Paige and I made our moms pinky swear they would take up this summer. It was a fun outing and I enjoyed the day with everyone.
We got there right when it opened at nine. We first checked out the polar bear exhibit (which might have been poor planning cuz it got hot that day and this exhibit was one of the cooler places to go) There was a ride you can take that was very similar to the star trek ride at disneyland. We ended up with a bunch of day care kids who screamed at the top of their lungs the whole time. it was actually pretty funny. you would think the world was ending or something. haha it didnt help that Paige thought she could out scream all the kids, (which she could and proved it to them the whole time!)
The polar bear exhibit was fun, they had an ice wall where people had pushed pennies into the ice, so we tried it too!
After the polar bear exhibit we went and saw the penguins, then headed over to the dolphin show. This show was probably my favorite. First, i love dolphins and think the stuff they do is amazing! Second, this new show incorporated acrobatic tricks and dives done by people. It mixed it up a bit and was definitely entertaining. after that we pretty much went straight to the Shamu show. This one was not my favorite. Maybe even my least favorite. It was SUPER hot and crowded, and it was a lot slower then i remember as a kid. Maybe i am just harder to impress in my old age ;)
After Shamu we were all ready for lunch. we all split club sandwiches and jello at mango joes and sat outside in the shade. It was soo nice with the breeze, so we sat for awhile chatting and enjoying the day. After lunch we went to the Sea Lion show. (SLL-Sea Lions Live) the preshow was my favorite part. Some guy came out and was messing around with the crowd. Then we pretended to watch Tv and kept changing the channel, everytime he would a different theme song would play. everyone would sing along while he did some silly dance. super cute. Paige was soo happy after, I think it was her favorite. When we walked out the flamingos were right in front of us. There was "flamingo" food you could buy for 50 cents, but after trying to feed the flamingos i think it was more for the ducks.
Paige and I were trying to waste a lot of time at the tide pools cuz the water was soo cold and it felt so good!!
check out our necklaces, we all got one. It is a wooden whales tale. It was part of the shamu show. they gave one away to a little girl during the show. me and paige were jealous until we realized we could just buy one!
These were shamu hats, kinda like santa hats but with fins.

The rest of the day was good. We went through the shark encounter, which brought back memories of being in girl scouts and spending the night there. At the end of the shark encounter there was a huge shark jaw with all the teeth, Paige wanted to touch a tooth, so reached in to feel it. An alarm went off! She bolted and i just pointed at her. so funny! Last We saw the cirque del mar show which i had mixed feelings about. The acrobatic stuff was amazing but i hated the pre show and the clowns. We were basically done after that so headed back towards the car, but not before we stopped and got some dippin' dots!

It was a very fun day! I have become very close with my cousin Paige over the past couple years and she really makes me laugh. Glad we were able to make it to Sea World.

Team San Juan Hills

http://main.acsevents.org/site/TRC/RelayForLife/RFLFY10CA?pg=peditor&fr_id=20546&px=16901557


My work is doing a cancer walk July 10th and 11th. I joined the team and signed up to walk 3 hours straight from 9pm until midnight on the 10th. Each team member has a goal of reaching 100 dollars in donations. If anyone can help me reach that goal I would be soo appreciative. Thank You!

New Bedding!!

I have been searching and searching online for the past 2 weeks for new bedding. My summer goal is to redecorate my room. Right now it is a mix matched mess of random stuff. I want to work on making it mine, and once I am gone, a decent spare bedroom. I am hoping the bedding will motivate me to paint, since this comforter will clash with my current bright baby blue walls. I am excited about this project! I will make sure to take before and after shots so you can see the transformation.