It's hard to know where to begin for Christmas break this year. We stayed in Seattle and had a really good time doing some local things. First up was the ward Christmas party, where Clara was a sheep and Eliza was the angel Gabriel. Both did a great job and the party was lots of fun. The kids agreed to pose with Santa, since Eliza guessed which ward member it was and there was a bowl of candy for after photos.
We also went to the Christmas Boat parade down at Golden Gardens. Every year on many weekends there are just a group of boats that have decorated with Christmas lights that follow a big boat around to the different beaches so the people on the beaches can see the parade. The main boat had a live choir on board that they piped out to the beach with massive speakers. It was a fun Seattley thing to go do.
We also lucked into some free zoo tickets and went to check out the Woodland Park Zoo. It was fun and all of the animals were nice an warm with their heaters but the humans were out of luck. It was pretty cold throughout, although thanks to the animals' heaters they were still out and happy to be seen.
On Christmas Eve we made Christmas cookies and left to go carol and pass out cookies to some of the old ladies in the ward. We only made it to two people before the snow got too heavy and we had to go home. Our third white Christmas in a row was a pleasant surprise. Apparently it hasn't snowed this much here in years and years. All of the neighborhood kids were out in the court going nuts with snowballs and snowmen. The next day after presents the kids and Collin built a large snowman out on the bike trail. Our neighbor across the way, who only speaks Chinese, sent her adult son out to give them a carrot for his nose.
For Christmas Grandma and Grandpa Roueche gave us some money that we used to buy a year-long membership to the Pacific Science Center, so we spent a day investigating that. My favorite part was the butterfly garden which is kept between 80 and 85 degrees year round. Clara liked the planetarium show that we went to which integrated a story about and the projection of constellations. Eliza and Collin both enjoyed the tinkering station. Leona enjoyed the section where you could touch tide pool creatures. It was a fun day and we look forward to returning many times in the coming year.
We also went ice skating which was really fun. Everybody was a little slow to get going on the ice but then once they got started they didn't want to stop. Eliza went without a walker this time and although she fell she kept getting back up and wanted to race people by the time we left. Clara was the most determined. She took no breaks until the very end. She just wanted to do her own thing and be solo out on the ice. Leona at first had trouble reclaiming her ice skating glory from last year, mostly because of the different walker style. She eventually got the hang of it and even did some skating all on her own.
Lastly we rang in the New Year in style with a party at our house. We invited the Calls, Richards, and our neighbors, Cathy and Brianna. The kids went nuts with unrestricted access to soda and snacks while the adults played games. At one point Matthew Call (Eliza's buddy) walked past the room where the adults were playing a game with no shirt on because the game or tag they were playing had gotten so intense he needed to cool down. :) Right before "kidnight", which was 9 pm, the adults discovered that Hannah Call and Leona had made off with a large bag of kettlecorn and were attempting to fill the circus tent with it downstairs. The whole downstairs was carpeted in kettlecorn and Leona was nonchalantly eating pieces of it off of her socks. Needless to say, the party was a rager.
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