Decembacation

For Christmas we visited my brother Jarom and his family in San Fransisco. I've been wanting to get out there for a long time, and I felt like I had just been falling through every time I said we'd visit. This time I wanted to be sure that we'd go, even when it looked like maybe we shouldn't. I thought it would be fun to do Christmas away from home this year. I figured our families would be doing Christmas parties anyway, and since we don't have kids, why not do a California Christmas?

We were planning to leave the Monday before Christmas, but when we woke up John was too sick so we needed to delay. After looking at weather and everything, we decided to split up the trip there into two days. So we left at our leisure in the afternoon, after John had gotten some rest, and drove to Reno. We found a fantastic deal at a casino, which in part is unfortunate because Casinos are not exactly the ideal place to stay. To keep customers happy they allow smoking almost everywhere. Bleh. But on the upside a casino means they cost less because they figure people are going to give them lots of money on gambling. Haha SUCKERS! We don't gamble! :) I love rubbing that in :P

The drive to San Fransisco was gorgeous. Mountains covered in snow and vast valleys with all sorts of greenery. Yay! :) Haha then we got stopped at the border. What? Um, I'm a US citizen traveling from one US state to another...why on earth is there a border patrol?
"Hello, where are you from?" "Utah" "Do you have any produce?" "Yeah, some apples" "Okay. Have a nice day"
HAHA...what was that? Crazy California.

We got to their sunny neighborhood (the snow was only in the Mountains) and walked in the house. The kids were SO excited to see us...for about 2 minutes. Okay, so just little Michael stopped being interested and started being scared then. That's what we get for family living so far away. It breaks my heart that some of my nieces and nephews barely know who I am. Ah well... :) We got him warmed up to us by the end, a little, anyway.

Mostly we spent a lot of time just at their house playing with their kids, which is what we really wanted to do anyway :) Benjamin was a little addicted to his video games, but we were able to play with him still so that was okay.

Tuesday evening we went to a...house. It belongs to some other religion's preacher? I think he's catholic? And his name is Deacon...how funny is that? :) Anyway, he has this gorgeous house that he WAY decorates. I mean, you know the people who overdo it and everyone wants to go see their house? Yeah, this is even more than that. He has a whole team of people helping and there's like a million lights and just...yeah. It's intense! It's for charity. It was crowded when we went and I imagine it's crowded every night while he has it up. He has several "rooms" that have scenes from Christmas songs in them, which is cute but the dummies are kind of creepy. There was at least one coin-tossing game, plus he has a river through the yard that everyone tosses coins in. It was neat! :)

Wednesday John and I went to Jarom's work. He works at the Lawrence Livermore National Laboratory. He works with fusion. Yep, he's that cool.
It was funny trying to get in, though. I still haven't changed my name for various reasons, but I forgot to mention that to Jarom when he was getting information to get us permission to tour. So the name he gave didn't match the name with the SSN I gave him. Oops! :P

That night we went to see the lights at Temple Hill :) It was pretty! =D I saw a Sister Missionary that I knew from Utah State, though at first we couldn't figure out where exactly. The visitor's center and everything isn't that different from Salt Lake's, though a little smaller. They had performances going on, as expected with the season. Michele told us that she had a non-member friend call the Oakland Temple the Mormon Spaceship. Apparently we're all going to go up in Space when the world goes to pot. Well, that's an interesting theory...but she has a point. The Oakland Temple DOES look like a spaceship. Haha! :P

Aren't kids great? =D

Commotion over an ugly spider. Eww!

John loves the lit palm trees.

Yep. Definitely a spaceship! Haha...

Okay, I just had to share this just like we just had to take a picture of it. Hahaha...well, this is one way to fix not knowing which side your gas cap is on! :)

You can't go to San Fransisco without going to the Golden Gate Bridge. Thursday we had lunch there. Omigoodness it was perfect that day! We had a fanTAStic spot just a bit off from the bridge, which gave us a gorgeous view of it and the bay. 

We had fun watching the boat come in from all the way off

Will it fit?
It did. :P

Ow ow!
We're fishies :P

Of course, you can't go to the Golden Gate Bridge without walking on it :P

We drove across it to get to the Muir Redwoods. John had never seen redwood trees before so we wanted to make sure that at least was one thing we saw. When I went out there with my Dad and Celeste a few years ago we saw some fantastic ones and they took us up on a train and we could walk around all of the trees and get inside some. It was awesome. This time it was more of a State Park and they had walkways so you could rarely get to touch the trees, but it was still awesome! :)

You drive through this to get to Muir Redwoods from the Golden Gate Bridge :P

We went to dinner at Denny's that night. My favorite part was how addicted to the TV Benjamin was. Michele didn't appreciate that so much, though :P

My niece Katherine is SOOO cute! She started singing on the way home that night:

Oooh I love her! Even though she polishes her teeth on her shoe...? :P

Denny's gave the kids balloons. They had fun chasing them around the house the next day. Katherine and Joanne's favorite was to let it go and then ask someone to get it for her...over and over and over and over... :P

We did a boo-boo and taught Ben to love ANOTHER video game (Angry Birds. Haven't heard of it? Look it up now. Or avoid it like the plague, depending). The nice thing about ours is that he'd have to have an iPod Touch, Android, or something like that to play it, so he can't get addicted :P

Friday was Christmas Eve. We went to a kids playplace, which was fun :) 

After playing mini-bowling with the kids, John was absolutely convinced that we needed a bowling alley in our house. It's only $80,000!!

We also danced. My family rocks. :P

Christmas was the best. Christmas Eve evening the missionaries came over (apparently they host the missionaries a lot) and we popped English toy poppers (or whatever they're called) at dinner because it was Jesus's birthday party and we all got party hats :) Then we all did the Nativity as one of Jarom and Michele's traditions. It was fantastic.

matchy matchy!

Even the shepherds were kinds this time...haha...

But John and I were the real Kings :P kissy kings...?

Christmas morning was unique for John because he hadn't experienced a little kid Christmas since he was really little. It was fun to get woken up fairly early by the excited kids and watch them open presents and toys with glee :)

After helping him open it, I was almost more excited about Michael's present than he was.
That game is awesome!

Ben was a little too excited and opened his present before everyone else :P

Gooooood Morning!

I love the mess all over the floor, haha

We got their family little trinkets from Mexico. In our family we don't do presents for everyone, we draw names. But we figured if we were going to spend Christmas with them we better get them something. My pleasure! They were wonderful hosts :) (And they got us gift cards to The Cheesecake Factory. Yay!)

We had a blast with our Christmas vacation to California. I LOVE Jarom and Michele's family. They're the best!! =D