Today I spent the 20th anniversary of my mother's death with all my siblings. It was more fun than sad and I'm so glad we were all together to share some laughs.


It has been nice to spend time with my eldest brother, who flew in from Seattle for the holidays and won't be back until the summer.

Christmas morning!! The kids were up at 6:10 am!

I loved the team work involved in opening their gifts!

The rest of the morning was spent building and playing with new toys and watching The Christmas Story.

We had a great time with our new karaoke game!

We headed over to Grandma's house for the afternoon.

We had a very sweet Christmas evening at my sister's lovely home.

The kids got to see my brother, their Uncle Agustin, who flew in from Seattle for the holiday. He is great with the kids and had devised a very fun game with Christmas toys and ornaments for each child who won in turn.

Christmas Eve!

My best friend came over to dole out gifts.

Isabel and Gabriel were thrilled with their new diaries and started writing in them right away.

The kids put out cookies and milk for Santa and some apple slices for his reindeer. They were so excited to go to bed!

This week Isabel and Gabriel visited it with their same aged cousins, enjoyed many holiday themed festivities at school and continued to humiliate our dog with various costumes.

This week we decorated our tree, experienced the thrill of sudden hail, and took a double decker bus around San Francisco to see all the holiday lights. We are all happy and healthy and excited for Christmas!

It's Nutcracker time again! We were so excited to see our family friends' son in his first show, playing a little mouse!


Isabel had a hard time picking just one favorite part, but Gabriel really liked the Arabian dance.

We got our Christmas tree this morning! We found the perfect plump tree for our celebration!