Holiday Adventures

We just arrived home from a 13 day adventure where we all, or some contingent of us, visited San Francisco, Disneyland, Santa Barbara, Broomfield, CO, Winter Park, CO and Boulder, CO.  That is a lot of packing and unpacking for a family of 5!  The San Francisco weather was insanely nice so the boys got to go sailing on the Bay, played on the beach and enjoyed the really awesome playgrounds in SF.  Sofia and I enjoyed taking long (and hilly) walks and visiting old friends.  

Part of the adventure was fitting 8 people into a one bedroom apartment before helping tia Veronika move into her beautiful new house in San Francisco, which closed on Christmas Eve.  The move on Christmas Eve made for a memorable, but sparse Christmas.  We got a Christmas tree from Whole Foods 20 minutes before closing time for $20.  We rummaged up some lights and told the boys that at least this way Santa would know to come in.  We hadn't thought to buy food while at Whole Foods so Christmas eve dinner and Christmas brunch consisted of whatever snacks we could find - mainly almonds and biscoff cookies!  

The boys' big Christmas present was a trip to Disneyland with tia Veronika and Abuela.  They drove 7 hours down to Anaheim and braved the crowds during one of the busiest times of the year.  It sounds horrific to me, so the boys are very lucky to have family willing to go!  Despite the long drive and long lines, the boys had so much fun and are still talking about it.  Unfortunately, Diego was too short for many of the rides so I think another trip may be in our future....

With the boys gone, Carlos went to work ripping out wall-to-wall carpets, painting walls and knocking out an unsightly shower in Veronika's house.  I also left town to go see a highschool friend in Santa Barbara.  It was so nice to see her, see Santa Barbara and eat lots of delicious food at her mom's house.  Any time I go back to SB I start plotting how to move back....Especially when we are welcomed back to DC with freezing cold and snow.   

Here is what Carlos did while I enjoyed 80 degree weather in Santa Barbara....

From San Francisco we went to Colorado to spend New Year's with the Andersons.  The kids all got along great and slept in bunk beds in one room.  It was very cute.  Carlos was excited to go skiing, but when he got to the mountain there were no skis left to rent!  When he asked what was left to rent they told him only "ice skates." Oh well!  Luckily the kids had better luck the next day and took a ski class with Issac and Caitlin.  Charlie enjoyed it so much that he insisted on skiing with Carlos (who by then was able to get skis) for another 3 hours.  Diego - surprisingly - didn't cry when we put him in ski school, but, with all the layers, wasn't able to make it to the bathroom in time and ended up peeing his pants!  Luckily he was wearing about 18 layers so one came off and he was happy to play more in the snow.  

Celebrating New Years (in some distant time zone :))

From there were went to see uncle Buddy in Boulder.  It is always nice to go there because Buddy is the most enjoy-the-present person I know.  And he makes some crazy good food!  We were greeted by the most amazing home-made bread.  

Despite leaving in plenty of time and getting to the airport a full 2 hours early (unheard of for us), we almost missed the flight.  Frontier airlines - which I will NEVER fly on again (like Spirit)- could not check us in because there were two Carlos Vazquez.  Carlos had gone to return the car and his cell phone was dead.  I waited in line for 45 minutes and then sat at the counter for another hour with all our bags, all carry-on bags and three children.  By the time I got our boarding passes I had 18 minutes to get through security and get to the gate.  I screamed "RUN!!!" to the kids and we took off running as fast as we could (as fast as I could with three children, a car seat, a trunky, and 2 more carry-on bags!!).  It must have been a pretty funny sight.   Luckily someone helped us through security and we made it just in time.  To add insult to injury, Frontier put us in four different rows so we had to negotiate to at least have three together.  

We told the boys that Santa had also stopped by DC so they got to enjoy a few more gifts when they woke up Friday morning.  Our house is getting overrun with legos - like this one that Santa brought for Charlie to make:

Christmas Tree!

We ventured to Middleburg to chop down a Christmas tree.  It seems that it was an off-year for the tree farm as the trees were so small that I actually considered getting two tiny trees - one for Diego and one for Charlie.  Sorry Sofia.  In the end we settled on a medium sized tree.  Despite the small size, the kids were so worried about getting hit by a falling tree that they stood back probably 25 feet.  Aunt Mary came to meet us and we put her to work as you can see...

 

We had a few of Charlie's friends over to decorate gingerbread houses this weekend. The kids were super excited and had lots of fun decorating....and sneaking a few candies.  Cici was the only girl and was subjected to a boy-centric comments, lots of talk about poo and wrestling.  Having her juxtaposed against the boys' behavior was really shocking. I had no idea how civilized girls were compared to boys!!  I am also shocked at the level of anti-girl talk floating around 5 year old boys.  Charlie doesn't criticize girls, but he does interpret and then generalize what he sees in a way that frustrates me: girls don't play baseball, or football, he is faster than girls, girls don't like kickball.....

The gingerbread decorating was fun and Charlie and Cici (and Diego) spent 9 straight hours playing nicely (and quietly) together (once the other boys left).  I promised Diego he could choose his own friends to have over too so we are planning another gathering.  I've been trying to spend more time dedicated to Diego. He is super sweet when he gets our undivided attention.  He is also quite amorous with his classmates - he wants to hug everyone and then gets sad if they don't want a hug.  Given how tough he is, I find the hug thing weird.

Sofia loves to try to walk around.  She nearly runs.  I think she may start walking around the same time as Charlie - 10 months.  She waves hello and seems to have full conversations with her high-pitched squeals.  Saturday afternoon Carlos took the boys so I got to spend a lot of time alone with Sofia and it was so precious.  She is a total delight - she smiles a lot and can spend an hour unpacking the food-truck fabric food that my mom made a few years ago.  She examines each piece, tastes it for awhile, flings it out of her way and then is on to the next piece.  She has really taken to the pickle in particular! 

New York and Thanksgiving

The weekend before Thanksgiving we all went up to New York to celebrate Wallis' 6th birthday.  Despite his aversion to New York, Carlos did okay and the kids had a lot of fun playing with Wallis and Eli.  Everyone braved the cold to go scooting/biking and play soccer.  From there they went to the lego store and then braved the snow to go to Soogy's favorite restaurant - Benihana!  So funny.  The kids did love the chef, but the food was, well....Benihana food...

We got to see some of my highschool and college friends while we were there which made me happy.  Seeing them always reminds me how much I appreciate old friends and how I don't do a good enough job staying in touch.

On Wednesday we headed up to Philadelphia for Thanksgiving at my mom's house.  It was so nice for the kids to be with their cousins and uncles/aunts.  My vision of a family Turkey day trot didn't really materialize, but we did go to the track to run around and play soccer before the big feast.  Charlie tried to keep up with his uncles running around the track, but at 6:30 mile pace, it was a bit tough for him.....Tio Seth ran with him afterwards around the track once at 2:13.  Diego played soccer with me (with sofia attached) and my mom but then told us he wanted "a fast guy to play with him."  Guess I'm going to have to score more goals on him....The day after Thanksgiving we trekked down to the Franklin Institute.  The Pompeii reenactment film made Diego cry, but the cool digger, skybike and actual train made up for it.  

Thanksgiving dinner was an insane amount of good food.  The kids started off with presents on their plates which was a good appetizer!

Sofia slept next to me all weekend and when she is close by she spends the whole night nursing.  I guess she smells the milk and can't resist.  She is so cozy that I don't really mind except that getting back on our normal routine is hard.  She cried like crazy when I put her to bed without me.  It could also be the fact that her first tooth is finally coming in!!  

During the week Charlie's class had a publishing party which was super cute.  They wrote a book and illustrated it.  Charlie's story contemplated why tigers and bees have black stripes. Very deep.  My favorite part was the back cover which read: "if you want to learn more about tigers and bees read this book."  Here he is reading it....

Despite my best efforts as room-parent I seem to get on Charlie's teacher's bad side.  My latest stick-my-foot-in-my-mouth episode was that I told her I thought the report cards were silly.  That didn't go over well. I appreciate that they don't grade just random subjects, but the social studies section feels like they are grading them on being patriotic capitalists!  He got a "B" for basic for the American symbol one - seems our son is not very patriotic....Luckily the teacher seems to like Carlos so we might at least be in neutral territory.

What charlie is graded against