Christmas Day 2014

Santa Came!  One little one spent some time on the naughty list this year, but she pulled it off at the last minute and made the nice list.  Everyone was happy with their gift- Family Disneyland Tickets and a few other small goodies!

We headed over to Grandma Cook's for breakfast ...

 and presents...

Family Pics in front of the tree...

 

Then to Grandma Hoyal's for more food and more presents!  

One of my favorite Christmas traditions is the family piano recital.  All the kids played beautifully!  Thanks to Aunt Maquel for teaching her piano skills!!

 Cute Cousins!

We hope everyone had a very Merry Christmas!

Christmas Eve

Our annual Cook Christmas Eve party was a blast!  18 people for a prime rib meal-I think that is a record!  

My cousin brought these cute little ornament skirts for the girls.  They looked merry and bright!  It is so fun to have little GIRLS in this family again!  We had a streak of boys but we are happy to have some girls!  

Great Grandma with 6 of her 7 great grandchildren.  Ceci wasn't in the mood for pictures at that moment!

We walked Thoroughbred to see the lights after dinner and presents.  It was a fun night!

Christmas on Balboa Island

My Aunt Marcy is always so kind to invite us to her beautiful house on Balboa Island to see the boat light parade.  She goes ALL OUT for Christmas and always wins the Islands best decorations award.  She has over 3,700 Christmas bears to help her celebrate the season!  We had fun visiting with relatives and passing out candy canes to the hundreds of passer-byers.  We even stayed late for the fireworks at the end of the parade.  

It was fun to see my cousin Kathy and her cute family all the way from Brazil!

Crazy Socks Dance!

Charity's dance class performed a little Christmas dance for the parents.  Her teacher said the whole purpose of this dance was to teach them to stay in one spot and not run around during the dance.  A soon as I arrived Charity informed me, "No running around!  I stay on my spot!"  They were 100% better than the Halloween dance they did in October!  It was crazy sock day.  So cute!

Nutcracker

We went to the Nutcracker with our school group this year. What better ballet to go to when you are studying countries from around the world?  The day before we invited some of the younger kids from the "B" Family over to have a little Nutcracker workshop.  I used all these same activities when Tanner and Hunter were the current ages of Hunter and Charity.  So, I guess I will save all of this stuff to use when Charity gets into first or second grade and then pass it down to a younger family!

My mom came with us to the ballet and even made the pretty dress Charity is wearing.  We had a good time and I am hoping this is the first of many ballets Charity will attend with Grandma and I!  We may need to wait awhile before we attempt any full length ballets (this was a shortened school performance)-she was pretty wiggly towards the end!

Grinchmas!

 We bought season passes (it was cheaper to buy season passes than one day passes!) to Universal Studios way back in January and hadn't been back since!  We knew we wanted to hit it up again, so Ladd and I took Tanner.  It was fun to have an "only child" for a day!  The park was all decked out for "Grinchmas" so that was fun.  Since we didn't have the little ones, we all got to go on all the rides.  I had a serious migraine the next day.  Sadly, I am getting too old for rides!  But, it was a great afternoon and after Universal, and a day at the Zoo, I feel like I am starting to get the hang of packing food for our new diet.  Not relying on sandwiches, any processed food, and not being able to purchase food when we are out is a little tricky, but thanks to Thermos' to keep soup hot, and ice to keep cold food cold, we are getting there!

Merry Grinchmas!

Rain Forest

We've been studying the rain forest and decided to head to the LA Zoo to check out their new Rain Forests of the Americas exhibit and then make use of our season pass to the Huntington Library to take full advantage of their Rain Forest green house.  It was  great culmination to our study and made everything we have been learning about come as close to real life as we can in the desert we live in!

A Tapir

Cute Little Toucan

Exploring Rain Forest Flowers...

We got to see some real Reindeer at the Zoo too!  Can't wait til they fly to our house soon!

The World Report: The Philippines Edition

We have been learning about the Philippines!  I bought a coconut and talked about how important coconuts are for these islanders.  The boys tried it, but didn't like it as much as I do!

We met with our school group and had a Filipino lady come and speak to us.  It was fun hearing about her culture shocks when she moved to the US as a child.

She was so nice to make us a full Filipino meal, it was delicious!

The "H" family taught us how to do tinikling.  We had a great time and all the kids practiced for a long time!

We received our World Report Periodical for the Philippines, which Tanner had an article in, and a few kids did presentations.  Hunter was an art specialist...

Charity was a dance specialist and taught every one how to do a few steps from the Itik Itik dance.

What a Fun Filipino Friday!