The Bean & The Peep: Catching Up...The Holidays

So...since it was my New Year's Resolution to Blog more often...I thought I'd better get to it.

Let's begin with Thanksgiving. I worked on Thanksgiving Day and the day after. We headed down to Florida the weekend following the National Feast and enjoyed turkey with Grandad and Babci a few days late. It was cold and windy but we enjoyed at least one morning of play in the indoor pool and lots of relaxing fun.

Christmas was a bit of a whirlwind. I worked a lot and Matt traveled quite a bit...slowing down just before Ella's third birthday and Christmas.

We decided to cut down a tree this year rather than going to a side-street tree lot. That turned out to be great fun. We headed up to the mountains with Grams, Aunt Leshia and Trey. We went to a farm located on several sloping mountainsides. We selected our trees and the farmers cut them down, bundled them and helped us load them onto of our cars.

Afterward...we happened upon a little man-made snow hill. Trey and Ella were too small to go tubing down it but we had fun sledding nearby.

Grandad and Babci were kind enough to take care of Ella for a long weekend so Matt and I could fly back to California for his company's Holiday party in Sacramento. We took advantage of our location and drove to our beloved San Francisco the day after the party. We visited Union Square for the Macy's windows and ice skating. Then we went down to Fisherman's Wharf for some fresh sourdough bread, of which we brought back several loaves. Then we took the cable car back up to our Hotel...just in case they really do away with those wonderful old pieces of machinery.

Ella's birthday was a lot of fun. We had a mid-morning Little Mermaid party with family and a couple of Ella's friends from the neighborhood.

Christmas week we did a lot of baking and spending time together, at least when I wasn't working. We also enjoyed watching Baby "A.J." grow along with my belly.