patriotic shed

snapped this photo on the way home from an extended grocery trip down to Fresno ... we had lunch out too :-) ... what a relaxed way to send off the year ...

Holidays End ...

Boxing Day...

we thought we'd had fun in the snow when there wasn't as much ... so today there is four inches of fresh snow over everything! we spent the day between playing in the snow, playing with our xmas presents, and eating up at the lodge ...

On Christmas Afternoon...

...we opened our presents, played with them, went for a hay ride, spent xmas money in the gift shop, (well, Josh and Bethany did - they chose cute soft toys), tie-dyed some tshirts, had a snow ball fight, somewhere in there Chris took over and I had a rest, and then we all walked up through the snow and the trees for Xmas dinner ...

And to make the day even more exciting it actually SNOWED ...

Christmas Morning *yawn*

a late night, and early start :-) lots of fun though ... stockings from Santa opened and then we trekked up to breakfast ... we had just finished our breakfast and someone calls out that Santa is HERE ... so we head over to the hall and find Santa dishing out lollies and to discover that he has filled more stockings - the ones that we decorated yesterday - SO exciting!

Christmas Eve

we arrived in time for settling in, admiring our cabin with snow on the roof, dinner, and some craft activities for the kids - they decorated Christmas Stockings, ate milk and cookies and wrote a letter to Santa ... then we all went out in the dark to watch the Christmas lighted...

On the way back to our cabin we toasted some s'mores - yummy American treat of a marshmallow toasted on the fire then squished between two sweet crackers with a piece of chocolate *Yum*

Our Christmas in the SNOW

so, coming from the Southern Hemisphere, snow at Christmas is a new experience for us ... so we booked a holiday xmas package up in the mountains ... it was GREAT ... when i went to find photos i found over 5o of just highlights :-) ... so i've managed to cut that back a bit ... here's us on the road, we didn't need to travel too far - it took us about three and a half hours drive time, and we stopped for lunch at a diner along the way... oh, yeah, it might have been a bit quicker if we hadn't forgotten Bethany's snow suit - so we backtracked for that!

Xmas lights ...

... it seems like just about the whole town has decorated their houses ... we've been taking the long way home when picking up Chris from work to look at them... but, tonight decided to drive around more of Los Banos's streets to look at the lights ... here is a couple of photos - i took more but, they were pretty blurry ... can you find the giant Santa?! One house even had their lights rigged up to be flashing on and off in time to music that you could tune into on your radio, that was fun!

its not all fun and games ...

well, ok, yes, actually it is :-) ... here is Ben and a friend playing with the new (early) xmas pressie... i believe they were riding down a river in a raft ...

Christmas treats

a trip to the coast

the build up to Christmas has us with itchy feet to start traveling already ... so we did a quick day trip out to the coast and visited the Monterey Bay Aquarium ... the weather was foggy - foggy the whole way there and back! But, it was nice to see some different fog :-)

Ben and I hung around one of large touch pools for long enough to be able to touch a stingray as it obligingly swam past us!

we were glad too, to be driving the unpopular direction - the traffic sure was busy going the other way...

Craft time

After we'd finished looking in all the Museums in Modesto, we squeezed in a spot of shopping on the way home - found a huge craft shop, and picked up a few bits and pieces (bargain of the day: two zip locks full of ribbons for a $1 a piece!) ... Ben's been busy building a log cabin, i've spent this morning looking at the fabrics ... and dreaming what i'd make with a sewing machine, and Josh and Bethany are happy with their new clothes for their teddies - gotta love fabric glue :-)

Field Trip to Modesto

We had an awesome time tripping to Modesto with the local Home School group ... we visited the Great Valley Museum and also the McHenry Mansion - it was decorated for Christmas, amazingly beautiful, and then visited McHenry Museum... throw in a picnic lunch and we had a great day learning about some of the local history...