Preschool Christmas Performance

Ahhhhh...... Tis' the season for those cute little Christmas performances and what parent doesn't love them! The kids get so excited and I love seeing them all dressed up. This year we got to enjoy BOTH of our kids on stage. Unfortunately Olivia was crammed down on the first level and managed to hide herself in between the girls on either side of her (a little stage fright, I suppose) so we really didn't get to see or hear much from her but we still enjoyed it. Cole was able to find us in the crowd right away so he kept waving and waving and waving over again. So cute.

And here are some great candid pictures :-)

 
 
 
 

San Francisco

Oh how I love this city. Could be the food, the shopping, the crowds of people,the people watching!, the Starbucks on every street corner, and the sites or maybe all of the above, but I just love visiting San Francisco. Pretty sure I could never live there, at least not with kids, but we do love visiting with the kids. We've tried to make it an annual thing to go at Christmas time and see the city all decorated and coming alive with the festivities. This year the big highlights were staying at the hotel and riding the cable cars. Funny how kids LOVE hotels. It was nothing fancy - a Courtyard Marriott, but as we were in our room staring out at all of the lights in the city, Cole asked me if we could move here. Wonder how long it would take for that excitement to wear off? We weren't able to get in any swimming time at the pool - which is usually what the kids love to do, but we were only there 2 days and had a lot of stuff we wanted to get in. We also got unlimited passes on the cable cars on Sunday which was pretty cool. Cole loved hanging off the side of the cars holding the pole (see pictures below). Made me kind of nervous but Jim was there with him. The cable cars were all decorated with Christmas lights and garland and looked so pretty cruising around the city at night. We ate dinner in China town and it was really yummy, did some shopping, took the kids to their favorite park (funny how you take the kids to an entirely new city and all they want to still do is play at the park!)and of course did lots and lots of walking, which was tough on this prego mommy! We also met up with one of Jim's high school friends, Angie, her husband and their two adorable children, Lucy and Charlie. All in all a super fun weekend! I didn't have the camera with me so these are all iPhone pictures :-) The Christmas tree outside of Macy's in Union Square  
 
 

Cole, Lucy and Olivia

Polar Express

We took the kids on the Polar Express train ride in downtown Sacramento to help us get us all in the Christmas spirit. Thanks to a friend in my playgroup, we were able to get the tickets (which usually sell out before they are even open to the public). We headed downtown a little early and ate at Joe's Crab Shack in Old Town. Cole was so excited to order crab - he loved it. We are beginning to think his eating habits may be a little on the pricey side, but we are glad he will eat pretty much anything. After eating our dinner, we changed the kids into their pajamas and headed over to wait in the lines for our seats. It was much better organized this year and we had a great train car with plenty of room. The kids were super excited, and so was I. I just love experiencing things through their eyes and seeing the cute little expressions on their faces. 5 and 3 are definitely fun years to celebrate the Christmas Holiday with the kids. They start out the ride but having the conductor come through the car and punch everybody's ticket with the word "BELIEVE" on it, just like the movie. Then they play some of the songs from the movie and have characters dance up and down the isle as the train starts up and heads out to the North Pole. They pass out cookies and hot chocolate to all of the passengers as they begin to the read the story of the Polar Express. This is the second year that I have forgotten to bring our book for the kids to look through as they read it.... bad mommy! Really need to work on that for next year. It takes about 20 minutes to arrive at the North Pole, which is all decorated with Christmas lights, wrapped presents, elves and of course, Santa Claus himself. Santa then jumps on the train and passes out bells to each of the kids. Jim and I always laugh at this point because the first year we went Cole's bell actually DIDN'T ring. He kept saying that he couldn't hear anything and we thought it was because the music was just too loud. But sure enough once the music was off, we rang his bell and heard nothing. For those of you familiar with the story, this is not a good thing. Only those that believe in Santa Claus can hear the ringing bell. We were able to get him a new one that worked, but only something like that would happen to Cole. We were in luck this year and all four of our bells rang! We are all believers in this household :-) Eating dinner at Joe's Crab Shack before our adventure.