Distancing never felt so good...

Christmas vacation is here... 

With stay-at-home orders returning, walks and hiking are our saving grace for keeping our sanity.  Peter's Canyon is one of our favorites!

Catching the last flowers of fall...

These spots are some of my favorite:

I love this family of mine and I love that we have places like this that give us space to breathe...

Making our tradition EVEN BETTER!

 There are two spots in North Orange County that we go and see lights every year.  This year, our sweet friends offered us their VW convertible to go and see lights!  It completely blew the kids minds...  We can't think of a time that they have ever been in a convertible!  We grabbed a a little dinner at The Hat and picnicked overlooking the cities lights:

And then we got cocoa:

Then headed to the lights in Brea and Fullerton...

We have been doing these neighborhoods since I could actually wear Ryder in a baby sling.  The evening was absolutely magical and we loved every second of it!  Thank you to our Allyson for letting us use her car to make the evening one that the kids would not forget!

Santa came to visit...

 ...and not one picture came out.  Oh well, the kids loved getting to wave at him...

Today marks the last day of school before Christmas vacation!

It was also Spirit Week in Ryder class:

Our favorites were elf day, reindeer day, and red and white day:

We taped felt ears onto the Robin Hood hat that he wore for Halloween when he was 4:

Making it work...

I had to laugh that he wore antlers WITH his Kuiu hat...

Then for his red and white day, we safety pinned home made pom-poms to a shirt... We had fun while making it work...❤︎

Then the week was finished off with Pajama day:

On Wednesday, Eden had her class "party in a bag" and they got to do crafts and drink hot chocolate and play bingo and watch a little movie together:

(Our room moms are amazing!)

In a season that has been filled with really hard moments of missing things and cancelled plans, moments like these bring our hearts so much joy!  

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Tonight will be a movie night and ordering in from Avilas, where we always go on the last night of school, and covid will not stop us from getting our tortilla soup and tacos...❤︎

Covid-19

We are still in a pandemic.  My heart is heavy.  Work has been crazy stressful. There are not enough beds and equipment for patients.  We are setting up tents outside of the hospital to try to care for patients until they can be seen.  My heart is heavy.  There is hope.  God is good and I am holding onto it with everything that I've got.

Getting the crafting bug...

 I think that the holidays are my favorite time to create and craft.  So I have taken a page out of Eden's book and tried my hand at some craftiness.  The first craft: I made the garland for our stairs and had extra beads.

I have seen these beads and thought I would try to recreate it:

(image courtesy of ETSY)

So I pulled out the twine that I had and the extra beads:

It was fun to try something new.  Eden LOVED that we were crafting together and that made my heart so happy!

Also, I finally retired my glue gun from my college RA days and we are loving that we have one that works so well now!

The second craft: wall hanging for flowers.

It started with a piece of free pallet wood from my neighbors:

I sanded it and stained it with stain from my stash:

I drilled a hole in the top for hanging and attached the wall hanging that I had gotten at Target several years ago:

Found our placement and we are loving this little change and the craftiness that brought it about...

We are still going strong on crafts over here and loving every second of it!