Rachel and Michael wanted to take a day trip down to San Diego minus the kids. Lauren won't take a bottle, so it ended up just being minus kid. And we got to have Ben for the night! My kids were pumped! 

We brought him home with us from Nana's house after the wonderful annual brunch my mom hosts. We had to make a quick stop at Trader Joes. It was an adventure grocery shopping with four kids. I don't even normally go with all three of mine!

Dinner was a success because Ben loves grilled cheese sandwiches. He was much less enthused about the broccoli soup. Thankfully aunts don't have to make kids eat their vegetables! 

Bath time.

And then we watched Mickey's Christmas Carol before bed. 

The next day I met up with my brothers and sister-in-law for an early showing of Star Wars (Andy, Joey, and Hannah had already seen it with my parents and brother-in-law a few days earlier) so Andy had all four kids until nap time. He took Ben outside to our neighbor's basketball hoop to shoot hoops. Shooting hoops meant Andy lifted Ben up to the basket and Ben would drop the ball in the hoop. Apparently, this lasted all morning. Andy was actually sore the next day. But Ben was worth it!

We went to see Santa again this year as usual. However, this year it was extra special because we went with my sister, brother-in-law and their two kids who flew here early from Indiana. My kids were SO excited to go see Santa with their cousins!

 Ellie (almost 4!), Joey (9), Lauren (9 mos.), Hannah (6 1/2), Ben (2)

 Ellie made it very clear again this year that she did NOT want to sit on Santa's lap. Hopefully she's up for it next year because Joey is getting awfully big for poor Santa's knee.

Santa was able to persuade her to get close enough for a picture. 

 All five cousins with Santa. Ben and Lauren did great with him.

The Gallo family

 Since Andy and the kids saw the new Star Wars movie that day (with my parents and Uncle Michael), it seemed appropriate to take a picture in front of the Star Wars decorations.

And one last cousin picture.

On Saturday, the Gallos came over to visit for the day. They had just flown into town a couple of days earlier so we were so excited to get to spend time with them. We first met them at Hannah's basketball game bright and early in the morning. Hannah had a great game and even made a basket! After the basketball game, the four Gallos came over to our house to hang out...

and get some snuggles! Although Ellie's not really sleeping.

See?

Andy had his own cuddler.

For lunch, Rachel and Michael headed out to get some Mexican food while we watched the kids. Lauren was super content sitting in Andy's lap eating Cheerios.

Octavian's no dummy. He knew who to stake out for falling crumbs.

After lunch, Michael and Rachel came back, put the two kids down for a nap at our house and then they headed out with Andy, Joey and Hannah for Joey's basketball game. My parents met them there. Then after Joey's game, Rachel came back here while the rest of them went to go see the new Star Wars movie. 

Rachel and I had a great time hanging out, having a hair curling tutorial (Rachel taught me how to curl my hair the right way!), and making cookies.

What's cuter than a thumb sucker?

TWO thumb suckers! 

Rachel, the kids, and I had a quick dinner and then headed out to meet the other group at Santa...

Andy and I were talking about carving a turkey on Thanksgiving...
Joey: Wait, you can carve a turkey?! Can I carve mine into a barfing turkey?
I never thought about how carving pumpkins and carving a turkey are very, very different.


Hannah has turned into quite a lover of books...
Hannah: Mom, this library book has a page ripped. It's barely hanging on. Poor thing!!


Ellie is still unsure about how she feels about Santa. She's made her peace with the fact that he comes into our house at night since she knows that means she gets presents, but then she said this:
Ellie: I'm not going to sit in Santa's lap, but I will sit in Jesus' lap.


Ellie: Mary had a little lamb, little lamb, little lamb. Mary had a little lamb, and Jesus Christ is born.

Last night we headed south about twenty minutes to visit "Candy Cane Lane." Every Christmas, 3.5 blocks go all Griswold on the neighborhood. The houses are connected by candy canes and each house is lit to the max. We parked close by and then walked all around each block. We got a little sprinkled on when we first started, but then it cleared up, and it was really nice.

I had heard about Candy Cane Lane before, but we had never gone. Our neighbors invited us to go with them so the kids were extra excited to be able to go with their friend Chloe.

Since Ellie is the baby of our family, she got to go in the stroller with "Pooh," her blanket. Man, she loves the stroller! She was so relaxed that Andy said it was like she was in a coma. Clearly, it was a happy coma!

The girls especially loved this "Frozen" house. In the background, there was a screen and chairs set up, and they were playing the Frozen movie!

Andy, the Philadelphia boy, laughed at how bundled up we were for the 58 degree weather. 58 degrees is chilly to us!

The lighting is not the best, but here's our little family of five!

 Joey came home in September all excited about joining the school band. I had been wanting him to learn an instrument, so I immediately agreed. At the informational meeting the next night, the band director was talking about different ways of finding cheap instruments. He said the best way is to ask friends and family if anyone has an instrument they aren't using. He said, "You'll be surprised that some random relative has an old instrument just lying under their bed." I didn't think anyone in our family had a clarinet we could borrow, but I put it on Facebook to see if any local friends had one. Turns out my aunt had an old clarinet in her closet! It made me laugh that the band director called it almost perfectly!

This past week, Joey had his first band concert. 

Getting warmed up.

His proud sisters!

Since Joey is in the beginning band, the parents were told his concert would "almost be music."

And that is what it was...a bunch of darling kids almost playing music. ;-) It will be fun to see how much progress they make by the next concert.

Friday night, we went to the Google Christmas party. I drove up to Irvine to pick up Andy from his office, and then we drove up to Long Beach. The party was on the Queen Mary! And since it was two hours away from our house, we decided to spend the night in one of the rooms since it's now been converted into a floating hotel.

Andy has worked at Google for exactly a year now. He started right after the Christmas party last year so we missed it, so this was my first time really getting to know some of the people he works with.

We also had a fun time goofing around in the photo booth:

Andy was a little tall for the photo booth.

 That's better.

 The stink eye.

 Gross!

And because we are weird, this was our favorite picture of the night!

After the party was over, it was so nice just being able to walk downstairs to our room. And sleeping in the next morning? Glorious!

The next morning we walked around the ship a little more and then drove back home. Since Andy takes the shuttle to work, we had to pick up his car in Oceanside. It was right near one of our favorite local brunch spots, so we took advantage of our time without kids and enjoyed a lovely meal before we got back to reality. Huge thanks to my parents for holding down the fort while we were gone!