Sunday morning we all went to our church at Harvest.

Hannah and I happened to be on nursery duty that morning, so we got these little cutie pies. 

Ben and Lauren came back to our house for lunch. Lauren said, "Uncle Andy is the tickliest dad I know!"

More Pokemon time.

After lunch we headed back to my parents' house. My uncle, aunt and cousin all came over for dinner. I thought this conversation with four engineers and one lawyer moderating was pretty funny.

I loved seeing all of the cousin love! These two were attacking Hannah with kisses.

We still did some Christmas singalongs even if they weren't quite as good without Benjamin and Christina on piano. But how could we avoid doing the crowd favorite "Twelve Days of Christmas" with Andy's exuberant "Five golden rings!"

Usually just Ben and Lauren spend the night at our house, but this time we offered to have Luke and Nathan as well. We could never convince Luke, but Nathan was totally on board. He made a beeline to our play kitchen his first morning here.

There was lots of arts and craft time.

More Huckleberry. This time all of the Gallos were there.

Luke enjoyed watching Hannah bake cookies.

I don't know what was happening here, but there was a lot of sweet boy time, 

especially with this love bug.

I always love getting to hang out and chat with Rachel and Michael.

Lauren had fun sneaking up on us and "surprising" us from under the table.

"Loopin' Chewy" is an old game that Joey got from a birthday party years ago. Apparently it's one of the Gallo kids' favorite games, and they always look forward to playing it at our house.

After all of my Christmas wrapping, I had two empty wrapping paper tubes so I saved them for these two.

One morning I quickly cleaned out my garage freezer and scooped out a bunch of the accumulated ice. I put it all in a bucket and showed the kids the "snow." They had a lot of fun playing with it, and Luke even ate some, which was pretty gross.

More arts and crafts. Even Luke and Nathan really got into it.

We played Mafia a bunch over Christmas. My dad wanted to practice being the narrator because he was going to be narrating for a group of friends at their upcoming New Years Eve party. At some point, we played so many rounds of Mafia that Ellie and Ben even took turns narrating. They both did such a great job! 

Michael made a great meme out of the original picture.

Abigail and Zachary hung out with us for a few days over break while their mom was recovering from her chemo infusion. 

The Meister kids fit right in!

 

The two oldest Gallos, Ben and Lauren, were SO excited to show Joey all of their new Pokemon cards that they had gotten since they last saw him. I got this text from my sister a couple of days before they got here: The kids can't handle how excited they are to show Joey their Pokemon. Lauren: I bet Joey only thinks I have like 11 cards and no coins! *Big grin*

We couldn't get enough of smiley baby James.

Joey had one home basketball game when the Gallos were in town, so we all went to go see him. 

With Andy's parents and my family, Joey had fifteen fans at the game. The good news is that he had a great game, and his team won!

Nathan really liked cheering for Joey's team!

At halftime, the girls took the kids onto the court to shoot some hoops.

That night Ben and Lauren spent the night at our house. We introduced them to Huckleberry the next morning. They loved it. At one point Ben said, "This is like geography too!" He seemed impressed.

Later that day we all ended up back at my parents' house.

 

Joey and Lauren loved tricking people with "Lauren's long legs!"

Cheers with chips!

Uncle Andy always likes snuggling or playing with the Gallo kids.

Hannah loves doing puzzles at Nana and Buba's house, and it's even better with a lap buddy.

It was a Krause Christmas this year so my family came here for Christmas. Unfortunately, this year Benjamin and Christina couldn't make it, but it's because of great news...she's due with their first baby soon!

My sister, her husband, and five kids (ages 8, 6, 4, 2, 0) all arrived on December 14th from Indiana. They had a trying time getting here since their connecting flight from Las Vegas to San Diego was cancelled, but after renting a car and driving in the pouring rain for six hours, they made it!

 

 My kids had their last day of school the day after the Gallos got into town, so I dropped them all off at school and then planned to drive straight to my parents' house to see them. Joey was my last drop off of the morning, and he asked if he could skip school and come with me instead. Since it was the day before break, and he really didn't have anything important going on in any of his classes, I said yes. 

At one point I walked by and saw the four older kids standing like this. They were waiting to surprise Joey when he got out of the bathroom. It made me laugh.

The next day, my kids were officially off of school for Christmas break so we met the Gallos and my parents down in Balboa. 

The kids were all very excited to see each other!

Balboa is such a beautiful place to explore,

especially at Christmastime!

Sisters!

As we were walking around, we found this cool area with all of these beautiful, exposed tree roots. The kids had fun climbing all over them.

This guy is just the happiest baby!

Eventually we made our way to this beautiful fountain

and this reflecting pool/koi pond.

After we walked all around Balboa, we drove about five minutes away to this suspension bridge.

Not everyone in our group was thrilled with it, but I thought it was so cool!