let the celebrations begin

we had my family christmas gathering yesterday. we do a gift exchange since there are so many of us now. i had my niece monica this year. abercrombie and fitch perfume and gift card. my sister had me, yah! gap gift card and a COACH wristlet for me. i love that no one stuck with the budget this year; ). we gave my parents a really cool album with pictures of each of us from a photo booth. have you done one of those lately? OMG, so much fun. everyone did it, brothers, sister, sister-in-laws, niece and nephews. then we filled out a questionnaire about ourselves and each of us made a scrapbook page. really fun, and my parents loved it.

tomorrow, it's christmas with the brocketts. christmas eve we will be in brea with tom and sue. christmas day we will be home all day for the first time in forever. maybe even in our pajamas all day. bob and d will visit for lunch and my parents are coming over for dinner. i'm excited to give bobby his gift, but i can't talk about it because he reads this, and talks to you all. i'll post later what it was.

i did go out shopping today. i didn't have anything to buy, i just wanted to experience some christmas-ness without the stress of getting what i need and moving on. but i did get these in red . . .on sale of course! perfect for christmas day.

hope you are having fun and not running around. see you soon.

yes

-i am stuck in the stress of the holidays
-i have been christmas shopping every day for the past two weeks and i'm still not done.
-i have to make cookies and brownies for sofia's class, cupcakes for 30 kids for Jordan's class and sugar cookies for andrew's class by next week.
-i have to get jordan's birthday present.
-i have to help jordan with his book report, due monday.
- i have been keeping up with my christmas journal. you can see it here.
-we have our christmas tree up.
-i could use a vacation.

hope everyone is doing ok.

busy having fun

we had so much fun celebrating bobby's birthday this weekend. saturday we went to burbank for surf n turf at bob and d's house. oh, but first we picked up cupcakes at yummy cupcakes. mmmm. finally, i took bobby to the movies. well, actually he had the passes and he drove, so technically he took me. but it was my suggestion. we saw "dan in real life." what a great movie. sweet, sentimental, funny. we are big steve carell fans, (that's what she said?).


sunday was the granada hills holiday parade. it's right by our house, so sofia and i walked there and met up with my parents and brother's family. it was a beautiful day. we had fun waving at everyone as they walked by. sofia loved the dogs and the dancers and all of the christmas music. lots of girl and boy scouts. and all the way at the end were the y-guides. andrew's first time in the parade and he looked like he could care less. but he said he had fun. then the gang came back to our house for tortas and tacos. and of course an ice cream roll cake. happy birthday bobby.

friday was jordan's swim team banquet. it was great to see everyone again, even the coach. they had an awards ceremony where they handed out trophies to the mvp, coach's award and most improved swimmer.
our little jordan won the most improved trophy. we are so proud. what else can we say. there was a slideshow with pictures from the season. it made us all teary eyed. jordan was "eh" about the whole night. more interested in how helium works and who invented the balloon. oh well.

finally, i am working on a christmas journal this year. part of an online class i am taking. it sounds like alot of fun. everyday there will be a prompt to get me to write about the season and really help me focus on this time. here is the first page, a manifesto about why i want to journal this christmas.


have a great week. oh and we hope the breast cancer walk in san diego was a huge success. wish we could have been there.