Christmas 2015

Can you believe that it has almost been two weeks since Christmas? Time is flying by (as usual) and here I am a little behind (as usual!) and I haven't shared anything from Christmas yet.

So let's fix that by having a look at our Christmas Day...

This year we were away from home again over the Christmas Break. On Christmas Day we were in San Diego where we stayed in a cute little 1930's cottage that I found through Airbnb. We didn't have a Christmas tree at the cottage which felt a little weird, but we laid out out Christmas stockings in front of the enclosed fireplace and Santa managed to find us just the same.   

As usual, the girls woke up super early on Christmas Day and could wait to go out into the living room to see if Santa had visited while they slept. They were pretty excited to see a big pile of presents sitting in front of the fire place with Elfie Pokie Nokie perched at the top.

The girls jumped straight into opening their presents. Lola tore through hers super fast which means I wasn't able to snap any decent photos as she was just a blur of wrapping paper! Ava was much more precise with her unwrapping and went through everything carefully. This totally reminds me of my little brother and I on Christmas Day as kids. I would opening everything carefully, making sure not to rip the paper too much, while he would just rip everything open as fast as possible. Mathilde was a little slower than her big sisters as it took her a while to work out how to get into each gift and she was keen to do it all herself.

The girls were pretty happy with their haul. Ava and Lola both received accessories for their American Girl dolls from Santa, and roller blades from Kim and I. Mathilde received a Leap Reader Junior and books from Santa and Playmobil trucks from Kim and I.

There were also DVDs, clothes, earrings and books.

Ava and Lola were keen to try out their brand new roller blades right away, so despite the cold weather they headed straight out to the little backyard in their pajamas to skate around. I had hoped to take them skating down by the beach during our stay in San Diego, but silly me forgot to pack their helmets so they weren't able to skate as much as they would have liked. As she used to take ice skating lessons, Ava was pretty good on her roller blades. Lola spent a lot of her time on the ground!

We enjoyed a delicious traditional Christmas lunch complete with Christmas pudding and custard for dessert and then headed down to the beach in the afternoon. As you can see, it was pretty cold at the beach. In fact, it was cold enough that for the first time ever the girls didn't ask to swim! Or even just paddle their feet in the water. That has never happened before. Instead, they were content to look for treasure with Lola's metal detector and build sand castles. They may not have found any treasure but they did find lots of huge pieces of seaweed that were pretty fun to look at and carry around. That photo below of Mathilde holding the seaweed with the sun shining through is my favorite.

When we arrived back home in Berkeley on New Year's Day the girls discovered that Santa had visited them at home as well. There were also a few more gifts from Kim and I plus gifts from family in Australia. The girls opened these in much the same manner as on Christmas day, with Ava opening hers carefully, Lola tearing through hers at a million miles an hour, and Mathilde slowly trying to do everything herself.

Here they are with their complete Christmas haul for this year - and our sad, neglected Christmas tree that went almost two weeks without having its water topped up. I'm amazed we didn't come home to a huge pile of brown pine needles!

I hope you all had a wonderful Christmas!