Bella and her cheer team was part of the Burlingame Christmas Parade December 7. The grownups took advantage of a kid’s slumber party and took of for Casa Bellamia and sadly missed the parade. It all tuned out alright, Santa showed up and the cheer season was closed down properly.
The Carmel Valley visit was just for a couple of nights. These days we’ll take what we can get. It coincided with a visit from AT&T. They estimated two hours to install U-verse. Three weeks, four visits and countless hours later… It’s woking (yay!) and we feel in touch with the online world again while visiting the valley. We were excited to to hook up with Allison for a “sundowner” – our first chance to see our wonderful wedding coordinator. We ended up talking past our dinner reservation but the AT&T technician made it impossible to leave anyway (visit two of four…)
All the Christmas events at school started on December 14 with the older grades performing “A Christmas story”. It was good entertainment and very well put together. A bit of a somber mood after the Newtown tragedy that had taken place earlier in the day, but the many mentions of the Red Ryder BB gun still got a laugh and a smile.
We celebrated Adrian and Penny on December 16 – one day after the actual anniversary date. Their 50th wedding anniversary was partly why we went to Africa during the summer and David (Olivia’s brother) had put together a beautiful book with lost of photos from the two weeks in Kenya and Tanzania. Browsing through it we were all ready to go back. Our hats off to their commitment!
The four girls were all involved in the Saint Catherine Christmas performance. Even Bella who probably thought she was done reading in front of the congregation. Later on Adriana was rocking while Isabella and Pia this year – and for the next two years – dedicated their time to the nativity play. Baby Jesus enjoyed the spotlight and the whole thing was a great start to the Christmas days of 2012. We went back for the Christmas evening mass on December 24 accompanied by out neighbors. Isabella and Pia were liturgical dancers and Adrian got to speak to the congregation together with a couple of her (very loud) class mates. Following the performance we had a small family dinner at Ecca in Burlingame. Ran into the Liberty’s who’s celebrated their 22nd Christmas dinner at the restaurant. Quite an achievement. We had not seen them since our wedding – good to catch up.
Adriana and Pia arrived Christmas morning and the race to open the most presents in the shortest amount of time was immediately on. All got great gifts and no lumps of coal were spotted. Or expected, we should add. We spent the afternoon making dessert for the family dinner at Hillsborough a little later in the evening. Chris, Kara, Chloe and Colton were “stuck” in Oahu but the rest of us watched the kids exchange secret santa gifts and enjoyed a hearty meal afterwards.
December is not a quiet month for any of us. Year-end, finals, concerts and much more. Oh, and of course the shopping although some of us managed to set foot in only one Christmas shopping store in all of December. Hurrah for online shopping!
Last post of 2012. We wish all of our readers a happy 2013!
