Back in California

We got to my parents house rather late the day that we arrived, so after a pretty quick visit we all headed off to bed. I was determined not to let us get too off of schedule. (I had made that mistake in July and didn’t want to repeat it!) When we woke up in the morning the kids met their Aunt Keira, Uncle Chad and cousins Adam (5) and Brinly (2) from Chicago. They were all headed off to my Grandma’s outside of San Diego for a few days, so we visited with them for about an hour before they left. Then we had the house to ourselves until Aunt Liel showed up that evening, home for the last winter break she will have in her undergraduate years. The kids, especially Lynnae, really liked Aunt Liel.

One night Liel gave barcode stickers to both of them so that they could be “scanned” and purchased. They thought it was really funny. Lynnae liked Liel so much that she told me, after only one day with her, that she wanted to change her name to Liel. Now, Lynnae has been coming up with all sorts of new names for herself in the last few months... Rebecca seems to be the lasting preference. We keep reminding her that name changes don’t happen frequently, and that when she told us that she wanted to be Lynnae she was making that choice for life. Hopefully she doesn’t pull one of those, “I’ll change my name at school and church anyway and then they’ll have to live with it.” (Like my cousin Amanda, I mean Liz.) Not that I have a problem with Rebecca, it’s a lovely name, but I just don’t think she understands that people just don’t go about changing their name every day. So when she asked if she could change her name to Liel, I reminded her again of our conversation and added, “Besides, don’t you think that’d be rather confusing?” She’s back to talking about Rebecca again, but I digress...

A couple days after we got there my parent’s ward Christmas Party was scheduled. This was perfect because we missed ours due to the trip, and I hadn’t yet had the opportunity to take the kids to see Santa... I knew there would be one at the party. So on Saturday night we all packed up and went to the church. Charlie enjoyed talking to Santa, although Lynnae was perplexed when Santa somehow seemed to know that she must not be making her bed every day. This heightened her worry of receiving coal in her stocking. :) I was happily surprised to see several old friends that I did not expect to be there. Dinner took awhile coming so we entertained Charlie with the candy cane Santa had given him, and Liel entertained Lynnae with some Rock, Paper, Scissors. Now, that takes some patience because Lynnae doesn’t often play fair with that game... Have to give credit to Liel!


Then they had the program, and the primary children sat on the stage while they listened to my Dad read the Christmas story... My Dad’s been the bishop for awhile, I am not even sure how long, but since he was called long after I had moved away, it is still a little weird for me to picture him in that role!

We had a great few days before Christmas. We took the kids to see Bolt with Aunt Liel, really cute movie, and got all of our Christmas shopping done. It was actually positive for the kids to get to meet the family bit by bit, a lot less overwhelming then it could have been!