November-December 2010

After 5 months of living in Cali, we found out from our landlord that we would have to move. We did have a 6 month lease but they had indicated that we could stay there a lot longer. However, that fell through because they decided they wanted to renovate their house and we needed to get out. Around 3 weeks later we had been lucky to find another house nearby and moved in over the over the Thanksgiving weekend. The week before we moved, we had an early birthday for Hyrum. With a large yard, we thought it would be easy having 10 boys over and planned to do a treasure hunt outside. Unfortunately the rain and cold weather finally came and so the boys were all inside, with way too much energy. I have never had a party more out of control than that party!!! We had unfortunately told all the children that they could have birthday parties since they were a little apprehensive being the new kids in town. I lived to regret it!

The weekend we moved into our new house we had Bethany's birthday becuase it had been planned ages ago!! Trying to unpack and organise another party was painful. Lets just say it was a very basic party and I was glad to see the last little guest walk out the door with their parent!!!!

Now the birthdays are out the way, we can unpack more and enjoy Christmas activities. We still don't have all our furniture but we make do and are happy that our new place has an open fire.

Watching a Christmas DVD, Elf as a family and someone invites all the teddies

Cooking gingerbread men.

In year 1, they had a cookie exchange at a friends house and Santa was there. (You all bring a batch of cookies and go home with an assortment of everyones cookies. Yummy!)

San Francisco.

One of our family traditions at Christmas time is to buy a new Christmas decoration. We went into the city to Pier 39 and went to this very lovely Christmas shop. We wanted to go on this carousel but it was out of order when we got there. We also went to Bubba Gump's (Famous in Forest Gump) and had fish and chips which were the best we have found in the States.

The Christmas decoration we got was a Christmas decorated San Francisco trolley car.

Hot donuts!!!! So delicious on a very cold night. So funny that we are getting used to Christmas's in winter!

On another night we came back into the city to see the real live, huge ginger bread house and go ice skating at Union Square. The heart of San Francisco. It was the highlight of our Christmas.

It was very hard to tell the children not to eat the candy....lollies, when you saw the grown-ups doing it!

Couldn't resist!

The famous trolley in the background.

We went into the massive mall before skating to eat and the children voted on panda express.

So magical!!!

Christmas eve we spent the evening with the Boyce's and Parry's. Ate a delicious meal, caroled and the children acted out the nativity scene.

T'was the night before Christmas...

......and then early Christmas morning!

University of California, Berkeley, where I visited with Susan Lloyd (one of our neighbours at BYU) for the weekend. She was doing a dance workshop and I came along for moral support : )

Riding to school from our new house. (We are actually on our old house's street which was just around the corner from school.)

Our New Home

California!!!! I never thought this would be our home, but we are loving it. It has been a BIG transition for the family after being at BYU, but we have been here for 1 year now and we are treating it like a working holiday. One of the harder transitions was getting the children up to speed with Californian schooling. The other possibly harder transition was finding new specialists and resources for Isaac. Learning which doctors to go to and where!! Working out our health insurance for all of Isaac's issues has been a major headache.

Thank goodness for fun!!!! Giants baseball game in San Francisco.

To keep me SANE I really look forward to Date night with Dave. Sometimes when every day is filled with therapy for Isaac and medical appointments, I NEED to have something to look forward too! With some friends one Saturday night we headed to San Francisco. This city is a blast! It is also great to go with friends who know their way around and know the best spots to go.

Isaac's EEG, St Mary hospital.

Isaac has a rare type of epilepsy. This EEG for Isaac was to monitor seizure activity in his brain. We had to keep him up till 12:00 then wake him up at 4:00am so that he would be asleep for the test at 9;30. We nearly couldn't get him to sleep for the EEG though. The nurse informed us that we would have to come in again and do the process all over again. In a calm but forceful voice I told her to give me 5 more minutes!!!! I'm happy to say we did not have to go in a second time!!!!!

Beach day's!

Love the beaches here but really miss the ones back home. The water here is considerably colder and you have to head out after lunch once the fog has lifted and the sun is finally hot (though many days in summer the fog doesn't clear at all and it stays cold). And what ever beach we want to go to at least an hours drive away. (Miss being so close to the Perth beaches!)

Isaac's 3rd birthday!

For Isaac's birthday we went and explored the bay area and enjoyed a picnic. Savannah made a Disney cars birthday cake for him. We had been in northern Cali less than a month and we were exploring our home town in a touristy kind of way!

He was so happy when the children finally got home from school and could play with him on his birthday.

Gran and Grandad got to have a quick visit as well. It is always so wonderful to see family however big or small. I wish I had more photos of this because grandad was on the trampoline too. (It was very funny!) Isaac was in heaven!

Half moon Bay. We always forget that when you drive to the coast that the temp drops 10 degrees. We were all COLD.

It was close to halloween and we were all very amused by all the pumpkin patches and halloween fun there was to do. Love Grandads SCARY look!

In November the Bennion family and our family were invited to go to the Johnson's cabin. It was amazing. 3 stories and it fitted 12 children and 6 adults easily. Very, very fun!

Going on a hike near the cabin. The children all had walkie talkies. Total hoot.

Halloween

Before halloween even started we had about 5 halloween activites on our calendar. Through church, school or friends!!! Oh my goodness............... halloween is bigger than our Easter. Crazy!

Gorgeous Emily Carpenter was a friend from the MBA program. She is also in our ward here in California. We went to her house for dinner and she showed us how to have some halloween fun. When we move back to Australia, this will probably be the festivity the kids miss most!!!!!! It is the thing I will miss the least!!

Another halloween craziness was organized by friends from the ward who divided people into about 8 teams who then for a week were involved in pumpkin carving, playing practical jokes on other teams as well as other activities that they would score points on. It concluded with each team on a Halloween themed Amazing Race to determine the winner. It was a lot of fun.

Pranking one of the other teams. The children thought this was the best thing around!

Our car.

Pranked!!! Some of the things teams did to us, or left on our door step!! The best prank was one evening when Dave was working late at work and I happened to be on the phone to him. It was about 9:00 at night and the door bell rang and I knew it was probably one of the other teams pranking us. I open the door thinking there would be some scary treat on the door step.........heck no! About 7 of the henchmen team members were hiding around the corner and one of the young men, Travis, was dressed like Chewbacca from Star Wars and came running at me. As I retreated back into the house scared out of my brains he ran in with this pretend sword. I have never screamed louder in my life and YAY, I had 7 witnesses watching me freak out!!! So funny!!! This naughty team got a little out of control and before me Travis had broken into our friends home and freaked one of the children out, not realising the parents weren't home. Another team kidnapped children and took them to baskin robbins. Very, very fun!!!!

Kids have only have half a day of school, the rest is halloween craziness!!!

That about covers the first 4 months in our new home.