Post-Xmas Weekend 2015

Saturday, December 26th
Dan and Carrie wanted to take Vivian to the Monterey Bay Aquarium the day after Christmas. I accompanied them but Frank volunteered to stay home. We'd only need one vehicle that way. The Monterey Bay Aquarium is about a 2 to 2½ hour drive south from Livermore. We left somewhere around 10:30 am or so and arrived close to 1:30 pm, hitting a bit of traffic and a slight detour due to an accident along the route. We decided to eat lunch before entering the aquarium and enjoyed a fine meal at the Cannery Row Brewing Company.

Vivian was good spirited but understandably a bit antsy after the long car ride. She fiddled with her mom's necklace while we waited the arrival of our food. Carrie played the role of the patient mom and went along with it, nearly getting strangled in the game. I quietly wondered to myself if I should reach across the table and rescue her from the tangle - or even if I'd be able to quickly enough if she started turning blue. But the food came, the game ended, and Vivian moved on to the more productive task of eating with gusto.

After our meal, Dan and Carrie took Vivian to the restroom while I proceeded out to the lobby. I spent all the time they were busy with Vivian trying to figure out how to open the stroller. I saved face by succeeded just before they rounded the corner. On our way exiting, I took a photo of Dan with Vivian by the restaurant's beautiful Christmas tree.

We got our aquarium tickets and passed through the front lobby about 1:30 pm. The website had stated closing time as 5:00 pm but the official marqueé at the entrance declared it to be 7:00 pm. Marvelous! We'd have another two hours! Great for a young family but this grandma was dubious about her stamina. I thoroughly, utterly, enjoyed watching Vivian's absorbed fascination at each of the displays. I am happy I went along and I had a very good time as an intense observer.Vivian was so into it. She pointed to one fish and said "Nemo", to another and said "Dory" so she was definitely into detail and taking it all in. Carrie kept asking me if I was having fun. That was a loaded question. To me, fun implies a sense of being carefree. Vivian's ability to slither excitedly between the legs of the throng of other visitors in the darkened exhibit halls made it very difficult for me to relax.  I am sufficiently out of practice in these types of situations to be stress free. The last time I experienced them was a generation ago with my own kids.

Several times I would pick her up so she could see into some display window. On one of those occasions as I held her, she plunged her head forward to better see the otters swimming beneath the surface. BONK! She really whacked her head on the thick plate glass window. She was not phased in the least, but I cringed and thought, "Oh, no. Not a huge black and blue bump on my watch!".

I fared better sticking to the photography end of things on this outing. As Vivian charged down a hallway toward another adventure I snapped this photo appropriately captioned by the exhibit title off to the right, "Vanishing Wildlife".

Vivian was mesmerized by many of the display windows.

I was mesmerized by the views and mechanics of just maintaining and running such a place. How long a squeegee must that be to reach the top of those tall windows? Being right next to the bay, how often must those windows be cleaned?

We stayed until about 6:00 pm. I sat up front with Dan in the car on the quiet, serene, ride home. There was one tired kiddo in the backseat with her mama.

Sunday, December 27
Dan and Carrie had wanted to have a date night one evening during their holiday stay with us, but somehow, there was enough going on that it never happened. I suggested they do brunch Sunday morning before their afternoon flight back to SoCal.  Frank and I baby sat while they were "out to brunch". Vivian chowed down her breakfast eagerly. I made her scrambled eggs, nice and fluffy and buttery, to go with the fruit and cereals she had on a snowman-shaped plate. We certainly got good use out of that highchair. There is a cute story behind it so I will digress.

When Vivian first entered the house the Tuesday before Christmas, she was attracted to a coffee table I'd set up with play things. I had a two-step watermelon-painted stool that I'd set by it for her to use as a chair. It was the perfect height for her to play, seated on the lower step and leaning back on the higher step. Frank and Dan both remarked on what a nice set up it was for her. Well, Vivian did sit on the first step but turned around and inserted her legs so they were tucked under the second step. She then leaned backward, toppling over entangled as if wearing the stool in her lap, and whacked her head against the coffee table. This occurred less than ten minutes in the house mind you, and with Dan and Frank both standing right next to her within arm's reach. We whisked away the offending two-step stool, substituting a white and blue Little Tikes single-level step stool. We still have three of these from our kids' younger years. 

Just a few minutes later we sat her for lunch at the kitchen table on a counter height chair we'd used for Alex for years. She leaned over, fell out, and whalloped her head once again, this time against the floor. This convinced us that seating would be an issue this trip and our granddaughter would not develop fond memories of visits to Grandma's and Grandpa's house if we did not run out and buy a high chair.

So while Dan, Carrie, and Vivian had been in San Francisco on Wednesday, Frank and I had dutifully gone to Target to buy a high chair. The cheapest one was $147.98! We would have gladly paid the price - well maybe not gladly but we would have paid it anyway for the sake of our grandchildren - but the chair was huge and did not fold up in any way for storage. Once assembled out of the box you were stuck with it occupying a pretty big chunk of real estate your kitchen - or in the attic later in our case if we'd even manage to get it up there. I prowled the aisles in the clearance section and lo and behold I lucked out and found a taped up box with a highchair in it and a red tag sticker for $27.88. It looked like it had been a repackaged and returned item. But the box picture and verbiage advertised that it folded up to only several inches thick for storage. I snatched it up. A brief doubt did whiz through my mind as to the potential quality of this chair since someone had returned it and it was so cheap but I ignored the thought and we bought the chair.

When I opened the box I found four screws neatly enclosed in a grocery store style Ziploc™ baggie and no assembly pamphlet. Yup, that confirmed the previously purchased suspicion. It unfolded fine, and the four screws worked nicely to attach the four no mar rubber corners on the base. Our purchase was a smart one. After Vivian's first meal in it, Dan removed the tray and on the underside of it was a bit of centrally located crusted on food. Yup, previously owned and previously used. We chuckled. I wonder if another set of grandparents somewhere had gotten it, used it during a family visit, and returned it. If they did - and there may be more than one set of them out there - I say a heartfelt thank you.

  

We played trains with Vivian. She took to this hand crafted wooden set I'd bought when I went with Frank to a model train show. All the cars on the train take up two window sills in our family room so it is nearly eight feet long. I think the elephant was her favorite. She kept reaching for it and saying her very recognizable version of that very long word.

Vivian pushed a two car train all around the track with her own supplied sound effects of "Choo-choo".

After running the train on the tracks she used the wooden rails as a balance beam to walk all around the oval. Thankfully there was no bonked head even with this gymnastic endeavor.

We moved on to doing puzzles till Dan and Carrie returned. 

Dan joined us while Carrie packed.

We took one final picture with the quilt named E-I-E-I-O before leaving for the airport. Vivian's face says "But mama I want you in the picture, too!" (More quilt details are in my December 9th post in my DianeLoves2Quilt blog.) We scooted them all off in time to catch their 3:20 pm flight. It was a great Christmas and a great visit.

Returning home after the drop-off, we searched for, found, and reprogrammed the remotes. I eventually folded up the highchair after Frank and I spent a solid ten minutes trying to find the release so it would bend in on itself. I struggled to recall how the Pack 'n Play that Vivian slept in did its Rube Goldberg transformation into a rectangular prism that would fit not only into its carrying case but also on the lower shelf of the changing table. I do this seldom enough that I have to relearn it each time time; but I met the challenge! We are going to miss Dan and Carrie but especially Vivian. She will have changed so much again before the next time we get to see her. Maybe Frank and I should go bonk our heads against something hard somewhere to ease the transition.

A Merry Christmas Day

Friday, December 25th
Christmas Day dawned and, unlike the days I remember from my kids' childhood, most folks slept in. Except for Alex of course. Although awake, he was content to delay opening gifts and just hang out with his dad doing puzzles and coin banks. The presents beneath the base of the tree in the living room were opened at a slow pace, later in the morning.

Pajamas are the accepted attire for gift opening. Yay!

A real hit was Vivian's cow-themed rolling suitcase from Grandma and Grandpa, called a Trunki. Vivian is a veteran traveler at her young age and this will be put to good use as an efficient packing aid and fun toy. It is sized to fit on board as a carry-on and to pass through the security scanners at the airports. It can be rolled or pulled or propelled by kids' feet push power or, alternatively, carried by handle or shoulder strap.

Vivian opened up her barnyard-themed quilt that came with a set of four hand puppets; a sheep, a cow, a pig, and a horse (not shown).

From Frank I got the promise of a bright sunshine yellow, cute as a button, Minion bowling ball, to be purchased and custom drilled after Christmas.

Dan and Carrie also gave me the game of Blokus and the promise to play it later that evening.

Blokus is the perfect strategy game for the whole family - less than a minute to learn with the depth to challenge all ages. As players take turns placing their 21 pieces on the board, each piece played must touch another piece of the same color, but only at the corners. Stake your claim and protect your territory by fitting as many of your pieces on the board as you can while you strategically block your opponents. - per Amazon

That night Carrie won a game and Dan won a game. The torch has definitely been passed to a new generation. We played additional games but I do not recall who won. It probably was not me or I'd be gloating.

Alex got a set of Catseye™ toiletry bags to use when he goes to camp or travels with us. They have realistic photos of bunnies on them. Rabbits are kind of a thing for Alex, to say the least.

Alex was pleased to get a replacement pirate ship puzzle. The images on his original are barely visible, so worn off are they from Alex's many, many, assemblies and disassemblies of this favorite tray puzzle.

Alex certainly liked his new puzzle and worked on it repeatedly a good deal of the afternoon.

After opening gifts, Dan and Vivian set out to make cut-out cookies. I was amazed and impressed at how focused Vivian was on the task. Her attention span was impressive for a 20-month-old. She and Dan did all the cookies. I did not need to step in at all.

Carrie helped when detail work was needed. I love that when she spends the holidays with us she wears her jaunty Santa hat for the holiday festivities like lighting luminaries on Christmas Eve, opening presents on Christmas morning, and in this case, cutting out Christmas cookies.

So I could kick back a bit, we bought a ready made holiday meal from a local restaurant, Shari's. After my learning curve with doing this at Thanksgiving, discussed in my post for November 27th, I knew what to expect and the heating up part was no longer a big deal. Since Alex likes ham, I added it to the pre-order as well as turkey. It was too much meat. Today is the Twelfth Day of Christmas and it is still lingering in the refrigerator. Our dog Daphne is going to have a treat because I did not have the foresight to freeze some of it.

But everyone enjoyed what we did eat on Christmas Day.

There were lots of goodies to spare. This is the largest box of chocolates I have ever seen. It was given to me by the literacy student I volunteer to tutor at our local library. Huge as it was, starting on Christmas Eve, we managed to devour it by the Third Day of Christmas. I do not know about French Hens, but there were plenty of us fat and happy ones around here.

At the end of the day we posed for a group photo. This was taken by Carrie's cell phone on a timer. I am wearing Vivian's Olivia beret after my unsuccessful attempt to get it on her head before the timer went off. Everyone is smiling. Amazing. Merry Christmas!

Christmas Eve

Thursday, December 24th
On the day before Christmas, we got up at a leisurely pace. Vivian was content to just hang with her daddy or explore the various kiddie toys I had pre-planted about the downstairs. I'd seeded the family room with curios like Duplos and stacking pegs and shape sorters. Perhaps her favorite items however were the TV and DVD remotes. The challenge of restoring them to their functional configuration would fall to Grandma and Grandpa at the visit's end.

Vivian was not the only one to play. Dan and I played checkers with a wooden set Frank and I had purchased at the Colorado Train Museum in Golden when we visited there the end of August. The red checkers were carved with cabooses and the black checkers were carved with locomotives. Dan beat me. 

Traditionally we'd play with a set of Christmas Checkers where there are 3-D wooden carved green Christmas Trees versus red and white Santa Heads; but that set, with its red and natural maple checkerboard, had somehow not made the trek down from the attic for Christmas 2015. I nabbed the image below from the internet. Maybe if I'd had the more appropriate checkers for the season the outcome might have been different...? One Christmas, when Robin and Dan were younger, I'd bought extra sets of these, one for each of them. I wonder if they still have them after all their moves and life changes.

Some adults, the energetic silly ones, amused themselves by ambushing each other with X-Stream Air guns that launched donut shaped discs or a PowerPopper that shot out bright green foam balls. 

Vivian loved running around picking up the foam balls, and placing them in carrying basket with a handle. A basket we normally use as a dispenser for our paper napkins was pressed into a nobler service on this day, collecting spent ammunition from the PowerPopper.

After collection, Vivian willingly and proudly presented the ammunition spheres to Grandpa, one by one.

I'd forgotten that I'd been saving empty tubes from wrapping paper so we could have cardboard light saber duels, but that is ok. We had plenty to keep us active and happy and busy. Frank picked Alex up mid-afternoon so he could join the fracus. He settled into the newly arranged, no longer carpeted family room, content with his puzzles and banks and videos, nonplussed by the totally rearranged room.

After Vivian's afternoon nap, she went with Dan and Carrie pay a brief visit to some in-town friends of theirs. Later, I accompanied them to the 4:00 pm Children's Christmas Mass at St Michael's Catholic Church. Vivian joined the kids up on the altar for part of it and was well behaved. She got kind of antsy as the sermon lasted too long and became too boring; but then, so did the adults. I surreptitiously took this cell image of her and Carrie from my place in the pew.

After church we gathered with the neighbors in our cul-de-sac to set out and light luminaries. It was a chilly night but the rain stayed away while we socialized and were occupied in our communal task.

Alex was quite the un-doer, trying to pick up each sack and blow out its candle! He loves to blow out candles so this was a fun, field day for him. Vivian was quite the helper. Our neighbors were commenting about how for many of the previous generations of candle lighters – our own kids when young and some of the grandkids, nieces, and nephews of our neighbors – lighting luminaries had been their first experience with striking a match or handling fire close up.

The resulting effect is always beautiful and calming. I love how in this  photo the moon is peeking through the clouds as viewed through the branches of our tree. 

After coming indoors I fried up the Cheese Blintzes I had made the day before. My aging stove-top chose to act up with an intermittently working burner; but by juggling different dials and controls, some pointed blows with a wooden spoon on offensive heating coils, and multiple fry pans, I persevered and no blintz was lost. They crisped up nicely and were delicious with sour cream or applesauce. I was too busy being a cook to be a photographer so you must just imagine how delicious they looked. We polished off all I had made in short order.

After dinner was bath and bedtime. Frank and Dan played a few games of Sequence and kept me company while I stubbornly stayed up knitting Isaiah's stocking. I finished it just at midnight with seconds to spare. I give more detail in my DianeLoves2Quilt post for December 28th. Here are those ten stockings hanging all in a row. 

The day had been quite full of merriment and we still had Christmas to look forward to the next day.

'Twere the Days Before Christmas 2015

'Twere is the pluralized version of 'twas, 'tis not?

If Clement C. Moore can do it, why can't I?

Tuesday, December 22nd

Dan, Carrie, and Vivian were about to spend the Christmas holiday with us in Livermore and their flight from SoCal arrived about 10:20 am. Frank and I parked the car with its child safety seat securely installed, rear facing, in the back seat center, the purported safest configuration and went in to greet them at the Oakland terminal. Meeting up in short order, we transported the luggage out to the parking lot. We had parked in premium; nothing is too good for our granddaughter.  A half hour later, after her parents had inspected and revised the safety seat installation and all the straps had been custom adjusted for Vivian, we left to drive home to Livermore. We had lunch and dinner at home and just hung out and visited. An afternoon walk to a neighboring park fit the bill. Every one had to get into the act on the slide - except the photographer.

We'd tentatively planned a night of Zoo Lights at the Oakland Zoo, but Vivian's long nap, Carrie's slight case of the sniffles, and the damp, chilly weather conspired together that we scale back our plans to be less ambitious. We went to look at Christmas lights throughout the neighborhood and strolled through the displays at our local Deacon Dave's. This is an annual tradition, established 1984, that we've kept since Robin, Dan, and Alex were little.

One year, when Dan was very young, he quite innocently asked us, as we walked through Deacon Dave's Christmas decorated courtyard, "How come we never see Deke, only Dave?" Here he is now, all grown up, with his dad! And if you are still groaning after that pun, it was not made up. He really did think that there must have been two people.

A friendly passerby graciously took a photo of all of us.

Wednesday, December 23rd

Dan, Carrie, and Vivian took BART (Bay Area Rapid Transit) into San Francisco and spent the day sight seeing. Frank and I stayed home. I used part of the time making Cheese Blintzes for Christmas Eve dinner, something I had not made in years. I still have my old crepe maker.

I made and froze two full jelly roll sheets of blintzes to fry up for dinner the next evening. Fortunately I had copied the proportions for the ingredients and taped them on the bottom of the batter platter because in its faded state, my recipe card was barely legible. My recipe is my mom's and different form the one printed on the plate. She used to make cheese blintzes at Easter time. We'd eat them with sour cream. Yum!

I also mixed up a batch of cookie dough for cut-out cookies. We would roll them out the next day. This recipe hails from the the early 1970's when my godson Glenn used to make these at Busy Beaver Nursery School in New Jersey. I think it may be time to copy over this recipe before it too fades away. Perhaps it can live on in this blog.

Once Vivian was settled in for the night, Dan, Frank, and I played a few games of Sequence and Tsuro. Dan won most of them. Grrrr. Seems like the torch has passed to a new generation.

I also used any other spare time during the day to work on a vintage Christmas stocking for grandson Isaiah. I only had one more day till Christmas and I wanted it hanging with the others. These stockings symbolize that we are all together in spirit for Christmas. Frank, Alex, and I carried them all with us out to Oklahoma for Christmas in 2014. Dan, Carrie, and Vivian were not there but their stockings were.

Once all others had gone to bed I took time to reflect. Robin, Jeremy, Autumn, and Isaiah were unable to travel to California for Christmas 2015, but they kept us in the loop of Christmas preparations in their Oklahoma home. I took time to enjoy some of the photos they'd been mailing us. Five-month-old Isaiah and three-year-old Autumn seem to be engaged in their Christmas tree-trimming!

Yes, I was reflecting on the growing, happy families. Carrie and Dan are expecting another little girl next May. I love this photo on their 2015 Christmas card.

And of course this one, with Dan balancing pink booties on his head and his daughter on this shoulders, is a real keeper.

I can't help thinking back to when he and Robin and Alex were the size to ride this rocking horse, now pressed into service as a Christmas decoration.

I also mused on the wreath we have in our kitchen. Frank and I bought that the first Christmas we were empty nesters – Robin in Oklahoma, Dan in SoCal, and Alex placed at St. Denis. It was now just the two of us.

It is easy to get lost in your thoughts late at night. And it was late at night. I stayed up until 2:45 am on December 23rd, determined to get Isaiah's stocking knitted to a point where I would have only to turn the heel and complete the foot the next day, Christmas Eve.