Winter Break

The very end of the year and the beginning of the next one are some of the best weeks for our family.   In addition to the fun (and stress) of the holiday's, and accounting for the need for a few days of sleeping in and doing nothing, we have time to do all kinds of fun things. This year was a stay-cation so it is very lucky that we live in such an awesome place.  

We started out with our annual trip to the Dickens Fair.  I realized that in all the years the kids and I have been going Steve has never been able to join us. His first time there made everything new and interesting for me and I experienced the whole thing in a completely different way. Steve had a good time and I think it was fun for him to see all the things we have been talking about for so long.

For Christmas Steve game me a museum membership so I can go to all my favorite museums free all year long. (one of the best presents ever) We took advantage of my new member status by spending a day at the Legion of Honor. We saw the Treasures from the Louvre exhibit, which was amazing, and then wandered through the galleries for hours.  That is my idea of the perfect day. 

We try and go to the Academy of Science a couple times a year and the holidays are definitely our favorite time to be there. They have special seasonal exhibits (snow and reindeer) and an hour in the humid rainforest makes the cold outside not seem no bad. It's always good to visit Claude, the albino alligator, (I swear I have never seen him move) and Dagny could (and does) happily spend hours down in the aquarium.   

For a week we had a little Frenchie guest. Chuck came to be puppy-sat, and since he is not housebroken (yikes!) we spent lots of time outside with him.  We found out that when you walk one or two dogs people stop and chat, but when you have four dogs people think you're crazy. 

There was also lots of movie watching, both at home and in the theater.  We saw Les Miserables and The Hobbit, (again) and AT&T decided to give us free HBO so watching that took up a lot of our time and made everyone happy.  One of Dagny's Christmas gifts was a shopping spree, so she and I hit up the mall and all the cool stores in downtown Walnut Creek and Dagny ended up with a new wardrobe.  (those after Christmas sales were just too hard to resist) We rang in the New Year at home with tons of food and watched the ball drop. 

Now vacation is over and Steve is back at work and Dagny and Dane are at school and we can all start looking forward to spring break.