Family time

One of my favorite things about Christmas is all the extra time we get to spend together. There's no school, scouts, music lessons, seminary, play practice or any of those other things that infringe on our family time. We get to sleep in every day, play all morning, and go on fun little day trips in the afternoon. My parents came over around noon Christmas day to exchange presents.  

Tyler, enjoying his art set.

So this is kind of a funny story. Dave got me a bunch of shave ice syrups for Christmas, and we already had a little hand crank shave ice machine. One of our favorite things to eat in Hawaii is shave ice, and he found a place near here that makes their own syrups; they are SO good, and they totally take me back to Hawaii. Then the lady he bought the syrups from asked us if we wanted to buy "Little Bertha" from her, since she had already upgraded to "Big Bertha."  She gave us a great deal, and we bought it! It's huge. We laugh at ourselves every time we use it. If you come visit us, I can guarantee you we will have a shave ice party with you. 

We also got a cotton candy machine from Dave's mom. It's so cool!! 

We had a lot of late nights playing the new Wii U. We hooked it up to our projector, and it fills the whole wall. Now it's actually big enough for four players (plus the game pad person). Too fun!

The two weeks of break were the coldest weeks of the year. Some days didn't even get up to 50 degrees! That's cold for here, but we still managed to get out and about. As soon as the boys went back to school, it went back up to 65. Oh well. 

Heading home from the beach: beautiful sunrise on the right, herd of zebras on the left. We loved it! 

We went on a couple of family bike rides. 

It had rained recently, so they had fun riding through puddles and getting all muddy.

These were Levi's first family bike trips riding his own bike, so now Chloe is the only one who needs a lift.

We went rock climbing near Morro Bay with new gear we got for Christmas. It was actually pretty warm on the rock that day.

My brother Aaron and his family came to visit the week between Christmas and New Years. We took them rock climbing with us. 

Of course we squeezed in some geocaching. Spencer discovered a path here in town with four cashes. It's always fun to discover a new hike, especially so close to home!

It started to rain towards the end of the hike; but we didn't want to stop, so we drove around to a few more. This one was definitely a favorite: a plastic bat (with the geocache sticking out of its mouth), hanging inside that tree! Very clever.

We liked the new hike so much we took Dave there New Year's Eve when he got off work. We thought it looked perfect for off-roading (there were tons of hills and ramps and such). I was so impressed that Dave was able to fit 7 bikes in/behind our Suburban! 

Aaron really wanted to go sailing while they were here, but the sailboat is too big for our Suburban (Nathan usually puts it on their van, but they were out of town), and the tide was too low. So we decided to explore tide pools instead. It's one of our favorite things to do around here, and it was especially awesome this time. Of all the times we've gone, we've only ever seen one octopus. This time we saw two!! 

We found another hike near Harmony that had a TON of geocaches. Like 15. It led to the coast, and then of course everyone wanted to climb down the cliffs and explore more tide pools. 

Highway 46 is so beautiful this time of year - so green! We pulled over at the top to find another geocache. It's one that Spencer has wanted to look for many times, but we never wanted to stop because we're always so tired after the beach and just want to get home.  

It's so hard to see Christmas break come to an end!