California Christmas

Ooooooookay! I got back from my AMAZING California trip late last night and now I get to post all the pictures! Yippee.

Of course, here is my boy Scout. On Thursday Mom and I trimmed whiskers and generally made the horses look like decent horse beings, as Mom tends to be too busy to attend to horse maintenance when I'm not around.

Showing off six months worth of whiskers...

Mom wanted to take some nice pictures of her riding Dobbin, so she got all dressed up while I cleaned up muddy Dobbin and snapped a bunch of pictures, about five of which turned out.

This one is my favorite.

I attempted to make reindeer cupcakes, but they didn't work so well. We couldn't find brown decorating sugar so we tried gold, and then the antlers kept breaking, and well, as my dad said, "They look like bugs. Little Wilton bugs." Fail.

Friday was devoted to Get Dramatic, my mom's theater company. My mom started Get Dramatic last winter (I think?) and they were putting on their performance of The Christmas Carol. It was a ton of work, and I was glad I was there to help out a bit. Here's me and Brett before the show started (he's being camera shy).

Here's Mom telling everyone about Charles Dickens.

And here's Michelle as Marley's Ghost. Not a great picture but you get the idea.

So on Saturday, Dad put up a bunch of Christmas lights! I was so happy. Christmas lights are my favorite, and when I was little (okay, maybe like 13), I begged and begged for some of those light up reindeer. Eventually Dad gave into my whims and bought two reindeer and a sleigh, and he would put them on the roof of our old house. He didn't want to put them up this year, but I dragged them out when he was at work on Monday and put them on our lawn. I was really proud of my handiwork!

One of me and Mom's goals for our trip was to redo a room. We decided to start small, and with my newfound HGTV knowledge we decided to decorate the bathroom. Dad wouldn't let us paint, but we surprised him with our new bathroom and you know what? He really liked it! He's picky so that's kind of a big deal.

This cute shelf goes over the toilet.

I loooooved the rug we found.

On the second Friday I was there, Jordan was able to come to California for a quick two day trip! We had a wonderful Christmas turkey dinner with my family and grandparents (sorry, no pictures--the food was too good!) and then had a very small Christmas day-eve, where all the siblings opened their presents to one another and such. It was a good time.

Here's Brett opening a present.

Mom and I picked out matching pajamas for everybody and then we took some fun pictures. Here are Jordan and Brett, gangsta bros-in-law.

And the girls.

And everybody. I wish this picture wasn't so grainy.

Mom gave Lexi a sheep costume because she knew how much I wanted to be Little Bo Peep for Halloween. Jordan hates dog costumes. Ha ha ha.

I got Michelle a cute pea coat for Christmas and Mom got me one, so here we are in our cute presents.

On Saturday we all went to San Francisco. We went over the Golden Gate bridge, and this is basically all I saw because it was suuuuper foggy. Oh well.

Here we are in front of the water.

Mia familia.

We had super yummy crepes on the pier. It was a really fun trip!

On Monday, Mom and I took Rusty boy to the dog park. While I was in California I taught Rusty to roll over and jump through a hoop and crawl. I didn't get any videos but I promise, it happened.

Here he is chasing his new dog park friends.

He drooled like crazy. It was gross. He obviously had a wonderful time.

On my last day, Tuesday, Mom and I finished our time together by watching The Sing Off and making snowmen cupcakes. You take a mini cupcake and a regular cupcake and roll them in coconut, then stick them on top of each other.

Then you add an orange slice nose and pipe on some eyes and add an oreo hat. Wa-lah!

I made some cute Christmas trees too.

And that was my trip! I miss you family. You are the best and I hope I can come see you again someday!