We had a fabulous Christmas. Lots of things happened in just a few short days, so I've put together a list of the highlights. Sorry this post is ridiculously long. If the longness offends you, you are free to close your browser and flee from your computer. Stollen
Robyn made Stollen this week. Stollen is a traditional German bread that is filled with deliciousness. Robyn's grandmother is from Germany, and when we were visiting her last Christmas, Robyn made sure to get Stollen lessons so that she could learn the art. She did it this year without any assistance, and I was very impressed due to the deliciousness of the final product.
Looking cute while she works.
Forming the dough.
Selfie with the final product.
Breakfast with Megan and Graham and Grahams
On Christmas Eve we went over to Megan and Graham's (Robyn's sister and her husband) place to have breakfast. We did the traditional (for the Wrights) crepe breakfast and it was really good. Robyn's other sister was there with her 1 year old twins. Here are a few pictures from that morning.
Will was getting sick, so Megan let him entertain himself with the ipad. He kept sneezing on it. It was simultaneously adorable and disgusting.
Robyn likes babies.
He kept trying to crawl over the box. Around it would have been way easier.
Doing a little dance number.
Snapchat
Last year we started a tradition of sending Snapchat pictures of each other (and especially of Graham). I promised my niece we would continue the tradition, even though she was in California and we were not.
The first snapchat is away!
However, I quickly realized that Robyn's sister and her husband have the last name of Graham, so we could also snapchat pictures of them.
Teance didn't disappoint. She may not have had any Grahams to snapchat, but she shared the love with plenty of selfies.
My brother Justin even got in on it.
Robyn made sure to send snapchats mocking me.
Christmas Morning
Christmas morning I woke up early and couldn't go back to sleep. Normally, Robyn is an early riser on Christmas. It's the one day of the year that she doesn't want to sleep in, but I had to wake her up. We exchanged presents at our house and then went outside to shovel the white Christmas off of our driveway before heading to my parent's house to have even more Christmas there.
I put a tiara in Robyn's stocking. I thought she'd think it was fun and cute. She was so excited, and screamed, "I get to be a PRINCESS!" I wasn't expecting that much excitement.
I was surprised to see how big Christmas was at my parent's house.
Zack got lots of ties.
Justin really liked the beanie he got. It was made even better by combining it with Robyn's tiara.
All the boys got dinosaur hats. I think I need to work on my dinosaur impression.
Olive wanted to be a dinosaur as well.
Near the end of the day, Robyn revealed her secret identity as Elsa.
It was a great Christmas! I'm just sad it's over. Maybe we should do it again this week.
This year Robyn and I spent Christmas week with her parents in Clovis, California. It was a great week. We had loads of fun. We went on a few adventures, had lots of relaxation, and lots of family time.
I'm just going to warn you now, I started writing this and it got really long. I won't be offended if you don't read all the way to the end. Just know it was a fabulous week. Here are a few highlights.
The Nativity
Robyn's family has a tradition of acting out the Christmas story on Christmas Eve. Her Dad reads it from the Bible and we all get to play various characters. We're a dramatic bunch, and I feel this picture captures some of the drama that goes into this family room production.
Teanca was an excellent angel that made everyone sore afraid.
Stollen
I don't know how to describe what stollen is. It's German. It's delicious. That's all I know. Here's a Wiki if you need to know more. Robyn took lessons from her Oma and she made us some stollen. I told her she needs to make it every month so she doesn't forget how.
She's the cutest little stollen maker.
And look at that deliciousness.
The Interpretive Dance
Out of the entire week, there were 3 1/2 minutes that shined like a jewel as the greatest 3 1/2 minutes of the entire trip. Robyn's Dad read "The Night Before Christmas" while Robyn and Teanca performed an interpretive dance.
It was the greatest thing ever. Despite that, Robyn is embarrassed about it. (She's embarrassed that no one else can even approach her awesomeness.) So I'm not sharing the video, but here is an animated gif made from some of the highlights. Hopefully that won't embarrass her too much.
We're bikers
I wasn't doing my normal exercise routine, but we tried to get out and do something every day to exercise. We even did some biking. Despite the pain in the buttocks region, it was a lot of fun and after our ride I told Robyn I want to buy a bike, so we can do more at home. She agreed and said we totally should when there is no snow at our house. Woot!
We're totally bikers. We biked to the John R. Wright station, named after Robyn's Dad. It was 9.2 miles round trip. Not a bad little ride.
Angry Birds
Have you ever played Angry Birds on your phone? Have you ever wished you could catapult birds at piggies in real life? We got a fabulous gift for Christmas. Take a look at this.
The moment we've all dreamed of is here.
The piggy death star. Destroy it before it destroys you.
It was just as fun as it sounds. Here's a video of us taking it on its maiden voyage.
The Zoo
We took one day and went to the zoo in Fresno. I've loved the zoo since I was a little kid. What can I say? I love animals.
I FED A GIRAFFE! I totally got to pet them as well.
Will was not nearly as excited about feeding giraffes as I was. In his defense, their tongues were as long as his whole body.
The goat let me pet him, but when I tried to take a selfie with him he ran away.
Also, this happened.
Sometimes Teanca poses with statues. It's how she rolls.
Woodward Park
We took a couple hours to explore Fresno's Woodward Park. I want a ginormous park like that. Good thing they're building a new park right by my house.
Robyn said she didn't remember a fountain being in this park, but we found one anyway.
There were these weird structures all over the park. I assumed they were built by an ancient civilization. Robyn said they were exercise equipment so people could do circuit training outside in the park. I like the ancient civilization theory.
There were millions of ducks and geese.
Yosemite
Yosemite National Park is one of the most beautiful places on Earth. It's only 2 hours from Clovis, so I convinced Robyn to take a day trip with me. It was totally worth it. We did the Mirror Lake hike this time around.
The trail was really pretty. I loved the bits of snow and ice amid the beautiful trees.
Just looking up at the mountains.
Mirror Lake isn't much of a lake. In the winter it's basically a stagnant river. The word on the street is that in the spring there's much more water. Robyn looks really cute standing in what would be the bottom of the lake at a different time of year.
It looked like a stairway to heaven. I climbed it. It was just a stairway to some rocks.
Sometimes I'm a tree hugger.
There's no scale in this picture but this crow was ginormous. It followed us for a half mile because I was eating a cookie. It reminded me of the movie "The Birds". It would just fly and sit somewhere near us until we got more than 30 feet away and then it would fly somewhere in front of us again. It was creepy and awesome.
Robyn is cute among ginormous trees.
I loved seeing the mountains and trees reflected in the water.
You can't go to Yosemite without taking at least one picture of half dome.
Christmas Morning
Of course, Christmas morning is always a highlight. I think the best part of Christmas morning was that my 18 month old nephew decreed that I was his official assistant to open his presents. I think it was because I had him help me open one of my presents. After that, he just kept bringing me presents and I let him rip them open.
Eventually, he brought me a present that wasn't addressed to him. I made him take it to his Dad, who it was addressed to. That act of betrayal lost his trust, and he didn't bring me any more presents.
The Christmas tree before we opened anything.
Megan and Will frolicking in the wrapping paper. Sometimes the paper is better than the presents.
Of course, the best thing was just being together with family. We had lots of laughs and lots of good times. That's what Christmas is all about.
