Holiday Festivities

Last Tuesday we kept with tradition and visited the Bellevue Botanical Gardens.

The dragon was new this year and has 6,750 lights and it took 200 hours to make.

After the gardens we concluded the evening with our annual visit to Snowflake Lane.

The kids had lots of fun giving high fives to the various characters walking around. Katie was entranced with everything and couldn’t take her eyes off the action even when I asked her to give me a smile.

Saturday was our ward Christmas breakfast where after filling up on pancakes the kids each took a turn sitting on Santa’s lap. Abigail asked for a Wii, though I’m sure she knows she’ll end up with something much more modest. Carly asked Santa for Squinkies which are apparently tiny little figurines that come in little balls (?)

We really don’t talk much about Santa at our house so I think Jason and Katie were ill prepared for their visit with Santa. Jason didn’t have a clue what he wanted for Christmas, but after a little prodding from Santa he told Santa he wanted a train under the Christmas tree. We’ve spent the last two Christmas’ in Utah at my Moms (which is basically any Christmas Jason could remember). She has a really cool train set that goes around her big, beautifully decorated tree and Jason loved watching it go around and around.

Katie was completely indifferent to sitting with Santa. Really I think she would have comfortably sat there holding her candy cane all morning.

Sunday evening was Abigail and Carly’s piano recital. The girls were really excited that Grandpa Fletcher came; an hour and a half of children playing the piano isn’t really his sort of thing. We were able to catch my Mom in Hong Kong on Skype that afternoon and we promised we’d post videos of their performance since she can’t be here to hear them play herself.

Each of the girls played a duet with their teacher as well as a solo arrangement. I was so nervous that my hands were shaking while I tried to videotape Abigail’s performance. She had the most difficult piece of all the students and did an amazing job. It’s hard to believe she’s only started taking lessons last year.

Carly was the only student that had her song memorized – her teacher told her not to even take her piano music with her. I was so proud of my girls.

Today is the last day of school for the girls and we are looking forward to spending more time together as a family during the next two weeks.