A New Cousin!

The boys were so excited to meet a new, to them, cousin. Since he's 9, I don't think he can be really classfied as "new". TT's aunt & uncle came on a visit from China and brought with them their grandson. He and the boys quickly (in the span of a car ride) became fast friends. They took a day off and went to Santa Cruz together. They had so much fun! A bit like the three stoodges...








Their cousin lives part time in New York and part time in Beijing, Hopefully we can visit him again sometime!

Now that it's 2012, Christmas 2011

Have to ring in the New Year with the requisite Christmas catch up. Christmas was good. LT proclaimed it "the best Christmas ever" and I'm pretty sure that kids' opinions are the most important, so, I guess, indeed it was. We took more video, so we only have actual pictures of 2 presents being opened, both very successful!



They really loved all their gifts this year from everyone.*

Then we drove down to San Diego for some Christmas with the family. Many rounds of Wits & Wagers were played. Good food, silly kids, Sea World, all the usual... Here is the family picture round up.




The trip back was very long with a lot of traffic. We wanted to make a detour to the Griffith Observatory, but so did everyone else, so we were detoured and just had a hillside stop instead. Still nice. Then more driving and more traffic. We left San Diego at 10 and got home about 10-11.




*We did end up making one change post Christmas. LT's big gift was a Lego Harry Potter castle. When we got back from San Diego, he hadn't opened it and wasn't that interested in opening it, it seemed, despite really wanting it for several months. We talked about it and he decided to return it for something smaller and more manageable. He picked two small lego sets and a DS game instead (total for 1/2 the cost of the big lego set) and was quite pleased. He got a smaller one from Grandma and it turned out that satisfied his Harry Potter Lego needs.