It's the Most Wonderful Time of the Year

What a wonderful Christmas. When I think of Christmas I think of lots of family, and so for that reason we have never just done Christmas just us 4. We usually travel away from home.  This year Ryan's brother decided to come out and celebrate Christmas with us. His oldest son Chris had a basketball tournament a couple days before Christmas, so it worked out well. My girls love to be with their cousins. We spent the weekend before with them in Newport area at their hotel and enjoyed the basketball game and swimming. Christmas Eve we spent playing a little pickle ball in the morning.  That evening Grandma Cathy prepared a yummy prime rib dinner, followed by our Christmas Eve program of:   the Nativity reading and songs, gifts to Jesus, and then Christmas trivia and Charades.

Ryan's family tradition is that everyone takes a turn youngest to oldest taking a santa bag and putting all the gifts they are giving inside. Then they bring it out to the family room and put then under the tree.

A tradition we started with our kids is that Buddy the Elf (aka Elf on a Shelf) gives the kids a present on Christmas Eve in the special Santa Bags.  It is usually something silly like funny hats or silly socks. This year they got beach towels, but when they unraveled the towell a snake came out of it. But snakes don't scare my girls, they loved them. As they get older, they will get a gag gift.

CHRISTMAS MORNING:

Ryan's family always eats breakfast before seeing what Santa brought them.  Everyone woke up by 7:45, so we sat down for breakfast a little before 8am and made our entrance into the CHRISTMAS room by 8:15. With 13 people taking turns opening presents one at a time, we opened presents until 11am.

 Rachel, Brandon, Jayden, Jessica, Kennedee, Tayvlee (not shown-Chris)



Kennedee got everything she asked for:  A Monster High Bike and Monster High dolls. Not to mention a new wetsuit for surfing, luggage backpack, movies, games, bike helmet, Merida bow and arrow, remote control car, clothes, make-your-own-blanket, and lots of other stocking stuffers.

Tayvlee got a swing car, luggage backpack, lite-brite, movies, games, figit, modeling clay, twin baby dolls, clothes, and ariel doll with matching dress along with her stocking stuffers.

We played some more pickle ball that afternoon and had another yummy dinner and movie night.
What better way to celebrate...............THE 26TH OF DECEMBER than at the beach. Yep, 80 degrees warm and beautiful conditions to go paddle boarding. The perks of living close to the beach in Cali.

Book Review: One Thousand White Women

One Thousand White Women: The Journals of May Dodd

By Jim Fergus

The premise of the story is that the Northern Cheyenne Indians are shrinking in numbers and seek a way to assimilate into white society. They decide to marry white women and have half-blood children, enabling the two cultures to blend naturally. The Cheyenne Chief Little Wolf approaches President Ulysses Grant with the proposal to trade 1000 white women for 1000 horses, an offer publicly refused by the government.

However, the government sees the placating of the Indians as being to their benefit, so they begin the "Brides for Indians" program in which women who are physically healthy and of child rearing age may volunteer to go. However, in order to keep the plan unpublished, they offer the trip to women in prison, asylums, and other restrictive situations.

In Chicago, May Dodd was born into a wealthy family but she fell in love with a man who was "beneath" her, and bore his two children out of wedlock, so her family had her institutionalized in a mental asylum and had her children taken away. The "Brides for Indians" program sounded like a way out of the asylum, so she joined and started a life of adventure.

 The novel is written as a series of journals chronicling the fictitious adventures.  I wish I had read the book more intently, I seemed to be always multi-tasking with lots of noise in the background while reading it.  I think I would have loved it more if I had lost myself in it.  Note to self, read in quiet and peace. That said, it is a good book and maybe I will re-read it in the future  :) 

Silver Bells and Silver Medals

Silver bells, Silver bells, it's Christmas time in the city.

Silver Medals, Silver Medals, it's winning time in the family.

It was a silver weekend. My dad and Lucinda played in the Utah Championships. My dad scored a silver in the men's singles and Lucinda a silver in the women's doubles. So it was pretty cool to add to more silvers to the family with Ryan's silver in Men's Singles and mine in Women's Singles.

Ryan lost his first match to the gold medalist. But he worked his way (really well) up the loser's bracket  and into the gold medal match against the same guy AGAIN. He won both games in a row......pushing them to one more game to 15 points. And he couldn't quite pull it off and ended up with a silver. Go Ryan, he plays so well.



There were less people in singles than in doubles, but some really nice ladies. I lost the gold medal to the sweet lady in the middle. She won 11-8, 11-8. I played very conservative since I hadn't done singles before, so next time I think I will hit the net more and be more aggressive. But I would especially love to medal in mixed doubles. SOOO competitive.

Kennedee isn't the only one getting medals

 Ryan and I were introduced to PICKLEBALL last September by my dad.....who btw is incredible, playing at a 4.5 level. Within a few days of playing we were hooked. We introduced it to Ryan's parents and several friends and everyone that played went out and bought paddles.
Initially we just played a few times a month, then as it got cold in the winter, we took a break. In March this year we tried to get out at least 3 times a month and started playing more consistently with the Wrights. (Jena and Jason). By summer we started to play in pick up games on weekends.
In previous posts I shared our experience of playing with my dad and his wife, Lucinda in the Generation Gap Tournament. We had to play up to my dad's skill level and got clobbered. So we decided to enter a tourney at our own skill level and practice for it.

We did it last weekend with the Wrights in Oceanside Melba Bishop.  Jena and I played in the Women's Doubles. We had some wins, we had some losses, and overall had a great time playing together (first time, we never play on the same team).

The boys did better than we did, and they have had lots of time to practice together as a team.  They went undefeated winning all 6 games in a row against 3 teams. They then had to wait over 3 hours for the loser's bracket to catch up so they could play the gold medal match. It was so intense to watch them.  They lost the first game (I think because they were so cold). But they came back and easily won the second game. So it went to the third game. They played well and then choked near the end, losing the game 14-16.  So because that was their first loss, they had to play one more game to 15 points for the gold medal and they just couldn't hang with the pressure I guess. So it was a silver medal for Ryan and Jason. Still so proud of the boys. The gold medalists are also from simi valley area.  The bronze team left hours before........it was a long night.

The next day we played in the mixed doubles. It was my favorite day because I think I played my best EVER in my life. Ryan and I had some amazing wins. But in the end we didn't quite pull off a medal. I think we had a good shot of getting at least a bronze, but we fell short in our last match. Oh well, we gave them a good fun and they were actually ranked at a higher skill level and played down. BUT SO MUCH FUN!!!!! I was on a high for days. Jena and Jason also played in mixed doubles together, and luckily we never ended up having to play each other.