Christmas Day 2017

      Christmas is one of my favorite holidays: since no one in our family celebrates, it is the most no-obligation holiday out there for us. The majority of the people around us celebrate Christmas, so it's like a total day off for us. Almost nothing is open, so there's nothing we "have" to do. This year, we took the bus to Mountain View Cemetery and wandered around for a bit. (although the bus drivers probably have mixed feelings about it, I was grateful that the busses were still running).

Molly & Indy-the-cat

Uncle Nouri Visiting

Gymnastics Clara

Last spring Clara joined one of the local gymnastics teams. Her first competition is in January. And here are the team photos that they took a few weeks ago (note that these were taken during a week of extremely unusually dry weather - hence the chapped areas around her lips).

candles and dreidlel

And, we had a lovely time doing the candles and playing dreidel with Nana and Pa (and their funny dogs Roger and Rex).

Latkes

We had a lovely weekend down in Carmel Valley - one of the highlights was celebrating Hanukkah, particularly the eating latkes part. Susie and Zach did the honors - and, as usual, they did a fantastic job!

Molly & Clara at Home

I got a new portrait lens for my camera and had the kids model for me. 

Around Town

Busing around town last week - Molly being cool, listening to audio books; Clara being cool, just being.

Middle Harbor Park

One more day until Zach and Molly return! For this morning's adventure, Clara and I took her friend Magnolia to Middle Harbor Park. I had planned to walk the whole park (it's a bit over a mile long), but they spent most of the time at the playground and so we mostly stayed there. Still fun - I made them listen to me go on and on about the shipping containers and all the stuff in them. They mostly reiterated that they would never want to be a crane operator.