2010 Holiday Letter

Julianne with the girls

 As we take a moment to reflect on 2010 we can't help but feel extraordinarily blessed.

After 14 years of talking about adding on to our home, we are weeks (ok months) away from being complete.  We are fully aware that as the girls look back upon their lives, they will think of this time as a big adventure, one that helped put some color in their charmed lives.

Two letters for Santa this year

As you might have guessed, the fact that space is tight in the rental really doesn't register with the girls.  The biggest thing they are looking forward to with the move back is not getting their own rooms or having closets that are not bursting, but rather being back on the block with all their friends kids and Dan and Jani next door.

Of course, when we move back they also get the bonus of Joe and Shannon on the other side as well, (as I'm sure Joe and Shannon are looking forward to something other than a construction war-zone next door too).

Holiday lights at the rental

On the school and work front, things are mostly as expected.

Bob has been working with Zoomsystems for over a year now, sometimes as a contractor and sometimes as an employee (confusing for me too).   Lately, he has been helping to setup the European operations with somewhat regular trips to Germany and Italy (hmm... too bad vacation budget has been eaten up by house stuff).

Meg is still plugging away at ORCL and both the girls are now in grade school with Jacqueline starting Kindergarten and Ashton in second grade.

Everything else about our lives is still extremely fortunate, with a year of good health and reasonably care-free living.   Our rental house is a close 6 blocks from our construction project so there are weekly progress visits that are a delight for Bob and Meg and a bore for Ashton and Jacqueline. 

I guess the rest is pretty well detailed in the blog, so do take a look for more year in review.  We wish you all the best this holiday season (which I do realize is past...) and that 2011 is as exciting a year for you as we know it will be for us.

All the best,

Bob, Meg, Ashton and Jacqueline Bear

+ Julianne

Breakfast with Santa

Our gym does a breakfast with Santa that is very nice. We didn't manage to do this last year so I wanted to make sure we got our photos this year.

For those of you who have been following along at home, you will recognize the dress on Jacqueline from two years ago. The doll had to come along as well, there really was not choice given that she had made the effort to dress up for the occasion.

We even managed to get a couple photos of the four of us together. This is a rare occurrence for us.
and finally one more photo of the doll. This is for grandma.

On Fairies and Jammies

We are all about Fairytopia these days. Our life is a series of fairy experiences we even fall asleep drawing fairies.
You might not have realized that even normal jammies can become fairy-ready just by adding wings. Older sisters, on the other hand, are much too cool for wings and fairies. They are just about the dancing.

A trip to the Nutcracker

 Every year Dan takes the girls to the nutcracker but this year the arrival of Baby Eli had him out of town so mom got to attend instead.

As you might have guessed I'm a bit less extravagant than Dan on the venue and I was thrilled to find out that there was a shorter/cheaper show at the Zeum so I immediately got tickets.

Ashton with the cast

 

Front row seats!

Since the show was smaller we were able to meet the cast after the show which was nice for the girls.  We also managed to get a nice family photo (seems the best photos are taken without a lot of thought on our part -- when we try to pose for a photo we tend to have a disaster with one or more of us looking the other way).

All in all it was a great show, and I managed to get a few photos for the holiday card but the girls did mention the differences with the "real" show and I'm sure they are looking forward to next year having Dan back in charge!

Jacqueline showing some attitude

Thanksgiving 2010

Jacqueline made us this Thanksgiving card. She asked me what the card should be and I told her "our house". I mention that as you might have trouble being sure that is what you see. What is cool is that she wrote Ashton, Bob and Mom without asking us how to write them and I've never seen her write anything before other than her name (which this is not her best work with the "ne" bleeding onto a different line)


This year we had all our stuff packed away. I had honestly intended to skip Thanksgiving and go to Hawaii instead but alas we ended up not being able to swing that. So I broke down and decided to cook instead. The Turkey was gorgeous and the dinner was lovely. Suzie and Dad joined and it was a wonderful and relaxing time.

We also went to a birthday party for a friend of Jacqueline that had parrots.

Gymnastics

Both girls had to do try-outs to join a new Gymnastics class. They are both beginners but are in different classes due to age. We have done different classes in the past but never really took to it. This time they both seem pretty enthusiastic about the opportunity.

We'll see how it goes. For now, it's a reliable thing to do on a rainy Thursday afternoon so that's good. My goal is for them each to learn a cartwheel. I've never been able to do one myself and I've always wished I had learned.

Halloween 2010

This year mom found herself on a plane returning home the day of the Halloween parade. I missed the parties but managed to get to the parade and snap a few photos. Bob got to the assembly but due to over-crowding we didn't really get any photos that were recognizable as our children.
Ashton was a very colorful witch. A seasoned expert at the parade I didn't really get to see much of her. The parade was almost foiled by rain and the construction of the new school building has shortened the playground so the route wove through the classrooms instead.
The glasses are completely decorative. The girls were so anxious for glasses that we bought some readers at Target and popped out the lenses for them to play with. They were a good addition to the cheerleader getup.
For the actual Halloween you will notice we had one family member do a super costume change. In fact, she had done three different ones but one fell apart completely. First she changed her mind to be a witch like her sister.

Then supergirl.

Then she put on a poodle skirt to match me

and last, back to supergirl which managed to stay through the trick-or-treat event.



There was a block party on our rental neighborhood with lots of cute kids dressed up and playing in the street. What a great time. While we missed having Grandpa Bob join us in the rental, Bob and the girls did trick-or-treating in both neighborhoods so a lot of candy was procured.

Traffic at the rental was much lighter than I'm used to so manning the door was not as fun as I had hoped. We are all looking forward to returning to our house for next Halloween.