Pre-Christmas Fun 2022

December is always a busy month for us, and this one was no different. It started off with a trip to Chicago for Sam for the Annual Retina Fellow's Forum. It was a great, fun meeting for him, including many great interactions with peers and faculty from around the country. They even had a bowling competition! He didn't get many photos, but here are a few from his time there:

Christmas in Chicago! Magical!

Got to have Chicago-style pizza! Almost didn't get this photo, as you can tell by the state of the slice

Lots of great food for every meal - very fancy

There was even a huge buffet at the bowling alley with everything from sushi and steak to pasta and tacos.

We had a scavenger hunt at the park for cub scouts. Here's our little Tiger Scout:

I just love getting pictures of Eden at school from her teachers. Here are some activities she did in December:

 

Making patterns and learning to lace.

Math time.

Tracing with glue and glitter.

 

 

A visit from a police officer!

In a police car! Luckily not in the back.

Eden also was super excited when she found out she was taking Kobe Bear home from school. We included him in all the activities for the weekend so we could write in his book about what we did. Here she is with Kobe:

 

Taking Kobe to dance:

The Ward Christmas party also happened to be this weekend. We performed, but the kids did as well. Here they are singing for everyone. Notice Kobe Bear there with Eden.

Everyone got to sit on Santa's Lap. These pictures always crack me up!

Joseph brought his stuffed snake!

Elijah in his Elijah gear.

There with Kobe and her bunny.

The best picture I have with them all 🤷

They had these really yummy donuts and had so many left over
we got to take a box home. They went quick!

Yummmm.

We really wanted to go to the Visitor's Center to see the many decorated Christmas trees. We went on Sunday before we had to give Kobe Bear up the next day. Here are the photos we took:

 

 

Eden got to have a pajama party at school and eat a delicious breakfast. Here are the photos her teachers sent on that day:

 

Our family was invited to the UCLA ophthalmology Christmas party. This one was fantastic! It was wonderfully catered, had live music, and beautiful decorations. It felt like a fancy wedding reception to be honest! We dressed up a little nicer for this one.

We didn't have very many pictures to document this, but we had Dillon stay with us for a month. He stayed in our finished garage so he could do a rotation at UCLA for podiatry. It was so fun to have him! The kids loved him, especially our little Noah man. Dillon was so good with him! He babysat for us when we went to a Christmas dinner with the retina division of UCLA. We talked about comics, snakes, and other fun topics that we typically don't get to talk about but were fun. He took a surfing lesson and it turns out he's pretty good at that (the instructor told him that he was performing at a level that usually takes 5 surfing lessons to get to, go Dillon!) He worked a lot but it was still cool to have him around. He wasn't sure if he would get to go home before Christmas so the kids and I made him a Christmas stocking just in case. Luckily for him he got to go home in time! Thanks for the good times!

Little man loves to seek him out.

Lastly, we celebrated Eli's birthday a day early because we did a fun weekend trip on his birthday and I still wanted to make him a cake. I kind of ran out of frosting but here is the Mario star he requested!

 

Really happy camper for his 7th birthday!

He got Lego Peach! He opened his other present on his actual birthday.

Next post will be about the rest of Eli's birthday, our holiday weekend in San Diego and Christmas day. Stay tuned!