She's crushing it!

Alison was invited into the honors society at Mira Costa!  She's held a 4.0 the whole year and I'm so proud of all her hard work!

 

San Juan Capistrano

Alison has been wanting to explore San Juan Capistrano for years and we finally made it happen!  It's a cute little town and we had a fun afternoon venturing around.

 

Making Sushi

Super Bowl Sunday, we made a feast of sushi and other appetizers.  This was our first attempt to making sushi and there is definitely a learning curve.  Hopefully our second attempt is a little less frustrating.

 

The reality of life

The reality is, I have more pictures of Maya on my phone than anything else.

With our regular routine back in full swing, I've squeezed in a few runs down by the water.  Because the reality is, while the rest of the country is freezing, it's still sunny and warm here.

Here's a peak of Colin's football game, right after he made a touch down!

Hot Air Balloon Ride

For my Christmas present, I told Ben I wanted to do something fun.  So, he got us a hot air balloon ride! 

It was an early morning, but also pretty cool that we could just drive up to Temecula to ride one.  The weather was being difficult and we ended up driving around for almost an hour looking for just the right launch spot.  At one of the 'check the wind' spots, we got in a conversation with the pilot.  Long story short, he asks us what part of Lawrence we're from and I ask him how in the world he knows Lawrence Kansas and he pulls up his hoodie to reveal a Sunflower Bike Shop t-shirt!  Come to find out, he grew up in Lawrence in the 70's and learned to drive hot air balloons in Kansas City!  

We watched the sunrise and the crew set up the balloon in the wine country of Temecula.

The first few moments of going up were slightly scary, but I had to just not think about the fact that some whicker was holding me up in the air.  Also, I really could have used a taller basket...but no one fell out :)

There was another balloon up with us that morning.

Our pilot talked our ear off the whole time about the mountains we could see, all the different wineries and their owners and then would throw in flashbacks to his life in Kansas.  The other two girls in our basket didn't say a word the whole time.

They gave us mimosas at the end, which was fun in theory but I really needed coffee at 8:30am, not champagne.

We certainly had an adventure we will not forget!  We went to get breakfast afterwards and then ran the Santa Margarita trail.

 

Christmas!

We don't quite fit on our bed anymore ;)

{the Lego set in Eli's stocking almost got thrown away with the recycling before Christmas...thanks to Colin, it was rescued}

Egg casserole and coffee

There were a few bigger presents, thanks to Ben's homecoming and his love for gift giving.  Eli got a new desk chair.

And Colin a new electric guitar

The one he's always dreamed of

All the presents were wonderful, but the best gift was being together.

The rest of the day was spent playing and eating

It's not Christmas if there isn't a Lego set to build.

Ben made the fluffiest zweibach we have ever had.

The two guitar players have a little jam sesh:

Alison basically finished the puzzle herself and jumped into games here and there.  I lost track of how many games we played, but it was a lot and we had lot of fun.

It was a absolutely fantastic Christmas!