This year’s Christmas spectacular at Filoli was themed around owls and woodland creatures. Our favorites! Here are some pics from the magical event.

We went to the San Francisco Nutcracker this year, and had a wonderful time!

This was our little one’s first time at the SF Ballet, she saw the San Jose version of the Nutcracker last year, after her first ballet last summer.

Here are some pics from our adventure.

After the performance, madame felt like dancing…as did other kids we saw twirling out of the Opera House.

We weren’t allowed to take pics during the performance of course, but you can watch it online or on dvd.

…and baked gingerbread.

At the Dickens Fair she tried every craft they had, including candle-dipping and fairy house making. She also enjoyed the games like ‘boot the cat.’

This year at Filoli’s Holiday open house the decorating theme was owls…one of her favorite animals. (She calls all owls “Bill” after the one in “Owl Babies.”)

And December has just begun!

Mom: “That’s ok. I know you didn’t do that intentionally.”
Lucy: “Oh, but I did do it tentionally!”
— a conversation between mother and daughter

2011.03 Grass Valley/Soda Springs from Mike C on Vimeo.

Here’s a video to go along with Jill’s previous post about our visit with Tom and Karen and our trip to Soda Springs.

Mommy, I wanna see the volcano interrupting!

-while watching Kilauea’s latest eruption

We just got back from a snowy weekend. Lucy enjoyed playing in Gma & Gpa’s yard, where there was still a bit of snow left over from last week’s storm.

Before:                                         After:

Here are some snow cats we made in the big pile of snow in the driveway:

We went up to Soda Springs for some snow play at Planet Kids. Lucy had a blast.

She rode on the tube ride, climbed the snowy volcano, and coasted down the hill. We checked out Boreal, which will be great next year for some ski lessons!

We celebrated Grandma K’s birthday with a cake made by Lucy, and played trains with Grandpa.

Grandpa gave Lucy a treasure chest, and let her pick out some shells to put in it!

Lucy and I cruised around the neighborhood looking at Christmas lights the other night…we saw snow globes and carousels, reindeer and santas, lots of snowflakes and stars. We oohed and aahed at them all. Lucy’s fave was the carousel…we had to go back twice.

Grandma and Grandpa came down for a visit to attend Filoli’s Christmas extravaganza with us. We had a wonderful time!

The house and grounds had lovely displays…

in the cafe with Grandma…

Lucy loved the toy room…

and so did Grandpa!

There were magical things to see around every corner…

and we topped it all off with a rollicking game of jump in the leaves with grandma!

was that a reindeer?!

We spent a great weekend w/ Gpa Tom & Gma Karen. Jill will make a post w/ more details and pics later this week. I just wanted to make a quick post showing Lucy’s first encounter with snow.

Her first rather astute observation regarding crystalline water ice? “Cold!”

Here’s some video we took during our time in Oahu earlier this month. The beach shots are from the coast of Lanikai in Kailua. For more info, check out this post.

• Music: “Jessica” from Brothers and Sisters by The Allman Brothers Band