It was a great Christmas this year. Estelle and I drove down two days before Christmas and soon enough the Harward Clan began to arrive. We soon got into the Christmas spirit with Elsa singing for us all her Christmas songs that she had learned at school.
Elsa and Aries soon carried on a Harward family tradition. The old olives on the hands!
It was great to be home again! I had not been back to California for a year, since Estelle got home from her mission. I was so grateful to be back and surrounded by family.
It was really good to see Brenna and her family as I had not seen them since last Christmas as well, whereas I was able to visit most of the rest of my family a few times in the intervening year.
We had a bunch of monkeys soon occupying the trees in the backyard!
It was great to see both my brothers. It was fun to have Apache, and later Rosco, come as well. Having dogs around is still a novelty as we grew up without any real pets. Apache was always anxious when people were coming and leaving. It was really funny that once Rosco showed up that he asserted his dominance over Apache, the larger dog!
Matt was recovering from his knee replacement surgery. It was one heck of an operation as is plain from this picture!
It was great to see Matt and hear about his job and work on new paintings of temples.
I got put on potato patrol for Christmas dinner.
One of the best parts of the trip was gathering around the piano and singing all the Christmas songs from the hymn book. Brenna is still our piano officinato!
Another Harward family tradition was also carried out while I was there: pile up on Uncle Grant! Aries was intent on sitting on my head and was soon joined by most of the other nieces and nephews. I always get pretty banged up, but the kids love it!
Matt's kids are a great lot! It was great to see them playing with all the other nieces and nephews. It was fun to see how quickly all the nieces and nephews who don't see each other that often got do to playing and being friends so quickly.
My 'little' nephews are starting to grow up into young men. It is so crazy how time flies and people grow!
We had a couple real foggy nights out in the field at the end of the cul-de-sac which was great. The kids loved going out, playing in the fog, and taking cool pictures. I took them out 3 or 4 times over a couple days.
It was still so much warmer than in Utah, but for the kids they bundled up and tried to summon fog spirits!
Deanne's kids arrived and brought with them their amazingly engrossing ipad with all its games. I was introduced to the game 'Plants versus Zombies' a strange game, but one that little Calvin was already a pro at and one to amaze his cousins.
I love little Parker! That kid reminds me so much of me when I was little, except much more mischievous.
I got Estelle, Kassie, Robert, Alanna, and Kellen to go to the movies after Christmas to see 'Warhorse'. It was a great movie, but a real heartwrencher, Robert told me he wanted to punch me for having us go see such a sad movie the day after Christmas! :)
Outside Mom's window a hummingbird had built a nest and was raising two little baby hummingbirds. It was a beautiful thing to see, especially in the middle of winter.
We all went to the beach and had a great time in the great weather of Southern California.
Parker has the sharpest nails I have even felt! His little hands feel like claws and he quickly made a game out of scraping up my legs! It was hilarious, yet often painful.
It was fun to see crazy Matt. He was in good spirits for the holiday, even with the pain from his surgery.
It was great to have most of the siblings all together, along with our families, I had such a great time and a great Christmas!
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