8 posts tagged “christmas”

On Tuesday we made our annual trek into San Francisco for a holiday tea. This year we went to the Teddy Bear Tea at the Ritz-Carleton.

We had some time to kill before the tea, so we walked to Union Square and looked at the holiday windows. Unfortunately most stores don't do the amazing windows that I remember from my childhood anymore. Macy's did have some kittens and puppies, though, and that kept us occupied for quite a while.

The tea itself was great fun. Anya was most enthralled by the bowl full of marshmallows on the table for the hot chocolate. There was a near meltdown when I dared to suggested that she might want to eat some of her more nutritious food before consuming the whole bowl. As it turns out her tea food didn't have much more nutritional value than the bowl full of sugar and gelatin, and she turned up her nose at anything that wasn't completely processed and gummy.

The highlight of the tea was meeting the giant teddy bear and getting a hug. The Binky the gay (of course) elf was fairly entertaining, too. It turns out that the theme this year was "London Calling" so his show was an odd mixture of Christmas carols and 80's pop. It's somewhat disconcerting to hearing Jingle Bells morph into Karma Chameleon. Not really what I expected from the Ritz, but fun none-the-less!

Here's a video that one of my friends made of our daughters making Christmas cookies for the first time. We ended up with some very red, but delicious cookies!

Yesterday my mom and I renewed a family tradition and went into the city for high tea (although it seems I should be calling it afternoon tea instead. Daft Americans always misinterpreting things and messing up proper etiquette!). It was Anya's first experience with high tea afternoon tea and she did quite well, at least after they finally got us seated that is.

We got dressed up in our holiday finery 

and took the ferry into the city. Once there we took a leisurely stroll down to the Palace Hotel where we had made reservations to have tea with Santa. While they were getting our table ready I took Anya to say hi to Santa. She did much better this time than she did a few weeks ago. She still wouldn't sit alone on his lap, but we got a cute picture with me crouching next to Santa, too. The best part was that Santa gave her a fairly large box of handmade cookies, which she dug into right away since it was way past lunch time and she was starving! As soon as we were seated the waiters brought over a crown and a large lollipop for her. They were also smart and brought her own small tray of finger sandwiches and treats first. She immediately started sampling the goods and seemed to find most of it quite yummy, although the egg salad sandwich did come right back out after a few tentative chews. It was a very tiring, but fun day. It's a great tradition and one that we are looking forward to maintaining for many years to come!

A red and white flowered jumper, hat and blanket.

A Waterford stocking holder.

A cute polar bear onesie!

When I was in elementary school my family traveled to Scandanavia for vacation. In one of the countries we visited, I forget which one now, my mom bought an advent calendar that has 24 little pockets for each day. When I was young she would fill each pocket with some candy, stickers or some other small treat and every day I would look forward to getting the next surprise. As I got older the tradition evolved so that each pocket contained a sticker that I would then match up against a sticker on a wrapped present. This tradition has continued every year since we first got the calendar. My mom claims that I told her I wanted to keep receiving the "advent angel" gifts until I had my own baby and then it would be passed on to him or her. I don't ever recall saying this, but who am I to turn down a present a day for 24 days

So now that Bubble Toes is going to be experiencing her first December it's time for her to start getting the advent angel gifts herself. Because she's so young the presents are really more like baby related gifts for me! When she is older the plan is to revert back to the candy, stickers, etc until she is in high school or older. So I'm going to try to remember to take a picture of each day's gift and post it here as a sort of "Days of Christmas" theme.

This weekend Bubble Toes had lots of firsts. On Friday we took her to the big playground in Benicia so that she could try out the swings for the first time. She seemed to enjoy them, but I think was kind of grossed out by how dirty they

were, or maybe that was just me. She also went down her first slide, with the help of Dad. After playing in the park we all took a walk and I snapped lots of pictures of Bubble Toes in her naughty/nice onesie and CMC hat. Chris thinks that we should use a sharpie to cross out the "naughty" on the onesie since Bubble Toes is always nice.

On Saturday we tried to get to The Village early to get a picture of Bubble Toes with Santa before it got too crowded. So after her morning nap we quickly put her into one of her Christmas dresses and wrapped her in a big bib and hoodie in case of any gacking. The line was pretty short when we got there, but the camera was broken so they were letting people take their own pictures. Ours' turned out pretty well, although I'm sure the professional one would have been a little better. Everyone was very impressed with how happy and smiley Bubble Toes was. Even though the picture wasn't professionally done I think that it will do for this year. Although I do plan on taking some more at home when we get our tree.
We have yet to have any professional photos taken of Bubble Toes. I had heard that the 8-10 month range is best for portraits. Any thoughts? Also if you have done professional photos, where did you go and how was your experience?