Sea World

Chistian's dad got our family tickets to Sea World this Christmas. We decided that we would go on Monday after Christmas between rain storms while the kids were still on break. Big mistake. The place was packed. Or it's been years since we went last, maybe it is always that packed now? They have also replaced a lot of the nice exhibits. My favorite was always the Manatee Rescue exhibit but they moved that to Florida earlier this year. Now they seem to be replacing real exhibits with a bunch of carnival rides.

Sure the kids think they are fun, but that's not what we are going to Sea World for. We can catch those at Castle Park...for a lot cheaper, I might add.

We were only able to catch the Shamu show. The trainers don't even get into the tank with the orcas anymore. The dolphin show got filled up the three times we attempted to go see it. Hopefully we can figure out when a better time would be to go again to catch the things that we missed before our tickets expire...we'll see.

The crowds started to disperse when most of the shows stopped and it started getting colder. Christian and Emily decided to jump on the Shipwreck Rapids towards the end. Caitlyn wanted nothing to do with it, so I stayed out with her. They got soaked. And boy were they cold afterwards! That is a fun ride but I don't know if I will be able to get Caitlyn on it even in warmer weather.

Needless to say, we were exhausted by the time we got home.

More on Christmas Day

In the afternoon, we headed out to my sister's house to spend time with my family for Christmas. My sister's in-laws were planning to join us for dinner, so we went early to exchange presents before they all got there.

Yup, a ton more presents for the kids. The girls were so excited to get pillow pets from my sister. They just love those things for some reason. My mom crocheted all the girls a little shrug. She's been taking classes. They are a lot fancier than the one I attempted for Emily last Christmas.

We had another huge feast after the rest of her guests arrived. And the girls love playing with their cousins. But most of the night was spent on their WII. Christian and I have not yet given in to getting them any kind of gaming system. So, they never turn down an opportunity when they are given the chance.

Luckily, the girls caught a quick nap in the car on the way over. It was quite late by the time we headed home for the night. But that didn't stop Emily from having a sore throat and feeling generally sick by that time. Of course, she was fine up until we told her that it was time to go home.

Here is the kids annual Christmas picture.

Christmas Eve

We did our usual Christmas Eve get together with our friend Marian. The girls were so excited for their Auntie Marian to spend the night with us. She arrived in the late afternoon with a gigantic rib roast for dinner. It ended up to be big enough for three dinners! We had to take a long walk afterwards!

After the kids got off to bed, we put out and wrapped a couple of last minute odds and ends. Of course, we stayed up way too late hanging out and talking.

Christian still got up in the morning with Emily to go for a little jog. Apparently, Marian has talked us into extending our weight-loss bet a bit. Unfortunately, it was not enough to get either Marian or I up and out to go jogging with them after staying up so late. I still really need to make sure that I get enough rest. I am deathly afraid of getting sick again.

The kids were so patient Christmas morning, waiting to open more presents. Guess what Santa brought them?

But with all the presents that Christian's mom sent them plus all the presents that their Auntie Marian brought, they did not miss opening ours (although we had a token gift left for them) since they had already opened ours early this year.

And for breakfast, we had our traditional belgian waffles! After cleaning up a little of the mayhem, I had to start making food for Christmas dinner with my family and Marian had to head back to take care of her dogs and to get ready for her own Christmas dinner plans.

Caldwell Christmas

On Saturday, we headed down to San Diego to celebrate Christmas with Christian's side of the family. The girls have been excited and waiting for it all week.

Their cousin Michaela is just a couple of months older than Emily and the three of them seem to get along really well. The girls love getting together so that they can play.

Plus, they got to open more presents. How can it get better than that?

The only problem was that their cousins just got over the flu. When we got home, Emily threw up...twice. Oh joy for us. Like we really need another bug floating around the house.

Christmas comes early for the Caldwell Girls

The girls started opening Christmas gifts just after Thanksgiving this year. We put up the Christmas tree the Saturday after Thanksgiving so that we can take their yearly Christmas picture and so that I can get to work on our Christmas cards. I even considered taking a family picture this year (instead of just the girls) but since I had a cold and looked like Rudolf, I scratched that plan pretty quick.

Anyway, after we put up the tree, we let the girls open up one of their gifts. It was, of course, their new Christmas dresses (for their, eh hem, Christmas pictures).

Neither Christian, nor I had too much patience for a long picture taking session as we were stressed out about our car and sick. There is always something but I am never entirely happy with the Christmas picture we end up with. It gets worse when you fix it the way you want it and they "color correct" your picture for you and screw it up again. So it is a bit redder than it is supposed to be. Shutterfly used to let you turn that option off but I don't think they give us that option anymore or have cleverly hidden it so that I have not been able to find it. I may have to switch to Kodak instead next year.

The week after, they were to get the second part of their Christmas present, which is a cute little DVD about the Nutcracker. They show scenes from the ballet while narrating the story. In between acts, they describe and show the girls little ballet moves. Caitlyn got the Swan Lake one last year or so and the girls loved it.

So week three, they got present number three, which was tickets for the Nutcracker presented by the Riverside Ballet Co. at the new Fox Theatre.

Unfortunately, I didn't really get any pictures. But the girls got to wear their new Christmas dresses and were able to follow along with the story because they knew what was going on from the video.

It worked out pretty well. We had second row seats and the girls were really excited. Christian and I were a bit put out though because it was really difficult to find parking since it was so crowded plus the city closed the only free lot in the area to put up some kind of hotel?

Plus, the orchestra was not that good. They sounded like a bunch of RCC students instead of a real symphony orchestra. But the girls didn't notice and had a great time.

I had also found out a week ago that we could have gotten tickets to the Friday night show for FREE! I was less than pleased as we spent a bit more for their presents this year than I would normally have liked to but we really wanted them to experience going to the ballet...and seriously, they needed another toy like they need another hole in the head...that is in the opinion of this mother, and do not reflect the views and opinions of my daughters!

That evening, was our ward Christmas dinner and the girls were in the little Primary program.

They also got to see Santa who came by at the end to visit all the kids.

Emily didn't know what to ask Santa for but Caitlyn definitely wanted a Nutcracker!

Honor Roll

Both girls made the Honor Roll this first trimester. The scheduling was a bit different and a little hard for me this time though because I'm still pretty tired all the time and I had to stay for quite a few hours to catch both ceremonies so I just helped out in Caitlyn's classroom in between instead of driving back and forth.

None of the pictures usually turn out that great but at least I captured the event and we are so proud of the hard work our girls put in every year.

Emily gets an added prize for meeting her AR goals. They have some special pirate themed assembly for them after lunch but I could not stay any longer to check it out. 

Thanksgiving Week

The girls had the whole week off plus the previous friday for parent teacher conferences so it's been a very busy month.

We visited with Emily's teacher a few weeks prior to this to try to get an idea about how they are differentiating her work since she is in the Gate program now. We had not noticed much difference at all and were a bit frustrated. They do a few little things with her but since her class has Gate kids and some of the kids that are really just struggling to keep up in 2nd grade, they just haven't given her much to challenge her. She has some reading groups with some of the kids that are more on her level but her math still seemed to be stuff she worked on in the 1st grade. So in the end, they decided to let her sit in with the 3rd graders during math time and she seems to be doing pretty good in there.

Caitltyn's teacher wasn't going to have time to meet with us either since she is doing fine in school as well but some slots opened up and she invited us to come in anyway. I've been very happy with Caitlyn's kindergarten teacher so far. I've always had to push Emily's teachers to try to challenge her. Emily is book smart but lazy by nature so I need to keep her on her toes to keep her out of trouble. Plus, we pay our tax dollars like everyone else and I don't see why I should send my kids to school so they can just sit there and fiddle their thumbs just because they are doing well. But with Caitlyn's teacher, I haven't said a word. Caitlyn generally stays out of trouble on her own and her biggest challenge has always been coming out of her shell. But her teacher knows that she is capable and has gone out of her way to give her more challenging homework, set her up with reading tutors and has even sent Caitlyn to sit in with the 1st graders during math time to see if she can handle it. I've been so impressed with her and am thankful that there are still a few caring teachers out there!

For Thanksgiving, we had dinner with my family at my mom's house. I made pumpkin pie from fresh pumpkins and a buttermilk sweet potato pie plus some garlic mashed potatoes to bring to the dinner. Everything turned out pretty good. Dinner went off without any family drama, so that is always a good thing. But when we finally packed up and headed home, the check engine light came on in my car and we got home on a whisper and a prayer. It was way to cold to be stranded out on the side of the road with a couple of tired kids.

Christian had planned to work on my car the next day anyway, but he needed to fix the transmission that we've been having problems with on and off for a year now. Our neighbor had planned to help him with the job as it was not going to be very easy. They figured out that the problem with the engine was due to one of the fuel injectors. They managed to pull off the transmission pans to change the transmission filter and fluid. Christian had flushed the transmission fluid twice already in the past two months trying to get ready to put on the new filter. We could not get a replacement gasket for one of the smaller pans so our neighbor helped us make one. So far everything is working great but it will take time to see if it really fixed the problem since it was always intermittent.

The next day, Christian also managed to flush the radiator which also needed to be done some time ago. Next will be my spark plugs. We have been far to busy to keep up with the maintenance on the vehicle but we simply can't put any of it off any further as problems keep coming up because of it. Luckily Christian has the knowledge and experience to be able to do it all himself but it is also nice to have a former mechanic as a neighbor!

After Christian worked his butt off fixing my car, we took some time to set up our Christmas tree so we can get working on this year's Christmas cards. It's the girls' favorite thing to do but I have to admit that it takes a heck of a lot of patience on our part to get it all done.

I've had a really bad cold since the kids came home from school...I know, what's new? I've been sick with one thing or another since July. I never did go to the doctor and thought I could do it on my own. I mean, after surviving pertussis and pneumonia, nothing else seemed that serious. But having my immune system assailed by one thing or another since that fateful July had seriously compromised it. And in the end, it was the common cold that kicked my butt. I couldn't hardly breath by Saturday night. It was a miserable night at that. I haven't had so much trouble since all this mess began and by Sunday morning I threw in the towel and made Christian pack up the kids and take me in to urgent care. Fun, huh? Three hours later, I find out that I have infections from my head to my lungs. I got two shots. An antibiotic and a steroid. Plus 3 more prescriptions for more stuff for the rest of the week.

I'm not feeling one hundred percent yet but I can breathe again, and that is always a good thing!