Not So Silent Night!

So it seems like the only way we go to concerts these days is if we get free tickets!  Stella's cousin Henry hooked us all up with free tickets to the first night of Not So Silent Night!  We were so excited when she told us and we scrambled to get the Herricks to babysit for us.  Stella and I got there early, and hung out in the parking lot a bit before going inside to hear the awesome music.  Tory got there shortly after.  One of the highlights was definitely Of Monsters and Men, and one of the headliners, The Shins, were also amazing.  Such a great time!

Just playin' around

We have lots of fun together just foolin' around the house now.  Skyla loves to "help" me get ready in the morning before we go out.  One of her favorite things is to choose the clothes she thinks I should wear (which is a nice way of saying she loves to take as many clothes off their hangers as she can before I stop her!) On this particular day she found the VIP passes we got from the Pearl Jam concert a couple of months ago and made a game of playing with it and trying to run away from me.  So silly!

We finally  made it over to the Richmond Rec Center with Natalie and Joaquin.  We met some other peeps there and it was a lot of fun!  They have a HUGE room with tons of toys, cars, and even a bounce house.  The kids had a great time playing with everything, although Skyla played it cool and acted like all of it was no big deal (clearly can't say the same for Joaquin, who was having the time of his life!)  After the play time they read a story and then we played with a parachute.  Good times!

Visiting Santa!

We went with the Bargas family to 24th street to take some pictures with the big man himself, Santa Claus!  Last year we took Skyla downtown to visit him at Macy's, so this was definitely more low-key.  I was a little nervous that she would freak out when we put her on his lap (as all kids do) but she behaved like a champ.  We even got a picture we liked so much we made it our Christmas Card!

Gardner Museum

After wanting to go for months, we finally made it to the Gardner Museum!  It's an awesome free museum in the Castro with lots of hands-on exhibits and animals for kids to look at and play with.  We met up with Andi and Mia and had lots of fun!

2nd Bday Party Fun

We went to the birthday party of one of Skyla's classmates at a great place in the city called Urban Recess.  It was our first 2-year-old birthday party and it was lots of fun.  The place is great for birthday parties, because there are plenty of activities for the kids, and a little kitchen area for food and drinks.  Skyla had a great time, and I loved playing with her.  The most amazing part was at the end when she discovered the ballerina bar and gave us a preview of what we might see in the future!

Christmas Prep!

As soon as we got back from our Thanksgiving trip, we started preparing for Christmas.  We were very excited for this one because Skyla is getting to the age where she understands more of what is going on and she gets appropriately excited.  We got out all of our decorations, and Skyla helped us unpack them.  I think she knew something very different was right around the corner.

A couple of days later we went over to Flowercraft in our old hood to get our Christmas tree.  Tory was hilarious the whole time, walking around amongst all the trees and saying he was "good at Christmas."  Eventually we picked out the perfect one. We got it up on top of the car with no problems and went home to decorate it right away.  It was a perfect start to the Christmas season!