It will take me a few blog posts to recount our holiday travels to California, but I'll start with our first Christmas celebration in Hemet. Anna deserves credit for most of these photos. In general, if you see a picture on the blog that looks great, she probably is the one who took it. If the picture is blurry or crooked, it's probably from me.

The girls were great on the plane ride over. They each had a special set of headphones and watched videos pretty much the whole time.

As soon as we got to Hemet, hiking was our #1 priority! Somewhere there is a picture of me and my sisters hiking, but I can't find it. Kelly? Kara?

Anyway, we spent quite a bit of time outdoors as you might imagine.

We also celebrated Kara's birthday

The kids spent lots of time reading with family

And playing cymbals. Thanks, Pa and Wa.

Now, on to the main Christmas event! Let's start first with the night before Christmas, at which point I opened up the package that contained the tutu for Quinn I had shipped to Hemet. If you're a follower of this blog, you'll recall that a "tutu with a bow" was the only thing Quinn asked for from Santa. And when he went to bed that night before Christmas, he looked and me and said, "When I wake up I'll open just one present, and I hope it's the tutu with a bow from Santa!"

So, you might imagine my dismay when I opened that package and the tutu was WAY.TOO. SMALL.  It's possible I shed some tears, and went into a state of panic.

My sisters are awesome, and given my incapacitated state went to the Hemet Mall at night (yikes!) to locate a tutu. Amazingly, they found one.

Now this tutu did not come with the bow you see above. My sisters bought that separately, and Moin then sewed it on late that Christmas eve night.

I hope one day Quinn reads this and sees what a family affair his present was! But you know what? His face the next morning made it all worth it! And yes he opened that present first :)

Other gifts - Kara bought the kids some cool superhero capes

Santa bought them all helmets

And Moin and I got them swimsuits and towels (along with winter swim lessons).

Wa and Pa also bought Quinn United States Bingo which we all played countless times with him before the vacation was over.

We also got a visit from cousin Luna!

The girls loved her, and did some serious supervision of her diaper change.

It was a great day. I'll end with a few more Hemet holiday photos.

Eli and P. Don't they look just alike?

Kelly and Z. You will notice that Z is still much more of a "poser" than P. The three below are also of her.