Holiday Hoopla and stuff

I guess I should back track to September when we had our big tamale making day!

This could be considered a holiday to the Goodman family.

Its been a long standing tradition for as long as Casey's been alive, and then some.

They actually took a 3 year hiatus when the corn was not doing so hot. 

Or too expensive? I can't remember.

However, I think some asked begged for some home made tamales

 so Papa and Grammy made it happen!

It's an all day Saturday ordeal.

  

This little girl was loving these things.

I think so consumed 8-10 that day.

I would watch her walk over to the table, grab one and eat it like candy!

School pictures came back!

I guess I only have Rusty's scanned so far.

After we got back from San Francisco, we had a bake sale for Rusty's school teacher, Mrs. Greaves.

She had been suffering from chronic illness for a while.

One day she woke up and couldn't feel the right side of her body.

She was in the hospital for a week and was diagnosed with MS.

That didn't stop her from coming back to school the day after she got released from the hospital!

What a dedicated teacher!

We wanted to help her and her family, especially during the holiday season.
 So we got to baking!

 I think these girls were the most excited.

We sold cookies, cinnamon rolls, and hot chocolate.

He raised $290 for his teacher!

She called me the following day... because when a student hands you an
 envelope of cash you raise your eyebrows a little.

Once I told her what we did, she was so grateful.

The night before they were talking about how they had little money to

 buy their kids Christmas presents.

She is a young mom of 4. Maybe that's why my heart went out to her.

I love giving during the holidays!

It's my favorite thing in the whole wide world!

We carried that attitude to the Giving Machine in downtown Gilbert.

It was a big deal to have it so close to home, with only 3 in the entire world!

So much so, that the lines could be an hour wait time.

I heard to go on a Sunday, so that's what we did.

No lines because everybody is at church:)

We told the kids to bring some of their money to put in the machine, 

but you could only use credit cards. 

They sure enjoyed swiping that thing!

They each choose something different.

Della, Mac n Cheese.

Lindi, first aid kit.

Lane, a holiday turkey.

Rusty, mackerel.

Mom and Dad, food supplies for 3 months.

I had no idea that Della would have such an infatuation with outdoor Christmas lights 

and lawn ornaments!

We could not leave the house without her running to the neighbor's yards and her loving on them!

She had an order.

First Mary got a kiss, then Joseph and baby Jesus.

She would repeat the line up until I would get bored with the whole make out shesh, lol!

BUT then we had to move on to the Rudd's blow up Santa and Frosty! 

She could not reach their lips so they received hugs instead:)

Any lights on any house were also gleefully pointed out while driving.

I loved the excitement from her.

She gets it... Christmas is magical!

Some church friends met up at Nando's for some late night nacho's.

It was Amber's birthday, more of an excuse to get together since the Bachelor isn't on yet, lol!

Really though, these girls are great and I am lucky to have them as friends.

This year I made "Grinch Granola" for neighbor gifts.

Pretty sure I have an amazing army of friends/neighbors, because we passed out 50 bags!!

Every year I try to trim the list down, but I just can't!

Christmas isn't Christmas without all the concerts!

"I wanna, hot cup of cocoa with a, marshmallow or two..."

You can barely see Rusty. Second row from top, next to the girl with a blue shirt.

Lane also sang with his age group, for the VERY LAST TIME!

HOW is that kid going to Jr. High next year?!

And HOW did I not get a picture?!

I did take pictures at his band concert!

Lindi (top row) all excited for her Kindergarten sing.

I think she was more excited that she got to go home early from school.

Grandma didn't get the striped shirt memo!
She is always so good to come and support the kids.

I helped in Lanes class party.

I snuck a picture of him, he would have given me eye dagger stares if I got caught!

He does not like pictures. 

I can't blame him, I was the same way growing up.

The Evan's invited us over for cookie decorating!

This was after we piled in the back of the truck to look at Christmas lights.

Lindi and her cousin's, who took up half of the class, had their Christmas recital!

I feel guilty saying this, but man I was grateful this class was over with!

Such a cute group of kids and an amazing teacher.

Something about driving an hour round trip for a 45 min class... I dreaded Monday's.

It was a Broadway type class so they sang their Annie and Wicked hearts out.

They sang some Christmas songs at the end, which then led to Santa appearing!

It was cute, until melt down city when the candy canes broke in half.

When do they get over that trauma and learn that it still tastes the same!!

Obviously before the candy cane broke.
I sound like Mr. Scrooge.

Cute girly cousins!

I don't know what possessed me.

One morning I woke up and said enough is enough.

I took scissors and snipped Della's pacifier.

WHAAAT did I just do???!!!

And during bonkers Christmas time!

That thing was her life line. Her best friend. Her 12 hours of sleep plug. 

Clearly she was upset as could be about it.

All of a sudden Lindi bursts out in tears!!

She was mad that Della was screaming her guts out AND sad that she didn't have a paci anymore.

I text Casey that I did it. I cut her off cold turkey.

He didn't believe me.

So a face timed him.

The second he answered I bursted into tears!!

Now 3 of us, sobbing on the phone.

Casey couldn't stop laughing!

I didn't know if I was crying because I knew it would be hell for days,

 or that I was sad that I took away her true form of happiness. 

Pretty sure it was both reasons. 

Sorry baby girl!

Fast forward a week.

Of course the same week I took away her paci,  she learned how climb out 

of her crib!!

Words cannot describe how miserable we ALL were.

Pretty sure it was worse than when she was a new born.

She was making me pay.

Smart little booger.

One night I literally hoovered over her crib for hours to make sure

she wouldn't climb out and wander the house all hours of the night.

Naps were out the window.

I bought a crib tent.

Imagine a cat getting put into a bath tub.

We turned the door knob around so the lock was in the hall.

Ya, she couldn't get out.

 She would lay on the floor and kick the door so loud and long

I for sure thought the cops were going to show up to see what the commotion was.

Or that the door would literally break down.

I can NOW look at this picture and laugh at it.

Any sooner and I would still shutter with PTSD.

It must had been a long night, because I was still in bed around 8am.

Kids were home on Christmas break .

I started to hear that somebody was in my room.

  I opened my eyes to Della, covered in my long last lip stick,

 no clothes on and eating a bag of

frozen mini corn dogs.

I didn't even care.

I think I rolled over and kept sleeping, ha!

Since I couldn't eat normal crack to put me out of my misery, I decided the next best thing was to make it in the sugar form, lol!!

I can't tell you how many batches of Christmas crack I made.

It can get you through rough times!

* I am happy to report that she did start sleeping again! It was a loooong month. 

Santa's Toy Shop was the theme of Grammy's party this year!

We were greeted by Santa and Mrs Clause.

She goes all out and the kids love it so much.

We had a caravan of Lindbloms at the Symphony of Lights!

Grandma with her video camera.

Figueoras were behind us.

I'm trying to get this video to upload, but at the end we had 5 white SUV's driving in a big

circle in the parking lot for quite a long time!

It was hysterical 

My girls dolling it up with my old Mini World dresses.

Vintage at it's finest!

They were a hit at church.

I must had lost my mind, because I told Casey to rip out the backyard... on Christmas Eve!

Yep, why not add to the chaos with a backyard remodel.

Not only that, it needed to be done in a month.

More on that later.

Fall Sports

Rusty played baseball.

It was a good season!

He loved having his friend, Trey, on the team with him.

Sadly, these are the sole 2 pictures I got.

Man, I am terrible at taking pictures!

I'm chalking it up to my wild 2 year old that hardly lets me

watch the games.

Rusty is catching, Trey is pitching.

They traded off as the team pitchers.

 He is the batter.

This is actually a screen shot of a video.

 Lane was busy tearing it up on the flag football fields.

He BEGGED and begged to play football.

We compromised with flag.

Only it was still cut throat competitive!

Thank goodness tackling wasn't thrown in the mix.

He had his best bud, Konner, from school on the team.

 As well as a second cousin, Ben, who he also goes to school with.

San Francisco, day 3!

My cousin who lives in the Bay area saw on Instagram 

that we were in the city.

She kept texting a list of places we MUST go to eat.

Food is a very important part of vacations for us!

I laid in bed with a huge list of things we still needed to see and devour.

I was overwhelmed with how we were going to get it all in.

We didn't have a full day, our flight was leaving at 5.

At 6 I jumped out of bed and informed everybody to wake up!

We needed to get an earlier start than originally planned.

We got ready, packed up and checked our bags at the front desk.

Mr. Holmes was number one on her list.

People start lining outside the door an hour before opening 

for their famous cruffin!

Which is a cross of croissant and a muffin.

Much like the cronut.

Apparently they sell out the first 30 minutes!

They opened at 8 and we got their probably 15 minutes before...

with only 2 other people in line.

I was confused because I thought it was going to be mass chaos.

We started talking to a couple and she had read rave reviews on pinterest about this place.

The doors opened and we pushed ourselves in for some sugary carb goodness!

Where are the cruffins?

"We don't serve cruffins until 9."

WHAT??? 

No wonder there wasn't a line yet!

I was super bummed, but they assured me everything they had out was basically

a cruffin, just baked in a different shape.

Same recipe and everything.

With that, we basically ordered one of everything!

In true San Francisco fashion, it is a random tiny bakeshop in the middle of a ghetto street.

 Hunkering down with our breakfast.

It was fun place to try!

I really wanted to ride a trolley!

We headed back to Union Square to find a trolley station.

It was crazy, the bus dropped us off and we looked across the street to a trolley pulling up!

We ran across the street and asked if we could get on.

The trolley conductor squished us on and off we went!

How perfect did that work out?

AND it was the trolley line I was wanting to ride, the Powell and Hyde trolley.

I love that it was decked out in Christmas décor.

The funny part was that we had no idea where it was taking us!

We knew we were headed down the hill towards Fisherman's Wharf,

 but who knew if it would turn and go a random direction.

Hello Lombard street!

With our luck, it stopped at Pier 39 and everybody had to get off.

Our next place we wanted to go was China town.

The workers said to jump to the next trolley over because it was leaving in

 5 minutes and China town was one of the stops.

What were the chances?!

We sat inside this time.

It was about another 10 minute ride when the conductor said this is China town!

Bye trolley!

We turned around trying to get our bearings and we spotted a Chinese hospital.

We must be at the right place.

A little further of a walk and yep, Chinese people EVERYWHERE!

I truly thought we were in a different country.

It was crazy how fast we got immersed into what felt like a whole different culture.

I was loving every minute of it. 

Since it was the weekend, everyone was out getting shopping done.

We walked upon a produce vendor making a delivery.

You can barely see his truck with hundreds of boxes flattened in the back. 

Lots of fresh produce out on the streets to purchase.

 We walked passed a restaurant with steam coming out of the window

 from them boiling fresh dumplings.

As we were watching and drooling, 

we decided to go get some authentic San Francisco Chinese food!

We couldn't read the menu, 

so we pointed and tried to understand what everything was.

Pretty sure we didn't know what half of the stuff we ordered was, but

it was all part of the experience:)

A view from upstairs where the tables were.

Laughing at what we were eating.

These were hot "bbq" pork buns. Tasted like sweet n sour something.

Pot stickers, sesame rolls, Chinese donuts, chicken dumplings. Cabbage something or another.

After our little snack, we headed out in search for another snack, lol!

We found it in a tiny little alley.

Golden Gate Fortune Cookie Factory!

You could literally smell the sweet cookies from the street.

We were greeted with warm, fresh, flat cookies before they get shaped.

We could hear some commotion.

The owner (we knew it was the owner because his pictures were plastered on the walls with him shaking celebrities hands), was chewing out this poor Chinese worker. 

You can see half of her backside on the left in a maroon shirt.

I wish I would have gotten a picture of him yelling at her.

It was #ackward. 

It was a good few minutes of him doing that.

He stormed out and she embarrassingly turned around, put a fake smile 

on her face and greeted us.

We think she was late to work and was the only employee that knew English.

I actually video taped some of the misshape and sent it to my friends husband that went to 

Hong Kong on his mission.

I wanted  to see if he could translate what he said to her, ha!

 He couldn't make out all of it because he was talking too fast but what

he did hear was him saying "what were you DOING?".

I guess the guy could've said it a lot meaner or sworn, but he didn't. 

Still, what a jerk!

The boys wrote some cute notes on paper for the girls.

They handed them to the workers to put in some fortune cookies for us to take home.

We also got some chocolate dipped cookies as part of their souvenirs.

Outside of the tiny factory with a specialized bag of cookies!

SO many oriental trading type of stores to shop in!

We hit a few to find some more things to take home to the girls.

We barely scratched the surface of China town, but needed to move

 onto the next activity because we were running out of time.

I love these lanterns strung across the streets.

Casey with his trusty bus map got us to Alamo Square where the painted ladies are!

My inner Full House geekiness was so excited to see this!!

I guess we passed the Mrs. Doubtfire house on the bus to Alamo Square. 

If I had of known, we would have stopped there too!

Now, this was our most anticipated stop for food. 

Tony's pizza in Italy town.

Not only did my cousin say to eat here, everybody else that we 

asked said it is the best pizza you will ever eat!

I was nervous there would be a line out the door and we wouldn't have time to wait.

Because typically there always is a long wait.

We walked up with our fingers crossed and the lady said a big party had just left and we could get seated right away!!

Our eyes were big while looking at the menu. 

It was hard to narrow it down.

So many different sauces, crusts, toppings to choose from.

We ended up getting 4 different ones, lol!

Each one did NOT disappoint!
Even the run of the mill pepperoni was amazing.

That pizza on the bottom was money.

It had a honey drizzle... I want some right now!

We had stuffed our faces when the waitress brought out our deep dish.

We had forgotten about it!

We unbuttoned our pants and started chiseling away at it!

Tony's, you were good to us.

With that, it was time to head back to the hotel and get our bags.

We called a Lyft and off we were to the airport to head home to our girlies.

They loved the fortune cookies and goodies we brought home for them.

I can't say enough how much FUN this trip was!!

Casey said he couldn't believe how the trip just flowed so perfectly.

This was a trip I didn't have scheduled out everyday and was nervous we would run out 

of time and not get everything in. 

We loved our one on one time with the boys.

We loved being with Papa and Grammy and making amazing memories.

San Fran, we will be back!!