We take a break from our postcard series (that I hope you’re enjoying!), to share with you our annual trip down memory lane in which we share photos of our friends and family who came to see us in California this year.

This year friends visited us from Oregon, New Jersey, New Mexico, New York, Pennsylvania, and Washington D.C. Here are photos from (hopefully) all of their visits! (Please email me if I missed you!)

Thank you all for coming to see us! We enjoyed each and every one of your visits!

Helping Mama organize our embroidery floss collection. We have a birthday crown to make for a little girl who turns three years old in exactly one month. I know, I can’t believe it either. Look how competent she is. I frequently forget that she’s only two years old. For a month longer, anyway.

Enjoying Daddy Time while pretending to be a cat and a cow. (We get some really fun hand-me-down kids clothes from friends.)

Yoga pose, anyone?

Reading together before bed is, by far, the easiest way to put her to sleep.

A favorite activity, scootering on the bike trail near our house.

What a month we’ve had full of holiday celebrations.

First we celebrated Hanukkah:

Then we counted down to Christmas, making handmade ornaments for our first full-sized tree and wreaths to decorate our entryway, sewing elf stockings for our family, and baking gluten-free treats:

Tonight I wrapped the presents and stuffed the stockings while David cleaned the kitchen, and voila! We’re all ready for Christmas Day:

After all this creative fun, we need a breather…

We’re going to blog lightly over the next few weeks, still posting daily photos Monday through Friday, but relying on less text, as we take a mini-blog vacation to recover from the whirlwind of the past few weeks and gear up to celebrate Carrie’s grandmother’s 80th birthday in January.

Hope you have a lovely holiday and enjoy your New Year celebration. May you find the comfort of warmth and light in this season of darkness. The solstice is past us, we’re heading towards Spring!

We’ll see you in 2011!

Another post in our First on Friday series where we share a new activity from the week.

Neither the toddler nor I had ever decorated a gingerbread house before. A friend gifted us this already assembled gingerbread house, so we were all ready to go!

In actuality, David and Miss Leyba decorated this tree. I mainly cheered from the sidelines and photographed the event. (I also may have washed the dishes and tidied up the kitchen, if I need to disclose everything. Ahem.)

David squeezed the frosting (with Miss Leyba helping by holding the bag too — she has to be involved with everything) and Miss Leyba applied the candies all by herself (another big concept around here these days!).

The ants (common to Northern California cause our winters aren’t cold enough to kill em!) waited approximately 12 hours before storming the castle, possibly a Spritzer Leyba world record. I was sure they’d find it in an hour or two.

This morning we waved, said, “Goodbye Gingerbread House! See you again next year!” as David dropped the whole thing in the trash bin.

Nevertheless, the experience of decorating the house was SO worth it.

We’re looking forward to doing it again next year!