3rd Christmas with Grandmas Pat and Sue

On Christmas morning the kids emerged all together to go downstairs and find their stocking gifts from Santa.

 

The third Christmas celebration had begun!

Ronan is just so cute and hug-able!

Right after lunch, Grandma Pat and Grandma Sue arrived!

And the opening of another round of great presents began!

 

Oh...this is awkward...I already have one of these...

The next day we headed out for a trip downtown. It was cold, but at least it wasn't raining! We parked downtown and walked to Pioneer Square to see the huge Christmas tree and other decorations.


While the Grandmas got a chance to do some downtown shopping, the rest of us took the light rail train across the bridge to visit somewhere we've never been before.

Given Tavio's and Ronan's interest in trains, we thought it would be fun to visit the Oregon Rail Heritage Center (i.e., train museum). There were two huge historic steam engine trains inside a large building, a caboose outside, and a couple of trains on train tracks outside.

 

The wheels were huge!

 

 We were able to climb up inside of a caboose.

Here's Uncle Kevin and cousin Tavio inside.

My favorite part was when we went outside to play on the train tracks. Even though it was a dreary day, I got some cool photos of the kids and they had a blast running around.

Sylvia and Brielle were so sweet together while waiting at the train platform to return home.

In the evening, it was time for another dance party! Sylvia served as the emcee, and Ginny participated by chasing after trailing pieces of the kids' costumes.

 This time Ronan joined in!

Then everyone joined in!

The kids were sad to say good-bye to the Grandmas. Thank you to Grandma Pat and Grandma Sue for a great visit! Kevin, Anoosh, Sylvia, and Tavio stayed for an extra day. We played and relaxed around the house. They got to warm up a little outside with our new fire table.

And the kids warmed up with a swim in the hot tub right next to the fire table.

Time for smores!

And, just like two years ago when the cousins were here, we had a snowfall on their last day in town!

The large chunks of snowflakes falling from the sky were beautiful. The snow was pretty powdery, but that didn't stop the kids from throwing snowballs and making a (small) snowman.

The first snowfall of the year was exciting for both the southern California kids and ours.

Saying "goodbye" is always difficult, although Brielle didn't get as upset as she did last year (when she was pretty devastated to leave Sylvia). We were relieved about that. The cousins were together, and even sleeping together, for a full week, and they got along amazingly the whole time. It was so special to have everyone here.