Merry Christmas!

We spent a wonderful time this week celebrating Christmas with the Rosses. On Monday morning, Aunt Lauren picked us up from Gabe, Karen, & Miya's house and drove us to their place in Fairfield, CA. There we spent the week cooking, eating, playing party games, playing guitar hero, and hanging out.

On Tuesday, Uncle Chris and Aunt Lauren brought us all to Travis Air Force base, where we got to fly the C17 simulator! It is one of the newest Air Force simulators, and it was amazing to sit in its pilot seat and "fly" the airplane that Aunt Chris and Aunt Lauren fly! Aidan was fascinated by the hundreds of buttons in the cockpit of the real C17 plane that we visited (he was the only one who didn't go in the simulator), and everyone else had a great time getting a taste of what it would be like to be a pilot.

Wednesday was Christmas Eve, and we all spent the evening opening stockings, listening to Mom read "A Child's Christmas in Wales", and singing Christmas carols. We didn't have all of the copies of our Christmas carol book, so we sat around the Christmas tree with our laptops, googling different carols and reading the words from the internet!

Thursday was Christmas, and we all spent the day continuing to cook and eat delicious food (we had been doing that every day beforehand as well), opening presents, and hanging out. We also played a hilarious party game called "Apples for Apples" that Mommy and Daddy have never tried before.

On Friday, we drove into San Francisco to visit Mommy's Aunt Rachel Crawford and her family. We had lunch together, hiked up and down extremely steep San Francisco hills (a good thing given all the food we had been eating), and enjoyed catching up with Aunt Rachel and Tami, and Elwyn, Nell, and Limin. Aunt Frances got her custom ordered hat that Elwyn designed for her, and modeled it for us (so stylish!). And Aunt Rachel's dogs (Pansie and Howie) couldn't get enough of Aidan! It was nice to catch up.

On Saturday, Aidan had his first experience bowling! We all went to the Travis Air Force Base bowling alley, and Aidan played a couple of times too! His first ball was a gutter ball (though it did make it all the way to the end of the alley), but he used a "kid helper" metal guiding structure the second time (he pushed the ball from the top of a metal slide), and actually knocked down seven pins!

We had a wonderful time this week hanging out with the Rosses, and wish that we could extend the holiday for longer. Aidan is going to miss Grandma and Pop-pop (what Grandpa Ross has decided to be called), as well as his Ross aunts and uncles (Frances, Chris, Lauren, and Jon-Michael). We're already looking forward to seeing them again in July!