Our Christmas Elf arrived today from the North Pole! She brought us her story as well. The girls were a little clueless at first, Adrian and I had to guide them to find her. After reading the book, the girls chose to name our elf Sparkle. So Sparkle will be visiting us for the next 24 days. Jillian gets it when we say Sparkle is watching, Olivia may be too young for this but it’s still fun.
Jillian is so ready for Christmas already! She loved decorating the Christmas Tree. The girls did most of the low ornaments 🙂
We had Thanksgiving at our house this year. I made many of the side dishes to accompany our turkey. My favorites were the homemade pretzels and the pumpkin dinner rolls 🙂
Here is Baby Barnes at 12 weeks 🙂
Jillian’s career aspiration is to be an astronaut. So this year Jillian wanted to be an astronaut for Halloween. As younger sisters do, Olivia also wanted to be an astronaut. This was tricky because we had to visit many different Costcos to find one that would fit her.
This year we went to Disneyland Halloween Night with my parents. It was great because Adrian and I were able to go on some big people rides. The girls were extremely excited that Papa was going on rides with them.
Adrian and I also celebrated Halloween this year 🙂 We went with our friend Lacey to Hollywood for a club crawl. We went as a fruit salad. Adrian was the banana, I was the strawberry, and Lacey was a watermelon.  I had so much fun… even though I wasn’t drinking… can you see the beginning baby bump?
Halloween at school was so much fun this year! We were able to dress up and my co-worker Jenny and I dressed up as crazy cat ladies. Â My students made q-tip skeletons and apple butter. For a fun treat we watched Charlie Brown’s Great Pumpkin and ate “Jack-O-Lantern” clementines.
Here are the girls on Halloween Night 🙂
Today at my aunt’s baby shower, my cousin Gianna watched the girls for me! She’s the best! Today while watching the girls, she recorded them each singing a song. Gianna later e-mailed me the videos 🙂 They’re super cute!
Olivia singing her ABC’s
Olivia Singing the ABCs from Sarah Barnes on Vimeo.
Jillian singing Number Rock, a song she learned in pre-school.
Adrian and I decided that our first long distance trip with the girls would be up north to visit our friends Jason in San Rafael and Sydney in San Jose. We flew into San Francisco and the girls loved it! They were very well behaved on the plane (a lot had to do with having the iPad). I was concerned that their ears would be hurting but they were champs!! (I also gave them lollypops to suck on during the decent, I think it helped).
We had a slight melt down when we got our car rental. Adrian rented a mustang convertible and Olivia was a little disturbed  because Adrian just plopped her in the car and walked away, haha. She also had a melt down with the orignal car seat that we picked, but once she picked her own car seat all was well in the world according to Olivia!
On the drive from San Francisco to San Rafael, the girls were not thrilled about the top being down. It was a bit windy, and frankly, it was COLD! They warmed up to the idea while we drove through San Francisco a few days later.
It was great seeing Jason and his family! We ate at some interesting places and we visited the Farmer’s Market (2 of the 3 pomegranates I bought were delicious). We ate a wonderful home cooked meal at Jason’s house, the girls had such a blast playing with Jason’s nephews!  Adrian had mentioned I wanted to see Redwoods (it’s on my 30 before thirty list) so Jason took us to John Muir Woods. It was fabulous!! It was so peaceful along the trail and I loved seeing how large (and old) these trees were! One more thing to check off my list, yay!!
Our drive down to San Jose took us back through San Francisco. We decided to stop at Fisherman’s Warf to check out the sea lions and have lunch. We drove down Lombard Street in our little convertible, the girls loved it! We also had to go see the Russ Building. While helping Sam with a homework assignment last year, I went through old files of my grandmother and found that the Russ Family were my distant relatives from my paternal grandmother’s side. It was really neat seeing the photos I have in the file hanging in the window of the Russ building.
In San Jose, we visited the NASA Ames Research Center. Jillian says that she wants to be an astronaut when she grows up, so Adrian and I have done all that we can to keep her interested in this high aspiration. The Ames research center was really cool, it’s too bad it’s so far away, it would be a really cool field trip! Jillian and Adrian were very excited 🙂
Unfortunately when we arrived in San Jose, our friend Sydney’s dog became sick. She needed to take him to the vet so we were unable to meet up. I was able to find a trampoline place nearby and the girls and Adrian jumped for an hour. It was great because there was hardly anyone there, so they practically had the room of trampolines to themselves. After jumping up a storm, it was time to eat!. We found a delicious Korean restaurant in San Jose. Yelp had amazing reviews and I would have to agree. We got lucky and got in before the dinner rush 🙂  After that we headed to our last hotel for the trip.
Overall it was a very pleasant trip, the girls did a fantastic job!! They were great travelers! In a few years we might consider something with a longer airplane ride… maybe Disney World.
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We’re expecting Baby Barnes #3!!! We are so very excited!! We are looking forward to adding one more to our family!
I took an impromptu trip to Disneyland with the girls. I did not pick the best day since it was extremely hot! haha I also had an insane notion that I wouldn’t need  a stroller. haha I parked in Downtown Disney, we hopped on the monorail, and headed to small world. Then the return trip back to the car. In the heat, by myself, was not a good idea!
haha at least the girls had a good time!!
Here we are in the very front of the monorail.
