Christmas Lights

As a family we love to go and look at Christmas lights.  Here are a couple of the destinations we visited:

Bainbridge Falls - This is a really cool community in Temecula where the entire street participates with lights that flash along to some music on a radio station.  It was our first time there and we totally loved it!







Mission Inn - We go here every year and enjoy all of the lights that are there.  However, I really go for the yummy cupcakes you can find there and this year the girls and Jacob found some delicious homemade donuts that I think they will get again next year!  We usually love going with MB and Nathan but unfortunately they were sick this year.  :(  But both grandmas stepped in and enjoyed the time there with us.

Chino - We like to go and look at the Chino lights every year with Spencer and Amber's little family.  The girls love to play with their boys, Gavin, Grant and Parker.

Gingerbread Houses

It's not Christmas unless you make a gingerbread house!  I am a little lazy though and instead of each of the girls getting a house to decorate, I only let them each decorate one side.  I love to see the difference though! (Look closely and you'll see what I mean!)

Jacob's 30th Birthday

This year Jacob was turning the big 30 so I wanted to do something special for him.  I decided to throw him a surprise party and the biggest surprise was that it was an entire month before his actual birthday.  Since his birthday is so close to Christmas, I wanted to make sure there was a clear separation AND I knew I couldn't lie easily to him so the farther away it was from his birthday the less suspicious he would be!  We had a wonderful time with a lot of family and friends but of course I didn't get a single picture.  When Jacob's actual birthday came around, we kept it simple and had his favorite dinner with the girls and Grandma Jones.  Emma's card was the best because she drew him a "computer" and a picture of him with a grumpy face.  Totally hilarious!

Bock 4th Annual Christmas Party

This week we had our 4th annual Bock Christmas Extravaganza!  Due to the normal crazy Christmas season, our turnout was a little smaller than usual but we had so much fun together.  We did an Ugly Sweater competition and Courtney won but I don't think it can qualify as ugly because she was so darn cute!!  (The rest of our guests weren't bad looking either although we missed a few for pictures.)  We played games, won prizes, ate great food and laughed a lot as usual.  We really do love our friends! (By the way, who is jealous that I am married to Buddy the Elf??)

It's Christmas time!!

The day after Thanksgiving starts the official Christmas season for the Bock household.   As I am sure most people know, it is our favorite time of year so we are pretty excited! Merry Christmas!

Halloween 2012!

Last year, my brother and his wife started the tradition of going to their house and having a potluck Halloween dinner in their garage/driveway and then going trick-or-treating in their neighborhood with the whole family.  It is so much more fun to be able to enjoy the holidays with all of the aunts, uncles, cousins and grandmas.  This year all 3 girls went trick-or-treating and Jacob and I were so happy with how polite they were.  They had a lot of fun, despite crying at some of the houses.  I am so lucky to have such wonderful family who help to make my children's holidays so special.  Shout out to Mike and Courtney, MB and Nathan and both Grandmas for taking turns taking all of our children trick-or-treating.  We love you all!  By the way, aren't they the cutest little bugs you ever did see??

 

I need to add in the story of our little "bug" here.  We put her in the bowl of candy so we could take a picture of her like that but no matter how hard we tried, we could not get her to look at the camera for even a second.  She was just too enthralled with the candy.  My kind of girl!!

Dance Class

In August I decided that it was time to sign the girls up for some sort  of activity and since I love dance, and Maddie is too young to participate in anything else, dance it was!  The girls have been loving it!!  They are each in their own class but they are one right after the other so it works out really nice.  They have a great teacher and they seem to be doing pretty well.  Maddie is definitely her own person so sometimes she follows the teacher and sometimes she does her own thing.  Emma follows the teacher the whole time, as expected from her.  They are so different!  Here are some great pics of them that we got to take.