A Central Coast Christmas Eve

I just finished working 6 shifts in 8 days - whew I'm pooped as they were mostly late shifts and kept me up until 1-3 am and Tommy would get up a few hours later! But I'm done now, so I can now update again!

On another subject, I have been asked many times whether we are considered to be in Northern California or Southern California. We are actually right in the middle of the state so I wasn't really sure. Over the last few weeks I have discovered that we are not considered either northern or southern here, but rather go by "Central Coast."

So we felt very privileged to be asked to join in a traditional Central Coastal Christmas Eve with one of the other ER doctors I work with and his family, the Ellisons. He and his wife both grew up around the Bay area but have lived here for probably twenty years and they have 4 cute kids. Their tradition for Christmas Eve is to have two of our local foods: crab and artichokes. (Our area grows over 90% of the artichokes for the US year round.) All I can say is YUM!! Maybe we'll have to adopt this tradition in our house.

They live near us in an area called Carmel Valley and up there the community tradition is for the firetruck to get decked out with Christmas lights and visit all the houses with the crew dressed as Santa and his elves. They come right up the driveway with lights and sirens on and give presents to the neighborhood kids (I learned later that the Ellisons had dropped off the gifts to be delivered earlier that day.) Well as you could imagine, Tommy was incredibly excited to see the firetruck up close and was very excited to get a present of new pajamas and a toy from the firetruck Santa.

We could hardly get Tommy to leave the Ellisons as he was having so much fun but we finally made our way home about 9 pm and got him to bed. Then we set up for Christmas morning.

Christmas morning was fun as Tommy is finally old enough to sort of "get it." He got a new dump truck, a tool box with wooden tools and a doctor's kit (no we're NOT brainwashing him - I promise!) He also got a great set of hot wheels cars and a track from Grandma Jackie and some gloves and a new toy from Grandma Carolyn. We had our traditional breakfast casserole and "fruit compote" and then I went to work in the afternoon.

Dave has enjoyed spending a lot of evenings with Tommy this week as I've been at work. They have gone out to dinner together, to the park and the aquarium. Dave also had the privilege of speaking at church on Sunday. We had a phone call Friday night from the Bishop telling us, "Oh and by the way, President Eyring will be there, but don't stress out..." I guess he and his family were here vacationing. I'm sure it was fun for Dave and he did a great job.

Now we are looking forward to a visit from my sister tomorrow from Seattle! Yea!