Christmas, a few weeks early

Since my brother and his family will be in Oregon and Washington celebrating Christmas we got to celebrate Christmas a few weeks early. We also celebrated my aunt's birthday right on time since she flew in with my uncle and cousin from Texas for the day Saturday.

I helped kid-sit on Friday before and after my field trip to Facebook until my parents and grandma arrived. Once they arrived my brother and sister-in-law headed to the Facebook Christmas Party at San Francisco's City Hall (it looked like a spectacular event). Saturday my dad and I headed to SFO to pick up my aunt and her family. Once we we arrived back we celebrated my aunt's 50th birthday with cake, gifts and a few hilarious cards. Throughout the day we continued our family tradition of eating, watched the kids open some amazing Christmas gifts and even watched my nephew do some tricks on his scooter at the local skate park. My aunt also surprised her youngest daughter and my grandma with a special gift ... tickets to see a taping of the Ellen Show in Burbank, needless to say both of shocked and very excited.

For dinner we enjoyed crab cioppino, another traditional meal in my family, as we had at my house last year. The dinner was spectacular, as always, and we followed it up with cheesecake and red velvet birthday cake. While watching multiple episodes of A&E's show "Storage Wars" my aunt also noticed that their best shot to get on a flight with their passes (she's a flight attendant) was out of San Jose at 6:20 a.m., they had been planning on flying out of SFO a little later in the morning. I volunteered to drive since I am oddly familiar with waking up early on occasion.

Today I dropped my aunt and her family off at the airport, got gas in Livermore and then made it to Bayside right as the 8:15 a.m. service was starting. The service featured the fantastic 200+ member Bayside Kids Choir singing Christmas songs.