The holiday season is my favorite time of year. Starting at Thanksgiving and going straight on through New Years is a time for family and friends and fun and this year was no exception. After the excitement of OUWAFC Thanksgiving dinner, Christmas party, Varsity rugby, Vicki and Tim’s wedding, I was finally “home for the holidays” and ready to enjoy the amazing California winter and Christmas season.
The first few days I was home was GORGEOUS! California sunshine and warm weather. Working out outside in the sun in a my sportsbra felt amazing!! Sadly that was shortlived and shortly after I got home we got hit with the worst winter storm in years with large parts of SoCal receiving over 12 inches of rain in a few days. The rain continued for 8 days straight, right onto December 23. It was a lot of rain.... Despite the fact that the rain completely ruined my plans for both surfing and snowboarding, I was able to spend time catching up with great friends.
I got to hang out with Ashley Kiley and catch up over some amazing lunch at Chick-fil-A. I love Chick-fil-a, England needs to get on the ball and bring that over here! Got to have breakfast with Ash and my friend Mackenzie Hogan and enjoyed chatting with her and catching up with whats happened since she came to visit me in England. I got to hang out with the one and only Hayley Maynard who is probably the craziest person I know and I love her for it! Who else would just buy a one way ticket to New Zealand and take off with no idea where she’s going and what she’s doing when she gets there? My amazing friend. Even though we couldn’t go snowboarding like I wanted I got to spend a day with Kim Hale which was great as well. I miss you Kimothy! Also on the docket prior to Christmas dinner up in LA with Gia Strauss, Kate Wagner, and Hayley. These girls and I played football together to several years and have remained tight ever since. We are a really eclectic bunch with not a whole lot in common amongst the four of us (soccer being the only common denominator between all of us) but we get along so well and I can’t imagine coming home without seeing them.
Our Christmas mugs:
Our little Christmas village: 
And of course, our tree and the train set that I set up under the tree.
Every year, each of the 4 girls gets a new ornament and so our tree gets bigger and fuller every year. Its not a surprise that the majority of my ornaments are sport related.
After the house and tree were decorated we did our Christmas cookie baking. We used to try a new recipe every year but its gotten to the point where we’ve figured out what we like and we just stick with that. We have Nutcracker Sweets (a peanut butter based cookie base with peanut butter frosting and chocolate drizzle), Andes mint brownies (pretty obvious, chocolate brownies with Andes mints melted on top), Pumpkin chocolate chip bars (basically pumpkin bread with chocolate chips in them) and of course Sugar Cookies (cut and decorated in Christmas theme). I’m not a huge fan of cooking and baking but Christmas cookies are the exception!!
This was all completed on December 23 and so it was now time for Christmas Eve. On the 24th we went as saw Chronicles of Narnia, Voyage of the Dawn Treader. Stereotypically, American Jewish families spend Christmas Day at the movie theatre and eating Chinese food but since we celebrate both the Jewish and Christian holidays that is NOT how we spend Christmas and we instead see a movie on Christmas Eve. After the movie we got ready for Christmas Eve service and took a bunch of pictures, trying to get a nice one for our Christmas card photo.
After the photos we went to the early Christmas Eve service at our church, Voyagers. The service wasn’t great this year but I really enjoyed the music which had a more country-like feel to it. We had a whole band up there (including mandolin, lap guitar, and fiddle) and it was all led by Dustin Kensrue, a church member who also happens to be the lead guitarist/singer for the band Thrice. After the service we picked up our traditional Christmas Eve dinner: pizza! We do things very differently in the Yadlin family.
After dinner we started our other Christmas Even tradition: reading our Christmas books. We have around 25 children's books that we read on Christmas eve. Each of us has our specific ones that we read and my mom has several that make her cry every year. She was actually really good this year and didn’t cry too much. I was impressed. My books are all written my Tomie dePaola who was my favorite author when I was younger. Every year I read The Night of Las Posadas, The Country Angel Christmas, and Jingle the Christmas Clown. I love my books (and this year my mom got me my own copy of Jingle, my favourite)!!
Throughout the course of reading the books we each open one present. My present was Series 5 of Doctor Who! Yes!
When we finally finished all the books it was pretty late and so it was time for bed. My younger sisters and I always sleep downstairs on Christmas Eve but we’ve gotten a bit big for the foldout couch that we have to sleep across it rather than lengthwise and our feet kind of hang off the end. Oh well, tradition is tradition!!
Christmas morning we opened our gifts (I got some amazing ones, ask if you really care or want to know) then Mom made cinnamon French toast for breakfast (which was amazing). Afterward we decided to wait until it got a bit warmer before heading to the beach so we sang our Christmas carols around the piano and then headed out to Laguna Beach.
I love our Christmas tradition of going to the beach! Laguna Beach is a really pretty beach and even with the construction they were doing this year it was still nice to walk up and down the beach and take lots of pictures. 
Because of how the weather had been up until then I had still not been in the water since I had come home. Furthermore, because I had my foot in a cast last year when I was home over Christmas I didn’t go in the water at all last year either. So it had been a LONG time since I had been in the Pacific Ocean and that wasn’t ok with me. So I decided that despite the disgusting water quality from all the storm runoff and the freezing temperature of the water, I was going in!! I was only in the water a few minutes but it was enough to get my fix for a little while.
After we got back from the beach we played a few of our new games including Disney Magical Moments Scene-It. We then had our traditional Christmas dinner of lasagna (yum!) and watched one our our new movies we got for Christmas (in this case, Shiri’s copy of The Princess and the Frog). All in all a wonderful Christmas with my family.
Boxing Day was spent hanging out with Ashley, doing some random errands including picking up my bridesmaid dress from the tailor, and going out to dinner with the family. After dinner we went to Balboa Island to walk around and look at all the lights and Christmas decorations around the Island. They really go all out and its always fun to see what is new and what has changed since the year before.
The rest of the break was spent trying to make the most of my time at home and time in the sun. I went up to Hermosa Beach to hang out with Ozzie Ortiz for the Air Force football Independence Bowl Game (we won!) and spent a lot of time outside in the sun. My sisters and I also rode our bikes around Woodbridge taking some pictures so that we had photographic evidence about what our neighborhood and things from our past looked like including our elementary, middle, and high schools. Also included in the photos were THE FROGS. Anyone from Woodbridge knows exactly what I’m talking about...
My last day at home we went to Aliso Creek Beach which is probably the most beautiful beach in Orange County. I spent a few hours reading on the beach and building a Tiki Hut out of all the bamboo-like plants that had washed onto the beach in the storms. Once again it was just amazing to be out in the sun and on the beach and enjoying the beautiful weather and surroundings.
However, it was finally time for me to head to Chicago for my second wedding of the month before heading back to England. Warm weather to freezing Chicago to cold England.... not ideal but oh well!! Blog about Shannon’s wedding to come shortly.
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