Our first December in San Diego was so much fun! We loved finding new ways to carry on traditions that we’ve had over the years. While the boys genuinely missed playing in the snow, we all enjoyed the perks of winter life without cold and dreary weather! This post covers everything we did in December leading up to Christmas Eve and Day.
Traditon: Decorate Christmas Cookies / Gingerbread
This year, the boys voted to get a mini gingerbread village kit. The kit allowed us to each make our own creations and then put them all together to make a village of houses. It was really fun making these with xmas music playing in the background. Best part was that we didn’t have any meltdowns or arguing, and it was really easy clean up, so a major WIN for us!
Tradition: Christmas Family Service Project
This year, we chose to help with the school musical that ran during the second weekend of December. The play was Aladdin, and involved 75 kids in 3rd-5th grade and was entirely run by parent volunteers.
The amazing director, Miss Pauline, expressed a need for help with singing, so I volunteered as the vocal coach. I was able to participate at rehearsals once a week for about 6 weeks and then every day for tech week and show week. It was an amazing opportunity to see how the theatre program works at this school. I was extremely impressed with the professionalism that Pauline and the rest of the directing team put into the show. Even more impressive was the dedication from the students. They practiced at home, came prepared to every rehearsal, and had a unique willingness to be taught and coached. Their teachable and grateful attitudes were some of the best I’ve witnessed during my teaching career.
The amazing director, Miss Pauline, expressed a need for help with singing, so I volunteered as the vocal coach. I was able to participate at rehearsals once a week for about 6 weeks and then every day for tech week and show week. It was an amazing opportunity to see how the theatre program works at this school. I was extremely impressed with the professionalism that Pauline and the rest of the directing team put into the show. Even more impressive was the dedication from the students. They practiced at home, came prepared to every rehearsal, and had a unique willingness to be taught and coached. Their teachable and grateful attitudes were some of the best I’ve witnessed during my teaching career.
Tanner and Dallin attended all of the rehearsals with me even though they weren’t performing. They did an awesome job keeping themselves entertained with legos, reading and drawing while I taught the students harmonies and how to improve their singing. My boys also helped with little tasks here and there and made friends with some of the cast members. Miss Pauline let them be honorary cast members! They recieved t-shirts, cast photos, and their name in the program!
Jeremy played a huge role in this endeavor, too. He picked up the slack everyday that we had rehearsal. From making dinner, grocery shopping, and doing extra dishes and laundry than he normally does, he helped keep things rolling so we could help at the school.
The cast did a phenominal job at all 5 of their performances! We were so grateful to be a part of such a fun show. Tanner and Dallin are in the top left row of this cast picture. I made sure to get a few pictures of me with the boys in our cast shirts, too. On closing day, I was able to get some shots with several of the students that I worked with. It was a very rewarding experience and helped us get to know lots of families at our new school!
The boys watched a performance during the school day on Weds and then the Sunday afternoon performance with Jeremy.
This young lady played Jasmine, and I’ve thoroughly enjoyed teaching her voice lessons in my private studio!
Program Cover
I put a star by the songs that I helped students with: Arabian Nights, Proud of Your Boy, These Palace Walls, Babkak Omar Aladdin Kassim, Prince Ali, A Whole New World, High Adventure.
Such fun songs!
I was surprised by the fancy title that Pauline gave me and felt very honored that she mentioned my new business name:
Vocal Coach, Theatre Consultant: SarahLynn Zavoral (Zavoral Music Studios)
I won’t lie, we were pretty tuckered out when the show was finished! Can’t wait to see what next year’s show has in store for us.
Tradition: See Lots of Christmas Lights
We’ve always loved finding lights at Christmas, whether at the beach boat parades, in the middle of cornfields, or on jolly trolleys. Part of the tradition has been to talk about the symbolism of the lights. This year we had a great discussion in the car while on our quest. Tanner knew the lights could represent the star that appeared when Jesus was born. Both boys started to catch on to the idea that the lights can also represent Jesus himself. I can’t remember everything they said, but Tanner and Dallin had some great insights to share on how lights played an important role during Jesus’ birth- all around the world.
We found a really neat street where nearly every house was completely decked out in lights. There were hundreds of people there to see it. The weather was warm enough, so we parked and walked around.
The homeowners did more than just put lights up. They opened up their driveways and garages for entertainment! One home was selling beautiful homemade cookies and Christmas boutique items! I bought several cute mugs for our Wassail Party. One house had popcorn, meatballs, hot dogs and hot chocolate for sale! Others gave out candy. One man dressed up as Santa and put a bench in front of his house to let kids sit on his lap and get pictures. Another driveway featured a tap dance show. Even a fire truck showed up to let kids climb in and meet the firefighters, and they made sure to let their lights glow with all the others.
Music was playing at many of the homes, and lots of laughs and oohs and ahhs were in the air. It was such a great time. We spent about 45 minutes soaking it all in! Can’t wait to go back next year!
After seeing the neighborhood homes, we headed to the San Diego Temple. It was more beautiful than I expected! We walked around the temple grounds, which also had music playing. The boys loved comparing the sites to the last time they had been here. Tanner and I got a picture by the nativity, and we got a few pictures over by the special tree, which this time we felt looked like the tree of life. Walking here was a beautiful way to end our time thinking about the Light of the World.
I also want to note that being close to a temple is one of the reasons we moved to San Diego. We didn’t have this kind of opportunity in Minnesota. I reminded the boys that even though there wasn’t any snow to go with the lights this year, it was a great trade for being able to drive to the temple in 25 minutes to see this.
Tradition: Christmas Wassail Party
This was our 7th annual Wassail Party. It took some faith and teamwork for us to figure out how to host in a totally new place. We ended up having a great success!! 15 adults and 6 kids came, and we managed to have a decent seat for every adult! Everyone sang with us, too, which we weren’t sure would happen. We used Jeremy’s snare drum for Drummer Boy and brought out traingles, bells and guiro shakers for various songs. The Glass family shared their Australian rendition of Jingle Bells with everyone, which was very fun!
I made the wassails this year. The group’s favorite was Cranberry Wassail. Everyone brought treats to share, which made a great spread of snacks and sweats. Jeremy figured out how to use our real wood burning fireplace, and it added a natural cozy smell to yummy Wassail aromas. I really liked hosting our party in our smaller house. It gave a more intimate feeling to the festivities and was much easier to prep and clean-up.
Also during the season, Dallin constantly had the song “Grandma Got Ran Over by a Reindeer” in his head. We were able to make a video of him singing the whole thing so that his Great Grandma Robertson could hear it. Grandma always requested that song at Christmas time when I was a kid, so I knew it would bring a smile to her face during her battle with illness. She enjoyed the video and said, “Yep, that’s my favorite Christmas song!” She passed away a few weeks later, so this has become an especially tender thing for me.
Tradition: Go to The Nutcracker Ballet
It was exciting and overwhelming to see that San Diego had dozens of options for viewing the Nutcracker. All of the options were pricey and I almost decided to pass on it this year. But one day, some nutcracker music came on and Tanner asked with urgnecy, “Mom! Aren’t we gonna go to the Nutcracker this year? Do they have it here? Remember we go every year!” I was thrilled that he wanted to do it!
Dallin was really excited when I announced that I bought tickets. “Do you think the Mouse King will be a Queen like last time? Do you think they’ll have swords and fight like this? Bshh bshh bshh!!” We read our nutcracker books and listened to various pieces to refresh our memories. They were super excited to go!
On the day of the Nutcracker, Dallin ended up getting a horrible fever and had to stay home. He was genuinely upset to miss it, I was so sad for him. Tanner and I took an uber to the theatre and were surprised when our tickets wouldn’t scan correctly. Turns out we were scammed by a third party company. Long story short, Jeremy got in contact with the third party ticket people to give us a full refund and I bought real tickets from the box office. We made it into the ballet right after the overture finished. I didn’t think Tanner would notice that we missed the first 4 minutes of the show, but when he realized the overture was finsihed he said “Oh no! We missed the overture. That’s my favorite song!!” Wow, I did not realize he knows the Nutcracker so well.
👏👏Can I just get a round of applause for getting my two little boys to absolutely love the Nutcracker Ballet?!? 👏👏 Seriously. My heart melted so many times with all their sweet comments about the Nutcracker. 😍 And it feels SO good to tear down the cultural bias that ballets are only for girls. 😛
My favorite part of the actual ballet was that there was a live orhcestra! Tanner has never seen that before, so it was a really an amazing treat! I tried making comments to him during the show, to point out different instruments and elements of the ballet. Tanner said, “Mom, be quiet, you are distracting me!! Just let me watch the show!”😂😍 Another cool thing about this version is that they had a young apprentice to Sir Drosselmeyer who took a liking to Clara during the xmas party, and that boy ended up being the same dancer for the Nutcracker Prince. Very neat touch.
This sweater is a special hand-me-down from Jeremy. If it hadn’t been Jeremy’s, then Tanner would not have worn it. It took some convincing, but he eventually was a good sport to put it on for the ballet. He looked so handsome in it!!
Throwback to 1991 with Jeremy, age 8, in the same sweater.
Two Front Teeth
Dallin lost another tooth just in time to be able to sing “All I Want For Christmas is My Two Front Teeth.” Actually, he refused to sing the song because he did not want people thinking that he wanted teeth for Christmas.
It all happened just two days before Christmas. Dallin was playing mini basteball in his room with Jeremy and Tanner. Jeremy bumped Dallin’s mouth and the next thing Dallin knew, his tooth wasn’t in his mouth anymore! They found it on the ground. He was pretty surprised and had fun telling me what happened while I videoed him. This took his total count of lost teeth to 4. At this point, Tanner only had 2 lost teeth and was getting frustrated to not be losing more, but thankfully, he seemed genuinely excited for his little brother.
Random Adventures
We also had some random fun throughout the month. Jeremy found this nasty spider by our front door. Seems like every month or so we find another breed of gross, huge spider at our house.
Cornbread with dinner one night was a hit.
These reading buddies read a lot before and after school.
A pretty scene for Jeremy on his way to work one morning.
Rain!! And it got pretty chilly. Down to the 40’s.
The leaves finally turned on some of the seasonal trees here. Dallin and I collected a bunch of them to look at. We were gonna do a project with them, but this ended up being the extent of it. I really likes how Dallin organized them!
I should note that we did not make any visits to Santa this year. The boys never asked and I of course didn’t bring it up. But they did make some drawings of him and sang songs about him. On ocassion, the boys had fun talking about Santa being silly. “What if Santa was real and he…” followed by some rediculous thing Santa might do.
I realized that the only times we’ve taken the boys to see Santa was in MN at the Soup and Santa event that I helped create at the Hormel Historic Home. Funny thing is, I think the boys missed the Hormel Home more than they missed a visit to see Santa. They brought up the HHH several times this Christmas season. “Mom, remember all the Christmas trees at the Hormel home? I wish we could go see them.” “Mom, do you think that in the olden days they would make snowmen, like when Jay was a kid?” “Oh, remember the big nutcracker at the Hormel home?”
I was really excited to get a custom-made coloring page designed for guests at Soup and Santa this year. (I’m still volunteering with the HHH, helping remotely.) A special thank you to Loury Trader from Austin MN for the work she put into this!! Our family had fun coloring in the picture that she made of the Hormel Home. I colored mine in the best and liked it so much that I laminated it! I’m going to make this a tradition in our family, to color a new copy of this page each year as a reminder of our experiences there.
A neighborhood pipe busted one day, and we had a rushing river by our house!
Watching home videos, I think.
Tanner and Jeremy took a trip to the zoo on their bikes. Their ride there was not very direct and involved some busy streets. But they made it and saw some animals before it was dark.
Tanner’s latest art project from art class.
Tanner made a list of items to bring on a hike. He loves makes lists.
Jeremy’s holiday work lunch was out by the stadium. There was also a holiday party at a bar that we went to at night. It was fun to meet more of Jeremy’s coworkers.
Card that Tanner made for his classroom teacher.
When Christmas break began, I took the boys to this park to play. This is my kind of December!!
Also in December, I worked hard at getting the house ready for opening up shop for private voice and piano lessons. Within two weeks of advertising, I had 11 students and a wait list!! I was not expecting so many people right away. There was lots to look forward to in the coming months with getting Zavoral Music Studios on the ground and running here.
Items for voice
Items for piano
