A Train Ride and Christmas Eve

There's a first for everything.  A few days before Christmas, we decided to take BART to Union Square to meet up with Matt's family for lunch at The Cheesecake Factory.  It's pretty ridiculous that we don't take advantage of BART more often, considering how close we live to the station, and how convenient it is to hop on and go downtown so easily.  But, we had never made the trip as a family before, so of course, we had to get some pictures to document this momentous occasion.   

Doesn't Bridget look like she needs a little briefcase to complete the look here?

And, Megan won't always be so excited to ride BART.  For now, though, this was pretty awesome in her book!

Next, we celebrated a Stecher Christmas Eve at our house. Yikes!  I'd like to say that I'm the type of person that loves to entertain large groups in our home, but...I'm not.  If we had a bigger house and older children, it'd be a breeze!  As it is though, just getting through a typical day in this house is insane - fun, but insane - and the house is definitely not company-ready on a typical day. When you add in hosting a dinner for over thirty to this typical day, it puts me a little out of my comfort zone.  Martha Stewart I am not.  Someday, when I don't have little ones hanging on my legs with every step I make, I'll throw fabulous dinner parties.  Until then, my M.O. for any of our parties has me preparing as much food as possible ahead of time, during naptimes and after bedtime the night before, and supplying lots of cartoons for the kids while I prep and clean the day of the party.  Our dinner this year was a very gourmet frozen lasagna with a couple of salads.  Someday, I'll also be more adventurous in our menus.

It was definitely our turn to host, though.  We last hosted Christmas Eve four years ago, when Megan was 8
months old, and at the time,  I thought that was hard.  Ha!!   

I don't have very many photos from that night, but I did manage to get a few.  Tessa and Annie were little clowns for Grandma and Grandpa, thanks in part to the large quantities of Capri-Suns consumed during the course of the night, as Tessa is not-so-subtly showing off in this picture.

Yep, they were definitely caught in the act!  I blame the host for placing those on the floor.

And, we managed a family shot where we all look somewhat normal :)

At the end of the evening, we had our work cut out for ourselves.  We cleaned up and everything was in it's place just in time for Santa to fill up the living room again!

(Yes, Santa wraps all of the presents for our house.  I never realized he did this at some people's houses until I met Matt ;)  Just one of the many things we didn't realize we "disagreed" on until we had kids.  Needless to say, I let Matt win in this arena, and I can claim some bigger victories!  What does Santa do at your house??)