While there, we did some shopping, or at least window-shopping.  We did buy a few souvenirs and quite a bit of chocolate, though, and Amanda and I bought Jessica McClintock dresses. The dress was definitely a splurge for me, as I have no clue what I'm going to wear it to. But it fits nicely, only cost $65 (instead of $170), and is really different from any of the other dresses I own. I'm sure I'll find some excuse to wear it!

We also got to see the SF Ballet perform the Nutcracker. It was amazing, though I was kind of tired and had a harder time paying attention.  I've seen other productions of the Nutcracker, as I usher at a local theater, but none were nearly this good. They had a different interpretation of some scenes than I've seen before, too, so it was interesting to compare different productions.  Also, the little kids attending the show were adorable! Surprisingly, there were a ton of them there (all dressed up in their best clothes), and it wasn't even one of their "family nights". It was a matinee, though, and I'm guessing parents would rather bring their little kids to an afternoon show than an evening one.   Anyway, I heard one parent ask her little boy (maybe 5 years old) whether he liked the show. He said he did, but it was "kind of girly", which I thought was pretty funny. Another boy (a bit older), however, was dancing around after the show. Hooray for getting more boys to dance!

Oh, and of course, the main thing we did in San Francisco was eat!  (Yes, I like food probably a bit too much...) We didn't have a whole lot we couldn't have gotten anywhere else, but it was all really good!  The first night we ate at Bubba Gump's, overlooking the Bay.  The next day, I introduced Amanda and Jennifer to dim sum, at a random little place we found in Chinatown.   We ordered up at the counter rather than off of carts rolled around the room, but it was yummy and cheap.  I'll still have to take them to a place closer to home that has the carts and more of a selection sometime, though. We also ate at Rain Forest Cafe, which I hadn't been to in years, and had Boudin's famous clam chowder in a sourdough bread bowl. Our most unhealthy dinner was crepes, which we got from a place off Pier 39. I got one with cream cheese and raspberry jam. It was REALLY sweet! I loved it, but by the end I don't think I could have taken any more sugar. I don't remember all what else we ate, but we were rarely hungry!

We got back from San Francisco on the 21st. Last weekend, I spent a lot of time with my immediate family, as well as with my dad's side of the family. We see two of his sisters a lot, but it was great to see the family we don't see so much.  My two little cousins on that side are so cute!  Christmas day, we drove up to Fresno to see my mom's side of the family.

That afternoon, we went to a Alzheimer's nursing home to give a little Christmas show for the residents, which has been our tradition for the last few years. My sisters sang a nice duet, my four youngest cousins on that side played piano (they're really good), and my other set of cousins tried to do a couple of sax trios, but only ended up doing one because they were having problems with one of the saxes.  My brother and I were the ones who didn't really have a talent to show off. In previous years, I'd played my flute, and maybe sang, but I haven't touched my flute in months and I really don't sing all that well.  By the time we got in the car on the way to the nursing home, we decided we were going to sing something simple in unison (my sister said it was lame, but we just wanted to do whatever would be easiest), but we still had no clue what we were going to sing. During the car ride, our sisters ended up daring us to sing the 12 Days of Christmas complete with ridiculous hand motions.  So we did it. And I ended up forgetting some of the words, and laughing too hard in places to sing at all.  So yeah, we pretty much made a fool of ourselves. But at least we got two dollars each out of it! My cousins (the sax players) said they wouldn't have done it for only $2 each, but I told them I would have made a fool of myself no matter what I did, so at least this way we didn't look like we were trying not to. And hey, my grandma at least loved the act! It took awhile to convince her that we had made the entire thing up in only like 10 minutes.

Let's see, what else did we do in Fresno?  All the Christmas-y stuff, of course.  And we watched quite a few movies. Most were DVD's, but we did go to the theater to see Juno with some movie tickets we had (well, most of us did. My brother and my dad saw National Treasure 2). It's a really funny and cute movie, though I thought the dialogue was a bit over the top in places. Oh, and my brother got Guitar Hero for Christmas, so we've played that a lot the last few days.  I'd never played before, and it's actually quite a bit of fun! I'm not too good, and I get bored of it after awhile, but I enjoyed it more than I thought I would.  We also went bowling. Now, I'm really bad at bowling, though I like doing it. Last time I played, I got 9 gutter balls in a row. So my first game this time was really good for me! I got a score of 76 (don't laugh) . But the second game, I got 36. Ouch...