Christmas as a family of three

Christmas this year was very special for our family - it was our first time celebrating with Carter! We have been looking forward to sharing Christmas with our children for years and it was so wonderful for it to finally happen. And if that wasn’t enough we were also privileged to have my Aunt Pat and Uncle Tim come and visit us from Santa Barbara to celebrate the holiday! They are like a second set of parents to me and a third set of grandparents for Carter and we were honored to have them here!

Pat and Tim arrived on Christmas Eve. We went to church for the Christmas Eve service and then headed out to P.F. Chang’s for a yummy dinner. Carter did well at the restaurant and even enjoyed some cuddle time with Aunt Pat after dinner.

Before bedtime Carter set out some egg nog and cookies and wrote a letter to Santa… well, I wrote the letter but I’m sure it was what Carter would have written, if he could write.

After what felt to be a short night we woke up to find that indeed Santa visited our house!

We caught Carter’s trip from his bedroom to the living room on video (a long-standing family tradition on my side of the family). Checking out the shoes seemed to be more exciting initially, but I’m sure that was because he didn’t know what was in store for him in the living room…

Then the fun began as we showed Carter how to check out all of the loot from Santa in and below his stocking (that my mom, aka Grammy, made for him)!

After this we headed into the family room where our Christmas tree was to open gifts under the tree from family and friends. The tree was certainly packed for only having five people’s gifts under it. What a blessing!

It was really fun teaching the little guy how to open presents and he caught on pretty fast! He’ll be a gift-opening pro in no time!

After opening the gifts under the tree we ate brunch, hung out, did some video calls to family, made dinner, ate dinner, and hung out some more - a pretty wonderful way to spend the day if I do say so myself!

We had a wonderful first Christmas as a family of three and we’re so glad we got to share it with Aunt Pat and Uncle Tim! We hope your holiday was wonderful, too! Merry Christmas!

Christmas traditions

One of the things that Dave and I love to do every year at Christmas is to buy an ornament that represented something from the past year. When we first got married we didn’t have many ornaments for our tree and we thought this would be a fun and meaningful way to fill our tree in the coming years!

So I thought it would be fun to look back on the past six Christmases we have spent together and do a little review of our ornaments and memories.



2007 - The year we got married and celebrated our first Christmas together
2008 - The year we celebrated our 1st anniversary and went white water rafting for the first time
2009 - The year we went camping every weekend that we could
2010 - The year I had the crazy idea to raise money (for work) by organizing a flamingo flocking fundraiser and we spent every night for a month picking up and dropping off plastic flamingos
2011 - The year we moved to California wine country
2012 - The year we finally found our church home and really felt a part of a community

It’s so fun to look back over the past years and remember many of the fun times we’ve shared since becoming a family. I am so looking forward to adding to our ornament collection in the years to come as our family grows and we make more memories together!

What are some of your favorite holiday traditions?

Christmas 2011

This year we celebrated our first Christmas in California. It looked a little more like September than December outside, and it was nearly 60 degrees - certainly not what we are used to, but a fun change!

Since we didn’t travel back to Colorado for the holiday to celebrate with our immediate families my Aunt Pat and Uncle Tim, who live 5ish hours away, came to stay with us! I was so excited to finally have the space to host my first holiday!!

On Christmas Eve Pat and Tim arrived and we all headed to our church’s Christmas Eve service. After church we went home for a bit to chat and eat some of Pat’s yummy appetizers before we headed out to look at Christmas lights and have dinner at a restaurant - one of my family’s Christmas Eve traditions.

On Christmas morning we all slept in before enjoying opening all of our gifts. Santa came for Gromit and he was super excited to check out what was in his stocking. And yes, we dressed him in dog pajamas that morning just to be cute.

 

Dave and I made out like bandits on Christmas morning and we have a lot of very generous family to thank for our wonderful gifts! The one thing that we are most excited about is that we were given money towards purchasing a dining room table and chairs! We do have a small, 4-person table in the kitchen area, but we want something a bit larger for the dining room so we can host more than two other people for meals. We are so excited!

After opening gifts we had a yummy Christmas brunch before spending more time hanging out, Skyping/talking on the phone with family members in other states, and eventually giving a driving tour of our new hometown.

One of my favorite parts of the holiday was preparing Christmas dinner. It was my first holiday meal and I was pleased at how it came out! We made balltip steak, mashed potatoes, green bean casserole, and rolls and Pat made a yummy salad. And then for dessert Pat and I made a really delicious pumpkin cheesecake. It was certainly a feast!

On Monday Pat and Tim had a great idea to take a trip to the Monterey Bay Aquarium. I had never been before so I was excited to go. Dave and I still think it is crazy that we live in the same state as all of these fun attractions. We all had a great time looking at all of the animals and Dave took some amazing photos!

After a few hours exploring the aquarium it was time for us to part ways and head to our respective homes. We had a great time spending Christmas with Pat and Tim and really enjoyed their company! Who knows, we may have to get together for every holiday!

I hope you all had a Merry Christmas!

Cute holiday find

Christmas updates are coming soon, but until then enjoy this cute video that Dave found. I love the part where Snoopy dances on the piano :-)

Merry Christmas!

Merry Christmas from our little family to yours!

Christmas lights

In our house, Wednesday night is date night and every week we try to come up with something fun to do for our designated quality time.

This week we had an awesome date - we had dinner at home and then went to a nearby Nestle Toll House Cafe for dessert. We had never been to one before so we were anxious to see what it was all about. Turns out you can order a custom ice cream sandwich and you could even pick the flavor of cookies and ice cream you wanted for your sandwich. So cool! I got chocolate chip cookies with double fudge brownie ice cream and Dave got the same cookies with peanut butter cup ice cream. Mmmmmm!

After we enjoyed our dessert we took a trip around town to see some local Christmas light displays - and Gromit was happy to be able to come with us in the car. Dave had gone online ahead of time to map out some must-see locations for us.

The first house had a gate where you could actually get out of your car and go on the property to see the TONS of lights they had set up in the lawn. The line for this was around the block so we figured we would try to go earlier on another night to beat the line.

Our tour continued.

One house had a cute Charlie Brown display complete with a little Christmas tree and single ornament.

A lot of the houses we saw had a bunch of random lawn ornaments set up. It was almost too much to take in.

Then, the last house we stopped at was the best house we’ve EVER been to. Ever.

The lights were synced to music and you could tune in and listen on your car radio. Now we’ve seen this before (live and on YouTube) and it seems like people pretty much do one of two things: 1. They sync it to music that everyone else uses to sync lights to, like Trans-Siberian Orchestra stuff, or 2. They have waaaaay too many decorations out and it’s hard to take it all in because things are just blinking left and right and you feel like you might be sent into a seizure. But not at this house.

The music was different than anything we had heard before - there was something Disney-like about it. There weren’t too many decorations and there weren’t too many things on all at once. There were no crazy lawn ornaments, just lights. And get this… there were also synced water fountains and a waterfall.

Seriously.

It was perfect! The best Christmas light show we have ever seen. Even Gromit seemed to enjoy it.

This house is now permanently on my must see list… and I think I’ll be going back to see it again tomorrow. And the next night. And the night after that. You get the idea :-)

All I want for Christmas is… a mantle!

When we moved into our house in California one of my favorite things about the house was the fireplace, but I noticed that one thing was missing - a mantle!

Luckily I married a smart and handy engineer who told me that he could build me a mantle and use some existing holes in the brick to support it - so that we wouldn’t damage anything. What more could a girl ask for?!?

A few weeks ago we went to Home Depot to get some wood, braces, and stain - and so began the building process. Dave soon took over the garage cutting wood, staining, and gluing. This weekend he finished up and he installed the final product:

It’s a mantle! And it is so beautiful! And my favorite part about it is that Dave made it for us. It just makes the home more complete, don’t you think? And I’m so glad he got it up just in time for Christmas. My nativity set and stockings needed a place to live!

Now it’s starting to feel more like Christmas! Thank you Dave for doing such a fantastic job - you’re the best husband ever!

Christmas Vacation

Sorry for the lack of updates during the holidays, but I was busy having a good time with Dave, friends and my extended family! So, here’s the holiday catch-up:

For the very first time, Dave and I decided to spend Christmas Eve and morning together with no other family or friends. We have spent the last three years going between my parents’ house and his parents’ house and there was barely any time for us to spend as a family starting new traditions together. This year it was very important to us to spend time together as a couple, deciding what is important to us and starting new traditions for our family. Besides, who knows how long it will be until our focus for Christmas will shift to kids!

We took a short day trip to Estes Park do to some last minute shopping and drive through Rocky Mountain National Park (to see some snow since it hadn’t snowed where we live). It was a lot of fun and a was also a nice little getaway for us!

That night we went to church, went out to dinner and then went to look at Christmas lights all over the city. We came home, lit a fire and watched a movie and went to bed (after we filled each other’s stockings!). It was a great, relaxing evening and Dave and I were so glad that we got to spend that time together!

Christmas morning we slept in (hooray!), looked in our stockings and opened gifts from one another. We cooked breakfast together and enjoyed hanging out doing nothing for a while. It was a great morning!

We spent the rest of the weekend celebrating Christmas with Dave’s parents. After that we headed to the mountains with my family to celebrate the holiday, spend time with my parents, siblings, aunt and uncle and especially to spend some time with my brother, Curtis, before his wedding in April. We went tubing and skiing, all hung out together in the hotel getting to know each other batter and had a great time!

All in all it was a great vacation for us and we really enjoyed being able to spend some quality time together and with our extended families. I hope you all had a great holiday season as well!

Merry Christmas Eve Day!

To continue on the video theme...

This may be one of the cutest and most creative things I've seen retelling the Christmas Story. So on this Christmas Eve day enjoy this video and remember why we are celebrating this week. Merry Christmas!

Digital Christmas

I saw this fun video on You Tube telling the Christmas Story in a fun and social 21st century way. Enjoy!

Merry Christmas

It's Christmas time!

Christmas is coming faster that I thought it would this year. It seems like it was July just a few short weeks ago - where has time gone?!? The good news is I think I'm actually ready for Christmas this year:

• Our tree is up and decorated
• Our mantle is decorated with lighted garland, stockings (I even bought one for Gromit), my nativity scene and candles
• Our icicle lights are hung outside our apartment
• Our home-made wreath is hung on our front door
• I designed, wrote and printed our Christmas letter
• I designed, ordered and picked up our Christmas picture
• I signed, addressed, stuffed, stamped and mailed (most of) our Christmas cards
• I made my best attempt at giving my blog a Christmas design makeover
• And we're going shopping for gifts today! Now if only I could decide what to get my sister...

Bring on the holiday goodies - I'm ready for a break!