December

I came here to do a year-in-review post but then realized I hadn't posted about some of the things we did in December, or Christmas so I thought I would do that first.  It's mostly just pictures.

We went to Roger's Gardens a couple of weeks before Christmas to soak up the Christmasy goodness.  They never fail to disappoint in that department.  The lights are magical.

Christmas tree hat!

They have some pretty cool gardening ideas. Joe was in love with this living wall thingy  to grow things in small spaces.

They have the cutest train set up.  I love the mini trees

How cute is this bear?

The biggest draw for me has to be the decorated Christmas trees.  I love to see the different themes and drool over the (overpriced)ornaments. So pretty!

This would be so cute for someone planning to propose on Christmas 

There were quite a few variations on the Santa theme

I loved this silver tree

Loved loved loved this church as well.  I miss my little collection of churches.  I might have to start re-collecting.  Lisa started me off with one for Christmas.

This is right before they kicked us out because they closed at 9:00.  9:00.  On a Saturday night.  Lame.  We didn't get to see everything we wanted and we told ourselves we would go back but of course we never did. Oh well, there is always next year!

The next weekend after that was the Christmas party for my job.  A fabulous time was had again this year.  I love where I work and the girls(and doctors) I work with.

My boss bought these headbands for myself and my co-workers. They.  Are.  Awesome.  I wore mine for a whole week.  Joe humored me and let me stick them on him and take a picture.

Last weekend we headed up North to spend Christmas with my sister and the kids. The kids were with their dad until Christmas eve so Joe and I drove up the coast to the Santa Cruz mountains to spend the day with Lisa.

Unfortunately Mother Nature did not want to cooperate with our plans and we battled monsoon-like conditions all the way there. We were not deterred.

The coast is still beautiful, even in the rain.

It was raining pretty hard when we set out for our hike but we were determined. One of my favorite things is walking in the rain so I was actually looking forward to it.

Ummmm....yeah, that was until about 15 minutes in and I was soaked to the bone and my jeans started feeling like they weighed ten pounds.  I had on a light rain slicker on top but from the waist down it felt like I had gone swimming.  In a very cold pool.  Brrrrrr.  But we soldiered on.

Slogging through the mud and the muck

I have to admit, the view from the top was worth it.

A well deserved rest at the top

Okay so when we crossed this bridge on the way up the water was running UNDER it and not OVER it. It wasn't until later that we found out there were flash flood warnings for that area.  Oops.  We very well could have been those stupid tourists that you see on the news who get swept away in flash floods and drown.  We were lucky.  We won't be doing anything dumb like that again any time soon!

Warm and safe back at the cabin

Drying off. Thankfully I had the foresight to bring an extra pair of clothes or I would have been miserable.

Despite the possible danger we had a great time on our little adventure.  We had a lovely dinner at the lodge before heading back to Lisa's house to let her dogs out(we let the dogs out-LOL).  They had obviously been bored because Sawyer opened a couple of the Christmas presents I had brought the kids. Just the paper and not the actual gift thankfully! 

The next day was Christmas Eve.  We picked up my Dad from the airport and settled in for two days of Christmas  fun.

We should have bought stock in Apple.  Seriously.  

A Christmas Eve tradition.  "You'll shoot your eye out kid"

Christmas morning the kids were up bright and early to check out the loot underneath the tree.

Grace painted this picture for her Papa.  She really is quite talented

I think one of Grace's favorite presents was this stuffed blueberry pie.  Kids are funny.  

Cameron got this goofy sweatshirt that he asked for.  When you zip the hood up over your face it looks like a skeleton face and you can actually see through the eyes. Like I said, kids are funny! He also got the IPod touch he was coveting, so it was a pretty good Christmas as far as he was concerned.

I got a couple of Christmas ornaments, since we lost all of ours in the move(don't even ask me how sad I am about that).  I also got some pajamas and a card reader for my Ipad so I can transfer pictures onto it. Oh, and I got an Ipod. That's right, my sister saw me eye-ing the Ipods(still cracks me up) and she bought me one for Christmas. It was a complete surprise.  

The rest of the day we lazed around in our pajamas and ate way too much.  It was perfect.  

My favorite part of the holidays:  The cheese plate.  yum.

I kept a close eye on this guy to make sure we didn't have a repeat of Thanksgiving. 

We had to come home on the 28th so I could work on Friday.  An hour and a half into our trip we came upon this:

Not something you want to see at the beginning of your six hour drive home!  Thankfully it only waylaid us by a half hour or so and we made it home safely in time for me to go into work on Friday.  We had no doctors in that day but my co-worker had family in town and I wanted to give her the extra day with them before the long weekend.

All in all it was a wonderful holiday season.  How was yours?