a little hike

We went on a little hike in the snow today. We bundled Charli up and borrowed a backpack to put her in and headed off to Boulder, where we started the day off right with coffee and hot chocolate and breakfasty burrito things at Brent's favorite coffee shop.

It was a really lovely day for hiking; it wasn't as cold as it has been. This is the coldest Christmas I can remember in Colorado! Charli was a little intimidated by the snow, but she had some fun walking around in it at the end. We were hiking around some NOAA facility, and it had a little museum attached to it with science displays about weather which were pretty interesting for everyone, including Charli, and we also saw deer, which Charli was very excited about. Sam REALLY liked the hike.

And here are some more cute pictures of Charli. Because you just can't get enough.

let them know it's christmas time again

Merry Christmas everyone! We hope you are having a wonderful wonderful time, and we wish you could all be here with us, so that you could have a mustache, too! Yes, we all got mustaches in our stockings. Charli really didn't like them - she refused to wear hers, and kept telling everyone else to "take it off! take it off!" I guess they freaked her out a little bit. It was OK for us to stick them on our bags, though.

For some reason, I hardly took any pictures this Christmas. I know, what's the world coming to, right? Seriously, I think I took less than 10 pictures all day long. Fortunately, Mom took some, and a bunch of videos, too - although the one featured in this post is by Brian.


Charli inspects a present on Christmas morning










Brian gets a well wrapped gift











Charli gets a purse full of interesting things (in the hopes that she will stop going through everyone else's purses)




But apparently the best gift was...

the eve of santa's birthday

According to the card Ceci sent us, anyway. :)

Our Christmas Eve has been quite lovely, thanks to the snow everywhere! I love a white Christmas!

As has become a new tradition (is there such a thing?), we had our homemade eggnog, which we start making sometime around Thanksgiving and stick in a dark cupboard for a month. All the alcohol prevents the eggs from rotting and poisoning us, or, um, something like that. In any case, once you get past the fear, the eggnog is truly delicious. Anyone who wants to take the risk with us should show up late afternoon on Christmas Eve. Charli couldn't have any, of course, so she had to make do with spaghetti and a noisy card about how great eggnog is.

Sometime after that, we had some exciting Christmas Eve present opening and jammie wearing! Thanks, Auntie Kelly!

snow! snow!

O my gosh, it snowed all night last night and most of the day today. There is over 6 inches of snow on the deck! This caused a slight bit of disaster as I got Charli ready to go outside (good thing we brought the snow pants!) and went outside with her and forgot about the potatoes I had in the oven which I was supposed to be roasting for the brunch we were having that day. Oops. They burnt.

Charli was very wary of the snow. She didn't want to walk through it (good thing I bought her some snow boots a couple of days ago!), and she hated the idea of wearing either her mittens or her gloves. She also refused to try to eat any of it, although she loves eating ice. However, she was pretty keen on trying to shovel - she doesn't realize it's work yet!

It's going to be cold tomorrow, so the snow won't melt, which means we're going to have a white Christmas! Yay! Yay!

cake

We went over to the Willett's for birthday cake (happy birthday, Sally!) yumminess. Julie was home visiting and we had a lovely time. Charli associates pretty much all cake with birthdays, and most candles, too, so of course she had some 'hap birday TO you' going.

This post is basically just somewhere for me to put this picture up.

tree day

We got an awesome deal on a Christmas tree by being too late to pick any of the ones that anyone else wants. We got it at the Fort Collins Nursery, where Mom likes to go because they are so nice there, and they were indeed really, really nice. They only had about 10 or 12 trees left, and they were all really tall and expensive, and maybe a bit sparse or lopsided on some. Since it was so late, though, the guy told us that he just wanted to get rid of them, and although the sign just said some % off, basically we should just make him an offer. He offered to sell us a $160 tree for $50, and said he could cut it shorter if that was a problem. Instead we got a $120 10-ft tall tree for $40, and I bet he would have sold it to us for $30 if I'd had the guts to ask for that. I mean, what's he going to do, save it til next year?

This is the biggest tree we have ever had. Here's Brent trying to put something on the top of it and getting heckled:

home for the holidays

Well, we had a pretty good flight to Colorado this time - especially since that was our actual destination! :)

We left pretty early, so we took Charli in her jammies and changed her on the plane. We took her some stickers (can you tell?) and a bag of stuff, and she had her own seat and was pretty reasonable about using her seatbelt (not always the case).

We flew Southwest and did this thing called EarlyBird check-in, which is brilliant: when you buy your ticket, you can give Southwest an extra $10, and they will put you in line automatically behind the business travelers and the people in the super duper rewards class. We were A19 and A20, and we got the bulkhead seats so Charli had a little extra space and couldn't kick the people in front of her, and all in all it was so worth the $20 we spent (I didn't get Charli the EarlyBird thing. What the hell). Brilliant.

Then after we got home, Dad showed up with a turkey that he had spent the day smoking at a neighbor's house. Delicious! I love being home. :)