Christmas 2013

This year we stayed home for Christmas in California with Ian's family.  We enjoyed a fun-filled week filled with activities to celebrate the season.  We went down to the Los Angeles temple to hear Brad (Ian's dad) sing in a Christmas concert.  We also took time to walk around the grounds and see the lights.

We enjoy attending the Brush Family Christmas party every year.  The Finlay's neighbor is a food stylist and always puts on an incredible display of food.  This year there were over 30 different types of desserts.    

We took a trip to look at the holiday lights at the Balian Mansion with the whole family.  It is a famous stop here in California to look at lights.

The women in the Finlay family always go to breakfast on Christmas Eve morning at Mimi's Cafe.  It was fun to be with everyone.

There was a big crew for Christmas Eve dinner this year.  

As always, the food was delicious.

We enjoyed singing Christmas carols together.

This year for the first time, we acted out the Christmas story.

This year Ian and I woke up early and celebrated Christmas morning together.

We then headed over to Larry and Lisa's home for a big Christmas breakfast.

The guys.

The Christmas gift exchange is always a big chaotic but fun.  

San Francisco

Ian works a lot in San Francisco so I flew up to meet him for the weekend.  We love San Francisco, but especially during the holidays.  We started out meeting Ian's Aunt Helen and her three daughters for a performance of the Nutcracker at the San Francisco War Memorial Performing Arts Center.  This was where the Nutcracker premiered in the United States.  The theatre itself was amazing and the performance was second to none.

 

We stayed at the St. Francis hotel in Union Square.  This nice gingerbread castle was in the lobby.

We tried to do some new things in the city that we don't normally do.  One of those bucket list items was to visit the cable car museum.  It was very interesting to learn about how the cable cars work.

Luckily, Ian has an incredible sense of direction.  He was able to find the fortune cookie factory.  Or, more like a really small room off of some random ally.  The cookies were sure good though.

We both have our favorite foods in San Francisco that we must get every time we visit.  For me, I can't pass up the clam chowder and sour dough bread bowl at Boudins.  

For Ian, it is the pork sandwich at the Farmer's Market on Saturday mornings.  We woke up early and stood in line for a while to make sure he got one because they sell out so quickly.

The weather was perfect during our weekend stay.  

We always like to try new restaurants when we travel.  This trip a vegetarian restaurant was recommended so we decided to give it a try despite the fact that neither of us are vegetarian.  As you can see from the pictures, we still don't really know what we ate there.  It was pretty good, but we may stay away from strictly vegetarian restaurants in the future:)

Because Ian is in school most weekends, this trip was a rare free break that we considered our "Babymoon".  

I'll Be Home For Christmas

Ian and I traveled to Denver for Christmas.  We woke up Christmas morning to a snowy, white Christmas.  I don't know how I managed to get through a whole five days of activities and not take a single picture on my camera!!!!  Well, I was actually trying to be techy and take pictures on my phone but my phone had a glitch and all the pictures were erased.  We had a madrigal dinner where you sing songs in between courses which we really enjoyed.

The day after Christmas we went snowshoeing with Nathan, my Dad, the woman he was dating at the time Julie, and her two sons.  The trails in Evergreen were perfect that day.

Ian and I enjoyed being in the beautiful Colorado mountains and snow for a few days.  We have so many happy memories from Colorado.

My brother Nathan.

Stopping for some hot chocolate half way through.

Christmas

We spent Christmas this year in California with the Finlays.  We started the week off with a girls only breakfast at Mimi's Cafe.

We toured some of the floats being made for the Parade of Roses.  As you know, everything that goes ont he floats for the parade must be living material or once living material.  The details are incredible.  A woman was putting cinnamon on the cheeks of this monkey to add color.

The Finlays neighbor, Larry, invited us all over for homemade pizza in his outdoor pizza oven.  

Christmas Day.

 The annual ping pong tournament.  We never did find out the winner...

 The whole Finlay and Ferguson families on Christmas Day.  

Christmas 2010

Our Christmas season was filled with so many wonderful parties, friends, and family activities.  However, it really feels like Christmas when I hear the Christmas music.  My thoughtful husband miraculously got us tickets to the Mormon Tabernacle Choir Christmas concert the weekend before Christmas to see David Archuletta.  We enjoyed our quick trip to Salt Lake City and as always, the concert was fantastic and we felt lucky to be able to go.    

My whole family except for the Lintons were here in Denver for Christmas!  We all started our week together with a good day of skiing.  This is the whole crew on the top of the mountain.  What a miracle my mom was able to ski with us!  

My siblings.  We missed Jennie and Lindsay!

 My brother-in-law Kris used to be a ski instructor and decided to lead my mom, Ian and I on some fresh powder.  This is a picture of my first attempt to ski powder - I am the black blog in the snow!  However, once we got going it was really fun.

The next day we saw a Christmas Carol in downtown Denver.  

My Grandma Darlene got to come to our house for Christmas!  We loved spending time with her and our other Curtis cousins on Christmas Eve.  For the first time ever we had as many men in the house as women!  Here are the three brother-in-laws. 

 All the siblings with our new Christmas Eve slippers.  

My little brother Nathan set up a double elimination foosball tournament that went all weekend long. It was very intense with hilarious commentary from Brent and full length filming by Nathan.   

 Team BLT won (the Brent Lindsay Team) after a very close championship game against the Kris Twice team (Kristen and Kris).  

We loved spending so much time with family and just enjoying an extended amount of time together when Ian didn't need to travel around the country!  We are looking forward to another great year.