Meanwhile

I think the best part of taking a vacation around the Thanksgiving holiday is that you come home to all that is Christmas.

Unfortunately, Zach and I were both sick for quite a while right when we returned back to Utah.  I don’t know if it was the shock of the warm weather to bitter cold Utah temps or what, but we were pretty down and out.

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Even though he was incredibly sick, he still managed to surprise me with an early Christmas present:  boots I have been wanting for months!  I can’t begin to explain how thoughtful my husband is…

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Once we started to recover we spent lots of time with family and friends.  We attended a waffle party at our friend Chet’s place where we were all were adorned with paper crowns.

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There were work and family Christmas parties at the Layton Classic Skating, which is always a good time.

This year Zach and I didn’t send out Christmas cards.  I found out this week that Zach was pretty disappointed considering he wanted to write a little “blurb” about what we accomplished this year…

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Something that this wonderful narrative DOESN’T mention is how many Christmas carrot cakes I made with my grandfather over the last week.  I spent two days with him making his famous carrot cake and we completed 36 of them!  I finally learned how to bake them and managed to not mess everything up…too bad…

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I also put up all the Christmas decor and wrapped all of the gifts.

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My new favorite addition to our Christmas decor is a nativity set my mother-in-law bought for each family in Africa.  They were made by the Zulu women in their village outside of Johannesburg.  Surprisingly, it was the only black nativity we could find.  Most of them were white.  Besides, this one came with cool African animals instead of your regular barnyard friends.

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Christmas decor is not the only thing we put up, however…

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Our kudu horns arrived this week and it was less than 24 hours before they were hanging up in our bedroom.  I actually love them, even though I swore I would never EVER put up animal heads or parts of animal heads on the walls of my home.  Never say never, I guess.  Thanks Bieber.

Friday of this last week Zach realized he still had some time off for the year and decided to take the day off and spend with me.  First we hit up the Rail Gardens in Salt Lake.  I love to watch Zach mess around on his snowboard.  I hope our children are blessed with his incredible balance.

After our rail sesh we stopped at Lonestar for some fish tacos.

We spent the rest of our day running errands, picking up last minute Christmas gifts, and catching a late night movie.

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Even though it was the day before Christmas Eve, we got all our neighbor and friend gifts delivered.  I did several different gifts this year, but my favorite for my friends was the “Holiday Survival Kit”.  You know…cause the holidays are hard…

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And finally, because this deserves SO much suspense…

We had our farewell dinner for Candlestick Park.  The 49ers played their very last game at that stadium and Zach wanted to celebrate in his favorite way:  eating food and watching the game from 6″ away from the screen.  I promised him a Thanksgiving dinner and he decided this was the night to have it, because the 49ers deserved “the best of the best”.  There was the whole deal:  mashed potatoes and gravy, turkey, stuffing, rolls and jam, carrots, and egg nog in lieu of pumpkin pie.  There was also a salute (with his hand over his heart) during the game…

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They won, by the way.  It was a Christmas miracle!

We do the holidays pretty weird around here…

…but we ARE weird, so we wouldn’t have it any other way!

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