A White Denver Christmas

We decided to drive out a day early and surprise the Ipsons. We are glad we did because the night we arrived we got a foot of snow.

All that snow meant we got to shovel the snow and then we went sledding at Eaglecrest. Good thing we had Kattie's Suburban that we could all cram into. It was a pretty good hill and we all had a lot of fun. Our sledding trains were less than successful and there were several crashes.

Camberly helped Jerolyn make little flannel nightgowns for the twins so they would match the rest of the pjs. It was a challenge because we didn't have a pattern, so we had to make it up as we went along. Some of the other pjs needed a little work too.

Can anyone say awkward family Christmas picture?



Christmas Eve was full of the typical baking fest. Lots of cookies and treats and of course all the stuff for dinner. Kattie and I fulfilled Mom's dreams by playing the viola and violin together.

It made for a different Christmas morning to get up and head to 9am church. Afterwards we worked together to make our traditional Christmas breakfast/brunch. Finally we did the present thing and had lots of fun surprises.

It was a fun time with everyone all together--bowling, playing round robin ping pong, doing Wii Just Dance, playing Stack, sewing baby blankets for church humanitarian aid, and just hanging out.


We got to celebrate Anna and Millie's 1st birthday. It was fun to watch them chowing down on their cakes. Will certainly liked the heavy heavy hangover part of the gifts.

Sylvester and Sadie had a good time too. Sylvester quickly learned where to hangout during meals. The girls on their seats were just the right height for him and the food that fell off the trays were great treats. The kids all did great with the dogs as well. Will was a little timid at first but he would do sneak attacks to pet them both when they weren't paying attention. Millie didn't seem to care at all when Sylvester would get close and would just push him away if it was too much.

Sadie, ever the timid one, just tried to avoid most of the madness. She learned that Trenton was the calm one to hang out by.



By the end of each day Sadie and Sylvester were both exhausted from being on high alert around the kids and missing out on their typical all day naps.

NYC

WARNING: This post has a lot of pictures and so it is dedicated to Dale.

We spent the past couple days in NYC. There was an anesthesiology conference there and so we decided to take the opportunity to see the city decked out for the holidays. We flew down Thursday night and got to see all the city lights as we came in to land. After a fairly tame taxi ride, we checked into our hotel on Times Square.

We headed several blocks north to the Le Parker Meridian (5 star hotel) with a greasy burger joint in the lobby. Not sure it actually has a name, it is designated by a fluorescent sign shaped like a burger and it is hidden behind a big brown curtain in the lobby.

We took the subway from there down to the Empire State Building and headed up to the 86th floor to view the city. It was cold and windy up there.

Friday morning Camberly headed to the conference while Caleb went out to see more of the city. He went down to Battery Park and the World Trade Center Memorial and spent the morning taking pictures.

We met some friends for lunch at Max Brenner's for some chocolatey goodness and then went for a walk in Central Park.

We headed down 5th Ave. and saw the tree at Rockefeller Center.

It was tough to go into many of the stores because the sidewalks and stores were packed. So many people there. We did stop by Tiffany & Co and ended up at Macy's. Inside we headed all the way to the top where there was a line of kids waiting to see Santa. It has such fun old wooden escalators.

That night we went to see Wicked in the Gershwin Theater. It was really fun and puts a whole different spin on the Wizard of Oz. Afterwards we stopped and got some world famous cheesecake from Juniors.

Saturday we started off with the 9am Rockettes Christmas Spectacular at Radio City Music Hall. The inside was just amazingly decorated for Christmas--like the huge chandelier shaped like a Christmas tree and draped in tons of snowflakes.

The show was pretty amazing too. The best numbers were the tap routine The Twelve Days of Christmas and the toy soldiers. It was also nice because it actually included the Nativity which is pretty rare in commercial things now.

While Camberly and Ryan were doing their anesthesia stuff in the afternoon, Caleb and Amy spent went shopping. They found scarfs, wallets, hats, buttons, trim, pants, etc. They also stopped into Grand Central Station where they saw hundreds of Santas who were participating in a SantaCon bar crawl. That evening we all headed to the Russian Tea Room for a sumptuous dinner and then had one last stroll through hustle and bustle crowd in Times Square.

Sunday was time to head back home and after a much more eventful taxi ride we hit the airport and then finally home sweet home. What a fun weekend and we are glad we could share it with some friends.

Thanksgiving

For Thanksgiving we packed up the dogs and drove to Chicago to visit Isaac, Francie, and Trenton. Camberly's parents and Justin met us there for the holiday fun. We all made the new version of our traditional M&M turkeys. The food prep went without a hitch. Turkey, carrot souffle, stuffing, yams, rolls, green beans two ways, mashed potatoes, and a very odd looking apple pie to finish things off. (I can say that about the pie because I made it.).

Friday the "boys" went glow in the dark miniature golfing while Camberly and Francie hit up a few stores for Black Friday deals. Sadie, Sylvester, and Trenton were not quite sure what to think of each other. Trenton would watch them as they roamed around and the dogs would kind of keep their distance. Once we got them close thought Trenton had fun pulling on their ears and faces while they just laid there and put up with it. They are so good tempered. The best was when Trenton was face to face with Sadie and he grabbed the hair on both sides of her face and tried to pull him in to put her nose in his mouth (which we didn't let happen). We made everyone BYU t-shirts to wear to the pre-season basketball tournament.

Some people were less enthused than others about their BYU paraphernalia but we all had a fun time going to the game.

Saturday was nice and relaxing. We had lunch at Lou Malnati's a famous deep dish pizza place. The salad was all it was hyped up to be and the pizza was very good too.

Happy Thanksgiving

Hope everyone is having a good holiday. We have enjoyed spending time with some of Camberly's family. We made the traditional M&M turkeys, ate a delicious meal with some new recipes, and played some games. It was a fun day.

Quiltaway

Last week Camberly went to her first quilt retreat. It was just here in town and she didn't stay overnight but she spent a couple long days in a hotel ballroom with 60 other women sewing away. She went with six other ladies from work who have been going for years. They all did the mystery quilt. She got the fabric and cut it as specified before arriving and then got one step at a time to put it all together. So until the very end you couldn't tell what the quilt would end up looking like. The challenge is picking out the fabric without knowing what the quilt is. But happily it turned out nicely. It was a fun experience.

10 years