Christmas 2013

I usually stay in Boston for Christmas because I really hate traveling but this year I decided to visit my parents. I was at their place for 10 days and it was wonderful. A nice mix of hanging out at home working on my thesis (no downtime for me this vacation), having friends over for dinner or going out to dinner, shopping, going to the temple, watching football bowl games, texting with my nieces and nephews and just talking.

The first day we went to Garden of the Gods--a beautiful area with rugged red rock formations. Here I am working hard to hold up one of the rocks. They have a really cute trading post.

Our Christmas loot: very different from when I was growing up. We would get up at 5:00, my dad would turn on Elvis Christmas music and we would all come in to see what Santa brought. We would open gifts one person at a time, youngest to oldest. On this vacation I had to text my parents to see when I could come upstairs--it was certainly not 5:00 AM!

One thing that was similar is that we all received books. When I was a kid we would all go our separate ways after the morning gift-opening and spend the day reading. My brothers-in-law all think that was crazy, but I think some of my sisters would still love to do that if they didn't have kids to entertain. We didn't spend much time reading on Christmas though--spent most of the day on the phone, skype, Facetime and texting with family.

We invited Maureen over for dinner. She is a good friend with my mom. I hadn't met her before but she was so excited to meet me because she wanted some help with genealogy. She has been stuck on a brick wall trying to find the parents of one of her female ancestors. Hopefully I was able to give her some tips that might help. It was fun to get to know her.

On Friday we went to Denver to go to the temple and Deseret Book. My parents told me about the incredible cinnamon rolls that Deseret Book has, so I was really looking forward to that. I was really bummed when we found out they were sold out. But it was still fun to spend some time looking at some of the Mormon books. I ended up buying a few (of course!)

On our way home we stopped at a Mexican restaurant. I love this restaurant. The food is really good and the decor is awesome.

Later that day my mom and I went shopping and to the nature center at Garden of the Gods. On the way we stopped at the Glen Eyrie Castle. We had tried to get reservations for a tour but they were sold out until mid January. The guard was really nice though and said we could do a quick drive-by. Beautiful, isn't it? I would love to see the inside.

At the Nature Center someone told us about a dinosaur that we had to see. I love dinosaurs so we hunted it down. It has an interesting story. The bones were found in the 1800s, classified as a camposaurus and sent to Yale. In the 1990s Colorado wanted to put together an exhibit and requested the bones back. Turns out they were misclassified and this is a unique species. It's name means Garden of the Gods dinosaur.

They ask for donations and you choose which state's container you want to put it in. Look where MA ranks!

I watched part of the BYU bowl game with my dad--it was a lot of fun. Neither of us lasted much past half-time though.

 We went to Fargo Pizza restaurant Friday night with our friend Peg. It was such a fun place. It seats about 500 (its website says it is the largest pizzeria in the world) and the decor is 1800s-ish.

Even have a piano that plays by itself (not sure how to turn these around)

 Enjoying our salads

 Hot fudge sundae for dessert!

The girl in the chicken suit came in as we were finishing up. Apparently she lost a bet with her mom.

The last day I was there it was about 60 degrees so we went miniature golfing. I don't think I have done that since college. Even though my parents were very generous in giving me freebie shots, they still did much better than me. There were 3 options, we chose the Western one as it seemed appropriate.

It was such a wonderful time. I had so much fun with my parents and got some much-needed rest.