Holiday Break in Denver and Boise!

Back in August we decided to visit my mom and brother in Denver for Christmas. We checked out flight prices and found a great deal if we left on Christmas Day. So we opened presents, ate cinnamon rolls and headed to the airport. We were in Denver before dinner!

We spent our time in Denver with family, of course, enjoying holiday time. We also are huge fans of Meow Wolf and hadn't had a chance to visit the new location in Denver since it had opened. We even spent a day down in the Springs hitting up some memory spots like our old house, the kids' old school, Culver's, and Garden of the Gods.

Christmas Dinner and presents!

I showed my mom this blanket pattern a few years ago and she surprised me with a finished one! It'll be perfect for my holiday decor (and any time, really!)

It's meow wolf day! Wake up Cade!

Meow Wolf- Convergence Station- Probably our second favorite Meow Wolf now!

My mom and brother's cat- Misty!

Garden of the Gods- It was SOOO busy. We wanted to hike around much more but couldn't find parking near the trails. So here's Balanced Rock :)

The boys both wanted to stop by their old school. They really loved it here. Wonder if they would still love it as high schoolers?

We miss culvers!

Also, in a lucky chance, the Broncos and the Bengals were facing each other so we set up some Charcuterie and made pizza for the game!

Not sure why or how, but Colorado still has such a hold on our family. I can only hope we'll end up living there again someday!

Dan also hadn't been able to visit his parents for awhile so instead of flying home and then driving out to Boise, we had our return flight take us to Boise where we spent a few days bumming rides off of family, and then when it was time to go home we did a one day car rental, drove back to SEATAC and picked up our car from the airport and headed the rest of the way home.

While in Boise we spent time with all the Idaho peeps. We stayed at Kristina's house which allowed visits with Nana Dee and Papa Jon. We even did an escape room in lightning fast time, lol. We also rang in the new year with Brett's family, great food, and their traditional Bingo game! 

New Years Day came quick and it was time to head into 2025 with only a little bit of time left before school and work would resume.

Highlights of 2024

• Cade graduating and going to Oberlin!
• Alex turning 16 and getting that driver's license :)
• Dave Matthews Band!
• ALL. THE. MUSIC.  we all had our share of performances and growing experiences!
• Alaska cruise- great reason to see family and a new place!

The Holidays in Washington!

 The holiday season is often long and quite involved! We started our holiday season off with a celebration of Yoshi's birthday!  A little known fact about me is that Yoshi is my favorite mario character, and Super Mario World is my favorite game. Lego must have been reading my mind when they created this awesome lego set! Our family had never put one together until now, and we may be a little bit obsessed!

My only picture of our Thanksgiving is this cream cheese, cranberry, jalapeno spread we made for an appetizer. This will be a new staple at our table each year! We spent the day with some of our oldest military band friends and a friend from college and his family. It was untraditional and still totally awesome.

As a musical family the holidays also means lots of performances! Here are some pics and clips of many of our musical outings:

Here's some pics of the screen catching Cade's performances at Oberlin! So exciting to hear everything he's up to. I wish my parents had been able to watch all my performances while I was far away from home!

Here's Alex and I at the SOGO HoHo!

Look who's home for the holidays!

My classroom all ready for the Wildcat Choir to do their winter performance!

They did great!

I actually got to see Dan's holiday performance this year- usually we end up with performances on top of each other.

Alex had a most excellent holiday choir concert!

And don't forget the Messiah sing-along at the Washington Center. The SOGO kids do such an amazing job, and Cade got to come back and play with the group. 

In case you can't tell, the Washington center had fake snow falling outside the main doors

Dan found a friend to sing the Messiah with, lol

Goofy cade faces

The brass kids played in the lobby after the Messiah

This is our second year cutting down a real tree. This tree was full, beautiful and REALLY hard to take down at the the end of the season, none of us wanted to say goodbye to it.

I tried a few new ways of decorating our house...

This is a window above our front door

Dan and I did a date night to my work holiday party at Insert Coin. They had different character hairs on the mirrors in the bathroom. Heya peach! Afterwards we went to the glass museum in Tacoma and caught the end of the boat parade with all of their christmas lights!

Can you believe these bugs are made of GLASS???

The Messiah performance was on December 23rd this year and that left one day of Christmas celebrations before beginning our travels for the holiday break. Cade spent the first portion of the day with Jorie and her family- they are WAY too cute!

While they celebrated at Jorie's house we celebrated with the three of us and some smash burgers and fries, our new Christmas Eve tradition two years running.

Also a second year in the running is our Christmas eve games. And not just tabletop or jackbox games, we're talking games that get messy and silly. First up was using those roll-up party blowers to transfer straws to your neighbor.

Then unraveling a roll of crepe paper to see who could do it the fastest, and then making a mess!

Then our favorite, slide the soda can and land in certain spots for prizes or dares. Alex got his nails painted. Jorie got to throw a whipped cream pie at Alex, and Cade had to try and chug a sprite.

Playing piano duets!

We all had a wonderfully cozy evening of fun and games and then got ready for bed. We may have used our early christmas present.

Christmas morning came and went with some light presents and cinnamon rolls early in the morning so we could head to the airport to visit family. First stop Denver!

Dan had this made for me at the glass museum without my knowledge! Love a melted snowman!