Christmas weekend felt so magical this year!

Baby R is just old enough to sort of enjoy some of the Christmas traditions we love, and hope to establish as our own family traditions.

After breakfast on Christmas Eve, we let Baby R open one gift. She was so excited to get a play vacuum and spent all day pretending to help vacuum the apartment! Even we had fun playing with her toy vacuum! Afterward, we put on some festive holiday music and made some gingerbread cookies for Santa. *wink* Jake showed Baby R how delicious cookie dough is and after that Baby R couldn’t get enough. While waiting for the batches of cookies to finish baking, we put on a special Christmas movie (really just any winter themed movie). This year, we put on Frozen. Baby R was enthralled for maybe 10 minutes before going off to play with her toys. Jake, having never seen the movie before, was more eager to find out what happens. This was our favorite day. It was so calm and peaceful. Amidst the busyness of Christmas weekend, we had a little moment to enjoy the holiday just the three of us.

The rest of the weekend and the few days after went by in a blur!

Christmas Day we spent with Jake’s family. And the day after Christmas we spent with Cindy’s family. As always, it’s nice to spend the holidays with family. We feel so lucky to have both of ours so nearby.

Other fun things we did the week before and after Christmas:

We saw Christmas lights at Sleepy Hollow (a festive little neighborhood in Torrance). We went last year and were amazed by how magnificent the light displays were. And we were equally amazed again this year! It was definitely more exciting now that Baby R can recognize some classic Christmas characters– snowman, reindeer, and Santa!

We watched Avatar 2, our first movie in theaters in a while! And were pleasantly entertained.

And we had our first family snow trip! It wasn’t exactly what we expected, but it still made for a memorable experience. We weren’t able to get tickets into the snow play area of the resort where the fluffy powdery snow was, so we were left to play with the icy snow on the side of the road. Baby R wasn’t a big fan. We spent a grand total of maybe 30 minutes trying to enjoy the snow before calling it quits and leaving. We did enjoy some breathtaking views on our way out.

We ended up going to Denny’s for a late lunch/early dinner and that turned out to be the fun part of the day! There’s just something nostalgic about Denny’s diners. It’s where we would stop by after long hiking or backpacking trips. Even though we didn’t do much, it felt like we were coming back home from a long snow trip.