12/05/08 - Drove in an awful winter storm to Colorado. Got there just in time to watch the Denver Holiday Parade. Lots of lights, giant balloons, and festive floats.
12/06/08 - The reason for going to Colorado! Brent's niece Natalie was in the State of Colorado Cheerleading Competition, and WON!!! Her team was so amazing and fun to watch. We were so glad we could be there to see them compete in such a huge competition, and then to win made it even better.
12/07/08 - While we were in Denver we took the girls to High School Musical On Ice. That was really fun. They were all very talented.
12/13/08 - TaVaCi Program. This year's program was full of holiday cheer. Gracy (6) was asked to sing a solo and she did so wonderful. She practiced for weeks before and loved all the special attention. Lexy got to be in the "boom wackers" specialty number where they play a christmas song by wacking sticks that sound like each note. They all did a great job and played it perfectly.
... This is where we took some time to play in the snow, Lexy finished up her baskeball season, and we tried to prepare for the holidays.
12/18/08 - We left late at night to get a head start on our drive to California for the Holidays. This trip came about because we bought tickets to the BSU/TCU Bowl game in San Diego which was on the 23rd of December. We decided that we could take our vacation time, christmas vacation, and the bowl game and wrap them all into one nice package. Thus, Christmas in California.
12/19/08 - A very long, long, long, drive all day...
12/20/08 - Legoland was our first adventure. That was such a fun day. Warm weather, fun rides, good friends. Oh yeah, I forgot to mention the best part of all. Our friends, the Smith's, planned their trip with us. We are all extemely CRAZY Bronco fans, so when we said we were going, we all decided to go. What a blast. The kids had the best time looking at all the stuff made out of Legos. Everything in the pics are made of them. Really cool!
12/21/08 - Went to church, played games and had lunch in our room, drove to the San Diego Temple and listened to a ward sing songs for Christmas. It was low key. Just perfect for a Sunday.12/22/08 - The weather played a bad joke on us and rained ALL day, no joke. But that didn't stop us from going to Sea World. We were soaked from morning to night, but, I don't think anyone noticed. Sea World is so fun. There are so many great shows. Gracy tried to pet the dolphins, but with no luck. They just kept swimming past, teasing her.
12/23/08 - Wild Animal Park and the Poinsettia Bowl. We took a tour ride around acres of land seeing giraffes, zebras, and many other animals. The kids all got their faces painted to get ready for the game. The game was at Chargers Stadium which is so huge. Unfortunately we couldn't keep our lead and we lost 17-16. It was a good effort. We all went home pretty bummed.
12/24/08 - Decorated our "blue" Chrismas tree. Made cookies for Santa. Swam. Played in the rec center at the resort. The girls opened a present from me, p.j.'s, and went to bed early to be ready for Santa.
12/25/08 - Christmas morning the girls slept in til 8:00. Yeah! Then saw all the wonderful things Santa brought. They were so excited to get a Nintendo DS, games, movies, journals, purses, etc... Brent got a portable BOSE ipod player and headphones, I got stuff for my cricut, a sewing machine for scrapbooking, a BSU soccer ball. It was pretty awesome. Then we got ready and ate a huge buffet lunch, went to Forever Plaid Holiday theatre show, and spent the rest of the day hanging out together. It was great.
12/26/08 - Brent's Birthday. We took him (wink, wink) to Disneyland. We had so much fun we decided to go back two more days. There is a lot to do there. The girls had a blast on all the roller coasters. Between California Adventure and Disneyland we were exhausted after 3 days of walking, running, and riding. Gracy's fav. ride was Space Mountain, of course we had to force her on it the first time through tears and wailing. Lexy's fav. ride was California Screaming, a wildly fast roller coaster. By now, we've been gone so long that none of us want to come home. The weather is great, the beach is full of sea shells, and every day is full of adventure.
We had such a fun time and are grateful for the fun holiday we had. We hope you had a very Merry Christmas and a great New Year. Happy 2009.
