Home for the Holidays

Thanks to my parents Sean and I were given the best Christmas gift...coming home! Prior to our trip, Sean and I started dreaming about all of the wonderful oven baked dinners and sweets we were going to eat. Most of the apartments here don't have ovens, and the people rarely have any sweets. If they do, it's just fruit after dinner. Which isn't a bad thing, especially for our waistlines. It was great coming home to see my family's house all lit up. Living in a foreign country really makes you appreciate every little thing that makes up our culture and way of life.

One of the things that I loved doing was going to pick out a Christmas tree with my Mom and sister, Ashley-Brooke. This brought me back to the olden days when my family would always go cut down a tree after we took our Christmas pictures at JCPenny's. This time we decided to suprise my dad and have the tree picked out, brought back home, and set up, before he got home from work.


We were successful, until we needed to drill a hole into the tree to get it into the stand. How many girls does it take to change a screw on an electric drill?

One

Two

Three girls and the neighbor's repair man.

My dad came into the driveway, just as Ashley and I were running back from the neighbor's house with the drill in my hand and the screw case in Ashley's. He was very concerned on what was going on, but became pleasantly surprised to see his little ladies doing all of the work for him. Wala!

Another special tradition my family does every year, is to go downtown to the Hotel Del Coronado. It takes two months to put up all of their lights and set up the tree. You can even go ice skating on the beach there!

Now every year the Del changes the theme of their christmas tree. This year, the theme was a Victorian Christmas. By far this was my favorite year! You can buy some of the ornaments in their gift shop, or wait after New Years for their auction. Such a girl thing, thanks guys for being such great sports.
Some of the decorations up close


We missed you Chelsea and Michael. Next year we can can all be together.