Well you've read about the Christmas tree excursion that was kind of a disaster, although now it will be a really great story, but other than that glitch we have enjoyed our first Christmas season in Colorado. Gabriel is 3 1/2 so he is really excited because he understands now what it means to celebrate Christmas, and Judah is fun too because he just turned one and he is just at a precious, delicious age. Andy and I were excited to spend a quiet Christmas at home with just the four of us.
On Christmas Eve we decided to venture to downtown Denver to see what kind of merriment we could find. We had a late breakfast at this cute little book store called The Tattered Cover and then wondered around the old building it is in and enjoyed thumbing through books. The upstairs is particularly authentic, resembling on old library complete with antiques. This posed a bit of a problem as the boys tried to play with them, but we managed to avoid actually breaking anything and made our way out the door when it became clear that the boys needed to burn some energy.
We walked down 16th Ave, which is closed off to traffic, and took in all the Christmas cheer manifested as lights, decorations and music. They had a large Christmas tree too, although of course not as big or elaborate as the Rockefeller tree in New York. We stopped at a clock tower about half way up the street and noticed there was an ice skating rink. Did we dare with a 3 year old and a baby? Yes we did! I will say that Judah was pretty unhappy and cried both in the carrier and out, but I took to the ice with Gabriel. It was fun, but man it was a lot of work. Keeping myself upright while keeping him on his feet too was taxing. We made it around the rink a few times and enjoyed the experience overall.
After our downtown adventure we headed home for some hot cocoa and Christmas baking. The boys opened their Christmas Eve jammies and we got ready to welcome Christmas morning. Andy and I had our work cut out for us as we had to assemble and set up the boys Christmas gift, a train table and train set! We also had to send Elfie on his way home back to the North Pole (Elfie is our version of elf on the shelf, except he doesn't report to Santa who is good and bad, he just makes silly messes and tries to learn to be a good elf by watching the boys - the main idea is we all need grace). It also started to snow on Christmas Eve and we thought "how nice that Colorado gave us a white Christmas for our first year here".
When the boys (or Gabriel I should say, Judah likes to sleep late) woke up they spotted their stockings and immediately lit up ... they were so enthralled with them that they didn't even see the train table set up with a giant red bow on it! After a bit of direction from us, Gabriel spotted the train table and ran over to it! He was thrilled! I think he played with the trains for several hours, even skipping breakfast to concentrate on his trains. Andy and the boys spent a lot of the day making different train track configurations. Judah spent a lot of the morning eating his way through his stocking!
In the afternoon, we went out to play in the fresh fallen snow, what a treat! None of us has ever had a white Christmas before. It made our Christmas even more special. Merry Christmas from the Goodwins!
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| Can you see the strain on my face? |
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| Time for Christmas Eve jammies! |
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| Giving Tsali his stocking treat |
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| Our porch ... |
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| Playing in the snow |
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| A few days after Christmas we went to our favorite restaurant, Denver Biscuit Company! |
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Our 'hood covered in snow
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