Christmas 2013

Brad and I left for our trip to Utah on Monday after work, since we were driving and it was around midnight we stopped in Reno for the night and finished our journey on Christmas Eve. We did sneak Gambit into the hotel with us, I had wrapped him in a blanket and carried him like a baby, it worked out well until Gambit didn't like the blanket over his eyes anymore so he stuck his nose out...luckily no one in the elevator said anything, and we were gone too early in the morning to suffer any consequences. 


My brother had bought me a crochet book for Christmas so as we were driving through Nevada I taught myself how to single/double/triple crochet and by the time we got to Utah I had made a scarf.

Christmas morning was quiet, Brad and I got up with his parents and his brother Justin and opened our stockings.

Gambit got a new hat to keep him warm in Utah

Christmas afternoon was hectic, as it tends to be with 7 grandchildren, 11 adults and 2 dots, but I wouldn't want it any other way. It was so much fun to see everyone all at once and watch all the kids open their gifts!

After the gifts and food we played, what has become a tradition, a dice game with prizes in the middle of the table. If you roll doubles, you get to choose a prize, otherwise you keep passing the dice, this goes until all the prizes are gone. At this point a timer is set and you continue to roll the dice, this time if you get doubles you can steal an item from someone else's pile, but only if you remember correctly who has it. At the end of the time you walk away with whatever you've managed to keep hidden or stolen from someone else in the family. Good family fun!

Early Christmas 2013

Knowing this might be our last Christmas for the next 3 years while Brad and I are living in Japan, we decided to have Christmas with my family the weekend prior, since this year was our year to go to Utah and we otherwise wouldn't get to spend Christmas with my family.

I really loved being able to have it at our house, it was fun to have so many people sleeping over and all the excitement that comes with a house full of guests. Our gift to my family this year was a ride on the Santa Cruz Holiday Lights Train. Unfortunately, I can't find any of my pictures from that train ride, but it was fun and I was able to snag one from my mom's facebook, this was at the end of the ride, the boys were tired, as you can tell from their expressions, but I promise they had fun. 

Santa was on it and he came around and took pictures with everyone, we drank hot cider and sang Christmas carols, it was truly a special memory I will hold dear to my heart. To commemorate that I also bought little train frame ornaments and printed a picture of all of us and put it in the frame and gave one to my parents and my brother and kept one for us.

Saturday we made gingerbread houses and hung around the house.

The next day we woke up to "Christmas" morning.

Joshua's elf even found him at our house, he had stolen Joshua's underwear and put them on the tree! The morning prior he was up to some "mustache mischief" by putting a mustache on Joshua's picture and on himself!

We all opened gifts

Even Gambit got to open some presents

After presents Brad and I made pancakes and bacon for breakfast then proceeded with some pretty funny family pictures.

Hakone

19 APRIL 2014

So, they have tours that you can sign up for, some of them sell out very quickly, but you can be put on a waiting list in case people cancel, but a day before the trip the waiting list is tossed out, and if anyone cancels at that point then it's first come first served to fill the vacancy. This trip was a result of Brad's willingness to go to the tour office on that day and luckily there was one opening/cancellation, to which he persuaded the lady to open one more seat to accommodate me as well. He's such a charmer!

We visited the Hakone Ropeway and rode a cable car to Owakudani also called Jigokudani "the valley of hell" ...

... where we are black eggs boiled in the sulfuric hot springs of the volcano. 

Then we went to the Hakone Open-air museum where we had a buffet lunch and wandered around looking at art ... 

... and playing with the fish in the coy pond ...

... and soaked our feet in a hot spring with all the other visitors ...

The next part of our tour was to visit the Hakone-jinja shrine, which is 1,250 years old. There was also a little snack shack which sold delicious peach soft serve (no picture was taken, it was devoured too quickly) ... 

The last stop was Lake Ashi where we rode a sightseeing pirate ship around a portion of the lake.

The tour was great, the only circumstance that would have improved it is if it were not raining and the clouds were a bit more dispersed. From the first stop we should have been able to see Mt. Fuji, but with the clouds it was not visible, so we took a picture of what we should have been able to see.