A "Wicked" Christmas

We had a wonderful Christmas! It always starts with a sleepover on the 23rd of December. Patt and I took the dogs over to my parent’s house for the beginning of the festivities! We all got new pajamas, played games, and had a really good time. As the night wore down, we finally snuggled into our beds under the Christmas Tree. (I will have to figure out how to post video of some of our games…hilarious!) On Christmas Eve we went over to my Uncle and Aunt’s house for dinner with my dad’s side of the family. Patt made a pasta salad for the occasion and it turned out delicious! It was fun to get together with family and we enjoyed visiting with everybody. After dinner it was time to get wrapping…I hadn’t wrapped a single present and it was getting down to the wire. Lucky for me, my sisters were mostly done and helped my finish my wrapping. It is a tradition that we wrap all of the items in our stockings. It is one of my favorite parts of Christmas morning…it just takes a little while to actually get everything wrapped! We finally went to bed around 1 am, and we stayed at my parent’s so we would be there bright and early Christmas morning. It snowed on Christmas Eve and there was a little skiff of snow in the morning. I imagine this is as close as we will ever get to a White Christmas in St. George! We opened presents and ate my mom’s delicious breakfast casserole in the morning and we spent the afternoon/evening with Patt’s side of the family. It was an absolutely wonderful day!!!

Highlights from Christmas
* Spending time with family and friends
* New Pajamas…New Zion’s Centennial T-shirts
* Playing Charades...Seriously Hilarious!!!
* Laughing until it hurt!
* Skiffs of Snow
* Opening Stockings
* Finding Chopsticks for Kristen
* My sweet new “teacher sweater”
* Ipod Shuffle…(Bring on the Show tunes)
* Power tools…(Now Patt is trying to find projects to do around the house)
* Getting absolutely spoiled rotten
* Laughing, Playing, and Taking Pictures!

But the fun wasn’t over yet…

For Christmas my family got tickets to go and see the play “Wicked” in Los Angeles, so on Saturday morning we hopped in Kristen’s Blazer and headed on a Road Trip! We sang show tunes pretty much the whole way there! We went to downtown Hollywood, checked out the stars, and did a little shopping before the play. “Wicked” was absolutely phenomenal!!! It was so much fun and I absolutely love the music! Thanks to Aunt Carla we had some “Wicked Dollars” to spend on souvenirs and we totally put them to good use…Thank you! We had such a good time and were very excited that we got the opportunity to see it live. The next morning we drove up to Solvang California, which is a little Danish town filled with restaurants, museums, Danish history, and lots of shopping! Some of my ancestors were Danish and we even found a little “Mortensen’s” bakery! We had a great time walking around the town, shopping, eating, and taking pictures!

Highlights from Hollywood, The Play, and Solvang
• Singing show tunes all the way to Hollywood and back
• Matching Road Trip jackets
• Spending some good ol’ quality time in the car
• Finding celebrity stars on the Walk of Fame (i.e. Audrey Hepburn, Lucille Ball, Marilyn Monroe)
• Grauman’s Chinese Theatre – Looking for handprints and footprints of celebrities and taking a tour of the Theatre’s Lobby!
• The usher at the play telling everyone to turn off their cell phones and to not take pictures…Watching someone take a picture right in front of him, priceless! He was hilarious and a great opening act for the show.
• My favorite musical numbers were “The Wizard and I” and “Popular.”
• “Wicked” Souvenirs bought with “Wicked Dollars”
• Taking pictures by the train tracks
• Finding “Mortensen’s Bakery” in Solvang
• Eating Danish food…The open face sandwiches looked a little intimidating but were quite delicious and Kristen found a new way to eat hotdogs (beets and cucumbers)

We hope everyone has had a very Merry Christmas, and want to wish everyone a Happy New Year!!!