Christmas with the Babcocks

As many of you know, early December, Brian had to take off once again for a trip to New York. This one was shorter than the first time, only 2 weeks vs the 4 weeks he was gone in September, but hard to swallow as we were given 12 hours notice and he was missing all the pre-Christmas celebration. We didn’t even get a tree this year! Something I was pretty sad about, but it was MORE sad to think about coming home to an empty house and looking at the tree by myself. So lame. Brian sent me a picture of this tree that made me happier.
Luckily, we have some awesome new friends in the ward that still let me come to their Christmas parties – even Brian-less. (Some wanted bribes – not that I blame them – Brian is really the best part of this duo.) I was so happy to have Christmasy places to go to get me in the holiday spirit and Brian even came back for the final 2 get togethers which was great. Here's a really attractive photo of us at my work party. In case I don’t say it enough – we are so lucky to be where we are and with the friends that we have and the new ones we’re making. It made me feel very grateful.

Christmas break was spent in Denver with the Babcocks! No blizzards this year (thank goodness) but enough snow on the ground to remind us what it looks like. It was actually gorgeous weather the whole time we were there. We missed Mark & Jenny, Mike & Kelly and the kids, but Tom and Jan pulled out all the stops and it was a perfect & relaxing break. With Jan’s nonstop, delicious cooking, Brian and I are both feeling the pain from some serious overindulging, but we loved every second of it.

2 quick things from our trip:
#1 – Skiing. Preparations for skiing are always a pain in the butt. It took half my suitcase to pack my ski clothes so I wouldn’t freeze to death, I had no way of getting my skis from Utah to Denver so we waited in long lines to get some rentals, morning of we were up early and sleepily dragged ourselves out of bed to schlep our gear to the car. Once you’re at the resort you get all your layers on and everything sealed off so you don’t get snow in unfun places and then you awkwardly do the heel-toe walk in your ski boots up to the lift lines. And that’s when you remember why it’s so worth it. Unless you end up like this guy. He’s probably thinking – not worth it. Luckily our day wasn’t quite as eventful as his (in a good way). Brian did wear his grandpa’s old snowmobiling, rainbow snowsuit though, which got us lots of funny looks, laughs and comments. #2 – Dirty Marbles & the Webcam. We probably played 400 rounds of dirty marbles over our 10 days in Denver. Ok maybe I added an extra zero, but we played at least a few rounds a night. One night while chatting via webcam with Mark and Jenny, we decided to get everyone in on the fun and played a couple rounds with them. We put the webcam on the board so they could see where they wanted to move and they rolled with their own dice in Rexburg. They tried to show us what they were rolling but then they couldn’t see our board so we had to just trust them to be honest… Conveniently they won the first and second place on the first round... This first shot is when they were trying to show us their dice.

Mark & Jenny via Webcam! This picture also (embarrassingly) shows that I'm a bad sister. That calendar announcement in the corner is letting me know that I missed Collin & Lindsay's 5th wedding anniversary! Whoops. This is what they were seeing.Jenny looks perplexed as she plans her next move. Every time Jenny kills someone, she apologizes. Every time she gets killed it's, "Oh that's ok." Pretty refreshing after Brian's "kill anyone and everyone" method.
#3 – Brian’s Hair. I almost forgot something else that happened over the break. Brian’s hair got AWESOME. Enough said.