Last Christmas when we were engaged, Luke and I were on opposite ends of the country, but were reunited just a few days later when we went on a New Year's Caribbean cruise with his family. So this was our first Christmas Day together and it was absolutely wonderful.
We stayed in Utah because his sister and husband live here and so his mom decided to just come out to Utah to be with us which has been very convenient for us. Christmas Eve we carried on the Christensen tradition and watched "It's a Wonderful Life" all snuggled up on the couch eating popcorn (Cameron can make great movie theater popcorn) and yummy hot chocolate.
That night we went home and Luke and I set up a little bed next to our Christmas tree and we slept next to it. I was so excited for Christmas I seriously could hardly fall asleep.
The next morning we got up and opened presents! We were both more excited to give each other presents than to get presents, and we got each other great presents!
It was then finally time to talk to my brother who is serving his LDS mission in Hungary right now. We had a conference Skype call between us, my parents in Washington and my brother. We got to talk for over 90 minutes and it was a blast! I hadn't heard my brother's voice in over 4 months when he was in the airports leaving for Hungary after his training in the MTC. It was great to laugh with him and hear him speak Hungarian.
Around noon on Christmas, we were off with Luke's family (his mom, sister and brother-in-law) headed to California. We decided to go via Las Vegas so we could spend the night there and be tourists at the strip. We walked a lot (probably like 7 miles) but it was so fun to get to see all the hotels again and spend fun family time. By the time we hit the hotel, each of us were absolutely exhausted and got a good night's sleep.
The next morning we got up and drove on to California. My grandparents live outside of San Francisco so we stayed with them and they just spoiled us with Christmas presents and good food (yummy pies). We loved of course that the house had all of its Christmas decorations, and especially loved my Grammy's little village. We watched 'A Christmas Story' together and then fell asleep after another day of driving.
The next morning all seven of us headed to the beautiful city of San Francisco. I get to go about every year and each year is more and more special. Since we just had a few hours before the game we went to Pier 39 and Ghirardelli Square. The weather was perfect and things weren't too busy (well, it's always busy I guess). We had some yummy bread bowl soup at Pier 39 in a cute little restaurant that my grandparents treated us all to. We then continued to troll along the piers and on to the square.
Our last stop in SF was what with whole trip was about: THE BOWL GAME. Luke's mom bought us all tickets just days after BYU was picked for the game back in late October. Our 9th and 10th row seats were awesome. The AT&T Stadium that the Giants play in is absolutely beautiful. It was fun playing the University of Washington from my home state. Sadly we lost (like to an extent of embarrassment) but there was so much other fun surrounding that game that the loss was just a tiny, tiny fly in our soup (Luke told me to write that one). All in all it was a great little getaway!
