High Tea at the Brown Palace

Christmas break began on Wednesday afternoon with the kids really excited about their break and, of course, about Christmas. We got into the spirit of things by going to “High Tea” at the Brown Palace Hotel downtown. This is a big deal here with the hotel booked out for months in advance. Marcy booked a table for us last Christmas and it was great. Lots of nice sandwiches, scones and desserts. We are booked in again for next year.

Taking a break during a great Christmas Eve ski day in Keystone

On Christmas Eve we decided to head up to the mountains for a day of skiing. The mountains have had a good amount of snow these past few days and so we thought Keystone would be very popular on Christmas Eve. But we ended up having no traffic and no lift lines despite 40 degrees weather and good snow. The day ended a little prematurely with Anna hurting her knee on a bump run and we had to call the ski patrol to get her down the mountain. But she was fine when she got down.

Anna walking down the stairs on Christmas morning

The long awaited day finally arrived. Anna was up super early, just after 5am, although we told her she couldn’t actually get up until 6am. They both love Christmas but Anna seemed a little more excited than Jude this year. Santa was very generous with many presents for both kids. Anna received her “dolls diner” that she has been eyeing at Target all year as well as an Easy Bake Oven. Jude enjoyed a good pile of presents including Arsenal gear, some Star Wars gear and a Packers book.

Jude with his pile of presents

We had our traditional Christmas lunch of Indian food but we spent most of the day at home with the kids very content to play with their toys. Tomorrow it is off to Iowa to visit Marcy’s family.