A Colorado Christmas

Since we didn't get to go see Ryan's family this Christmas, we decided to meet halfway (kinda?) in Colorado at Ryan's aunt's house the weekend after Christmas. We had so much fun in Colorado with Ryan's family. Three out of the five brothers were there and we of course got to hang out with cute little Cael! I had the whole week after Christmas off (which was wonderful!) but Ryan had to work Tuesday and Wednesday so we didn't end up leaving for Colorado until early Thursday morning. I was worried that we would have a hard time driving there with snowy roads and all but thank goodness Utah decided to have the most mild winter ever and the drive both there and back was amazingly smooth! We got to Colorado around 3:30 on Thursday and got right into the fun.
We started decorating my very first ever real gingerbread house with real homemade gingerbread! It was so fun to have an actual real looking house and not just our stinky graham cracker ones!

(Us with our awesome gingerbread house!)

(The front of the house. Ryan made the awesome roof. It looked totally pro!)

(Back of the house complete with an outdoor stone fireplace with seating and a pool! My favorite part of the house!)

We had dinner and played games that night. My favorite thing about the Gardner family get-togethers is that they love to play games! Being just the two of us, Ryan and I don't get to play games very often so it was pretty fun! The next day we went over to someone's house to watch the BYU game on a huge giant projector. Ryan stayed and watched the whole thing while the rest of us went and played Wally ball at the local gym. It was really fun up until the point where the ball hit me right in the face and I got a bloody nose. I was a bit skittish after that. Then we all went and saw Mission Impossible Two, which was pretty good, and then played games all night!
Saturday was freezing cold and so windy but we still ended up driving up to this lookout mountain to see all of Denver. It was so windy I swear you could have jumped off the mountain and the wind would have blown us right back up! It was freezing, so needless to say, I stayed in the car for the most part. Then we walked around a cute little street with fun shops and had frets and stoufles (a Dutch or German french fry) and German bakery treats. We made it home just in time to get ready to go to the New Year's Eve party at someone's house. (Ya, I don't know these people, but Ryan's family did, so it was ok.)

The party was actually really fun. They had some really good food (pita bread filled with good chicken and lettuce=A+ in my book!) and they basically had games spread out on a bunch of tables so everyone could play whatever they wanted. We played some Rumikub and some Taboo and just hung out and talked. We left before midnight and made it home in time to watch the ball drop, toast our Martinelli's, and have our first new year's kiss. We stayed up talking way too long and didn't get to sleep until like 2 AM which for me is unheard of these days!

(Us getting wasted on New Year's Eve)

Sunday came and we went to 9 AM sacrament meeting so we could travel home all day. We took Jason and Jenna home and were grateful to have them there so we could sleep some of the way. All in all, we had a really fun time and I have to say Colorado was a pretty fun place. The #1 thing I loved about Colorado=they have the nicest drivers there! Everyone drives in the right lane if they are going slow and if they are in the left lane and you come up behind them, they move over for you. (a completely unheard of concept here in stupid Utah!) It was so refreshing to have good drivers around us for a change!