We had a wonderful Christmas this year! It started in Pleasant Hill, where we joined Beth in celebrating a few days early. It was festive and beautiful. She made us a delicious breakfast, adorned us with reindeer and Christmas lights headbands, and showered us with lots of thoughtful and wonderful gifts such as our new sushi, flame, and I Love Mom socks. We had a wonderful morning celebration before catching our flight to...

Salt Lake City was next on the agenda! Looking through my photos now, I realize that I completely failed to capture our adventure there (sad!), but we had a wonderful celebration with Jake's sister's family, then with Robert and Tracy, then with Grandpa George for his birthday. We stayed with Robert and Tracy in their beautiful house and felt loved all over!

The only photo I did get of our time in SLC was of the airport, where we saw lots of happy families reunited for the holidays, some greeting missionaries just as they arrived home. What a happy happy place, the Salt Lake City airport at the holidays! I could just spend hours there.

Everyone was warm and loving and wonderful and we were showered with gifts galore in SLC, too. One gift, from Grandpa George, was a giant, 17-pound ham which had been cured and sitting around in the basement to age for the previous 15 months. So we named her Pam, packed her in our luggage, and took her along to our next stop...

Kansas! In Kansas Pam the Ham came out of her shell and Jake spent a full 24 hours cooking her to perfection. She was delicious!

We also had a gift wrapping marathon in the basement, where I did the wrapping and Jake handled the artwork. So fun!

And of course, there was much love and family and warmth all around. I loved getting to see everyone of course but was especially thrilled to get to meet my new baby cousinette, Hope, who's 8 weeks old.

I miss everyone already! Until next year, Santa.

We enjoyed lots of fun and celebrations before the holidays even arrived this year. First, the Zillabyte team and several other local startups hosted Holiday Dinner and a Holiday Happy Hour, complete with Charlie's amazing homemade eggnog (thank you Charlie! Yum!). 

We attended several other lovely holiday parties too, like Steve and Kate's fun event in Palo Alto for instance and one fantastic party with real snow and ice skating in Palo Alto... but apparently I got a little lazy on the picture taking, so I'm just hoping y'all will have parties again and I'll have another chance next year :)

And then there were Christmas Cards! Here are the cards we sent out. This was a big deal for me since this is the first year I've done them as an adult. I must *really* be getting old, I guess. (If you didn't receive one then I must not have your mailing address - please send it to me and I'll make sure you get one next year! I wouldn't want you to miss out on real printed copies of Jake and me looking ridiculous in our Santa hats, after all. Or whatever next year's silliness will be.)

And finally, saving my favorite part for last, we *received* zillions of holiday cards! We are so fortunate to have so many thoughtful, festive, and especially good-looking friends (as you can see here). Each one made us smile, nearly all of them drew an audible "Aww!", and we put every photo we received up on display in our dining room. We feel so loved, thank you dear friends and family!

And that was just the getting *ready* for the holidays...