Christmas in San Diego

December 25, 2010

We had such a great Christmas.  I think I'll just let the pictures do the talking.  :)

There was a lot of loot!

My mom got Brian and I a "First Christmas" ornament.

Here's everyone opening presents!

My mom put together a very cool gift for us!

It's a shadow box filled with things from our wedding.  It's got some pictures, copies of the announcement, Hersey's kisses (our favors), bubble blowers, and the flowers from our cake.  I loved this gift.  I was in tears opening it!

Brian got me clothes, but I have to say, he did a good job picking stuff out...better than I do for myself.

We got out my parents Wii to play some games.  Here's Brian checking out the Hula Hoop Wii Fit game. 

He was a pro at it!

Here I am trying out some stuff too.

This is a video of the ski jump.  I liked that game!

The last couple of years Noah and I have a "Dance off" with the "Dancing with the Stars" game.  I swear I'm a better dancer but he beats me everytime!

I love Noah's faces!

 Courtney and David gave it a go.

As did Brian and I.

Here we are with our finished cheesecake.  Don't mind my shiny face.  It's from all the dancing!

Courtney and David made the other dessert.  It was a pecan tart with a chocolate drizzle.  Both desserts were delicious!

Here's a picture of Brian with the family dog Summer!  Whenever we are in San Diego we take her for walks.  Brian loves her, and Summer loves him!

The traditional pictures by the tree!

Here we all are!

Merry Christmas from the Ingram's!  We hope you all had a great one too!

It's Almost Christmas

December 23/24, 2010

We were so excited for Christmas.  Brian was lucky enough to get Christmas Eve off (after I begged him to request it).  We left the evening of the 23rd for San Diego, but not before we took a picture of our tree with all our presents under it.  It looked so pretty.

I definitely have to say that there were a good number of presents under the tree and many had my name on them.  Yippee!

We drove down to my parents where we got to spend Christmas Eve together with my family.  Both my brother and sister (plus her boyfriend David) were already home.  We enjoyed hanging out and catching up.

Brian and I were put in charge of a dessert for Christmas.  We decided to tackle a cheesecake (chocolate...yum).  Here we are making it:

Brian sure does like to taste test...

It's finished baking and we discovered it was also home to some earthquake fault lines.  :)

After the baking we thought we'd better put our gifts under the tree.  There was hardly any room!

We spent the rest of day hanging out and playing Mexican Train Dominoes.  Lots of fun was had by all.  I'm pretty sure I beat everyone at Dominoes too.  Hooray!  I like to win!  

Oh, don't worry there will be more cheesecake pictures in the next post!

Christmas at Disneyland

Saturday December 11, 2010

Brian and I were so excited to go to Disneyland to see all the fun decorations!  We drove down and stopped for lunch at our favorite Northwoods Inn.  We really love that place.  I spared you all another picture of us there.  While we were eating we discovered that we left our passes at home.  We were less than 10 miles away from the park with no passes.  We were so frustrated!

Since we left later than usual we didn't want to drive all the way home. We chose to go to Disneyland anyway.  We learned that we made quite the expensive mistake leaving our passes at home.  We decided to only pay to go to Disneyland and forego California Adventure this time.  It was still expensive!

Here I am with the big Christmas Tree

I love the wreaths and garland.

It's a little hard to see this picture because of the glare but in the window they are making homemade candy canes.  You have to line up early to get one of these. 

The "snow capped" castle. 

We rode Space Mountain and obviously had a ton of fun!

We took it easy for the day and did some smaller rides that we haven't done before instead of standing in the long lines.  Later we definitely wanted to see the Christmas parade.

 

The parade was fun but they played the same song over and over for the whole parade, so maybe 20-30 minutes.  It was awful!

Here are the Disney Princesses.  I love Snow White.  She was my favorite as a little girl!

And when you have Snow White, the 7 Dwarfs aren't too far behind.  They are so cute!

After the parade we took the train back towards the entrance to see the fireworks.  While we were on the train we passed by "It's a Small World" and got a cool video.

The castle is beautiful all lit up.  It shimmered!

Brian remembered hearing about a Yule Log at Disney on the Food Network so he had to have one.  I chose a cheesecake.  Strange, I know, since I love chocolate.

Here's another great shot of the castle.  We had waited for about 30 mintues for the fireworks that never happened.  It was sad, but apparently there were some high winds.  There was some fake snow blowers though which was fun.

 

We did go on a couple of rides to end the night.  First was Indiana Jones where I got to "drive" the jeep!  I think Brian might say that I was a crazy driver.  :)

 

We also went on the Haunted Mansion which was decked out in "The Nightmare Before Christmas". 

 

On the way out Brian wanted another picture of me with the tree at night!

 

Here's some pretty snowflakes that were on the entrance/exit gates. 

 

Brian wanted a picture of him with the decorated CALIFORNIA sign in from of California Adventure.  He wanted the C for CHRISTMAS!  BB and Mickey...so cute!

 

We had a great day but sure wish we would have brought our passes!  Lesson learned!