Christmas with the Krauses

Because we would only be spending a few weeks in our little apartment in Provo during the Christmas season, we decided to not get a tree and just wait until we made to the the Kraus home for the real thing :) instead, we decorated our little bamboo plant and placed our presents under it!

Then we were off to the Krauses for Christmas in Colorado!

We had a lot of fun the week before Christmas. We spent the first few days catching up on some Christmas shopping, playing tons of games, and eating delicious food.

One of the major things we did was go skiing at Copper Mountain. Aside from a couple experiences when I was young, I had never been skiing before. Needless to say, I was nervous to go up with the pro Kraus members. The first couple runs were a little rough, but after a nice lunch break in the lodge, I actually had fun! I hadn't decided yet if the skiing was worth how sore I was the next week after though, haha.

Soon after, it was Christmas!! One of the Kraus traditions that I really like during Christmastime is to write letters to Christ for His birthday. They write a letters to Him each Christmas Eve, talking about things they are thankful for and what "gift" they want to give Christ for the next year (such as more faith, service, missionary work, etc). On Christmas Eve, they also read the letters they had written the year before, to reflect and see how they did. On Christmas day, they read the new letter. I thought this tradition really helped to bring the Spirit and thoughts of Christ into the home during the season.

Christmas day was awesome! We stayed up so late the night before watching The Grinch together and sleeping in the basement, it was great to not get up too early. We took turns opening up presents then ate SO many crepes for breakfast (though they call the crepes flinza, weirdos). We even took some lovely family photos in our new matching clothes :)

After Christmas, we didn't have to worry about all the Christmas shopping and spent the time partying! There was just barely enough snow for us to go sledding one morning (as long as you stopped before hitting the plants and pond at the bottom).

We also went to the Denver Zoo. At Christmastime, they put up tons of beautiful lights that you can go tour at night. There are even a few animal exhibits that are open. We were especially amused by the kissing giraffes and the eating baby elephant.

Then it was New Years Eve, and time to go skiing! We again went up to Copper Mountain, and boy was it chilly this time. When we started skiing at sunrise, it was about -3 degrees. If I remember correctly, the high that day was 8 degrees. The lifts were the worst with the temperature and wind. Thankfully, I seemed to start where I left off last time, and hadn't gotten any worse. I actually had a lot of fun this time. I stayed on the greens the whole day still, but I was falling a maximum of only three times per run, which was a major improvement, haha. Dustan spent most of the day on top of the mountain on the hard stuff with his brothers and dad. Unfortunately, we forgot to bring the correct case for our GoPro, so we didn't get the cool pictures and videos we wanted. But it was a blast nonetheless!

It was harder than normal to stay up for the New Year because of the long day skiing. I loved the Kraus tradition of eating finger foods all evening, like little smokies, cocktail shrimp, egg rolls, pumpkin rolls, and leftover Santa cookies. When midnight hit, we ran into the streets to bang pots and pans (apparently that's a normal tradition?!? Who knew!) and I got a New Years kiss :)

After that, it was time to head back to Provo :( we made a couple stops on the way out of town to take pictures in the beautiful Colorado mountains. As we drove, we finished listening to the first Harry Potter book and started the second. And even though we miss Christmas break with family, it is nice to be back in our little home!