Christmas 2021 recap

Hi friends! How are you? I hope you’re having a wonderful day and that those who were celebrating are recovering from the festivities. I spent all day yesterday in my pajamas (took a break to lie horizontally in the sauna blanket) wondering what the heck just happened. 🙂 I’m back in the swing of things and heading out to teach a morning aerobics class. 

For today’s post, I’m sharing a recap from our Christmas adventures! It was an amazing week with family and friends, and I always love the chance to get together and celebrate.

Christmas 2021 recap

Earlier last week, we went to stay at the Fairmont Princess in Scottsdale, and they do Christmas RIGHT. If you live close by, I highly, highly recommend it. (We went last year right before Christmas and decided it would be a new annual tradition.) They have ice skating, rides, a s’mores land (with s’more pits and supplies), Santa, a train that goes around property to see the elaborate light displays, characters, the whole deal. We went ice skating three times during the evening, in between riding the rides, roasting s’mores, and enjoying dinner at the Bourbon steakhouse on property.

Finished off the night with robes and hot toddies.

The following day, we hopped between the Odysea Aquarium and Ripley’s Believe It or Not science museum before grabbing Flower Child takeout to eat on the way home. 

The rest of the week was spent getting ready for Christmas! The girls had some friends over to decorate sugar cookies, and the rest of the time was spent wrapping gifts, prepping food, and watching Christmas movies. We spend Christmas eve at my dad’s house, and Christmas day is at our house with my mom’s side of the family. 

(Sweater is here and shoes are here)

We had copious amounts of Mexican food and sangria at dad’s while the cousins ran around and played,

and we came home to sprinkle reindeer food in the front porch and set out cookies for Santa.

Some pics from Christmas Day:

 

For brunch, we had tamales, beans, ham, egg casserole, cinnamon rolls, mimosas, and egg nog. Of course, Madre brought an epic platter of Grammies and I set out a bunch of Christmas cookies to snack on throughout the day. (My holiday baking strategy: the two weeks leading up to everything, I bake cookies and freeze them. This way, I don’t have to do a ton at once and we have a lot of variety! I made thumbprint cookies, peanut butter blossoms, Mexican wedding cookies, peppermint bark, brownie cookie oreo bars, and ordered the sugar cookies from Flora’s.)

My mom wins Christmas with these concha slippers:

After gifts and brunch, everyone went home for a couple of hours to rest, and then came back for round 2! We had surf and turf for dinner: filet mignon, BBQ salmon, lobster tail, crab legs, asparagus, salad, and rice.

Kyle seasoned the lobster and the Pilot grilled everything. It was AMAZING. 

Plus an enormous cheese board:

(With Nana! My dress is here)

With all of the good food, my very favorite part was seeing everyone together. The cousins running around and laughing is my favorite thing, and the dog cousins had a blast, too. 😉

(The ran around in the mud all day and were very happy indeed) 

So friends: what was your fave part of the weekend? What holiday foods are staples for you? Tamales and grammies always make an appearance. 

CONGRATS to the winners of the Favorite Things giveaway!!!

Our 6 lucky winners are:

1) Emily

2) Stephanie

3) Allison

4) @laceylina

5) Jen

6) @kaischnee

I’ll reach out to the winners this morning to claim their prizes!

Stay tuned for another sneaky giveaway soon. 😉 If you’d still like to fill out the annual survey with your feedback and content ideas, the link is here! xo