First Christmas

We were lucky enough to have two Christmas celebrations this year: Lisa’s parents had us over to their house for a California Christmas on December 18 and we also traveled to Carson City for Christmas Day last weekend.  Lilia was more enamored with the ribbons around the presents themselves on both occasions, but I’m pretty sure she enjoyed being amongst all the action and lots of new people both here and in Nevada.  I think Lisa had quite a lot of fun dressing up Tinkerbelle for both occasions!  A memorable gift from our California celebration was a book Carol had made for Lisa and Luke chronicling the Young family from the 1970s to 2000.  She spent over a year scanning all their old family photos and had them made into a bound book for both her kids.  A very touching present and a lot of fun for Katrina and me to look back over the years as Lisa and Luke grew.  Especially awesome to see some of the perms that Greg used to rock back in the 1970s and early 1908s, definitely a grandpa with some style!

As seems to be the case every time we travel, Lilia was a gem on the six hour drive over the Sierras to Carson City.  She slept on and off, played with her toys and had staring contests with herself in the mirror we have setup in the back seat so we can see her from the front.  It was Lisa’s grandma’s last Christmas in her house – we moved her into an assisted living residence the day after Christmas – so quite a special time for Lilia to be experiencing her first Christmas with Lisa’s mum’s side of the family.  At this time of year there’s usually snow covering the Sierras and occasionally we can squeeze in a ski at one of the resorts around Christmas.  But this year the mountains are almost completely devoid of snow, so I decided to hunt down some singletrack in the eastern Sierra to explore while we were in Caron.  Lisa, Luke, Katrina and I left Lilia with the grandparents and the four of us explored some exceptional singletrack on Christmas Day afternoon, there’s a rundown of our trail and a video from my new Christmas helmet camera (thanks Mum) from Ash Canyon here.  Lilia wasn’t too keen on sleeping through the night for the couple of nights we were in Carson – I think Lisa and I had an aggregate four hours of sleep between us on one night – but it was nice for Lilia to spend one Christmas with her great grandma in the house where we’ve all spent many a Christmas and Thanksgiving over the years.