Christmas with mom

Mom and Rodney came over this evening for Christmas with the Lairds. We exchanged gifts and managed to take a couple funny photos thanks to the self-timer on my point-and-shoot.

sweet tooth

I can honestly say that I've never made Christmas candy. I've eaten my share of it, but I've never made it. So this year, mom and I decided we would spend "Christmas" together baking some yummy treats since I'll be in Texas on Christmas.

Below is the process of our 3-hour bake-a-thon.

reading grandma's recipe pumpkin roll

mom and the pumpkin bread

removing the coconut macaroons from the pan - i'm not quite sure why mom's making that face

yum!

we both hate fudge, but we made it for everyone else

i'm pouring the fudge into the pan

white chocolate covered pretzels are my favorite! this was my first time to make them. i didn't realize how tedious it is. i stood there for about 45 minutes making hundreds, if not thousands of pretzels.

yay! for mother/daughter baking

sweet baby kail

This is technically my second time to take photos of Kail - but the first time he was in his mommy's tummy. He was such a sweet little baby boy and I was honored to take his photos (again). I love his serious little face.

honey, I can't feel my fingers

Apparently we cannot go to Crested Butte without it snowing 18+ inches on us. Before we left Ryan had been checking the snow report almost every day. We knew they had a little snow, but most had been man made. For the second year in a row, we had to ski through blizzard-like weather and freezing temperatures. I actually didn't ski through much of it, I was happy sitting by the fire reading, drinking a tasty hot chocolate with peppermint schnapps or spending time in our king corner suite (which the hotel upgraded us to). yeah!

I have to apologize, I didn't take as many photos as I usually would because taking photos would require me to take off my gloves in the freezing weather and that was not going to happen. So here are a couple of my favorites.

That's me freezing on the ski lift. This was the second day and as you can see, I'm completely covered in snow.

Here we are on our first ride up the lifts. It started snowing on our second run down the mountain and didn't stop the entire time.

Crested Butte is beautiful. I'm so lucky.

Ryan and I went to a little bar in town called "Talk of the Town" to watch the Heisman Trophy Selection Show. I could barely pull him away to take this photo.

This is what our car looked like when we were ready to leave. We left a trail of snow the entire way home.

A Very Saxum Christmas

Saxum celebrated Christmas with a lovely holiday party at McNellie's on Dec. 5. All Saxumites were invited to bring their spouse or significant other to what was sure to be an entertaining evening. This was my third Saxum Christmas party and while it wasn't Vegas, it was a blast. About 35 Saxumites enjoyed some of McNellie's finest foods before the fun started. It was a great evening and I stand firm that I work at the best PR firm in the state, quite possibly the Midwest.

Did I mention that I wore a Christmas turtleneck and vest?

me and Ryan (looking a little more rugged than usual)

Some of my favorite Saxumites: Tanner, Julie, Houda and Adrianne

We had no idea he was standing behind us. I find it funny that such a big dude (6'9") can be so stealth-like. This is a photo of me and Christina but it's totally not us. See below.

This is more like it.