Christmas Re-cap

Our three week vacation in Arizona was awesome.  The flight to and from went very smooth for our first time flying together as a family.  Brinleigh did amazing and I'm sure the other passengers were grateful for that.  The flight attendants loved her and we got so many compliments about how cute and happy she was.  While we were home we got to see just about everyone we wanted to at least once.  Brinleigh got to meet so many new people and she was such a cute little thing.  Everyone was so impressed with how happy, calm, and content she was.  We did tons of shopping, visited lots of friends and family, and were able to take Brinleigh out to do things that we haven't been able to do in Alaska.  We had some family pictures done, took Brinleigh to have her Christmas portraits taken, and visited Santa Claus and of course got her picture taken with him too.  Needless to say, TONS of pictures were taken.  She got a kick out of Santa talking to her and complimenting her and she smiled big for the camera.  The best shots had the photographers hand in the picture so of course we couldn't order those.  We went to the Zoo one night and walked around for the annual Christmas Zoo Lights event.  Brinleigh got to see a mall for the first time and of course Mommy just had to introduce her to Target every other day a few times.  

We also got to discover how much fun Christmas is when you have children.  We were so excited to get Brinleigh dressed up in her Christmas outfits and take her with us on our Christmas routine.  Kolt and I have a Christmas tradition of going to Winterhaven's Festival of Lights every year on Christmas night and riding through on my second dad's wagon.  This year we were extremely excited to have Brinleigh with us and make it a family tradition.  Opening her Christmas presents, watching her play with wrapping paper and chew on bows never gets old.  I personally was more excited about opening the baby's Christmas presents rather than my own.  And let me just say, Brinleigh is one spoiled little gal.  She had more presents than she will ever know what to do with.  Packing to go home was an all day event which consisted of a trip to the u-haul store to buy a large box.  We went to Tucson with six bags, one which was full of diapers that we planned to use while we were there so that suitcase would be available to use for items bought or received while there, and another was Kolt's RC car that he took home to keep at his dad's house, so that freed up another bag to come home with.  We ended up coming home with two extra boxes, which we were able to check at the airport and only had to pay one extra baggage fee of $20 for one of the boxes.  I am a member of  Alaska Airlines Club 49 for Alaska residents which allows me two free checked bags up to 50 lbs and Kolt is allowed five free bags up to 70 lbs for being military.  Thank God, because that saved us a lot of money.

After three weeks of constant running around, shopping, eating out, and daily visits with people, we were more than ready to return to our calm quiet life in Sitka.  The amount of money we spent on this trip has cost me my online shopping hobby for probably the entire year of 2013 :/  looks like I need to find other things to occupy my time this year.  

Here are a few pics from our vacation.  I wish I could post more but there are so many.  To see all of our pictures you can look on my Facebook in the December 2012 Album.