every year all the girls in my mom's family have a big chocolate dipping party and this year was so much fun! then the day after my mom, sister and i had our own chocolate dipping party in an industrial candy kitchen! janet barton, our neighbor who is THE expert on all things chocolate, set everything up and came to help us. we dipped homemade butterscotch squares, caramels, chocolate truffles, spicy truffles, dollar mints, marshmallows and cinnamon bears. holy amazing... the caramels were the best i've ever tasted. EVER.
we did our little family christmas on the 17th, christmas with my family the 18th, and then headed for california! it was everett's first time driving and he did pretty well the first half, the second half he really wanted out of the carseat. i can't blame him, i was tired of the car too! we had 'poppy christmas' at grayson's grandpa's house and took some family photos, so much fun to see everyone! christmas eve was at jolyn's and santa came! everett was terrified of him but we still had to take a picture... christmas morning was an absolute dream, everett and i woke up early and sat by the fire with papa. (i love that even though it's so warm outside he still makes a fire every year!) ate a little pre-breakfast snack, then opened presents with everyone. everett loved playing with all his cousins. we had the most incredibly breakfast/lunch of french toast, bacon, eggs, sausage and berries.
our days then consisted of playing outside in the sun, grayson got a lot of surfing in, shopping, eating too many treats, and on saturday we went up to santa barbara. we walked along the pier for a while, it's so beautiful at christmas time with all the lights!
the next day we headed down to escondido for my family's yearly vacation. the resort was awesome, and we mostly just played at the pool, went to the beach, and enjoyed relaxing! games every night was a must: time's up, 5 crowns, phase 10, risk, and uno. i could play board/card games every night... i'm obsessed! we headed back up to newbury park friday to drop off all the surf stuff and say goodbye to grays' family, then left SUPER early saturday morning back to utah. everett did much better on the way home in the car. he slept better and we basically just let him snack on whatever he wanted the whole day which definitely helped! all in all it was an amazing 2 1/2 weeks in california, can't wait to go back again soon!
