This year we spent Thanksgiving in Denver with Tony’s family and it was Sam’s first trip to Denver. The trip with the little guy wasn’t too bad since it was only one flight and the time spent with family and friends was great. Sam finally got to meet his uncle Ian and Tony’s best friend, Matt. We had a wonderful time relaxing, catching up and eating some great food! It was pretty chilly and it did snow a little bit, but not enough for Sam to notice, so we won’t call that his first experience with snow. Maybe next time we get back there it will be a little warmer and we can enjoy a hike and do some sight-seeing outside of the city!For Christmas this year we decided we didn’t want to fly anywhere and deal with holiday/winter air travel and a baby so instead we decided to take a trip up the California coast for a week then spend the rest of the break in San Diego, enjoying the warm weather. That was our plan right up until 2 days before we were supposed to leave. Enter the biggest storms and most rain that the w
est coast had seen in a long time and flooding up and down the coast; our holiday plans were foiled! We had planned on taking a leisurely drive along the CA 1 and stopping in Santa Barbara, Morro Bay, the Hearst Castle, Big Sur and Monterey on our way to San Francisco, but considering half those towns were underwater, we decided to abort and possibly re-schedule for another date. We wanted to do a couple hikes with Sam and see some of the spectacular views off the coast, but since that would have been impossible; cancelling the trip was probably a good idea. We’ll the try the CA coast trip another time.So instead, Tony worked for a few more days and we hung out in San Diego until Christmas day. Neither of us really wanted to stay in San Diego for the whole break so we decided to take a short trip out to Joshua Tree National Park, which is about 3 hours east of San Diego. We left on Christmas day and stayed in a really great B&B called Roughly Manor, which was near the entrance of the park, until the 27th. We stopped in the resort-type town called Palm Springs to get some dinner on Christmas since nothing was open near Joshua Tree. Palm Springs is an interesting little town about 2.5 hours east of San Diego and 45mins to an hour from Joshua Tree. The town is supposed to be a “getaway” from L.A. with lots of hotels, spas, restaurants, year-round sun and palm tree-lined streets, but we found it to be a bit of an odd place. I think a lot of old-time celebrities used to hang out there to get away from L.A., and Sonny Bono even used to be its mayor, but now it seems to cater to a weird mix of tourists. Truthfully, I’d rather visit/stay in San Diego any day over Palm Springs but I’m not really a desert person.
Even though I am not usually a big fan of the desert, Joshua Tree National Park is beautiful. We were going to do a long-ish hike on the 26th but it was way too windy to be outsi
de for too long with Sam, so instead we did a bit of a driving tour and got to see the various landscapes of the park. There is a lot of climbing out in Joshua Tree with huge boulders and gigantic piles of rock and cool formations everywhere. It seemed a bit treacherous with such strong winds, but people were still out there climbing. We stayed 2 nights at the B&B and had really delicious breakfasts both mornings, and they even had a high chair for Sam; with all the beautiful Christmas décor, it ended up being a really lovely place to stay around the holidays. On the 27th, we drove back into the park and the weather was a bit nicer (beautiful blue skies and less wind) so we did a short hike in an area called Hidden Valley. It was our first time trying out the new hiking backpack we got for Sam. He seemed to enjoy it enough to conk out for about half the walk/hikes so I guess it will work. 
Back in San Diego, it was beautiful and sunny for much of the rest of the break, so we did some nice walks and relaxed a bit with Sam. Tony’s dad came out for a few days to visit and after some initial tears when seeing Grandpa, Sam had a grand time with him for the rest of his stay. So despite our holiday not going quite as planned, it ended up being nice and relaxing and I think Sam really enjoyed having both mom and dad around to spend time with.
For 3 of the past 4 years, Tony and I were always travelling on Christmas (1 trip down to Tassie, 1 to the south Island of New Zealand and 1 to the north Island), so we never really did much in terms of Christmas traditions –especially since we were away from family anyway. We sort of planned for it to be that way again this year since we didn’t think Sam would really understand what was going on, but as things did not go as planned, I was feeling a bit bad about not doing anything “Christmas-y”. We’ll have to figure out what kinds of Christmas traditions we want to share with Sam in the future, but I guess that will start next year…
