The theme of this holiday season for Alex and me has been family, friends and new traditions. While we still have a few more days left of the season, I’d say our Christmas surpassed my wildest expectations of new traditions and time with family.
We just returned home from our Christmas vacation in Leavenworth, Washington with both of our parents and Alina and Alberto. We spent five days in the mountains, as well as a day on either side in Seattle. I found a cabin for us to rent that came with a huge kitchen meant for entertaining, a great big wood burning fireplace, a fabulous hot tub, a dining room table to accommodate us all, a shuffleboard table and a wine fridge.
Our trip began in downtown Leavenworth where we stopped for lunch at Munchen Haus to enjoy a sausage, sauerkraut, as well as beer and mulled wine. We walked the streets of town and got our bearings before setting off to check into the lodge.
While it was a little different than I expected, the lodge worked out really well for us. I wish there would have been two more bedrooms and bathrooms, but the three {of each} that were there sufficed pretty well. The layout was meant for entertaining, though was still a little sectioned off. I would definitely stay there again – the hot tub was awesome, there was a huge deck off the back overlooking the expansive property and onto the mountains. The kitchen was enormous and had a lot of space to set food out for all of us to indulge in. We brought our own Christmas tree and a few decorations, as we had been told that the lodge wasn’t decorated for Christmas. As it turned out, there was a huge artificial tree and tons of decor in the closet. I guess the property manager was just too lazy to decorate for us!
The trip was a wonderful hodgepodge of cooking, eating, drinking, skiing, chatting and playing games. The first night we were treated to an Italian meal called Spetzatinna {or something similar}, which is a ragu with slow cooked beef served with polenta. It was divine!
Our first ski day was Christmas Eve. We woke up to find an early Christmas gift in the form of new snow! I think it’s safe to say we all enjoyed getting back on the slopes at Stevens Pass.
Donna prepared our delicious Christmas Eve turkey dinner and we spent the evening playing the game called “Things” which is a new favorite.
Christmas day started out with homemade cinnamon and orange rolls, opening our pajamas and gigantic stocking and just hanging out. We spent the day at the lodge and went in the hot tub, played Uchre, worked on the neverending puzzle and the ladies did Pilates. My mom arrived just in time for our prime rib dinner on Christmas night. She flew in late so she could spend Christmas morning with my brother back in Minnesota. Our night was finished with a grossly inappropriate game of Cards Against Humanity. Nothing like playing that game with your parents!
The day after Christmas we all piled in the SUVs and headed back to the mountains for more skiing.
We had planned on doing a sleigh ride that evening but there wasn’t enough snow for the sleigh so it got canceled. That meant we had more time in downtown Leavenworth to taste wine at Icicle River Winery and eat dinner at Gustav’s.
On our final full day in Leavenworth the moms treated themselves to a day at the spa while the rest of us made our final turns at Stevens Pass in one last day of skiing. It snowed quite a few inches during the day, which conveniently provided us with free snow refills.
We headed back to Seattle on Sunday with two very full SUVs, while my mom made her way slowly back to the airport. She went back home a day earlier than everyone else, and just as she was getting ready to leave the lodge we found out that chains were required to get through the mountain pass. Having a rental car meant she didn’t have chains, so she had to take the long way around through a different mountain pass. Of course less than 30 minutes after she left, the restriction was lifted so she could have gone the original route anyway. Oh well!
The rest of us packed up and headed back to our house since we still had one more night with the rest of the gang in Seattle. We spent quite a bit of time playing the game Fibbage on the Xbox before settling in for an evening of drinking wine at Bottlehouse.
Our house is now empty and feels much too quiet. It was very sad to see our families leave today after such a wonderful Christmas vacation with everyone. We are so grateful that our family was willing to come out to Washington to celebrate Christmas with us in the mountains. We knew it was a lot to ask but now that we’ve had our first Christmas out here we hope it won’t be the last. This holiday will go down as a highlight of my Christmas memories from recent years.