The day after celebrating Christmas we packed up and drove south.

• 

• 

It took us all morning to pack everything up into our travel trailer.

We added a couple Christmas decorations and were good to go. We made sure to bring clothes for lots of different weather, lots of books and yummy food. It’s so nice to travel with our bathroom with us so we don’t have to worry about finding rest areas or exposure.

We stopped in Pueblo, Colorado for a while to play. The weather was beautiful and we enjoyed the break.

We had reservations at Storrie Lake State Park in New Mexico. We rolled into the entry parking lot around 7 pm to ding the gates locked and closed. We read the sign on the gate that the gates are closed in the winter at 5 pm! First big fail of our trip, we couldn’t find any information online saying that they closed early. Luckily the entry parking area was tucked back and flat so we just camped there for the night. It would have been nicer to camp in a spot by the lake but all we needed was a place to sleep. All things considered it worked out fine.

Christmas Cactus Trip Links:

Christmas Cactus – Day One

Christmas Cactus – Day Two – Santa Fe

Christmas Cactus – Day Three – Petrified Forest National Park

Christmas Cactus – Day Four – Sedona

Christmas Cactus – Day Five – Quartzsite -> Anaheim

Christmas Cactus – Day Six – Christmas Eve in Disneyland

Christmas Cactus – Day Seven – Christmas Day in Disney’s California Adventure

Christmas Cactus – Day Eight – Anaheim -> Joshua Tree

Christmas Cactus – Day Nine – Joshua Tree National Park

Christmas Cactus – Day Ten – Sonoran Desert National Monument

Christmas Cactus – Day Eleven – Arizona-Sonora Desert Museum

Christmas Cactus – Day Twelve – Saguaro National Park

Christmas Cactus – Day Thirteen – Tucson -> Albuquerque + New Years Eve

Christmas Cactus – Day Fourteen – Albuquerque

Christmas Cactus – Day Fifteen – Home!

We are loving our new book nook and I was most excited about creating one for Christmas. We love books and enjoy adding books to our collection each year.

It’s so fun grabbing books each day to read!

Some of our favorite books:

Snow Globe Wishes

Together

Little Red Sleigh

Dasher

The Tree That’s Meant to Be

Tough Cookie

Pick a Pine Tree

The Little Reindeer

Santa’s Story

Last Stop on the Reindeer Express

S Is for Santa: A Christmas Alphabet

Tiny Reindeer

The Little Red Elf

We added a basket to catch the extra books we have, love them all!

Shelves – Banners – Shelfie Sign – Kids Custom Chairs – Wire Basket

• 

• 

Pillows are old from Target

**I own some of these books but also check many out from our local library, it would be very expensive to add all of these titles to your collection in one year. We are building ours with a few new favorites each year.

Monthly Book Nooks:

January – Arctic Animals/Winter

February – Love/Valentines Day

March – St. Patricks Day/Spring

April – Easter/Spring

May – Emmy’s birthday theme

June – Cannon’s birthday theme

July – Camping/summer

August – Back to School

September – Fall/Harvest

October – Halloween

November- Thanksgiving

December – Christmas

• 

• 

• 

We celebrated Christmas eve early since we will be out of town. It was a little sad because Cory was working but we still had a good day.

We made fun snacks, I am no charcuterie board expert but this was still fun.

The kids and I made peppermint bark for our family.

We finished up our salt dough ornaments for the year.

I love these so much!!! One set for us and one set for my parents.

We added ribbons to finish them off.

Before bed we made reindeer food, ours was just oats, sprinkles and edible glitter. We sprinkled it on the lawn, the kids loved it.

While we did final Christmas morning perp we put on Home Alone. I haven’t seen this movie in years, I forgot how crazy it is.

All ready for Christmas morning.

Does Santa wrap his gifts for your house? He doesn’t for ours.

We spent our day doing ALL the Christmas prep as it was our Christmas Eve Eve.

We let the kids open a couple gift early because we didn’t want them to open all their toys on the 18th then not have the chance to pay with them before we leave the next day.

We made LOTS of Christmas treats.

We watched a storm roll in.

We enjoyed double rainbows.

Our elves had some fun.

I am sad they are leaving soon, we will miss them and I can’t wait to see what they get up to next year!

Do you do Elf on the Shelf? If so do you like it?

We are in full on Christmas prep (we are celebrating on the 18th) and trip prep. I am so excited for all of it but we have a lot of work ahead of us in the next couple days.

We have been planning this trip since July!

Christmas in July

We have 14 days, a tiny trailer and plans to visit:

Anyone have must visit places in Arizona? We know that the Grand Canyon is missing from our list but we want to make that it’s own trip and spend more time there.

We took the kids to the little mall near our house. They have a cute little Christmas set so we wanted to grab some pictures of the kids. We did this last year as well and it was so fun.

You can meet Santa here, but we wanted it to be quiet so we were there before the stores open.

We all treated ourselves to Starbucks as well. The kids have fallen in love with peppermint steamers and they are so cute about it.

We also played at the playground for a little bit (obviously!)

I started the day in the best way!

We had just a dusting of snow, our first of the season =( We need a lot more snow/moisture.

But it was still so nice to be out in the snow, even if it was just a bit.

In the afternoon Cannon had his holiday performance. It was nice to go and enjoy it. Last year we didn’t get any of that and I missed it. Masks were required and the kids did great!

My parents got to come watch as well so that was nice.

It’s nice to have things return a little to “normal”

We woke up to some fun shenanigans.

They left us a new table runner that the kids could paint on with Dot paints.

This one was pretty fun!

We then spent the morning playing.

We love this park!

Then it was time to get ready for Cannon’s last day of school for the year. They have three and a half weeks off and I am loving all this time together.

It was crazy hair day, and pajama day and pop corn day and movie day.

He had a good day!

After a few lessons Emmy and I shared popcorn and watched a movie too. Home preschool is fun too!

If you have kids how long do they have for winter break?