A Canadian Christmas

This Christmas Scott was lucky enough to have two weeks off from his medical rotations, and it was his family's year so we flew to Calgary for the holidays. The entire Swendsen clan was able to make it, I think a total of 24 people, and we were thrilled to be able to see everyone. It's hard to know where to start in describing this vacation - we did a lot of different things over the two weeks we were there and it was so much fun. Here is a random assortment of pictures from our trip.

This one was taken the day before we left, after Scott opened this deluxe camping gift from my parents. He seriously was so excited that he slept all night in it.

This is Scott's brother Dan on Christmas morning in Canada. The rapid-fire Nerf gun he's holding was a huge hit with the whole clan. We awoke that morning to what sounded like a machine gun being fired in the living room - it really was alarming! Luckily we don't have any war vets with PTSD in the family.
Pjs for the grandkids - a classic Christmas Eve tradition. From left - Kate, Ava, and Reese.

On New Year's eve the Swendsen family has some fun traditions that include these paper hats, poppers with little surprises inside them, Chinese takeout, and rice pudding with one almond in the batch. The person who finds the almond in their bowl gets a special prize.

This picture makes me laugh. Kate and I feel similarly about cold weather. During our visit the temperature in Calgary fluctuated from slightly above freezing to about -30 degrees C (-22 F). I'm not sure how cold it was when this picture was taken but for Kate it was cold enough.
While in Calgary we got to go to a Flames hockey game, my first NHL game ever. The Flames won a close one against their rival team, the Edmonton Oilers. It was pretty exciting to watch.

We got the full cultural experience by taking public transportation to and from the hockey game. It was New Year's eve and the train was free for the night, so it was crowded with some pretty colorful characters. Also, I cut my hair short before the holidays but this is the only picture where you can kind of see it.

For our last day in Calgary we drove to the Banff National Park area for skiing at Sunshine resort, a dip in the hot springs (very brief for me and the fetus!), and dinner. Here's a great view of the Canadian Rockies on our way there.

You'll have to trust that this is me, although there's almost no skin showing. It was weird posing for a picture wearing a ski mask and realizing that a smile would be useless. This ski resort is gorgeous with great snow and the weather was sunny but the temperature was around -4 F so it was just a little fresh out there... Scott took this photo at great peril to his exposed hand. I was feeling proud of my Texan self for toughing out those temperatures.
Kate's grandparents watched her while we skiied and then they brought her up to meet us for what Kate called the "hot pool" - a natural hot spring in Banff that has been built around in one area for use as a shallow swimming pool/hot tub.

The day we got home, Clint came up to Salt Lake for a brief visit and Kate basked in the glow of his attention.
Excited about wearing Clint's shorts.