Christmas in Arizona

I visited the Burtons for a weekend at the beginning of December, I hadn't ever visited Arizona at Christmas time, it was so much fun! The day I flew out, there was a huge blizzard in Utah. I took an Uber from my house to the Provo airport and it took twice as long because the roads and traffic were so bad. I was so grateful I wasn't driving, my Uber driver was my hero. It was crazy watching the snowstorm from the big windows at the gate, as well as walking on to the plane, I was so excited to be flying somewhere that was warmer.

Just a short 90 minutes in the air makes all the difference, I went from snow to blue skies and sunshine in no time.

Karin, Thomas and James picked me up from the airport and we headed to one of our favorite places for lunch. First Watch has such delicious food and we love it so much because it always has really fun and festive seasonal specials. We had gone here in September and tried all their fall specials, and we were excited to see what they had for winter.

We had to try their drink special The Cranberry Crush. 

cranberry

fuji apple

lemon 

cinnamon 

It was so delicious. 

We also tried their gingerbread spiced donuts. They came with a side of caramel and icing for dipping. They were fun and yummy, but I did want a little more gingerbread flavor.

One of the first things Thomas asked when I got in the car at the airport was if we were going to do a Christmas edition of our Trader Joes haul. We hadn't planned on it, but he asked several times throughout lunch and we all love Trader Joes so much so we headed there after lunch.

We found quite a few holiday items we wanted to try!

The maple version of these mini cones we tried in the fall were on of our top favorite things, the peppermint version was just as delicious. 

Karin made a festive sample platter to try out some of our goodies. We enjoyed them while we watched A Charlie Brown Christmas.

I love that their tree has red lights. When we were little, our family always had red lights on the tree, it felt very nostalgic.

The next day I got to participate in Karin's Fun Friday. Every Friday she has a little group of kids that come over for home school and she plans extra fun things. The theme that day was Victorian Christmas. We learned all about what Christmas was like during Charles Dickens' times and the origins of some of the most well known Christmas traditions.

There is always a baking element during their Fun Fridays, that weeks was baked apples. Karin had found a beautiful and fun variation on baked apples that we tried out, which was baked apple roses.

Each of the kids got to make one and I got to finish up making roses with the rest of the dough. They consist of a strip of puff pastry, apricot jam, cinnamon sugar and thin apple slices.

They were absolutely gorgeous as well as delicious. We ate them warm with a side of ice cream.

We also learned that Christmas poppers were invented at this time and were very popular at parties. All the kids learned how to make them and got to make their own. James loved this part of Fun Friday and went above and beyond and made one for every member of his family to open on Christmas morning. Each popper had a homemade crown, a joke and some candy. James carefully picked which joke should go into each popper based on who it was for. I got a joke about cats ;)

In the evenings, we would drive around the neighborhood and look at all the fun Christmas lights and decorations. I was amazed at how many houses went all out with their Christmas decor, it was so much fun! Arizona loves their decorative blow ups. 

Karin had made these adorable prizes to hand out to the houses we thought had the best decorations. I loved this idea so much, I made a few when I got home and handed them out to houses that made the Christmas season feel extra festive. We just dropped them off on their doorsteps, hopefully they felt appreciated for all the work and effort they put into their lights!

One night we drove to Agritopia, a neighborhood in Gilbert that transforms into a Christmas wonderland every year with amazing light displays. This drive/walk through light experience consists of several streets with houses decked out with the most festive decorations. Each street seemed to have a specific theme, one street was Grinch themed another was candy canes. At the end of each street is a hot cocoa stand and larger than life blow ups. I loved this activity so much, it was such a blast!

This Candytopia house was one of our favorites.