Christmas is without a doubt our favorite holiday, and this year was crazy and busy but wonderful at the same time!  Here are some of the memorable moments we shared during “the most wonderful time of the year.”

We officially met on November 26, 2016, so this year we celebrated our one year of knowing each other with a night downtown!  We did an endowment session at the Salt Lake temple, which was extra special because we were asked to be the witness couple.  We then walked around Temple Square to see the lights, visited the window displays at City Creek, and had dinner at Valter’s Osteria.  I was excited to take Tom to Valter’s as I feel it’s pretty authentic Italian, and Tom is pretty particular about his Italian restaurants, but he actually really enjoyed it!  It was a wonderful evening that ended with a gorgeous sunset, and we had so much fun reminiscing over the past year and how much our lives have been blessed by knowing each other.

This year Tom and I were on the planning committee for our ward Christmas party, and it turned out so well!  The theme was “A Pioneer Christmas” and everything came together nicely.  It was fun for us to get to know people in the ward better and the party itself was great!

One of the weekends in December we were able to head down to Las Vegas for a quick weekend getaway.  We actually weren’t planning on it, but my colleague’s mother passed away and so we felt it was important to go support her and attend the funeral.  We decided to make a weekend of it, and of course we had a great time!  We stayed in a suite at the Venetian, visited the Bellagio and fell in love with their floral Christmas display, ate lots of yummy food, visited Sprinkles Cupcakes of course, and even made time to do an endowment session at the Las Vegas temple.  We are hoping to be sealed in the Las Vegas temple, so it was neat to be there and get a feel for what a special experience that will be someday!  It was a whirlwind few days, but we definitely made the most of every moment we had together!

The weekend before we left for Italy, Tom surprised me with tickets to “The Forgotten Carols.”  It’s one of my favorite Christmas traditions, and I appreciate how thoughtful Tom is in listening when I say things in passing (which I did about how much I loved the show) and how much he tries to make things special for us!

The day before we left, the Turley family held an early “Christmas Eve” celebration, since it was the family’s “off” year and we wanted to celebrate together.  We held it at Nonnie and Grandpa’s so they could be there, and it turned out to be a really perfect day!