In typical Wellons fashion, we jumped right into December with several events on the calendar. The first weekend of the month found us co-hosting a Holiday party with our neighbor the Miramar Base commander for the units on board Miramar as well as San Diego's local leaders. The club did a fantastic job with the decorations and the food was incredible!
Saturday, Ben took the SAT and Jim and I put together the big tree and purchased a smaller live tree. He also helped me find all the Christmas ornaments (there are lots of them). On Sunday we attended a Christmas party down on North Island and then transitioned up to Scripps Ranch for Ben's end of the season Football Awards Banquet. Ben was awarded the Newcomer of the Year! He certainly put in a lot of work this year and it is nice to know that he was appreciated! We are looking forward to seeing how he does for his senior season.
Lucy actually beat Lilly home this time! Lilly has started working at an elementary school and she had to stay at college a couple of days longer. Ben and I volunteered Friday afternoon at the Wreaths-across-America set up at the Miramar National Cemetery and got a tied up in traffic so we don't have an "arrival" picture of Lilly. She was sitting on the curb at the train station when we got there, none too happy - sorry Lilly!
The next morning Ben and I were again volunteering at the Wreaths Across America event. Jim was speaking at the event so we would link up with him later. In the meantime, Ben reported to the area we worked the afternoon before and I helped with the wiping down of the chairs where the ceremony would take place. The morning was cold, but beautiful. If you haven't had the privilege of participating in this event in any capacity or location, I highly recommend you do.
Immediately afterwards, Jim had to hurry off for a homecoming of a squadron of F35's from their shipboard deployment. Ben and I stayed on for a bit longer and then we all met up at our neighbor's house for the Army-Navy game. We had little hope that Navy would beat Army this year, but Army didn't show up for the game and Navy beat them handily! Always a good start to the holidays!
Sunday afternoon found Jim and I at yet another Christmas party and that evening we joined our awesome neighbors on their sailboat to catch the Parade of Lights in San Diego Harbor. Wow! It was spectacular! The theme this year was Peace on Earth. The 80 boats cruised around the harbor for about two hours giving everyone a nice view. I love events like this!
The following week the girls had made some plans with their friends from college, but before I just turned them loose we needed to make our Christmas cookies. Ben was also busy with his agenda but we were able to corral him for a few minutes to help.
Lucy and her friends headed over to the Julian area one day and did a hike, then of course had to have some world famous "Julian pie." That is one of the things that area is known for - pies. Particularly Apple Pie. The local grocery stores are full of them. Very tasty. Lucy said she would take us up there before she left to go back to school. Fingers crossed!
On a different day, they met up and walked around Balboa park. They had initially thought to check out the newly renovated Botanical Garden, but that particular day the building wasn't open so they found other things to see/do on the park. With 1,000 acres and 15 museums I am sure it wasn't hard.
Lilly had two friends from LA come down early one day and then spend the night! We had plans to attend a free concert by the San Diego Symphony on base, but we weren't able to convince them to join us. Which is a shame, because the symphony was great! They played several Christmas favorites ranging from classical to modern and ended the evening with a wonderful sing-a-long which had everyone in the Christmas spirit!
The girls on the other hand went down to Coronado and checked out the Christmas Spirit and decorations at the Hotel Del Coronado and around town. Lucy was even able to join in the fun!
While we were on our Thanksgiving trip, Jim called in a request for a timeshare ski trip and none of us thought it had much chance of getting filled, but lucky us it did! So we found ourselves the weekend before Christmas flying out to Colorado to ski for a few days. None of us have ever skied Vail so we weren't sure what we would be in for. Lucy and I drove past Vail on I70 earlier this summer and it looked HUGE! Going skiing in December is always risky, so we were hoping for decent snow since Vail got a nice dump earlier in the season🤞. We reached out to some Colorado friends from Japan to see if they could possibly join us. One family was also going to be skiing that weekend - sadly not in Vail. The other said they could totally join us and bonus for us - they know Vail very well! YAY!
The Campbells weren't kidding - they did know Vail! We skied all over Vail Mountain that first day. The second day we decided to try nearby Beaver Creek. The snow was not as good as Vail Mountain, but we still enjoyed ourselves. We had a late flight out on our last day so we decided to do another 1/2 day at Vail Mountain before loading up the rental truck and heading back to the airport. Wow! Just what we needed. The whole trip was awesome and we couldn't have asked for better weather! Vail totally lived up to the hype and the kids all said they would love to come back. The best part, besides the blue bird weather, no crowds. We had threaded the needle between the crowds and were leaving just as everyone was coming in for Christmas.
On the way back to the airport, we did a quick drive by CU Boulder. Both girls applied and were accepted there and it is on Ben's list of schools as well. The campus was cool and Ben said he would like to come back and possibly do a tour. I could totally see him at this school.
Once we got all checked in, Jim decided we all needed to do an airport lounge strike. Of course who were we to say no? #airportloungelife
Getting back on Christmas Eve Eve wasn't ideal, but we had done pretty much all the Christmas things before we left so whatever hadn't gotten done wasn't going to get done this year. Only thing left to do was wait for Santa!
We hosted Christmas dinner with our neighbors and afterwards several more came over for drinks and dessert. Maybe next year Jim can have his big Holiday party but there just wasn't time for it this year.
One of the last items on calendar before 2025 was for Ben to get his wisdom teeth out. We tried to do it in November but the football team kept winning so we pushed it to December. Ben and Jim are going on a camping/canoe trip on Jan 2nd so we basically were rolling the dice that there would be no complications. He was a little nervous before going in. Not so much about the surgery/removal, but of how he would be afterwards. None of us were expecting him to be so awake afterwards. He was raring to go! I tried multiple times to get him to sleep off the anesthesia and to apply ice to his face to keep the swelling/pain down. But no - he had other plans - namely playing video games with his friends and talking talking talking. So we improvised on the ice pack application. Strange as it looks, it worked! He was able to keep the swelling down and even though no one could understand anything he was saying, he continued to talk the rest of the day.
Our NYE was pretty lame. Ben was hanging out with friends and the girls were content to stay home and watch it all on TV. Jim and I watched the ball drop East Coast time and then headed to bed. Our plans for Jan 1st require us to be on the road at 3:30am. Rose Bowl Parade - here we come!
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