What a fantastic few days in El Paso! Since Marc’s birthday is December 23, Jenny always lets him pick our Christmas location. And he keeps wanting to go back to El Paso — possibly something to do with Jenny’s Mom (Carol) being a gourmet chef and constantly making all of Marc’s favorite foods!
Anyway, we got to El Paso on Saturday (23) around mid-day. Friday we both had to work, but we did manage to load up the dogs and make it to Trinidad, Colorado. In Trinidad, we always stay at the La Quinta. It’s dog-friendly and has a trail right behind the hotel that’s great for potting the pups! We also typically head to their super cute downtown and eat at Bella Luna Pizzeria. Super good. There is also a Starbucks inside the Safeway if you need a caffeine fix for taking on New Mexico 😉
Once in El Paso on Saturday, we unpacked and then headed out for dinner around 7 and then came back to the house for a homemade carrot cake courtesy of Carol. She also gave Marc his gift — a commissioned landscape of one of his photos of Vail this fall! It’s gorgeous and is going to look great in the condo! Our old man, Indy spent the whole time sleeping in a leather chair. If anyone sat in it, he would bark at you until you got out of it and then hop into your vacated spot. So this was pretty much how he spent the whole vacation!
For Christmas Eve, we took the dogs, well Halo, Karma, and Tybee on a 3 mile hike in the Franklin Mountains. For dinner we had our traditional tamales, which were absolutely fab! We also managed to make it to midnight mass — got to sit in the family room with our niece Charley which was a new experience, lol!
Christmas was magical. It was Charley’s first one so she received way too many presents, and it was fun to watch her all day. For Christmas breakfast Carol made French Toast (Marc’s favorite!) and Charley had SO much fun feeding it to Karma. Karma has a new favorite cousin!
Yesterday, we spent soaking up one last day with family and had a final amazing Mexican food fix at Leo’s. Then today we made it to Albuquerque to have dinner with Jenny’s Aunt Michele! We’ll finish up the road trip tomorrow and hope everyone had a fantastic holiday!
