Christmas came early this year

When we bought our house the upstairs bathroom looked like this:

Pretty disgusting, eh? So Megan and I ripped everything out:
And Butch and his awesome Dad and brother rebuilt it to look like this:

Most of you are probably thinking "is that a shower cap hanging on the shelf?" Yes, yes it is. Don't judge me.

You're also probably thinking "Dang, that's some bright freaking paint." Exactly. When we were choosing paint for the bathroom the color I settled on was demurely named "English Apple" and appeared to be a lovely true green. Then we applied the paint to the walls and the result was quite different. To be honest I actually don't mind the way it looks in these photos all that much, but if you've been over to our house at night you probably remember that the bathroom walls gave off an eerie glow that resembled a nuclear plant or something. Not really the look I was going for.

I've been wanting to repaint the bathroom for some time now, but with all the other house projects we've had going on it was kind of low on the priority list. Plus I was not looking forward to taping off all the nooks and crannies and whatnot. I had mentioned to Mike that I wanted to repaint the bathroom as a Christmas project and even went so far as to pick out a swatch and sample can at Home Depot but didn't think we could really manage it during the Holiday break.

But then I came home from an annual "girls weekend" in Park City with Mike's mom and sisters on Saturday morning to find this sign posted on the bathroom door:

If you don't watch Arrested Development you're not going to get that particular joke, but the point is that I walked into the bathroom to see a Merry Christmas banner and the walls transformed into a lovely shade of robin's egg blue ("Zen" by Behr):

Turns out Butch and his friend Hansol had stayed up until 5 in the morning on Friday creating this Christmas miracle. As cliched as this sounds, I truly think this is the most thoughtful and unexpected gift I've ever received. My husband is awesome.

We continued our early Christmas celebration by heading up to Alta to test out the new ski gear we bought this season. Mike's parents were kind enough to give us money for new ski boots (me) and new skis (Butch) for Christmas and we wanted to try them out before our full ski day at Snowbird next week. So up to Alta we went, accompanied by Smash, Matt, and Smeaglett.

If anything could have made me love Butch more that day, it would be watching him ski. This is only his second season on skis after boarding for most of his life, but homeboy is already dropping cliffs and taking crazy tree runs with the rest of us. I hope our kids inherit his athleticism cause they sure aren't going to get it from me.

Of course we had to make a run to Molca Salsa afterward. Nothing tastes better after skiing than greasy Mexican food.
It's funny how, back in my high school and college days when I had a season pass and a schedule that allowed me to ski at my leisure, I totally took the experience for granted and only got truly thrilled about skiing on the most powderlicious of days. Now something as simple as an hour and a half of skiing (for free!) makes me feel positively giddy. I guess absence does make the heart grow fonder.

Hope all of you are having a wonderful holiday season!