For us, this is the first Christmas ever that we’re away from family.  It’s a little sad not being home for the holidays; however we’re grateful for our health and all of our new crazy desert dwelling friends…..and our friend Cass who came all the way from Dallas to be with us for the Holiday!

Yesterday afternoon we setup the camera, grabbed the entire family, put on our holiday outfits and gave the campground something to talk about (I mean how often to do you see a family portrait at the RV park with their festive cats!)

But let me back up a little bit, because the morning began a little out of the ordinary or to be more accurate, it was flat!

Apparently we picked up a screw and it cut the ‘bead’ on our tire.  Of course our ‘special’ little car causes us a special little headache: There’s not a tire that will fit our rims within 600 miles, and with the holidays we’ll be lucky to get one in 7 days.  So I limp back to the campground with my hazards on, defeated.  So here we are on Christmas Eve, without a tire, with out a car, the local rental car companies are closed up for the holidays and we have dinner plans tonight way up the mountain.  Then it hit us, why not call on one of our new friends to help us out.  In a last ditch effort we call Pirate John to see if he’ll kindly spread the love and let us borrow one of his UTV’s. Boom! Done. Good thing it’s not going to be a white Christmas!

After all of that was settled, we were in serious need of a drink!  So, we swing by Mudshark for the last of the 12 beers of Christmas.

Now, back to being thankful….Our good SCUBA friends Joel and Kathy host us for a beautiful 3 course meal complete with wine pairings…and of course Captain Cathy whipped up some killer desserts (yes we ate all 4).

We are extremely fortunate to have good friends who treat us so well during the holidays; it gives us that warm fuzzy family feeling you can’t get any other way.

What a great night and we can’t wait to pay it forward one day to a set of world travelers.

So what for today?

On this lovely Christmas day we plan to do what we always do on Christmas: Go see a movie! (And maybe hike to the top of a mountain to work off that dessert!).  It is 60 degrees and Sunny here in Havasu.

We hope you have a wonderful Holiday, and for those who are with family make sure you give them a BIG hug!  Merry Christmas.

Send out some holiday cheer in the comments below, we wanna know what your Christmas looks like!  And, if you are feeling really festive, post a photo on our facebook or twitter!