The last few moths have been rather busy with working at K3DES as a security assessor, but December finally came and after I finished up one last site visit at Home Depot (in Austin), I had a great Christmas lined up – or so I thought…

Everything started out pretty good, but some evidence and reports got delayed and popped in on part of our Christmas vacation.

You see, this year we decided to celebrate the holidays before Christmas and started it with a weekend at the Fairmont in San Diego. It’s a beautiful hotel and we happened to get a good deal with Ayano being in the President’s Club. We didn’t do must there, except to just enjoy the amenities as the Fairmont was all decked out for the holidays.

A week later, we went up to Salt Lake City (SLC) for a couple of nights and then headed over to ‘the Canyons’ – our favorite place in the United States to go skiing as we’ve been going there for years and have had some amazing skiing and winter holiday memories there.

Before heading to the Canyons, we stayed at the Grand America hotel in SLC. It’s a beautiful traditional hotel with excellent service. I’d say it’s right up their with Fairmount Gold, the Four Seasons, and the Ritz. I love the architecture and there are plenty of little alcoves to settle yourself in for enjoying a pre-Christmas drink or writing a few Christmas cards. For me, it’s a great way to get into the Christmas spirit even though I needed to spend a number of hours each day working on some security assessments.

The evenings in SLC were even better, as we were only a short walk to Temple Square where one can enjoy the Mormon Tabernacle Choir and the evening lights for celebrating the birth of Christ. I must admit, I love SLC. May be one day we will end up living there for a year or two. You never know.

Well after a few days, we drove over the the Canyons and stayed at our favorite resort – The Westgate. It used to be reasonably priced over the holidays about 8 years ago. But now it’s just out of our reach. Before the holidays however, it’s still reasonably priced. Unfortunately, there wasn’t too much snow before Christmas, but we still got to get out on the slopes for one day of skiing. Yeah!

On the way back to the SLC city airport we ended up visiting the Natural History Museum. I”m so glad we went as it was a great learning experience into the various cultures of the region. I’m hoping to back again the next time I’m up in SLC.

From there it was back home for some more traditions like visiting South Coast Plaza to see the decorations, setting up our home for the holidays, and Ayano (bless her soul) making her cookies and another AMAZING Ukrainian Christmas Eve supper!

Yum Yum!

A week later we took off to Victoria BC and stayed at the Fairmont Empress Hotel over New Year’s. Little Paddington came with us and even ran the Resolution Run – a free New Year’s Eve 5k evening run sponsored by the Running Room that takes us through Victoria.

In the end however, paddington left us somewhere along the route. Every since picking him up in London, he has traveled everywhere in the States and the far reaches of the Orient such as Hong Kong, Shenzhen, Fuzhou China, and Japan… only to end up immigrating to Canada.

Way’da go Paddington!
May you have a great life on Vancouver Island.