I am thinking Nick got pretty spoiled this year with his birthday and Christmas. Thanks to my mom and dad we got to experience an amazing night at the desert resort, Qasr Al Sarab on Christmas Eve. A bit of an upgrade to our tent camping the night before, we drove through the amazing dunes of the empty quarter on the way to the resort. The resort almost blends in with the dunes close by, but when you finally arrive it's a site to see. It's so tastefully done and I absolutely loved the design and intricate details throughout the place. We arrived in the afternoon and headed straight to the pool bar for a drink while we waited for our rooms. Nick didn't know that Stew and Maggie were going to be joining us for Christmas Eve, so it was a surprise when we swam over to the pool bar and there they were with drinks in hand.


We got to our room, which had a beautiful view from the balcony of the desert and slowly got ready for the Christmas Eve Dinner watching the sun set behind the dunes.


Christmas Even Dinner was a buffet at one of the restaurants, I was surprised as they were in fact playing Christmas songs. Most hotels here are decked out for Christmas, but this one wasn't so much, just a few little decorations nothing too elaborate. The buffet too wasn't very Christmasy with Turkey, stuffing, etc. Instead I think we all mostly ate the sushi. Wine and beer were included in the price of the buffet so needless to say we took advantage of that and found ourselves both asleep by midnight. Although, I did manage to call Mom and Dad and wish them a Merry Christmas for the following day.

We woke up in the morning and opened the presents that Nick's parents sent along on Skype, the others we waited to open them under the tree at home.


In the morning we hiked up the big dune just next to the hotel and had a great view from up high, had to be one of the taller peaks in the area.





Checkout was at 12, but managed to stay till 1 where funnily enough we found out that one of my friends Desiree and her husband had been staying there the same night, but did manage to see them at the entrance on our way out.





On our way home from the desert, I had one more surprise for Nick. He's been talking about how he's wanted a rabbit for a while now and just so happened that a friend, Don was looking for a new home for his since his 3 year old daughter just couldn't play nice with it. So I said well, it's his birthday, it's Christmas, I'll take it and surprise Nick. We picked up young Jack on the way home Christmas day and while we didn't put him in a box under the tree he did enjoy jumping in and amongst the presents.







Christmas evening we drank hot chocolate, opened our presents...I think both of us did alright this year! And finished the night watching the Christmas episode of Glee...cheesy I know.