7000 Days

For the first time since I can remember, we had a big gathering of my Mom’s side of the family. Lena & Kyle hosted in their wonderful home in Portland just a few days after Xmas and just in time to erase the winter dreariness.

The big news of the day is that Jeff and Kathy (who is wonderful) are going to have their wedding at Aunt Nett & Uncle Steave’s in the San Juans. I was planning to be very cool and understanding if they had decided to play it low key and elope to Las Vegas so I you can imagine how uncool and totally excited I was as this announcement.

Even cousin Jake was here from grad school in Sweden (for those of you who have asked who he is, here is his face to go with his comments)

(two 90% percentile heads meet at last)

Aunt Nett wore a special Christmas sweater as a test to Kathy to see if she was either polite or gagging to throw up. She was both and so passed with flying colors.

Lila and Lainey were as adorable as ever.

And at the end of the evening we exchanged gifts in a way where we could steal them from each other. I got a lavender linen spray so feel quite chuffed about the whole thing. (chuffed = smuggly happy)

Finally, we took a few family photos -in the last one, we were the only ones, apparently, who thought it was ‘funny faces photo’

The day after Xmas, the McDonalds left us for the rest of their ski trip.

The snow began to melt and turn black.

Gus was winy and clingy after all the excitement.

And Charles went to bed with a cold.

We woke Christmas morning to find stockings stuffed and a bike under the tree (for me, woo hoo!). Then the kids arrived and the present opening began. They got lots of cool little things like hair bands and pencil sharpeners but then at the end, the real excitement began. First Tom pulled out a slip of paper from his Santa bag that read, Wii. He jumped in the air and screamed “Are you serious?!” He genuinely didn’t believe it. Then Alice pulled out a picture of a dog, which she was totally confused about. But before anyone could explain it to her, Harriet (who has wanted a horse as long as she knew what they were) pulled out a photo of a horse they ride sometimes in Houston. Instead of jumping up and down, she got really quiet and asked if it was a joke. It was very sweet. She didn’t actually cry but she was close. Then we ate pancakes.

Later in the afternoon, the Ketchums all came for dinner complete with Grandma’s Mother’s China and not one, but two turkeys prepared by Charles the vegetarian.

So good to have everyone together. With snow outside and Lisa, Duncan and the kids here. We rounded out the evening with puzzles, crafts, Uno Attack and Gus snuggles.

Merry Christmas.

After a canceled flight and a detour to Seattle, Charles’ sister and fam finally arrived to spend Xmas with us in the snow.

(at the cafe -waiting for us to get out of the car)

Dad took them all out to the woods to hunt and kill their very own tree. After walking for several minutes, they found the perfect one – tall, with full branches, perfectly spaced. Which Dad walked right by in favour of a scrawny, scraggly neighbor. You see, he never lets us cut down the good ones. Something to do with letting the good ones grow into valuable timber.

And I couldn’t help at all since I was in the car with a sleeping Gus.

(diddle diddle dumpling…)

(the hunting party)

Here it is dressed up in lights and a few ornaments. You can’t tell from this, but the top is bent on the ceiling, which somehow feels hopeful to me -like it wants to reach further. Miss Congeniality in the beauty pagent.

At night we had roast Tofurky and played Uno Attack.

(monsters all)

The freeway finally opened (hooray) just in time for us to pop to Portland today to meet up with old friends Curt and Jamie who are here visiting from their new home in Germany.

So we spared no expense and treated them to the American treasure, Red Robin. (Ok so it was close to the airport and to the freeway…)

They’re doing great -are learning to speak fluently and are traveling all over the place. Gus gave them both a huge smile when they first met -maybe because he knew they’d give him a cool wooden toy from Germany. Or maybe because he knew he already had more hair than Curt.

It was great to see them and well worth braving the ice patches and trucks-sans-chains that hog the road and cut back in front of you mere inches ahead in your lane without indicating-what’s with that?

By the way, we also had big plans to drop off presents to people in Portland but not only did my wrapped packages get soaked in my bag but we only had time to drop off one! The Portland roads are still horrible too. A nice time to stay at home and warm the toes.