Christmas in Seattle

Well, I had my first White Christmas! Mary and Mom flew in, too. Here is Mary making a snow angel in front of Grandma's garage.

This was also my first year sending out Christmas cards/newsletters. I liked writing in the cards and the way they came out, but I was distraught by the process of narrowing down whom to send them to. If you did not receive a Christmas card, I apologize. I am happy to send a PDF (electronic) version of the card to each person who asks me via e-mail. It has the benefit of being scalable, and it will not fade in sunlight!

Everyone said this was the most snow they had seen in Seattle, and some people have lived here 30+ years! Outside of my Auntie Nancy's house, crazy icicles formed. The ones shown were at least 2 feet long.

When I was a kid, I was very into receiving presents. Well, only particular presents, i.e., things on my wish-list to Santa. Usually this included money, Transformers, G.I. Joe, GoBots, and/or He-Man. I remember one year when I must have had ~20 presents, and I wanted them ASAP. I probably asked if I could open them all on Christmas at midnight. While that did not work, I somehow got my parents to agree to let me open one present every hour, starting at midnight. While I was unsupervised (because they were sleeping, duh), I stuck to this "honorable" agreement. So I was spoiled ... and no doubt ungrateful ... but at least I had honor ....

From Christmastime

This year, Christmas was very low-key. In Sacramento, we would visit my dad's grave in the morning; this time we just did our own thing. The annual Christmas dinner here is hosted by Uncle Paul and Auntie Nancy. Unfortunately, a couple of relatives could not make it in the snow. After dinner, we opened up presents. The most presents probably were for Baby Jubilee. Mary also had us perform a reading of part of the play "The Man who would be King," by Dorothy Sayers.

On Saturday, Mary and I made Christmas cookies with a spritzer cookie gun. When we were kids, we used to do that every year.

From Icicles, snow angel, snow melt

Now the snow has mostly melted, but it was a bit messy. I think my car got stuck in the snow/ice/mud about six times over three days. But each time we were able to get it out after not too long. And I learned a lot.