Christmas

I am writing this post from the comfy MoHo sofa waiting for the frozen water hose to melt.  Of course, we are in California and it dropped to 25 degrees last night. Silly us.  We saw rumors of freezing temperatures but kind of ignored them.  Couldn’t be THAT bad, right? We are on the road again, but instead of writing about the trip (that will come in the next post), I wanted to write about Christmas.  As the years go by, how would I ever remember where we were and what we did if I missed blogging it?!

For the first time I can remember, there was no snow in Rocky Point for Christmas.  We had a month of gorgeous sunny clear days, short as they were, and cold temperatures, but not a single day of plowing or shoveling.  It made for a good month for me to spend time decorating the house inside and out.  Two comments from the day made it all worth while.  My youngest said, “Thanks Mom, it finally feels like Christmas to me”. And my oldest said, “Thanks Mom for a true “mom” Christmas”. 

The lack of snow made travel easier for everyone, and Deb and my grandson Matthew drove down from Portland on Friday without a hitch.  It was wonderful having two nights with them here before Christmas, with time to just hang out together, eat good food, watch a sweet little movie, and have time to talk.  Then on Christmas morning the rest of the local family, with Melody and Kevin, grandkids Hillary and Elric, and my sister Sally and my niece Savannah arrived early for our traditional family breakfast of eggs benedict.

The house was warm and festive with family all together laughing and talking and sharing stories.  Something that happens all to rarely it seems, so I treasured every single moment of the entire day.  After breakfast we opened packages and a highlight for me was the soft sculpture coyote that my granddaughter Hillary made for me. She couldn’t find a pattern so she just designed her own, personally designed and hand sewn.  Hillary is an artist who spends much of her time drawing, so somehow she had the ability to picture something two dimensional turning into something three dimensional.  Amazing to me, since I am the one that always had trouble with those shapes tests! Vocabulary and reading skills off the charts for me and forget the mechanical stuff!  I failed miserably.

Since there was no snow, we settled on another family walk through the Rocky Point neighborhoods, amazed at the 40 degree temperatures and light skies.  I hear that winter is coming with a vengeance this week, but lucky us, we missed it!  Most of the family left just before dark on Christmas Day, but Deb and Matt waited to leave for Portland until Monday morning, just in time for Mo and I to pack up the baby car and leave Rocky Point behind for two weeks of traveling. 

Of course, most of you know to hover over photos to see captions and click to enlarge the picture.  For family who want to see the rest of the photos, click here for the web album on Picasa.  It seems that these albums are also viewable on Google Plus for plus users as well.  I made them visible to anyone interested. 

Once all the Christmas hoop-de-do died down, I had some time to read some of the blogs and see all the wonderful Christmas posts from everyone.  Beautiful.  A belated Christmas to everyone and thanks for being part of my world.

Author: kyotesue

Soil scientist/mapper working for 35 years in the wild lands of the West. I am now retired, enjoying my freedom to travel, to hike without a shovel and a pack, to knit and quilt and play, to play with photography and write stories about all of it. View all posts by kyotesue