Our Holidays

Here's Tam, Coco and Sarah on December 28; Sarah's face as usual is not shown on the blog. And below that, our tree this year.

After the arrival of Coco, we were hit over the weekend before Christmas by the huge snowfall that whacked the whole east coast: 18 to 20 inches in much of the area. One of the worst in memory. Why is it when we get our usual four inch snowfalls lots of people show up wanting to shovel the driveway, but when we get two feet, no one comes? It took us two days to dig ourselves out.

Anyway, Tam's sister Kate came in from Michigan for Christmas, with her friend Brenda and Brenda's two daughters. On Christmas Eve, a beautiful sunny day but with still plenty of snow on the ground, we all did Mount Vernon. Crowds weren't bad and Sarah finally got the tour of the interior of the mansion, which included the usually closed third floor. Everybody then retreated to our house and went out for a nice Thai dinner.

Kate spent Christmas day with us. Limited gift exchanges because Sarah had already got her Wii and lots of dog-related things, and the loss of the weekend before to the snow meant that some gifts were picked up after Christmas.

The day after Christmas we joined Kate and Brenda and the girls for a nighttime tour of the monuments. It was a cold night, but I think Sarah was pleased to see stuff she's more used to seeing in the daytime.

I had the week off between Christmas and New Year's, though I did continue blogging about Christmas in the Middle East (see previous post and links). It gave Coco lots of time to get used to us, Sarah lots of time to bond with him (though as I said previously they pretty much mind-melded right away). Now we're in a bitter cold and high wind pattern, but dry. Back to work and school on Monday.

On the whole a quiet holiday once Kate left; low-key Christmas dinner; low-key New Year's as well.

I really hope to get back to family blogging more regularly in 2010.