We had such a great two days over at the kid’s house.  A really lovely Christmas Eve and Christmas Day.

Pierogi making and toy building and a walk and elf set up on Christmas Eve.  Such a nice day.  Karen makes a mean pierogi… or several of them.  So good.  A new Christmas Eve tradition is born.  From now on every Christmas Eve we will be clamoring for pierogi.  Yum.  After a walk, and food, and after the young gent went to bed we all went into elf mode.  Building toys and setting out his wagon and enormous zebra, later named Zeus.  The kids put together his easel.  All while Christmas music played.

Christmas day Karen and I opened our gifts to each other, and the gifts from Mom for the pups (they loved them… or, more accurately, Weston took to both of them and Riley hasn’t seen much of either since… LOL) while enjoying a quick cup of coffee.  We had to get it all done and then get dressed and head over to the kid’s house so we’d be there before the little guy was up and able to look at the tree.  We didn’t make it before he was up, but he hadn’t looked at the tree yet.  When that little man wakes up he thinks of only one thing… food.  He loves him some oatmeal and applesauce!

So he looked at the tree and the gifts and was overwhelmed.  In a good way.  We all opened, he opened some of his, and we enjoyed some cinnamon rolls. Then Martin made us lunch (pizza) using his new bread maker.  He makes some mean pizza dough and we made some yummy pizzas.  Then a walk (the young man rode in his new wagon part of the way and pushed it part of the way and cared less about it part of the way).  The walk was followed by more present opening for him, he got an unusually high number of presents… go figure.  It was fun.

After a full day Sebastian had a little dinner, played a little more, and then went up for his bath and bed.  Meanwhile the turkey was cooked (it had been started earlier in the day) and Karen and I set about getting the rest of the stuff ready.  The kids came back down and the table was set, the food laid out, the wine uncorked, and there we were… turkey dinner for the four of us with most of the trimmings.  A quiet really nice dinner.  We followed that up with a rousing game of Mad Gab, a game we’d gotten for them for Christmas.  It was totally fun.  At one point Mary and I were laughing so hard we were crying.  Good fun!

It was a beautiful Christmas this year.  Relaxed, fun, totally great.  As Mary said… it’s why we all moved to the same place.  So we could enjoy stuff like this while still getting to sleep in our own beds at night.  The best of both worlds.

If you think about the most important events in your life, they always involve the people you love.  Traveling to new places is best when shared because you aren’t just seeing something, you’re experiencing it with someone.  Buying things, though perhaps providing a brief level of happiness and excitement, a sort of rush, ends up just being stuff you own.  Stuff you have around you.  But events, dinners, days in the park, watching a movie and digging into the shared bowl of popcorn, walking, playing games, chatting over coffee… all these things involve people.  When I look on my life to this point there’s not one thing I have that I couldn’t live without… not one.  But the people… that’s a different animal, pun intended, all together.  The only things I ache for are more time with people I love.  More time.  The only thing I’m greedy about is time… and wanting more of it.

I was looking for quotes today as I always try to put one inside the Christmas cards we send, and I came upon this little gem from Mother Teresa…

If we have no peace, it is because we have forgotten that we belong to each other.    ~ Mother Teresa

It seems, not too surprisingly, that Mother knows what it’s all about…  Here’s to peace…

Here’s hoping everyone feels better by tomorrow who has been sick, and those of us who haven’t caught it still haven’t…

Here’s also hoping that all of our family and friends have a holly jolly one filled with love, laughter, joy, and more love.  We wish we could give each and every one of you a Christmas hug today….

Arrived, fussed over the little boy, dealt with the whole shot thing by ending up going to Manchester by train to meet with Dr. Yin and get the first shot (Karen and I then made our way from the clinic by taxi back to the train station in Stockport and then by train from Stockport to Manchester where we did some shopping and finally from Manchester back to Lancaster), many trips walking into town for shopping, have had an occasional pasty, a nice visit with Ashley who came in on the train from Edinburgh, more playing with and fussing over the boy, a drive to the Trafford Center mall near Manchester for more Christmas shopping, more walks into town (we do it at least once daily), more fussing over the boy, wrapped purchased Christmas presents, petting Wicket and Ziggy, and still more fussing over the boy.  He’s the cutest every, I’m just saying…

That’s pretty much been it.  I’ve taken some photos, though not tons.  Mostly of the boy.  We are gearing up for a lot of picture taking on Christmas eve and Christmas day.  Watch for those.

We’ve been here two weeks tomorrow.  The time has flown by really.  There’s tons of darkness here.  It doesn’t get really light out, like fully light, until about 10:00 in the morning and conversely it starts getting dark about 3:30 or even a tad sooner.  The sunrises and sunsets seem to take a long long time.  I think we only get about 6 hours of good daylight every day.  Strange.  At least we’ve had a lot of blue sky so far when it is light.  We like that.  We were expecting way more gray skies and rain.  Lucky.

Christmas Feet, originally uploaded by Tokenhippygirl.

Finally, some last words on Christmas. We couldn’t get through the day without the must have foot shot. Here we are, in all of our pajama clad, footed glory. The pups didn’t get in on the action, but they were there. One big happy family. On another note… just want to say to Don, Karen’s dad, that we are thinking of you, and sending you much love.

Icicles, originally uploaded by Tokenhippygirl.

These are always strange and beautiful.

Candle Light, originally uploaded by Tokenhippygirl.

This week’s theme for the hunt is Dark. I took this one in December last year at The Grotto. The candlelight was beautiful and was even more so after dark. Really lovely.

If you’d like to join in all the Photo Hunt fun and madness, CLICK HERE for all the details over at tnchick’s site.

Dripping

Originally uploaded by Tokenhippygirl

This weeks photo hunt topic: Messy. This candle was making a mess, but you have to have candles when you have Christmas dinner, yes? …hence the bowl.

We’re heading out this afternoon… road trip! If we’re lucky, and the weather holds, we’ll be in Vegas by Sunday. Woo Hoo!

The Angels

Originally uploaded by Tokenhippygirl

At The Grotto in Portland.