A Christmas to Remember!

We were lucky to have my 90-year-old father still able to celebrate Christmas in our home along with 18 members of our extended family. I did not take a photo of my son carrying my father into our house because the sight was just too heart wrenching, but you can see him here in a wheel chair in front of the fireplace in the midst of the gift opening.



Here are the two youngest of the clan--Piper, our son's 20-month-old daughter, and Gareth, our daughter's 2-year-old son, who are great playmates.



And I have to include a photo of my favorite gift--photographs taken on Vinalhaven Island off the coast of Maine. My husband had prints made on canvas, to hang in my writing cabin in order to keep the setting of my novel-in-progress clear in my mind.

A Post Without Words

The Gift of Friends

My favorite part of the December holidays is spending time with treasured friends.

This morning I got together with three amazing, creative, thoughtful librarian friends, Julie Reimer, Linda Middleton-Koller, and Kim Faurot. We snacked on Julie's delicious holiday cookies and discussed books and reading. They also indulged me by looking at the latest revisions of my current book project. My heart was light and happy when I left their good company.

On Christmas Eve morning, as is tradition, I met with the members of my old book club, friends I have known for over twenty years: Gary, Robert, Evan, and Timothy, friends who make me feel loved and appreciated.
Still to come, a Saturday morning walk with my college friend Ann, and a New Year's Eve gathering spent eating delicious food and playing board games with three other friends. I couldn't ask for better gifts than the people who make up my life.

Eat, Drink, and Be Merry

Tamales are the traditional Christmas food of Latin countries. They are very labor intensive to make, so usually are only made for special occasions. My daughter and I took a tamale-making class at the Santa Fe School of Cooking a couple of years ago. This was an all day project for us on Christmas Eve. I made a killer pico de gallo, too.



My daughter is pictured here in her "drinking glasses" a well engineered straw that travels quite a distance! Santa brought this for her stocking.

Dreaming of a White Christmas

Here in the high desert, we've been treated to about 7 weeks of sunshine and no snow. It gets cooooold at night, down near zero most nights, but then it's back up to mid 40's during the day. All of this means the roads have been wonderfully clear as we had to drive 180 miles to Boise to pick up my college daughter at the airport, and 140 miles to Baker City and 140 miles to La Pine ( and 160 miles to Sisters tomorrow) to watch my other daughter play basketball. So no complaints there, but it makes for kind of a non-Christmassy view of my house:

And when all the packages were open and wrappings strewn about, this emerged as my favorite present:

My thoughtful husband took copies of The Compound and four of the foreign language versions and had them framed. Cool.