Moision Madness

We’ve got cat pictures!

And silly kid pictures … in portrait mode.

And Finn showing off his hockey stop for his friend from school.

Another good month!

I got up extra early for my walk on January 31st in order to see the lunar eclipse. We lucked out with clear skies and it was absolutely amazing. I kept stopping my walk in order to take pictures, but since I was only using my phone none of them really came out. Here’s the best I could do, for posterity’s sake.

See, they’re terrible. But it was so great in person! I woke up Finn to see it and he came out for a few minutes before he ran back in the house freezing. I didn’t wake up Ezra because I hadn’t talked to him about it beforehand and he’s awfully grumpy in the morning. My mistake — he was super mad that he didn’t see it when people were talking about it at school. Lesson learned.

Finn has recently been lobbying for a dog, while Ezra has been trying to get us to foster kittens. We told them they both should try to make their case, and on January 7th they did just that. Bruce and I sat down to a presentation from each of them.

I only have pictures of Finn; I’m not sure why. His presentation was really good! He did research and had some convincing arguments. Ezra’s report was mostly just pictures of really cute kittens. I think he figured he had an advantage since we already have cats.

Luckily, no one has pressed the issue further because I am not really interested in adding to our menagerie just now.

We wanted to try one of the outdoor skating rinks that were put up during the holidays, so on January 6th we headed to San Jose. As expected, it was crowded and the ice was terribly slushy, but we had a good time anyway.

We also had hot chocolate and strolled through their Christmas display, which was on its last legs having probably been up for almost a month. Still fun.

Here’s my every-so-often jumble of photos that don’t need a whole post.

It was a good month.

We had a quiet New Year’s Eve at home after running around for the better part of the day getting equipment, clothing, and food for our trip to Caples Lake the next day. We also had lunch at Refuge in San Carlos where Bruce and I split their homage to Langer’s Deli, the #19. It was good, but not as good as the original.

Way back at the beginning of the year, I’d had the idea to write down each week’s best thing for all of us. We didn’t manage to do it every week, but we had a lot of entries and we spent some time on New Year’s Eve reading through them all.

We discovered two things: 1) we really enjoyed it and wanted to be more diligent about it in 2018, and 2) no one can read my sloppy cursive writing. But we did our best to go around the table, each reading a week’s entry.

It really is a pleasure to go back and think about all the good things over a year — the small things and the big things — especially in a year with the trials we had. It was a great exercise in gratitude.

We got geared up for Christmas pretty early this year and got our tree on December 9th. It was not the cats’ favorite day, as you can tell from the look on Emmy’s face here. They generally are not in favor of any changes in the house, but putting a tree in the living room with a bunch of shiny, dangly things is really just too much.

We had a nice time decorating it and were happy with the new spot we chose this year.

There were some cat shenanigans and a few fallen ornaments in the weeks we had the tree up, but it was okay.

Mainly they just liked to hide under the tree.

After some delay because of lighting issues, we got the Little Free Library decorated again too.

Jamma arrived on the 21st and we were ready to celebrate! While Bruce was working on Friday, the rest of us saw a great LEGO exhibit in downtown Palo Alto and then had surprisingly good Mexican food for lunch and a little run around time in the park. On Saturday, we all saw Coco which we loved. I cried like a baby, such a sweet movie.

On Christmas Eve we had a feast of ham, scalloped potatoes, glazed carrots, and homemade rolls.

After dinner, we braved the cold to walk off a little bit of what we’d eaten. Poor Jamma was a little chilly but a good sport.

As usual we were exhausted but managed to get everything ready for the morning before hitting the hay. I always love the peacefulness of late Christmas Eve.

We had a good time Christmas morning with the present-opening extravaganza, although I mostly just have pictures of the cats checking out the mess. But here’s one of Finn.

Once the boys discovered they had one more present outside, they had a wicked foosball game going.

But mostly they loved the wacky stuff from Vat 19, including the sticky poo. Oy.

Oh, and the Emmy socks!

We were sad to see Jamma go a couple of days later, but we had a nice visit. I’m sure she misses us but is happy to be back to reasonable temperatures!