Woof. Ten days without an entry. I suspect that is a record for me.

Frightening how easy it was to get out of the habit of writing here. Guess I'll have to go easier on you now when you neglect to update.

So, to catch up.

Finally got the family Christmas letter done, and got the Christmas cards out on either the 23rd or 24th. Actually had the letter done days earlier, but the wife refused to come down to read my draft. Finally had to print a hard copy, and let her stand and read it while she baked pies in the kitchen (Yes, she was busy, but with things of her choice. She could have bought pies, instead of baking six or seven over the weekend.).

Wife took care of addressing the cards. No biggie, since they were still sitting there in the dining room, already addressed, from last year.

Yes, we never got last year's cards out. Because I never got the letter written. And so on, and so on. The letter from the nun in the wife's family, which was supposed to prod me into writing the letter, was still sitting right here next to the keyboard.

Right where it has been for eleven and a half months. Just a little deeper in the pile, that's all.

Had to remember to take out the cards addressed to folks who are now deceased. How cruel would that be, to still mail those out? And some cards got out a day later, since we actually used a few last year and had to replace them.

Then it was doing laundry. Into the wee, wee hours of Christmas Eve (the wife's first day off). While she baked and slept. Also wrapped two presents for her and slipped them into the box of presents we were taking with us. To bed somewhere between three and four o'clock.

I was surprised at the wife's relative lethargy in getting up and ready a few hours later, since we needed to travel to my folks' for Christmas. Until I pointed out to her we weren't just expected "sometime" on Christmas Eve. Because of my Dad's working shift, our family always opened gifts on the Eve, not the Day. And that has never changed at their house. So they would be expecting us there by 19:00 at the latest, and preferably by 17:30 for dinner.

I.e., we need to be on the road by 11:00.

Made it at 11:50. But got through the Front Range in record time, arriving five hours and fifteen minutes later. A record for this family (my single trips are under five hours... I don't take long to pee and buy coffee). We even stopped long enough to buy a ticket for the big Lotto.

(We got one number right. If we had gotten only two more numbers correct (only two!), we would have won a whopping ... ... $3 off our $2 investment. Rats.)

Traffic was thick, as expected, but not bad until almost home:

Traffic on our side was backed up because of a five-car chain-reaction rear-bumper collision. All looked okay, but all five vehicles looked to be out of commission, and at least one minivan was jammed full of Christmas presents. Hope their holidays improved from that point.

And I should point out the smog against the mountains. Because that was the only day of the trip that you could see it. Otherwise the air and skies were incredibly clean for this city of a quarter-million+! Weird.

All the early hustle and hassle and fast driving wasn't really necessary, though, since my sister's family decided to go to a Christmas Eve mass, delaying the present opening session by almost two hours. Something we would never dare do, and would not get away with without numerous complaints. (Oh, and if you're the new reader from the city in the shadow of Zebulon's Mountain who has knocked off over 200 entries in the past three weeks, and happen to be my sister, you'd best prepare yourself for reading things you don't like. You should have made some mention of your discovery sometime during my past two trips to that city.)

So, Cmas Eve was fun, relaxed, and full of family (and a new dog). And I had great fun playing with the digital camera.

Did I mention helping my Dad set up the Christmas lights on their big blue spruce while I was down for my aunt's funeral? We did good:

Although, I think having the five-pointed star upside down like he always does is actually some sort of satanic symbol.

He also had his bell lights on the flagpole, as usual:

And while I had no intention of posting any family photos here, especially without anyone's permission, I couldn't resist this one of my brother:

Yes, he actually looks like that. I swear I never saw him look any other way all evening.