Christmas past (but in a good way)

My mother-in-law’s estate sale was this weekend—not that she’s dead, far from it. But since she’s moved into the assisted living/nursing home, there’s no point in keeping rooms full of stuff or a house she no longer needs. So we needed to dispose of  all those belongings, and then get the house sold.

The estate sale industry is pretty weird, at least to me. Getting the sale scheduled was a chore. I don’t know if that’s because the people who do this have other jobs or if that’s just the norm for this line of work, but everything was hard to pin down.

As a side note, the woman we bought our house from used an estate sale company before she moved out. Her parents had lived here for over 30 years, and she’d lived here with them through their illnesses and eventual death, and this place was packed with stuff (including a casket in the basement—isn’t that strange?).

They do a lot of the work, though. They sort and label everything, publicize the sale, and provide staff to work at the sale. Afterwards, they box and donate everything that’s left. In the case of the company we used, they prefer that the family not hang around during the sale. That sort of bothered Kent (what are they hiding?) but it also made sense. I can well believe that people get a little weird watching their possessions or their parents’ possessions going for a song, and get emotionally worked up.

One thing my mother-in-law has always loved is decorating for Christmas. When I first met her in 2002, she was still putting up three or four fully decorated trees along with lots of other Christmas decorations (her Santa collection is impressive). She made a lot of her decorations, and really enjoyed getting everything set up just so. Even as recently as five years ago, she put up two trees. In this last house, she only had room for one and of course now she'll need to display a couple of small items since there's no room for a tree.

Kent was in Tulsa as the estate sale people were organizing everything into categories, and he told me they’d put all the Christmas items into one room. He said it was pretty cool to see all those things together, so I asked him to take a photo. Here it is:

Ho ho ho!

I am part of a group of eight women friends who mean the world to me. We are a mix of virtual and face to face friends; I knew one in high school and I’ve met two others in real life. The meeting in real life or not as the case may be doesn't seem to have stopped us from becoming friends. We share so much with each other and offer advice, encouragement and best of all, non-judgmental listening ears when any of us are going through tough times.

Last year we had our first ever Secret Santa gift exchange. The dollar limit is low by design—we’re not going for bling or best gift ever, we are going for ways to show the affection we share, demonstrate some creativity and maybe brighten someone’s day. For our first gift exchange, I drew Magpie’s name and sewed up one of the bags I tend to make (you can see a photo here).

This year, I drew her name again! Well I wasn’t going to make her another bag; that’s a little too one trick pony, don’t you think? I had a sense of the kinds of clothing she likes and decided to make her a kind of a vest. Hancock’s cooperated by have patterns on massive sale the weekend after Thanksgiving, which kept the costs down. Otherwise I’d have had to franken-pattern an existing pattern since my friend and I are not the same size.

I picked Butterick 5359, view A (shown in green in the line drawings) because I thought the way the front seams angled down suited my friend’s style. And I used some lovely I don’t even know what to call it but it’s gorgeous and has a lot of colors in it. I’d originally bought it to sew up another New Look jacket, but didn’t because I thought one was enough for now. Then I used a bit to make a bag for another friend, which left me with not a whole lot of fabric. This picture really shows the fabric.

Then I pinged the one friend who’s met both of us face to face to get an idea about the proper size. I figured since Harriet had met me and Magpie, she could offer some relative size guidance. And this wasn’t intended to be a super fitted vest, I had my fingers crossed. I pieced it together from the fabric that was left and here’s the results on my dress form:

If I draw her name again next year, I’ll speak up. She’s been inflicted with enough of my sewing!

The dragon flower bag

I made another bag as a gift this year, this time for my mother-in-law. She was with me when I bought the pattern and seemed to really like it, so I sewed it up for her.

I put my hand in this picture so you could get a sense of the size of the bag. The clasp is actually on the back side, not on the dragon flower side. The exterior is made from an ultrasuade material, the dragon flower is a really interesting cotton and the interior is also a cotton that in a happy stroke of luck pretty much exactly matched the exterior.

My cat's Christmas

My mother-in-law is a confirmed dog person but still manages to get the best cat toys for our kitties at Christmas (which I know I've written about before). This year was no exception and Eddie in particular is having a ball with this present.





He's managed to get the toy out of the sucker gripper that kept it on the glass door, and has been carrying it around the house for the last 30 minutes. We'll need to make sure we put it away tonight or we'll never get any sleep.

No such thing – a family story

My ex and I didn’t teach our children to believe in Santa Claus. We thought that was not a good idea – tell them about a mythical creature who flies around the world in one night, have them believe it for their early years only to learn we’d lied to them. We preferred to teach them about Christ, stressing that His birth was what Christmas was all about. We didn’t mock or otherwise denigrate the Santa myth but we didn’t perpetuate it.

From L to R: B, me, and J

When J was nearly five (the age he is in this picture), I was finishing up Christmas shopping with the boys at a mall. As often happened, another shopper stopped to chat with us. I’m not bragging when I say that I got stopped a lot with my children because they were really gorgeous. I was usually told they should be Gerber babies or in modeling or something like that. The kids had gotten used to it, and we were always polite. This time, after commenting on his beautiful eyes, the elderly lady asked J what Santa was bringing him for Christmas. He looked at her and said, “Nothing. There’s no Santa Claus!” Her face fell, she sort of stepped back in shock, gave me the most disapproving look and hurried off.

Now there’s a follow up to that story. Not four or five months later, J lost his first tooth. He was really young for that, only five, and we hadn’t given any thought to what we’d do about the Tooth Fairy. So he came to me with his little tooth and asked me about the Tooth Fairy. Thinking quickly, I asked him what he knew about it. “Oh,” he said, “I know it’s not real but can we pretend?” Sure thing! And so my children got their ransom money for their fallen teeth.

Day 25

Christmas is a month away (if you celebrate).

And I’m grateful for something that’s fairly innate to me. I plan ahead – I mean I really plan ahead so most years I’m done buying Christmas presents in October. We are slightly behind this year but not by much. And celebrating Thanksmas with our kids and grandkids the day after Thanksgiving means we have most of it done now anyway.

But having that tendency to plan ahead and get it done means December is just not a hassle. And it means I can enjoy the stuff that matters – like the traditions I mentioned yesterday.

Christmas decorations

If you celebrate Christmas, do you decorate your house? Put up a tree? Maybe use different plates?

I’ve written about this before, I know. But for someone who usually decorates, I haven’t done much in the last six years.

• In 2007, we’d put our house up for sale so no decorations were allowed.
• We spent our first Christmas in Boston in 2008, and did manage to find a ceramic tree that ended up getting knocked off the table and breaking. That’s cats for you.
• 2009 was a challenge all the way around because we’d recently flooded and were living in a temporary place while our home underwent extensive renovations. Kent convinced me we should spend money we didn't really have to get a little tree made of Christmas decorations. 
• In 2010, we went to Oklahoma for Christmas, I was traveling pretty much 100% and didn’t see any point to put up things only the cats would see and probably destroy. And apparently I was so swamped, I didn’t even write a blog post about Christmas that year, except my not-very-subtle hint to Kent about Despicable Me.
• Last year, Kent surprised me with a tiny live tree which had little colored lights and teeny tiny decorations. That was pretty cool. We put up other decorations too but couldn’t hang our ornaments on the tiny tree (it was about 18 inches tall).
• This year, we figured we wouldn’t put up the tree we bought after Christmas last year.* We’re moving in the middle of January and thought we’d save ourselves the hassle. We also feared  that Wally and Eddie would either eat the tree (remember, Wally loves plastic) or knock it over or both.

But after the events of last week in Connecticut and China, I realized I really truly did want to celebrate almost as a way of defying such evil events. I asked around about cat deterrents, found the recommended product and sprayed the snot out of the lower third of the tree. We strategically hung decorations no lower than about 18 inches off the floor and used soft ornaments at the lower levels. So far, Eddie’s tried to eat a branch just once, and both have stayed out of it.  

And now we have a place to put our presents. It's beginning to look a lot like Christmas!

*Yes, I like live trees too, but I'm also aware of my own limitations. I remember to give the cats fresh water every day but they are quite vocal in their reminders. Trees don't really have that ability.

Boring stories of glory days

I’d already posted about my favorite Christmas music when Harriet decided to host this holiday blog go round; if you'd rather read about my four favorites plus a bonus fifth song, they're right here. Otherwise, I'll tell you a story.

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So far, we've heard from:

Harriet at spynotes
Hugh at Permanent qui vive
Jeanne at Necromancy never pays
Cranky at It’s My Blog!

Dr. Geek at Dr. Geek’s Laboratory

Lemming at Lemming’s Progress

Readersguide at Reader’s Guide to…

Freshhell at Life in Scribbletown

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Over the years I've played so many Christmas or holiday concerts that I feel a little immune to the wonders of the music. It's like watching a show from backstage, you see all the less glamorous stuff that goes on behind the curtains. And really, once you've played Leroy Anderson's Sleigh Ride 100 times, it gets pretty old and it's just not as much fun (unless the percussion section screws up the whip sounds, in which case it's fun in a painful sort of way).



Years ago, when I was still an oboist but could see the end of that thanks to my arm, I'd started singing more frequently although I avoided the so-called serious genres of music. I stuck mostly to rock or pop music unless specific music was requested for the gig. Although I’d been an oboist for a couple of decades, I didn’t have nearly as much vocal training as I’d had on my instrument so I was intimidated by singing anything more legitmate. I’ve watched plenty of singers who aren’t well trained try to do that, and to me it’s like putting on clothes that don’t quite fit. I was also still adjusting to not having the instrument to hide behind, and on top of that, my voice teacher refused to let me sing alto any more. "Like most women, you're a chickenshit soprano," she said.

Yikes. 

That particular year, I'd done all the usual Christmas concerts both for the military, college and church. But we'd also scheduled a Sunday evening recital at church with the vocalists choosing what they wanted to sing. I figured I'd been studying voice for a while and my voice was in pretty good shape and besides, I wanted to try something new (and above the staff). So with my newfound vocal bravery or perhaps it was just pure foolishness, I picked an aria from The Messiah, I Know That My Redeemer Liveth. Then another singer asked if I’d sing a duet with her, also from The Messiah, And He Shall Feed His Flock. I was very flattered, she had some serious vocal chops so I said yes. 

Please don’t think for a moment that I believe my voice sounded anything like what you’ll hear in this clip or the next one. Because it most certainly did not. But I didn’t shame myself.

And I didn’t shame myself in the duet either.

That recital was a pivotal event for me. I was in my early 30s, and had been told that fall that the tendonitis I'd developed from being an oboist wasn’t going to go away, that the damage I’d already sustained was probably permanent and that I needed to stop playing. I’d been so nervous, felt so inadequate as I started doing more singing but that night showed me it would be OK. Even though singing would never be as satisfying as performing on oboe, I realized there was life for me post-oboe and my fear needed to go. So that recital marked the beginning of the end of my deep sadness over losing something that had been part of my life for a couple of decades. 

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This is the eighth blog post about holiday music. Next up is My Kids' Mom at Pook and Bug. After My Kids' Mom, we have:

joyhowie at The Crooked Line

Magpie at Magpie Musing

And the bow on the package will be  a wrap up by Harriet at spynotes

A few of my favorite things

One of my friends on Facebook asked what our favorite Christmas songs or carols are. And I couldn’t just give a title. There are reasons these songs make my tops list,

Little Drummer Boy. In 7^th grade, I switched from playing flute to oboe which was probably the best musical decision I ever made. I know I’m not the only one to believe that personalities and instruments have to match. If you like being in a group, you should play something like flute, clarinet, violin or viola. If you don’t mind standing out, or even positively want to stand out, then consider the double reeds – oboe, English horn, bassoon. So the oboe was a good fit for me.

Every year, the junior high advanced band would play Little Drummer Boy at the Christmas concert (this was when Moby Dick was a minnow so the concerts were still called that), and that arrangement had an oboe duet right at the beginning. Now I’d only been playing oboe for about six or seven weeks so I was still really learning what it meant to be a double reed player, and I wasn’t in the advanced band, I was in the beginner band. But the advanced band had just one oboist so I was tapped to play second oboe in that piece. I’m sure we sounded like dying ducks but I was so exhilarated by playing that piece and so convinced of my pure awesomeness on the oboe that I never looked back.

Breath of Heaven. I heard this piece about 20 years ago on Amy Grant’s second Christmas album and along with most CCM listeners, was captivated by the words and the melody. Amy has said before that she’s not the best singer and knows there are other artists out there who are far more talented than she, but to me her voice fits this piece perfectly. I love that she’s singing from the perspective of a young, scared, very pregnant Mary wondering why she was picked to be the mother of Christ and whether or not she can actually do it.

‘twas da Night: Take 6 did an amazing version of this old favorite which made me laugh out loud the first time I heard it and hasn’t stopped being entertaining since. Plus they’re just amazing vocalists.

Carol of the Bells. I flat out love this song whether it’s done as an instrumental or vocal version.

Chant Noel. OK, this isn’t one song, it’s an entire Christmas CD put out by the Benedictine Monks about 20 years ago as a follow up to their first CD. I don’t know Latin at all but I still love this CD and it’s on my Christmas playlist.

And here's something I posted on Facebook yesterday, which is well worth the four minutes it takes to watch:

What about you? What are your favorite Christmas songs?

Merry Christmas

Or as the cats would say--Meowy Christmas.

Random Christmas memories

I alternated spending Christmas and Easter with my mother and my father. Some of these memories are with my father and some are with my mother.

Breakfasts in the two households were different but both included foods that were part of that family’s traditions. So my mom would make a Swedish tea ring—until the year she found the Victorian Tea Pastry recipe and ditched the tea ring. The tea ring had to rise twice so Mom either made it the day before or got up at a ridiculously early hour to make it. My step-mother tended to have things like country bacon, and biscuits and gravy.

When I was six or seven, I spent Christmas in Denver with my father’s side of the family (his parents lived there) and I got my first ever watch. I felt so grown up.

In third or fourth grade, my mom and dad lived in Lexington, KY for the first time (we returned there a few years later for Dad’s residency and fellowship). I remember Mana and G’Pa came for Christmas and Mana had sewn my brother and me each a large green burlap bag with our initial on the front in red braid. I don’t remember what presents they put in there but I sure loved that bag.

That was the same year my mom made Doug and me each a super cool stuffed animal. I think Doug’s was a large white dog because he was really into Call of the Wild. I got a cat of course, and he was made of a very cool, mottled patterned baby corduroy. Doug and I often traded animals back and forth so they may have actually been given the other way around. But at the end of it all, I got them both because Doug wanted something else I had.

In sixth grade, back in Bryn Mawr with my father and step-mother, my mom and dad had sent me the soundtrack of Jesus Christ Superstar (yes, on vinyl). I played those records to death and still have every word on that soundtrack memorized. That was the last year I spent Christmas with that side of the family. Long story, but it was how it needed to be.

And skipping ahead to my mid-20s, I will never forget the year Mom and Dad gave me and Rick a portable dishwasher. Mom cleverly wrapped a box of dishwasher detergent and somehow I did not figure out what it was until the moment I started taking the paper off the box. See, I have the ability to touch a present and just know what it is. It’s such a strong, reliable ability that Mom usually forbids me from touching anything and in fact this year, she mailed everything to Kent so I wouldn’t be tempted.

Got any special memories from your past Christmases?

Christmas meals

What do you have on Christmas day? Are your meals tried and true favorites? Are they foods you’ve always had?

For breakfast, I’ve served Victorian Tea Pastry (called Pea Tasty by my sons when they were little) plus a fruit salad made of diced pears and apples tossed with a bit of vanilla yogurt. We'll have that this year because it's just so good. Lunch is normal, whatever we’ve been eating lately. That means it will probably be my spicy vegetable soup plus some chips.

Dinner will be different from what I usually make. I’ve made my mother’s pork recipe for years and I do love it but I’m ready to have something else. So I found a recipe for Cornish game hens in Nigella Express cookbook that sounds good and mostly hands off. The recipe calls for putting sweet potatoes right in the roasting pan with the hens. I will put in one for me and a couple of small red potatoes for Kent since he despises sweet potatoes. I’m also making an autumn salad (romaine, diced pears, toasted pecans, feta cheese, dried cranberries plus balsamic vinaigrette), and creamed onions. I already made a pumpkin pie this week and if it’s still around, we’ll have some of that. If not, we’ll have peppermint ice cream.

Christmas Past

This week I got out our Christmas decorations. As I told Kent in October, I missed having the house decorated last year. Of course last year we were both gone so much, plus we went to Oklahoma for Christmas itself that we really didn’t have an opportunity to decorate. But this year is different. We are staying home.

We need this time together. My previous job’s travel tended to cluster in the spring and summer, while Kent’s job gets crazy starting late summer and continuing through the end of the year. Between work and Thanksgiving, he’s been gone the last three weeks and was home a week before that but gone several weeks before that. So we are looking forward to some quiet together time.

As I unpacked the boxes, I realized we had not really decorated for Christmas since 2006. We had the best house for Christmas decorations in Kansas City but in 2007, the house was on the market so most Christmas decorations weren’t allowed, although I did put some artificial garlands on our mantel. We had Eddie and Wally by then and Wally promptly started eating the garlands so they got put away almost immediately. In 2008, we were here but still had far too many things in the house to put up decorations. The tree had been abandoned before our move as far too large for Boston living (plus Wally would eat it). Without a mantel, I had no place to put stockings. I did put up a wall hanging my mother made for me years ago but that was about it.

Eddie is our present?

2009 was a bust since we’d flooded and the surviving Christmas decorations were at the salvage company. That’s the year we bought our little ornament tree and I cried in Target when Kent said we should get it. And of course last year we were just not around.

Going through the boxes was almost like opening presents. I found a pet collar I really didn’t remember we had. It's the one in the video I posted earlier this week. I think we bought it for poor little Sammie cat. Since he was pure black and the servant stairs in our Kansas City house had no lighting, we had already put a belled collar on him so we’d know where he was. We figured he wouldn’t mind the collar but sadly I have no pictures of him in it.

I know we got this stocking for him, because I remember the conversation Kent and I had about how silly it was to spend $12 on a stocking for a cat. Now I wish I had two more, although I still don’t know where I will put any stockings, let alone stockings for cats.

Do you decorate? If so, how much? When do you take things down? I take our decorations down on New Year’s Day. I also stop listening to Christmas music the day after Christmas.

Kindle v Kindle

Fire is on the left, 3G on the right

I got my Christmas present from Kent early—in fact I got it before we left for Virginia. That’s because I have zero patience and once he informed me that he would be getting me the new Kindle Fire for Christmas, and I’d made the financial objections only to be overruled, I asked if we could get it Right! Now! So I got my present early. Yes, I know I'm spoiled.

My mother called this morning asking some questions about the difference between the Kindle 3G, which I also own (hey I am Gadget Queen) and this one. We had a good conversation and I told her I’d also post pictures of them both here on my blog plus give a quick assessment on how they compare.

The screen on the Fire is amazing. We watched lots of short videos on You Tube last week and they looked great on the screen. Streaming like that does drain the battery, and I haven’t yet looked at ways to store videos or movies on the device although it can do that.

The touch keypad is fine but I wouldn’t want to type lengthy posts on it. That’s mostly because I prefer keyboards and I'm really fast with them. I’m less speedy with a touchscreen keyboard.

See how well the 3G handles
the light from the flash?

Reading on the Fire is different from reading on my 3G Kindle. First, it’s backlit. Second, instead of buttons on either side of the screen, you tap the right side of the page to advance in your book and the left side to go back. The search function works as well as the 3G search function. I will take my 3G Kindle when we go places where I’ll be reading outside—the e-ink does so well in direct sunlight and doesn’t strain my eyes.

If I get a job where I travel the way I did with the last job, I’d take the Fire. When I travel, I’m generally not creating content while in the air and if I need to do that, I’d use a work laptop.

With my hand as a reference for size.

The Fire is perfect for consuming content which makes sense since that’s what it’s designed to do. If you expect a powerhouse processor, first reexamine why you are considering a Fire—start by asking yourself what problem you are trying to solve.

If you want to create content, get a different device. This isn’t the device for you.

If all you want to do is read, get a plain jane Kindle, which handles that task beautifully.

If you want to keep up on your personal email, check Facebook or Twitter, read your favorite blogs and maybe play games like Angry Birds, then give the Fire a good look.

If you’re an Apple fan, I can’t help you.

My children made me cry

And in this post, I am counting all four of them as my kids (no disrespect intended to the mothers of Jen and Sophie).

We exchanged gifts with Ben, Jen and the kids and Jordan and Sophie on Saturday. The puppets were a huge hit with both children, which really made me happy. I have some great memories of playing puppets first with my little sisters and then later with Jordan and Ben. Seeing Alison and Eliot love the puppets like that brought all those good feelings back.

But I have to say I think that I got the most amazing gift of all. My kids completely surprised me and more than that, they got me something that just overwhelmed my heart. To understand why, I need to give you some back story.

I’ve written here before that as divorces go, mine was pretty civilized. Yes, a marriage ended and yes, dreams we’d both held of beating the odds and living happily ever after also ended, but for the most part, neither of us got nasty or vindictive. One of the few sticking points for me—and let me hasten to say that this wasn’t Rick being nasty or vindictive, I think he was just sort of oblivious—was that I got pretty much no photographs of our 16 years together. That also meant I had almost no pictures of my children as they grew up.

I’ve always felt this loss keenly. The boys loved it when I’d sit down with them and go through all the photo albums and tell them stories about what they were doing in each picture. Our albums weren’t scrapbooks, just the old-fashioned, probably ruin your pictures kind of albums but they held the pictures and we looked through them frequently.

Even this summer, when Rick was in Boston and took us both out to dinner, I mentioned that I had no pictures. He was shocked and promised to get me digital copies. I didn’t hold my breath.

Maybe you can see where this is going. Last year or the year before, Ben and Jen put together a picture book, bound and everything, that contained pictures of us with them and their children. That was a fantastic gift, so Saturday when I felt the texture of the book, I knew what it was.

But I was wrong. They’d gotten their childhood pictures, scanned them all, and had them printed into a book for me. They also burned the pictures onto a disk. It was a complete group effort by all four of them—I cracked up at the account of how Sophie just walked in to Rick’s house and took the pictures (yeah!).

I’m getting teary again just thinking about how much this book means to me. I haven’t looked at the disk yet. I am saving those pictures when maybe I’m having a sad or lonely day, or feel not so great about myself. I know for a fact those pictures will give me a wonderful boost.

Now you’ll have to excuse me. I have something in my eye.

Ben is on the left, Jordan is on the right. Cute lil stinkers, huh.

T minus three

Christmas is less than three months away and we should be finished with the gifts we're giving by the end of this month.

Oh I can tell you that planning ahead is especially important for us because we (a) live far away from all recipients and (b) have a greatly reduced family income from which to get the gifts. But really, it's because I like to stay organized. I dislike the retail craziness in December and will do just about anything to avoid shopping, even online, during the holiday season.

The first year Kent and I were together, he was a little dismayed in September that year when I asked him where he was in his gift planning process. Thankfully I’ve learned to nag far less than I did when I was young, dumb and even more impatient (I know, hard to believe I was ever less patient than now because I’m sure not very patient even yet), so I didn’t harangue him about the evils of his unorganized ways. But he did notice that I was finished in October and not scrambling around in late November and December, making mad dashes to the mall or looking online.

The next year, he joined me in the planning process and it’s continued that way ever since. We have scaled gifts up and down as our financial resources have increased and decreased but we still give presents and we don’t go into debt over them.

We have a shared spreadsheet on Google Docs that lists names, need by dates, ship by dates, delivered by dates, the gifts themselves and also a column for interests.

We're making a lot of our gifts this year. Some are from fabric, others involve food and all are going to be made with as much care as we can possibly give. I don’t want someone to get a gift from us and think it’s a tacky thing. Yes, it's the thought that counts and we think highly of our family and friends.

I’ve got what I need to make gifts for five people, plus I know what I’m making for another half dozen or so. In a way, I hope I stay unemployed for the next month because I have a lot of work to do.

Merry Christmas

Despicable Me

One of my absolute favorite movies is Monsters, Inc. I love that movie partly because I looked like Boo as a little girl and also that movie does an end run around my protective barriers and I always cry at the end when Boo says "Kitty!"

Well on the HNL > SLC flight last night I (finally) watched Despicable Me. Jeanne liked it and I like Jeanne and generally check out a lot of things she recommends. I must confess, I teared up at the ending.

In my family traditions (the ones I established with my children, not what we had growing up), we include movies in stocking gifts--by the way, DVDs fit better than VHS movies, so thank God for technological advances. Anyway, if a copy of this movie showed up in my stocking, I wouldn't mind. Yes, Kent, I am so very subtle.

Merry Christmas and please, a happy New Year

Kent and I won’t forget this year any time soon. Go here for the year in pictures.

And here’s a recap of our year:

Even for Boston, last winter was cold and snowy, and the snow remained on our patio until March 19. At least we don’t have to shovel a long driveway.

I ramped up my sewing, and made a lot of bags, toddler clothes and aprons. Wally helped.

Once things thawed out a bit, we turned our attention to our patio. One of the main reasons we bought this apartment over others we looked at was the very large outdoor space—well, large by Boston standards anyway. We moved bushes, added ground cover that can thrive even with little sun, and planted impatiens, begonias, herbs and ferns. We couldn’t enjoy the patio in June since most of June was very rainy and cold, but our work paid off later in August.

Ben and Jen asked us to visit at Easter and you better believe we said yes. Watching Alison eat (and dislike) her first Peep was hilarious.

My folks organized a family reunion in Estes Park, CO in July, which gave us the opportunity not only to get out of the chilly rain in Boston but also to catch up with family members, some of whom I hadn’t seen in decades. We also headed down to Providence for Waterfire—the city put platforms in the river and then lights huge bonfires on them. It’s a very cool spectacle.

In August, my best friend Kerry and her husband Brad came out to see us. Thankfully the weather actually cooperated, and we had a blast going to Fenway, checking out the Freedom Trail and watching Brad replicate a Man v Food event.

Throughout the year, I rediscovered how much I like baking my own bread, I learned to make yummy granola bars, and Kent became a pizza dough master. We also got more storage for our apartment, things like tall bookcases, a sewing cabinet that looks like a chest, plus an amazing new rug and a new chair.

On October 28, a 31 inch water main ruptured and flooded our apartment with about 18 inches of water. For the first three weeks, we stayed in Providence at a friend’s house, and I found the house my mother lived in when she was a little girl. Right now, we’re in temporary quarters waiting for the insurance company to approve the construction plan.

We spent our third Thanksgiving in a row with Ben, Jen and Alison. This has become a cherished tradition for Kent and me, and we love that we can spend time with them, celebrate Christmas early and just soak up family time.

Three weeks ago, Kent learned that AOL was eliminating the small company he works at. He opted to take the voluntary separation packet since the job was going away no matter what. Right now it looks as though his last day there will be at the end of February.

Two weeks ago, we learned that the trustees for our condominium association are being sued—and Kent is a trustee.

We’ll end the year on a better note when we head to Nashville to visit Jordan and Sophie the day after Christmas. We are looking forward to seeing them and putting the stresses we’re currently facing out of our minds for a few days.

Here’s to 2010—may it be a lot more peaceful not only for us but also for you.

With love,

Kent and Elizabeth

We are insane

We're heading to Target on Christmas Eve to buy a meat thermometer. We can't make my mother's amazing pork without it.

If you don't hear from us, send help.