Still Good-Bying

A short time ago, I wrote about the night in December with the soft snow outside and Mary and I were inside in front of the fire in my parents' house (Click here). And, I said I thought I had a picture I took that night. This black and white is the picture with the snow covering my car and the neighborhood lights on to celebrate the Christmas season. Not as elaborate as today, but perhaps more meaningful.  (Click on the picture to enlarge.)



My Dad did something radical that year, he purchased a long-needled flocked tree and put a limited number of glass balls on it and illuminated it with flood lights. No tinsel, no kids school projects, none of the family's Christmas stuff. I was too old to say I was heart broken that Rudolf didn't get put on the tree but I did complain that the plastic angels were not allowed. This is a picture of my parents (yes, Mary and Pat) dressed for some holiday event in front of that tree. Today, in a more enlightened world, the color scheme makes one think it might be a Hannukka tree!  (Click on the picture to enlarge.)

Happy New Year

The Holidays turned out to be far better than I was expecting. The visit by my son, daughter-in-law and two beautiful grandkids was beyond great. They were here 18th to 27th so we had lots of time together plus Christmas Eve at Casey's Mom's, Christmas day at my place and the 26th at Casey's brother's place. All in all a great Christmas weekend.

New Years was with friends including catching "The Black Swan" on New Year's Eve. That is my first in-the-theater movie in roughly two years--before Mary presented her cancer symptoms. Oh, it was a good movie as well.

On New Year's Day, the three amigo's from our Alaska cruise got together to build a photo-book of our trip. I set up my big iMac (24" screen) on the dining room table so Ingrid and Mary could fully interact with the pictures and editing on the screen. Amazingly, Kodak sent a 25% discount notice if it gets done by Tuesday. Nice, very nice. We also prepared a nice dinner as part of our photo work--salmon, potatoes, gingered carrots and a salad.

Monday is back to work! These past ten days have been so very nice.

Happy New Year!