Happy New Year!

Time to catch up on my posting!

It was a busy New Year holiday. After watching BC lose to Vanderbilt, we hit the grocery store. For our New Year's Eve feast we fixed ourselves lots of munchy food (cheeses, pate, dips, New Braunfels Smokehouse sausages)-see Keara with the fine spread. BTW, you haven't lived until you've eaten these sausages...

We drank the most excellent bottle of Lange Three Hills Cuvee Pinot Noir the girls sent us for our anniversary, followed up with some house chardonnay, then toasted each time zone's new year with some Freixinet Brut. By our new year, we were toasted, too. The girls also showed me how to gang text, so if you got a text from me on New Year's, it's because I was testing out my new skill successfully. If you are in my cell phone directory and didn't get one, it's because I was toasted.

It was a DVD watching holiday, with our lovely weather, starting with 3:10 to Yuma. If you haven't seen Wall-E, don't be shy about renting it just because you have no little kids at home. This is one clever Disney-Pixar flick! None of the good films are playing around here yet, so DVDs and HBO ruled. We watched one of my all time faves, The Committments, which I bought for Keara (she loves music films and Irish films, score two). Keara got me Mamma Mia, which was great fun! Meryl Streep was fantastic as always, and seemed to have a blast making this one. But the best reason to watch was the painful singing of Pierce Brosnan...we howled! Then we rented Prince Caspian, the second of the Narnia films, also quite good. And watched The Bucket List again last night. I love that film.

Brindle got in some quality snuggle time with Alina.


We had part of a sunny day on Friday, so we headed up to Mt. Adams and Atkinson Sno Park for a little cross country skiing and snowshoeing. Lloyd and Keara took the skis, Alina and I the snow shoes, knowing how much she loves cross country skiing. Finally, some exercise after a week of rain, snow, back to to rain, etc! This was a pretty frosted tree along the trail.

Saturday we drove into Portland for some shopping before Keara headed back to Boston Sunday morning. Another night at the Hampton Inn. Good thing we stayed, it was very icy at dawn, which would have made for a risky drive in from White Salmon. I think she'll come in the summer next time...

This morning there were another 4 inches of slush on the deck, the car, the road, the hot tub. I caught Lloyd out there shoveling...it was in the 40's. Yes, he's wearing shorts, tshirt and snow boots.

Today we took down the town Christmas Tree. Sorry, no photos, I forgot my camera. Alina and I collected all the strands of lights, while Lloyd, with his trusty chain saw, and Tim, with his trusty pick up, loaded chunks of tree into the truck. It was today or Friday. It's supposed to pour rain the next few days. Sigh.