This is some pictures from our Christmas dinner. Note both mom and Katie have poodle collars. In second picture, not sure what mom is doing with her head. Hope all are enjoying your Christmas.

Babies at Christmas!!
Can you recognize them, or yourselves?
I guess I have babies on the brain this year.

Our tree and my favorite ornament.
Here is our tree, it is new this year, a pre-lit one. It seems as we get older, the less hassel the better. I made the tree skirt about 10 yrs ago, and the train we bought in Mexico. The little eskimo ornament is my favorite because we bought her for our first Christmas tree back in 1969. We bought her on Christmas Eve just before the store closed and so she was marked down. There is only one other ornament from that tree left, and it is slightly broken. Looking at her reminds me of sitting in a rocking chair under the lights of our little 4 ft. tree feeding my first born son, only 1 month old at that time. It was magical to me. I just noticed that you cannot see the entire tree top ornament. It's a light house with Santa and his reindeer circling it. Guess who picked that one out?

Have you visited Santa yet?

Isn't this a great Santa? We came upon him on one of the islands near Seattle. The name of which escapes me just now. Chris, if you can remember, leave me a comment. Anyhoey, he was delightful, kept telling all these silly Santa jokes. The towns and shops on these islands are so much fun. We took the ferry over, and had the best time all day.

This was my favorite scene. I was unable to upload it last night. This is all done with lights. I understand that the gardens offer a class in how to make these floral lights. That would be fun to do.

Trip to Botanical Gardens in Seattle.
In Seattle at the holiday time they light up the Botanical garden. It is not necessarily
Christmas scenes, but plants and flowers. Quite unique and beautiful. I am afraid these pictures do not do it justice.

Travel Woes!
Let me see if I can report this correctly. Mike left Iowa to come to Seattle only to be stopped in Chicago because of 'mechanical trouble' causing him to spent the night there and arriving in Seattle a day later. When he and Christopher went to the Packer/Seahawk game they got caught in a rare Seattle snowstorm and it took them 6 hours to get home. A whole 10 mile trip, but the streets were all ice covered and many exits were closed and traffic at a standstill. In fact that were lucky to get home at all because many people spent the night in their cars. (Mike will say it was his driving and navagational skills that got them home, but I'm not going there) Then the next day the streets were still so bad that we could not get to the airport so Mike spent an extra day in Seattle. When he finally left Seattle but he got stuck in Dallas because of bad weather and spent the night there before going on to Torreon, MX. When he was due to fly out of Torreon there was doubt about his leaving once more due to airplane trouble. But he did make it to Iowa on Saturday, as planned only to discover that his car had a flat tire. Thank you Katy for taking care of that for him. I dont know, but I think I will not travel with him until he stands on his head and spins around 3 times to change his travel luck!!!