Christmas 2008

This holiday season was marked with family, food, illness and a few good games of Scrabble. We'd planned to spend two days in Turlock to celebrate an early Christmas with my extended family. Our trip was extended to honor Garett's grandmother, Nonni, who passed away two weeks before her 91st birthday. It was a gift to get to get to spend some time with more of our family than we'd expected to see. Instead of driving back to San Luis Obispo following the service, we decided to spend Christmas in Turlock to have a traditional Swedish meal with my Grandpa. We then spent a few days in Morro Bay with my parents and brother before finally coming home on Saturday. After my fourth rotation of the same outfit, I was glad to come home.

Perhaps my favorite moment during my time in Turlock was the surprisingly bad combination of my brother's jeans and my parent's new white leather couch and ensuing hilarity . See, the jeans bled on the porous couch so he was required to take off his pants each time he sat on the couch. He soon found some "couch pants" that he could use if and when he wanted to watch television or a movie or just hang out with the family. My folks still don't have a long term plan for how to avoid getting denim stains on the couch so dark jeans are not recommended if you're invited to their home in the near future and prefer to keep your pants on. Fortunately Wyatt's jean overalls passed the test.

My other favorite part of the holiday week was playing Scrabble with my Grandpa. He is stiff competition and the king of vocabulary which makes my double victory all the more sweet. You might think it's uncool to tout a win given my Grandpa's kind demeanor and elevated age but, seriously, I can count on one hand how many times I've beat him and it did feel good.

Wyatt learned a few new things while we were gone, like how mimic his Grandpa and eat persimmons. He's still doing an army crawl and now he's focusing on speed. He got to play with a few new cousins and the picture below displays his friendly social skills. I suppose there must have been a few other happenings over the holiday week but I think I missed them due to being sick. Garett and I are still fighting a horrible cough and finally got cough syrup with codeine from the doctor this afternoon to hopefully help us sleep tonight. In fact, I did not take one of this photos in this post. All three of these are courtesy of my brother Josh.I'm still hoping to send out Christmas cards and am trying not to feel guilty about being perpetually behind. If you're reading this and have moved recently (Jana, I'm thinking of you.), please post a comment with your address or email it directly to me. Thanks!