Christmas Eve

On Christmas Eve our Reno family gathers at our house, and then on Christmas Day everyone goes different directions. But for this one evening, one loud and crazy evening, we love and celebrate Christmas and us - our family. I think this gathering is my favorite Christmas present.






~The Little Cousins~












~The Big Cousins~








My daughter-in-law is getting ready to read the traditional Christmas Story. Kiernan is absent as he's upstairs with his uncles' Legos - they refuse to take them home with them so we have tubs and tubs of Legos. Kiernan only came downstairs to eat and unwrap presents. I like Legos - they don't require batteries.


Allie is in her pretty Jasmine costume parts. The actual costume was a Christmas Day present yet to come from her parents - all packed in our luggage from Disneyland. Her slippers have genie-like pointy toes and she carefully shuffled around in them all evening. I love the look on her face - she is Jasmine. Chris, her mother, is a bellydancer so the costume has special significance. We also brought back from Disneyland the dreadlocks of Captain Jack Sparrow and a giant three-point pirate hat for Kiernan, Allie's brother. Aaargh~



I read in other blogs of all the wonderful and thoughtful Christmas presents being lovingly and slightly frantically knitted. I didn't knit a thing this year - I didn't want all that pressure. I've been taking fused glass classes over the past year and Ian suggested that I give some of the ornaments that I had made as gifts. I really enjoyed the fun of making different Christmas trees and that's what I gave.


I don't understand why I love the glass so much. It's like antithetical to wool. I just hope I don't keep loving it because kilns can cost as much as looms. And there's the thing about time. From one junkie to another - you understand, right?

And please note that the pumpkin in the picture on the right is the same as Amy posted to her blog. I think that means I gave her one and me one too. Is that so wrong?

And long story short, this Christmas I got to meet my youngest son's girlfriend for the first time. I thought that was pretty cool



Probably the most unexpected present ever was that my children in Reno had arranged to have a professional photographer take pictures of themselves and their families on the main UNR campus, all of them dressed in white. Just months ago, Ian's children had presented us with an astounding picture of them taken last summer on the beach by the Seal Beach pier by a professional photographer, all of them wearing white. The locations of the pictures are significant, and while our children know each other, they did not consult each other. It couldn't have been a cooler Christmas.