Karl and Angela Rees

No, it’s not your imagination.  December just skipped a week.  Or we did.  Either way, it’s been a crazy month.  The week before last we occupied ourselves with all sorts of festivities.  Monday night (the 8th), we went to see a crèche exhibit in Palo Alto.  There were nativities from all over the world.  It was pretty cool, and we think Thomas enjoyed it as well, except he missed the puppet show due to traffic.   Tuesday night Karl played Frisbee and Wednesday night we had home teachers over. 

Also on Wednesday, a hard drive on our computer died, and Karl spent much of his free time over the next 5 days putting it back together again (he wanted to put it back together again the right way—with RAID backup—because he’s tired of having to spend days recovering things when it fails.  This led to numerous local computer shop visits to purchase and return various parts that had no business being sold in the first place.  But he finally had things working again the next Monday.

Thursday evening, Angela had fun at women-only Christmas party while Karl held down the fort.  And on Friday we ate ham, sang Christmas carols, and saw Santa at a church Christmas party.  Unfortunately, the line for Santa was way too long, so Thomas didn’t get to sit on Santa’s lap. 

Saturday, we ran errands all day and then dropped Thomas off with Becky and Wayne for the evening while we went to a work party.  It was a fun evening.  Karl sang Christmas group in the firm caroling group (they’d been practicing at lunch for weeks).  We didn’t win a trip to Hawaii (which they gave away in a raffle), but that’s okay because we’re going in February anyway.   We creatively announced Angela’s pregnancy during the firm’s “Two Turth and a Lie” game (no one thought it was lie, sadly).  The most memorable moment was when we (and the rest of the firm) got down on the dance floor to “fast” dance.    We didn’t get out there at first, preferring rather to marvel at how a dance floor and a lot of loud 70s/80s music utterly transforms normally sane co-workers and partners.  We can’t remember exactly how—sort of a collective “double dare”—but we soon found us out there busting a move as well.  And wow could Angela dance!

Sunday, we taught our primary class for the last time this year (seeing as we expect that we’ll be with another age group next year).  Monday night (the 15th), we had Wayne and Becky and Paela over for a traditional Rees “Christmas Eve” dinner of brats, potato salad, deviled eggs, and  sauerkraut.  It also got so cold that we started a fire—that night and for much of the week, it snowed not just on Mount Hamilton, but even in the Santa Cruz mountains.  We’re under an impression that that’s a rare event indeed.  It was fun to see snow from the valley all week long.

The rest of the week was a blur as Karl tried to get in as much work as possible while frantically shopping for Christmas presents and Angela got us ready to go to Utah—buying snow chains (which we fortunately haven't yet had to use), getting the car serviced, mailing Christmas letters and packages, and so on.  Angela also was busy scouring the Internet for deals on our next vacation, the previously hinted-at February trip to Kauai with Angela’s family.  

We anxiously watched weather reports all week trying to decide if it’d be alright to drive I-80 to Utah on Saturday.  But Friday morning, a snowy forecast for the day had us convinced that we needed to go down to Vegas and head back up.  This was not our preferred option, as it added 4-5 hours to our trip, meaning we had to leave that evening and hotel in Bakersfield.  All this, and Angela still had to go to the doctor to hear our little baby’s heartbeat while Karl babysat Thomas in his office (he did that twice this week actually), and Karl “had” to participate in a little office celebration and then get packed.  Anyway, we made it safe, meeting up with Angela’s brother Jonathan halfway.  And Thomas was a perfect little boy.  He didn’t complain even once.

So here we are, in Utah on vacation.  It’s freezing cold with half a foot on snow outside, but it’s great to be with Angela’s family.  Thomas has taken to his grandparents and uncles very easily.  Oh, and while we’re on the subject of Thomas, he loves musical performances at church, music on the radio, green and red stoplights, advent calendars, kissing mommy goodnight, pointing to airplanes, the moon, and stars, walking around the Christmas tree touching ball ornaments (and not other ornaments) with his finger like he’s Adrian Monk, trying to repeat any and every word we say, and chocolate snacks that daddy sneaks to him.  He doesn’t love vegetables (he used to; it’s so sad), being dipped in the tub to rinse his hair (and consequently he was having a bathtub aversion for a week until we stopped doing that), snow, mommy changing his diaper when he knows his dad is around and could do it instead, and leaving the house with only one parent when he knows the other parent is not following behind.

Merry Christmas everyone!