Finally, news for yous
So I’ve been away for a bit. The lack of posts tells you something about my holidays–they’ve been busy. This is not a complaint.
Before I launch into a short recap, let me say that the long-promised site upgrade is almost done. Hooray! Ezra, my upgrade co-pilot, has been giggling to himself in the shower for the last three minutes. I don’t want to know…
We spent Thanksgiving at Ezra’s family farm near Pittsburgh. It was my first trip there with my digital camera, so I entertained myself a bit, wandering outside, pulling off my gloves long enough to compose a shot and release the shutter, and then bundling up again and moving to another location. As usual, the shots I like the best are posted on flickr. Here are a few:
One day we drove into Pittsburgh. We went a few different places, but ended up on the South Side–as we often do–at The Beehive.
Though I had fun taking pictures, I feel like I was kind of cranky and tired at Thanksgiving. I was in a better frame of mind when we returned to visit for a few days just before Christmas.
The weeks between Thanksgiving and Christmas are a blur of holiday preparations. I did tons of shopping, cooking, cleaning, etc. for our holiday party on the 10th (we had loads of tasty leftovers–I think the spice cake is a keeper). We also made our own cards this year. Please forgive us if you didn’t get one–we got really behind with the cards and just didn’t finish them all. We’ll do better next year! It was our first attempt at making Christmas cards with the press. I’m pretty pleased with how they came out for a first try.
Christmas was a lovely break. Though it always seems to go by too fast, I also realize when I return home from our holiday trip how it always relaxes me a bit and somehow gets me ready for something new–a new year! Yes, though there’s always a mad rush of holiday things going on, it’s a different and welcome rush compared to the usual work routine.
This year Hope joined us for her first Christmas, and everyone was a-flutter to see her, hold her, and generally coo and grin and giggle when she smiled back at them. She seemed to really enjoy all the attention. Ezra and Hope met for the first time, and after checking each other out
they decided they like each other very much.
Mom (Nana) was pretty excited to have her grandbaby around, and of course I enjoyed some aunt time myself.
On the downside, Dad may have a herniated disk and was hobbling around with a cane for much of our visit. It was a family affair, as my own back problems flared up on Friday morning. I heard a few other groans about back pain from other family members, too. May 2006 be the year of happy backs!
Ezra gave me lots of cool photographic stuff for Christmas, including a Holga, which is a medium format toy camera that will allow me to inexpensively experiment with lots of cool effects. It’s just got fun written all over it. Santa also brought me the Garbo DVD set (hooray!) and lots of other goodies (new pajamas! a space-age oven mitt–ain’t nothin’ gettin’ through that baby! new watercolors!).
Well, Ez and I are well overdue to get out of the house and get going on our New Year’s Eve activities. Happy New Year to you! (In jail! No, wait a minute…)
