Christmas in Livermore

With Thanksgiving so late in 2013, Christmas just seemed to sneak up on me. Since by definition Thanksgiving is the fourth Thursday in November, the 28th is the latest it can be and that was this year! I spent the twenty days before Dan and Carrie's scheduled Christmas arrival recovering from Thanksgiving travel, buying for and mailing packages to Oklahoma, and stocking up on food and presents and handcrafted gifts for home here in Livermore. There was little time for writing blog posts so I am catching up now.

We Skyped our Christmas with Robin and Jeremy and Autumn the Friday before Christmas because we wanted them to have their presents before their trip. They were to spend Christmas with Jeremy's family and were going to leave the next day to drive the ~900 miles to Grand Junction, CO from Oklahoma City, OK.  Autumn is really into books now so here is some of what we sent.

Autumn has quite eclectic tastes in her books. We mailed a variety for Christmas.

Jeremy has a fondness for zombies. I thought this shirt came close.

Their trek was challenging with a 14 month old who upchucked either from car sickness or altitude sickness in the mountain passes going through the Rockies, but they made it safely there and back. Hmmm. They are reconsidering flying next time.

Dan and Carrie drove up from Southern California with Snoopy the Saturday before Christmas to spend it with us in Livermore. We enjoyed the  the Niles Canyon Railway's Train of Lights with them the next night, Sunday. The festive trains leaves from Sunol, a town about 10 miles southwest of our home and the 13-mile roundtrip takes a little over an hour. It is decorated within and without.

The outside of each car is decorated. The train itself is about a 1/4 mile long.

The inside of the cars are decorated, too.

The train has a very special visitor riding along. He does not look as jolly as Frank and me in this photo.

Christmas eve we filled paper sacks with sand and lit candles within the luminaires all around our cul-de-sac. We followed this with a dinner of spaghetti with sausages and evening Mass as is our tradition.

Carrie (mini-Carrie internal), Dan, me, Frank, and Alex Christmas Eve
in our cul de sac with our house and some curbside luminaires in the background.

Carrie and Dan and Snoopy just before Christmas Eve Mass.
No, Snoopy did not go to church!

Christmas morning we opened gifts and played some games. Dan got the game Suspend by Melissa & Doug. Suspend is a balancing game that is as easy to understand as it is difficult to master. The game comes with 24 notched, rubber tipped wire pieces that hand form a tabletop stand. With each turn a new piece is added to the transforming vertical sculpture, causing the balance to shift and the difficulty to increase. Frank, Dan, and I played it. Here is our creation.

Frank won this game being the first person to successfully hang all his wire rods
 without collapsing the tower.

We played Ticket to Ride, which Dan won every time. Dan and Carrie gave me Deluxe Super Scrabble with twice as many letter tiles and regular Scrabble. Frank and I did not play this until mid January. Our game lasted several days- not continuously, of course! It took us a bit of time each day to use use up all the tiles. 

It seems my love and skill at Scrabble are well known.

I spoke too soon. My Scrabble skill failed me. Frank won 738 to 697.

Santa brought Alex a tall parking meter bank that he really seemed to like and was very engaged with throughout Christmas day.

Alex had fun unwrapping his tall parking meter bank.

Alex cheered after dropping each coin into his bank.
Aren't we all this happy when paying for parking?

I made a turkey dinner. Then, in the evening Christmas Day, Frank was leaving to drive Alex back to his group home. I'd gathered up his gifts and clothing items from his visit to send with him. As Frank was backing out of the driveway with Dan and Alex, I noticed that one of Alex's gifts had been left behind. Parking meter in hand, I went running out the door between the family room and garage to catch them. Intent as I was on my goal, I totally missed the two steps down to the garage level and went sprawling, crashing my left knee down onto the concrete floor and wrenching my right ankle that had apparently gotten hung up on the threshold. I was so lucky I did not break anything!

When I was still limping two weeks later I went to the doctor who diagnosed a high ankle sprain. If you have to be stupid and a clutz, it is good to be simultaneously lucky. Per the doctor... 1) no, I had not been worsening it by putting weight on it for all this time, 2)  no, it did not have to be in a cast, 3) movement was a good thing that enhanced healing, and 4) most people heal from it in two to six weeks so I was within the range of being better already. Now that lemon at the close of Christmas Day was well on its way to being lemonade! Carrie made me sit down and she did all the dishes after Christmas dinner. Now that extra sugar sweetened the lemonade!