Merry Christmas and a Happy New Year!!!

We hope that you all have had a peaceful and wonderful holiday. We are just through the joyous chaos of Christmas and looking into staying up to welcome in the New Year tomorrow night. Fiona's fourth Christmas was so fun for us all. Her wonder at the mystery of Santa was great and made all the little preparations worthwhile. Lots of special Stories, Christmas Cookies, Presents from St Nick himself, followed by visits from our dear friends Brian Liv and Lyle from Oregon.

Here are a few pictures to illustrate:

Our Bouche de Noel

Fiona with the seal that Santa promised her in the parade.
A carrot discarded on the gutter by a reindeer.

Sitting in the pile Christmas morning with the paper crown from the cracker still on.

Fiona with a music box from her Grand Dad Ken


A Sunday dinner of historic proportions with Brian and Liv and Lyle (in action!)

We will be at home for january and february, perhaps a trip on the train to Oregon in March . With any luck 2010 will be as wonderful as 2009 and perhaps the world can find a bit more peace and harmony to boot.

Love and Hugs,
Louise

PS, thank's to Brian for pointing out that our post about the Grand Canyon was broken...I fixed it. Apparently the computer was revolting.

San Francisco Birthday

At the California Academy

We visited San Francisco and stayed overnight this past weekend. It was a rainy weekend but the city provided plenty of inside and mud free walking. We stayed in the Haight at the Red Victorian Hotel, and fulfilled my birthday wish to have Ethiopian food for dinner. Fiona thought that it was pretty cool that they don't use any utensils there, just fingers:On Saturday we visited The California Academy of Sciences and peeled off our layers to revel in the warmth of their rainforest bubble. Fiona had a wonderful time. Then on Sunday we woke up and had a lovely breakfast and then went for a walk from "The Haight" to "the Castro" Louise and Fiona on Buena Vista Hill

They happened to be screening 'The Wizard of OZ' at the Castro Theatre, which happens to be Fiona's favorite story at the moment. The audience was about half girls under 10 wearing ruby slippers and half gay couples enjoying Judy Garland at her finest-- or perhaps ogling the Tin Man! Fiona loves singing "somewhere over the rainbow" and liked the movie very much, but didn't like the wicked witch very much because "she was bad." She "loved Dorothy because she was so beautiful...and Auntie Em and Uncle Henry"

Fiona sitting on devon's lap watching the movie and munching on popcorn.

Freise inside the Castro theatre

Poster from our hotel room.

Unfortunately we were too late for the extreme buddhism, but we feel pretty relaxed all in all and ready for the rest of December.
We hope that you are all well and happy too.
Love
Louise

Fishing and Santa

We have been busy getting over our last big cough. I have gone back to work and Fiona and Devon are seemingly unfazed though I think that fiona has an ear infection that is getting better on it's own. Devon as you can see has been getting in a bit of official fishing at work...this trip was to catch Humbolt squid, The sunset isn't too bad either.

We went on Saturday morning to the Santa Cruz holiday parade. It is a lovely event. one of my favourite entries in the parade is the Santa Cruz Libraries Book truck drill team...of course Santa himself was at the end of the parade and the carriage he was riding in stopped right in front of us so we took the opportunity to see him immediatly rather than at the mall later this month. Fiona was REALLY delighted to see him and said "Santa...Santa..Santa...Santa"(sort of at a loss for words) when we said hello...and then she collected herself and very nicely asked him if she could "please have a baby seal for Christmas." He responded that he doesn't bring live animals and Fiona clarified that she wanted the seal to be a "pretend one" He said he could probably do that and fiona BEAMED.

Approaching Santa

So we are all ready for Christmas that we will celebrate on the Solstice this year...Santa will make an early stop to fit in with my work schedule which I really appreciate. In the meantime we are looking forward to staying up in San Francisco to celebrate my birthday next week (My 7th annual 29th birthday). We'll bring Fiona and do all the fun city things, eat Ethiopian food, visit museums, maybe even see a kid movie. Of course we'll post a full report then.
Love
Louise

Autumn Fever

Yesterday Fiona and I were both sick, fever, cough, tired. We napped all day, snuggled in bed, Devon took the day off to take care of us. I should have taken a picture of Fiona sleeping in our bed, but I wasn't feeling up to finding the camera. The blessing in all that was that at a time when fiona is usually a little comet flying around our lives dropping debris in a stream behind her she was peaceful and sleeping for a good part of the day. I had plenty of time to watch her sleep and worry over her and marvel at how sweet and good she is. She was especially cuddly and placid. We are so lucky to have her and so lucky also that she is better... and today is a comet flying about again.
I hope that you are all well
Love
Louise