6 posts tagged “christmas”
Where does the time go? My parents, sister Laurel and brother Matthew drove up from Calif and braved the snowstorm coming up (I think it took them an extra 10 hours or so once they hit Oregon!...) But we had a great Christmas together and I'll need to get caught up and post some pictures. Little Jake and Will had a lot of fun, as did the adults. Two highlights for me were going to the Blazers game with Dad, Laurel, Melissa, Mark and Mark's dad and a few days later seeing what has become one of my favorite movies of all time: Slumdog Millionaire--about a poor kid in Mumbai. The story, photography and music were all brilliant. Someday Agi and I hope to visit India (won't be any time soon though).
We also enjoyed some bowling with the family one afternoon and the kids did some sledding! It was a bummer that our church service at Intown was cancelled prior to Christmas though due to the snow.
My parents gave me two great books and I recently finished one, which was superb: The Art of Learning, by Josh Waitzkin. I want to read it again as it's packed full of remarkable insights. Josh is a high achiever: a world-class chess champion and world champion martial artist. His writing style is accessible and he communicates like a helpful coach without being cocky.
We brought in 2009 with Melissa and Mark and amazingly enough I just turned 36 on Monday. Life is short and there's much to do.
Portland has been covered in snow this past week. Overall it's been a lot of fun and Agi and I have enjoyed walking around outside and going to the store for food to avoid driving. I've got chains on the Jetta though and the car has done well when we've needed to use it (still looking forward to getting an AWD Audi however). Though a couple days ago we got stuck twice briefly in the snow driving over to babysit our nephews.
We took the Max train into downtown on Saturday and braved a big snowstorm but were comfortable and warm because our gore-tex jackets and fleece hats do the job beautifully. Downtown was gorgeous and there was a festive atmosphere and people were very friendly, talking about how cold it is.
Also, Melissa snow-shoed over to our condo yesterday, amazingly enough--it was pretty funny but we saw others doing the same thing. We've been running our fireplace a lot and enjoying the cozy feel. We had our neighbors over last night--a nice couple who we get along with well.
I'll take some more pictures and get these up--we want to remember this beautiful Christmas
After some skiing in Tahoe (Ivy actually took snowboarding lessons for those three days we were there--I stayed w/ normal skiing) we cruised back over to my parents' place just outside of El Dorado Hills. My sister Melissa's kids are looking great: Jacob (almost 2) and Will (10 months I believe...). They were the center of the action and fun w/ everyone. Some good presents were exchanged: Ivy got me the superb Beatles "Love" c.d. (based on the excellent Cirque de Soleil show featuring the Beatles--we saw it this past 4th of July in Vegas); Ivy also hand-crafted and painted two corkboards made out of wine corks in a wooden frame (I helped with the hole drilling, which impressed Ivy as she always likes to see me do anything "handy") and gave one to my parents and the other to Laurel. My mom gave Ivy and me two more classy leather-bound books from the Narnia series and we're looking forward to reading those with some kids some day!
Ivy had to go back to work this past Wednesday, but I got to hang out with Melissa, Mark and their kids and--amazingly enough-- all five of us fit pretty well in our little one-bedroom apartment w/ one bathroom. I just reminded everyone that this is how families live together in much of the world outside the U.S. (e.g. we saw about 10 people living together in one room in Thailand) and so it's no big deal. But they decided to leave anyway after 2 days with us for some reason!
I finished the John Adams biography yesterday. It was phenomenal. I loved nearly every page and have concluded biographies are my favorite books. It's always so moving to see the highs and lows of a person's life and how they dealt with adversity. I'm also always very sad at the end when the person inevitably dies, but inspired too to live life purposefully because time is clearly limited. In another post I'm going to add a bunch of great quotes from the Adams book.
Last Saturday night, Yardu and her roommates in Santa Cruz threw another great Christmas White Elephant party. Hanging out with her roommates and all of the ultra-hip, post-college age Mountain Hermon camp leader and “emerging church” folks, it reminds me a bit of the group at that Laurel and I were a part of for a number of years. Fortunately, Ivy and I seem to fit right in.
Some funny moments for us: Ivy “stealing” (as per the White Elephant rules) the cow-themed alarm clock gift that has an authentic mooing cow noise because she wanted this to wake us up every morning. Perhaps Ivy and I both have rural, farm-based roots that we want to get back to. (I grew up with some chickens, goats and horses and Ivy loves animals, plants, trees, berries, gardening, etc. By the way, where we currently live there are about 10 squirrels outside our apartment in a little grove with two oak trees. This squirrel colony is bustling. In Hungarian, a squirrel is called a “mokus” (pronounced “moe-koosh”) and we spend time every day watching these guys jump around and nervously and quickly eat their nuts. They are hilarious.)
Back to the White Elephant party and to the other funny moment for us: We wrapped up two old thick “Labor Law” casebooks as my gift and it turns out that the only young kid at the party picked this gift. He was probably 9 years old and was crestfallen when he pulled open the wrapping paper and saw these two boring books staring back at him. This nevertheless got a lot of restrained laughs from everyone and the kid was actually a pretty good sport about it. Ivy and I later gave him the “Poopy Reindeer” gift (a plastic reindeer action-figure that drops realistic-looking pellets) that came with her Moo-Cow alarm and this got him very excited and happy.
This past December 5th, my lovely sister Melissa turned 32 (this is the one month out of the year we're just a year apart) and good amigo Cameron F turned 33! At my company's Christmas ("Holiday") party, on Friday, Lovely Ivy spoke with one of the many Dutch guys who work with me. He described how the Dutch celebrate Christmas differently than the Americans (and presumably the British) do. I think the Dutch model has a lot of advantages for good reasons. Over there in The Netherlands, their Santa Claus equivalent comes and brings gifts for the family and friends sometime during the first week of December. Then, on Christmas Eve and Christmas Day, no presents are exchanged because that's all been taken care of already. What is great about this is that you don't focus on the materialistic aspects of what should be a family-centered spiritual holiday and so instead a family can better emphasize what's truly important--very similar to how Thanksgiving works in the U.S. Ivy and I both like their approach much better. We suspect that the retailers might have pushed for the gift exchange to happen as late in the year as possible to pump up annual sales results!?... Anyway, we may go the Dutch Christmas route with our own kids someday. (An added benefit of the Dutch approach is that everyone gets to open their presents earlier than everyone else!... Or--to rid Christmas of its materialism as much as possible--maybe we should ban all gift-giving entirely in our family? Nah--all in all, we should just go Dutch.)
On Sunday afternoon, Ivy and I met up with my sister Laurel (often called Yardu--this is the name my little brother Matthew gave her when he was very young and couldn't pronounce tricky names like her's). We met Laurel and her relatively new Boyfriend--oww!-- David up in Santa Cruz. This area really is gorgeous. All the big, green pine trees, mountains and ocean are a beautiful combination. It's expensive to live there too but if you could get a nice set-up (as David does) right in Mount Herman or Mission Springs, you are set!
We went out to the Johnson Family Christmas tree farm and enjoyed the festive atmosphere, took a lot of pictures (will post some soon) and liked seeing all the kids run around excitedly, petting the goats, and riding the tractor around the farm. It must be incredibly hard work, but I can see the appeal of farm living. (Growing up, my Mom did have a goat, some chickens and horses at our home in Cupertino. Perhaps it was a mini-farm?). I have fond memories of throwing farm apples at my sisters when we had to clean the horse stall.
