Starting with the fact that we found the prettiest Christmas tree (I think) of all time and space, though I think I'm about done with evil unreliable incandescent mini lights (did I mention unreliable and EVIL?), Dylan and Emi flew to Colorado to spend some quality Christmas time with her family, though Dylan flew back to Sacramento on Christmas Eve because he wanted to get started with us (mostly Tom) who were going to help him with his website for a few days so we had a nice fish taco Christmas Eve dinner with just the three of us--can you see our traditional miniature leg lamp on the table?--and Christmas morning we had fruit and sweet bread and such though I was somehow and inexplicably out of eggs (it had been a crazy week) after which we opened fun gifts one of which was another gorgeous teapot for my collection from Tom--it's a traditional Japanese iron kind--and both Tom and Dylan got waffle irons, don't ask me why, well, actually, Tom is always hinting about waffles and, well, we have one, but, well, too many words, and I'm pretty sure there were things Dylan needed more, but oh well, and we spent the rest of the day dodging the little RC helicopter we also gave to Dylan for fun and of course I'm always giving socks to everyone, as well, and, even though I have a standing rule for, lo, these many years, of no cooking on Christmas, I decided to break it just this once to prepare make-your-own pizzas for us, and Dylan's was actually four pizzas in one and I had made a Chocolate pecan pie, among other things, and have since come to the conclusion, albeit a shocking one, that the chocolate in this case is a bridge too far so we took refuge in the plain shortbread cookies, which are Tom's fave and, oh, I made peppermint bark for the first time, too, which, well, take my advice and don't eat some after chocolate pecan pie, and since there were so few of us, I didn't fuss about a bit of football going on in the background and for the next couple of days or so we tried to help Dylan revamp his website so as to be a better marketing tool for him and fortunately, Tom is becoming an absolute wizard of websites and "we" (including myself in just the smallest of advisory positions) made quite a lot of progress (and hope to unveil it in this next week sometime) after which, Wed afternoon, we took him to the train station in Sacto to get back home then we had a day (Thurs) when I had to spend most of the day at the shelter because lots of folks are gone (after doing regular shift on Monday), but Rachel and Mike, who spent Christmas with his family in Chicago this year, had flown home by now and, around 9am Friday, started out for our house, but the Jeep broke down in Vallejo, and, in a goofy, confusing and crazy train of events, had to leave the car in Rodeo, California, where it is at this very moment, at the fourth garage they visited after which, around 3:30pm, they still wanted to come on out to Grass Valley, so they took a bus to Richmond and hopped an eastbound train and we picked them up that evening in Sacramento and by the time we got them to our house (and some seafood stew) they had been "on their way" to our house for about 12 hours--quite a commitment--and still had some energy for a gift exchange, and, whoa, another RC helicopter flying randomly around and some other really fun gifts like a sweatshirt dress (cool!) and super-high-tech hair dryer as well as a very stylin' straw hat for Tom, which he will wear a little more later in the year, then we all collapsed and they took one of our cars the next day (New Year's Eve) back to SF because the Jeep won't be ready for a few days and that's the end of the Christmas of 2011 which was one of the best of course and now, here are the photos in more or less chronological order:
