An unusual Christmas is over and I’m back from Seattle…my first Christmas spent away from home in over 30 years.  Things were different, but we had a nice Christmas at Kevin and Soula’s.  Christmas eve was spent in front of a fire, listening to lots of Christmas music.  I made crab rangoon and Soula made a bunch of other yummy goodies.  For Christmas day we had a great dinner of roasted duck with plum sauce, rice and steamed vegetables.

The gifts were plentiful this year.  Patrick and Veronica gave me an apparatus that turns a regular bath into a spa with massaging jets.  They also got me a Lakers couch blanket, a Yankee Candle Christmas jar, and a pad to put at the edge of the front door to keep out the breezes.  Kevin and Soula got me a computer game called Sims 2 that looks to be very fun.  And they also got me lots of movie musical DVD’s and a collection of all the Barry Manilow music.  All in all a great batch of gifts.

I got to see some snow while in Seattle as we had a light dusting one evening.  Otherwise, the weather up there was wet and cold.  Not real pleasant, and reinforcing my decision to stay in California during the winter months whenever possible!  Good that Kevin likes it since he has to live there, but not something I would choose.

Patrick and Veronica picked me up at the airport…with Murphy!  He was ecstatic to see me and thrilled to be home.  I think the cats are happy to have someone in the house with them and expect I’ll be surrounded tonight when I go to bed.  The flight home was dreadful…delayed for over 2 hours due to a mechanical problem with the brakes.  Then we hit really high winds as we approached the airport resulting in an extremely bumpy approach and landing.

Got home to find that we had high winds this afternoon at the house.  My Christmas street decoration is hanging out front after the wind had at it.  Patrick and I tried to tie it up tonight, but it came loose after Patrick left.  We’ll work on it again tomorrow and will try to fish the top shade portion of my backyard swing out of the pool!  Not sure if there’s any other wind damage, but can’t really do anything about it tonight if there is.

Am ready for a moderately relaxing day tomorrow with nothing planned.  Am looking forward to sleeping in my own bed tonight and just being at home tomorrow.

Hope everyone had a wonderful Christmas.