Thanksgiving WAS wonderful this year, as usual. I especially enjoyed the day at my Mom's. Our home group friend Donald joined the half-crowd. The food was FABU and I thoroughly enjoyed the time with family and friends.
Football season ended with a disappointing loss to our rivals and then a hard-fought, entertaining ACC championship game loss in Tampa. Alan especially enjoyed the roadtrip to that game with Doug, Dave, Dustin, Erik and Nelson. I decorated for Christmas while he was away. Our neighbors, the Harpers, loaned us a tree. (We have great neighbors)
As the post below indicates, I struggled in December to adjust to a new "droid" phone that Alan just HAD to have. About once a week I have a lesson on how to use some features. I can probably do 20% of the stuff it does. And I didn't even WANT a new phone.
The BIG news in December is that Alan had an epiphany and now knows what he is going to do with his life. January 11th he starts a program at Greenville Tech in GEOMATICS. Wiki that term for a complete explanation.
So, unless something else comes along, I'll be toiling away at the Cate Law Firm for the next year and a half. Despite the economy, people still want to get divorced and fight over their children, so business is good. December was interesting because the boss was out most of the month and I held down the fort. It was challenging at times, but I did OK. We have a good team.
After the fun of Thanksgiving, I was REALLY looking forward to Christmas, since this year it would be the whole-crowd at Mama's. Things really came together nicely and we celebrated on Saturday the 26th. Simple menu. No sickness, bleeding, hard feelings, or gifts. For me it was mostly playing the the little ones. Doug managed to get Cara (to neigh), Annalisa (to quack), Kade (to moo) and Libby (to Oink) while he clucked like a chicken to several Christmas tunes. It was SO CUTE! After naptime we had a 2 minute (if that) live nativity starring Kade as "Joveth" and Cara as Mary, 2 week old Colton as Baby Jesus, Caleb and Cooper as the Shepherds, and Annalisa as the Angel, to Doug's reading of the story from Luke. Again, they were adorable. Thanks to the Flemmings for the costumes.
Also had fun with Alan's family at Christmas (the potato gun he built at Thx continues to be a hit), and especially enjoyed the Clemson victory over Kentucky in the Music City Bowl Sunday night.
All is well in my world, and for that I am enormously grateful. In some ways 2009 was a hard year for us (although Colorado in Feb and July & Alaska in August were terrific memories). We are looking forward to 2010.
