Happy Holidays

Winter Solstice has become one of my favorite holidays. In order to feel the long night, our family turns off all lights in the house at sundown and lives the rest of the evening by candlelight. We eat dinner (yummy Chinese food) by candles and then the rest of the evening the candles end up spreading throughout the house so we can live without electric light. I even did dishes by candlelight. We played games and this year we rented a couple of movies. It is not something I would want every night but once a year it is a fun, family evening. This year we were still awake as the final candles burnt out.

Christmas was a little different this year. Christmas-eve the kids and I went out to dinner, as has become our tradition since we moved here. I then went to the church for the candle-light service, because the choir was singing. I had never been to that service and it was really nice. The kids didn't want to go and stayed home and watched movies instead. I then went to a party with some friends and had a really good time. I had some interesting discussions with the widest range of individuals I had ever seen in one place.

Christmas day Glenn came over to open presents. Everyone got plenty of presents, even though we cut down this year. Kara's big present was an i-pod touch (I didn't get a picture of that one) and Tim's big one was Guitar Hero World Tour, here he is opening it:

Glenn stayed at my place and played with the kids while I went to the pot-luck at the church, which was a good time, visiting with old and new friends.

Since Christmas the kids have been having a lot of fun with the guitar hero. I have tried to play with them, but can never get far on drums or guitar. Kara has let me sing on a few songs but she likes playing that roll, often in combination with the guitar.