Looking back – Christmas 2019

The day after Christmas, John and I left for Texas (more on that in subsequent posts). As we neared southern Texas, Christmas disappeared, and all of winter went with it. We had 70 degree weather in Houston! Plus, my in-laws down in Houston don’t celebrate Christmas, so their houses didn’t have Christmas lights and Christmas trees and other remnants of the holiday. It was just suddenly not Christmas anymore at all.

Then toward the middle of January, we arrived back home and I still had my tree up, and my decorations, and my luminarias – everything was still set up. And it was cold! Christmas past came back to haunt me!

I now have the tree down at least, but the the decorations are all still piled on my dining room table waiting to be packed away, and the luminarias are still set up along my entryway.

So in the spirit of not yet having put Christmas 2019 to rest, here are my Christmas morning photos, only 3 weeks late.

Laura and Alex came to visit! Our oldest dog, Kai, has learned through the years that the person with the Santa hat hands out presents, even to dogs. Alex couldn’t figure out why Kai was following him around and sitting in his begging pose. It’s the Santa hats!

Confusingly for the dogs, we had 3 people in Santa hats, although John’s wasn’t a convincing red and white. (That hat says Vikings, in case you didn’t notice.)

And we had one of Santa’s elves on the computer – oh, wait, that was Darren.

Laura turned out to be the real Santa.

First we all waited patiently while John called Monica.

Here’s Darren with his patient look.

Kai didn’t wait all that patiently. I don’t know why he chose this present to tear into. Turns out it was just socks!

Finally it’s Kai’s turn!

The other dogs sort of have the hang of it too.

Passing around fancy candy while Kai waits for another present:

Laura seems rather excited by this tin of chocolates! Yeee-aaah!

Here’s John showing Darren his new fishing rod, all ready for our trip to southern Texas.

Darren got a 23andMe kit. The question of whether we were Irish came up, but according to our relatives, we’re actually Scottish (and a whole bunch of other stuff). I have no idea how it’s possible to tell the difference between Irish and Scottish ancestry. There’s only a little spit of cold water between those two countries. And, crucially to Darren – both countries wear kilts! (LOL.)

Laura got Airpods, just what she wanted:

And a beautiful scarf from Pakistan, where Alex had gone biking earlier in the year.

I got a fake computer, lol, it was made of cardboard! Complete with a background picture. It’s a “promise” of a computer at a later date.

Laura has the real thing, so here we’re checking hers out. (Yeah, you can tell who’s the REAL Santa because the real Santa has a REAL computer and the real Santa wears TWO Santa hats at the same time!)

Here’s Darren’s Christmas tree. I’m not quite sure how a nearly dead snippet of jade plant is a Christmas tree. I guess it has an ornament. An ironically appropriate ornament.

Hoping your holiday season was wonderful, and you’re off to a hopeful start to the new year!