Getting Together

 We had a bit of a change of pace this week. On Tuesday Tom and I headed south to meet up with my sister Laurie in Olympia, with a little shopping on the way to and from.

For you non-locals, Olympia is our state capitol, located on the southern end of Puget Sound. 

There are good seafood restaurants on the docks by the marinas. 

Laurie and I and Tom had good food and a good long visit, catching up on all of the family news and gossip. She lives a half hour south of Olympia and we are one hour north. We will be with our immediate families for Christmas, our kids and grandkids. 

On Wednesday we hosted two of our breakfast friends for afternoon tea/coffee.  Our friend Dede is 95 and is losing her eyesight, so we really wanted to have here come and see our Christmas House and eat cookies while she still can. She is a former kindergarten teacher and just the sweetest person ever. Interestingly, Tom and Jan, our other guest, are also former kindergarten teachers at the same school. 

Dede is Norwegian by heritage, so of course she loved all of our Scandinavian decorations. In fact, she loved everything, and we and Jan, who brought her, were very pleased to give her this gift.

Today is a slow day. We did some candy shopping. Tom is using the mower to clean up the last of the leaves on the lawn now that it is dry enough. I have been going over lists and making new ones. I think some gift wrapping might get started this afternoon. At 5:00 I'll be watching the Seahawks on Thursday Night Football. Tom is cooking - he's making the pizza run. Papa Murphey's pizza will get cooked in our oven and I'll get a salad made. 

Later, we'll fill some cookie tins to give away. tomorrow. Now it's time for lunch and newspaper reading.

Happy Holidays!