The village of Langley has a little Christmas parade on the first Saturday of December. It's a little parade because it's a little town.
After a slow morning we headed out, with our first stop at the Bayview Grange Hall where we shopped for crafts at the small Christmas market. We found some treasures, but they are secrets.
In Langley we stopped in at the Whale Center and the Chocolate Flower Farm Shop before taking our place on the curb of 1st Street. Here comes the parade.
The bagpipe band led it off.
The locals have fun putting on this community event.
While it had rained earlier, now there were just occasional light sprinkles.
No horses, but goats and dogs.
Santa rode the fire truck, of course.
After the parade we shopped up and down the two main streets, enjoying the decorated shops.
The ever present Langley bunnies made their appearance.
Back at the cabin we went for a short beach walk under rapidly darkening skies. Solstice is not far away now.
We settled into the cabin to read our electronics and cook and eat and play games. All is good.
Now the tree is done too.
It was a bit of a marathon, and we weren't sure if we were going to make it. I asked, "Are we really going to get all of these ornaments on here?" Tom responded, "Well, we did last year." And so we did.
Some of you will remember from previous years that this is a memory tree. There are Santas, because I have collected them for years. There are horses and pigs, because our kids collected them when they were young. There are birds because we like them. There are ornaments that we gave our kids as Advent gifts. There are crocheted snowflakes we bought many years ago, and felt ornaments I made when Jill was a toddler, because they don't break, and we didn't have much money. And I could go on and on.
There are glass fruits and vegetables, because that was my last passion for collecting.
Under the tree are the Winnie the Pooh characters Tom's mother made for our babies.
And because we have a sense of humor, there is Krampus with the bacon.
The tree is groaning under the weight of it all, but everything has meaning. We love it, once it's done.
This is the new HP all-in-one desktop computer that I am posting on today. Everything works! I learned on my new Levono laptop and then setting this one up was much easier. It is sitting beside our old desktop that we have not decommissioned yet, just in case. That other screen is our office TV.
Yep, we're wired up, wireless even, and connected. Technology is great, most of the time. :-)
The lights are up on the house.
Today we put up the Travel Tree. It holds ornaments collected on our travels, plus the flags of all the states and countries we visited.
Inside, the house decorating is almost done. The dining room reflects our Scandinavian heritage.
The Santas are in their places.
The gingerbread garlands deck the kitchen.
We are down to this. The Christmas tree is out of the box, assembled, and plugged in. Tomorrow we'll place the hundreds of ornaments on the tree.
On Friday we'll go to a brunch, and then pack up and run away to Whidbey Island for a weekend with Jill and the grands.
We need to get away from computer set up. I spent hours today figuring out how to restore my Facebook page on the new desktop computer after it turned out that Tom signed in wrong and created a new account. Gotta' watch his every move. :-)
We still have a few things to figure out. I have done a lot of Google searches learning how to do a lot of technological stuff. I have impressed myself. :-) But now I am sitting here in my recliner in front of the TV while I post on my new laptop. All is good.
In the last two days I have met with two people who are very good at what they do.
On Sunday afternoon we had an appointment with the Geek Squad at Best Buy. I have figured out a lot of what I needed to do in setting up my new laptop. Switching from Windows 7 to Windows 10 wasn't that hard, and I found online help with most of what I needed. However we had a Microsoft Account problem that made it impossible to sign in to Microsoft, which means there was stuff I couldn't access.
Reza to the rescue. While it turns out I had to be where my land line was - home - to finish the task, he gave me great instructions that did the trick. And while we were with him, he answered a lot of other questions too.
Reza is an older man, obviously an immigrant somewhere back in time, but what a great guy to work with. And secretly we even agreed on Trump!
The this morning I had a dental appointment to do a lot of expensive work. My teeth are breaking at too fast a rate now in my old age. I used up my dental insurance coverage for the year way back in January, so when I lost a crown and had another cracked tooth that needed a crown, It required a bunch of cash out of pocket and several hours in the dentist chair. Dr. Mah is young, friendly, fast, and kind. We had to find a new dentist last year, and this is my first experience with her.
No, I did not enjoy my dental experience, but it sure was bearable, and I feel like I am in good hands, or should I say I have good hands in my mouth. :-)
The process included a root canal and a post in one tooth and a crown on the other. I snapped a pic from the x-ray monitor to show you the post.
No, it's not really that big, but big for the little tooth it's in. Now I hope this holds. I have temporary crowns and get to go back on Dec. 23 to get the permanent crowns. Merry Christmas! But Dr. Mah will take care of me.
Now the Novocain is finally wearing off. I'm hopping it doesn't hurt. After going without lunch, I'm looking forward to eating dinner.
Besides spending hours on the new computer set up, many frustrating, some successful, we did get our three wreaths completed by Saturday morning.
Here's mine, the prototype.
I did go easy on the embellishments, just adding a few silver sprigs, and a recycled bow from last year.
It is now hanging by the front door along with greens stuffed in the planters.
Jill asked for lots of color and texture in the greenery and red berries. Greens we had, but I had to use artificial berries.
Here's a close up. Everything is from our yard except those bits of blue juniper berries and that juniper with the gold pollen buds.
Jake said he wanted an all natural wreath. I said that's what I made for him last year. He said, no, it had that big bow on it. Now I happen to like bows.
But I did this instead, sort of a green bow.
Here's what's left of my greens, enough to make arrangements for inside the house.
The purchased greens.
And there's plenty more where these came from.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=e9Ze0FEuG4s
As the song says, "Christmas in the Northwest is a gift God wrapped in green." (link to the song )
