Brr!

I'm typing mostly to keep my hands warm. For those of you that aren't here, it's freezing! Literally. When I drove to church this morning my car's thermometer read 31 degrees. I've never known it to be that cold here. And apparently my car has an ice warning system! I had no idea. It's supposed to get down to freezing again tonight. Two days ago it was snowing in Corona. Weird.

Well, Christmas finally came to an end for us tonight. The very last event of the season was a get-together at my parents' with some life-long friends, and it got pretty crazy since we all have kids now. Judah was the youngest, at just under two, and Cameron was the oldest, at eight. There were seven kids total, and the highlight of their night was when Judah stuck his hand in the toilet. Nice!

Christmas was fun, and crazy as usual. Christmas Eve was church in the morning, Nathan's parents' for lunch, my cousin's place for a mid-afternoon snack-type-thing, then the traditional Christmas Eve trip to the Old Ship for Nathan and me and Judah, where we ate tomato soup and wore our paper crowns from our Christmas crackers. Then it was home to celebrate Christmas for the three of us. Nathan gave me a really cool digital camera, so I'll soon be posting actual personal pictures here. I was supposed to sing with the choir in the 11:00 service at church, but I came down with a bad cold and ended up not going, which is the first time I ever missed a Christmas Eve service that I can remember. :(

Christmas morning we headed over to Ken and Elly's to open presents with Nathan's family and have lunch (gorging session number one). Later we went to my parents' for more presents and more good food for dinner (gorging session number two). Judah had a great time unwrapping things this year, finally getting the hang of ripping off the paper, then wanting to open ALL the presents, and being upset when there were none left to open. His favorite things this year were all the cars he got, which I think eventually totalled 20.

A few days after Christmas my mom and dad and Heather and I went up to Pasadena to help decorate Rose Parade floats. I'd never done it, and Heather was the one that came up with the idea. I'm so glad we did it. We ended up working with the Petal Pushers, and we decorated the Lutheran League float, which was titled God's Great Nature. It was a really cute little float, just a church with stained glass windows, a walkway leading up to it, a couple of lamposts, and some trees. We spent part of the day wiring daisies and roses, and the rest of the day gluing chrysanthemums to the undersides of the trees. It was a lot of fun.

New Year's Eve was spent with Jeff and Heather and Barbara at Santa Monica, having dinner at Trastavere and wandering around Third Street and the pier. Some of Barbara's friends met up with us around 10:30 and we all went on the ferris wheel. We were on the Promenade when midnight came, and it was exciting, but there weren't too many people there. It was kind of sad. When I first started going to Third Street for New Year's Eve, in 1995, there were so many people there that we could hardly walk, and the party went on until at least two in the morning. This year we left right after midnight and the place was pretty empty.

We got back to my parents' (where Judah was) around 1:00 and Heather and Barbara and I stayed there while Jeff and Nathan went home. We (the girls) slept for a few hours and got up around 4:30 to drive back to Pasadena for the Rose Parade. After paying $20 for parking we took our blankets and began to wander Colorado Boulevard looking for a place to set up. We finally found a group willing to share their curb space with us. We settled in, all bundled up, and had a good time watching all the floats and bands go by. It was a good parade this year and we cheered loudly for "our" float.

Last Sunday we celebrated Christmas again with the part of my family that was in Peru for the holidays, and then tonight we celebrated once more, and now we're finally done! Phew!

And now you're all updated.