On December 21st, Frank and I celebrated a quiet pre-Christmas in DC under our Christmas ficus.  I got lots of clothes and Frank got a GPS.  The kitty cats got us both a trip to Boston to visit our friends Mary and Ben.  That was very generous of them. 

We headed out on Saturday morning to go to my parents’ house in NJ.  We got a bit of a late start because, for the first time ever, we had a very rough time getting the cats into their carrier.  So we had to stop at a pet store along the way and get a bigger carrier so they could ride together without being smushed into their old carrier.  (They have always had separate carriers, but are much more relaxed if we stuff them into the same one.)  After a small pet store detour we set off for NJ.  We spent the weekend at my parents’ house with Danny and Morgan and the kitty cats — who were much less freaked out than they were last year.

On Monday morning (Christmas Eve), we drove up to Denise and Robert’s house in Long Island.  We celebrated Christmas Eve with the Schipanis, Pizzis, and Steigerwalds. We stayed there on Saturday night because we wanted to be with Daniel and James on Christmas morning after Santa came.  That was lots of fun (but we went back to bed afterward…).  Then we all drove to Julia and Michael’s for a delicious Christmas dinner and — everyone’s favorite — Secret Santa!

We left Julia’s and drove back to my parents’ house so they wouldn’t have to be alone for *all* of Christmas.  Then we stayed with my parents for an extra 5 days because we were sewing curtains for the house. We had planned to just have my mom help us with one test panel, but it went so quickly that we decided to stay and finish the whole project.  The only thing left is sewing the trim and hemming the bottoms — both of which had to wait until we had hung the curtains so they’ll be at the right level.

On Sunday, December 30th, we came back home and got ready for Bonnie and Tom to come over to ring in the new year with us.