holiday roundup

We had very busy 48 hour trip to Philadelphia, to spend time with our families over the holiday. I feel like we were being social in almost all of those 48 hours, and I'm rather relieved to be back, though the time there really wasn't unpleasant at all. Dinah is also happy to see us.

Here is a photo of my parents' impromptu Christmas tree (and Christopher).
(This- and our own tree- got me thinking recently about dim lights in the dark, and how I start enjoying both the darkness and lights this time of year, mostly in the form of Christmas lights and candles. Neither can be really appreciated, in my opinion, without the other. There's nothing really like sitting in a dark room in front of a roaring fire or meditating on a lit tree. I guess I find it sort of spiritual.)

The other major highlight was being able to spend some time with our nephew, Isaac. He's 3 and we've had trouble finding time to get to know him, since usually we only see him on holidays when there are tons of people. Today we went out and spent a few hours with Christopher's sister and him. It was really fun, especially since he's become very chatty in the past few months.

I hope we can do more of that sometime soon.