Oh, Christmas Tree!

Last night we came home to find the Christmas Tree lying on the floor amongst a debris field of smashed ornaments... now I wonder how that could have happened?

So we decided it was finally time to take down the tree and put away those tempting decorations.

Bad kitties!

Christmas 2007

This year we stayed home and had a quiet Christmas with Todd and the kitties (next weekend we will go down to Er!c's parents' house for a late Christmas get-together with his family).

For Christmas Eve we made gingerbread cookies and multi-colored snicker doodles and watched movies, followed by opening our stockings.



We also almost had a "White Christmas"this year! After our late Christmas morning brunch it began to sleet and covered our deck with small pellets of ice for 15 - 20 minutes before turning to rain...

The rest of the day we played Clue, Phase 10, and UNO and also managed to fix "Christmas dinner" -- hot & sour soup, vegetable stir fry with rice, and sparkling pear juice... Mmmmm . :)

Tofu and Arthur thoroughly enjoyed Christmas this year as well -- undecorating the tree, playing in the piles of wrapping paper and fighting over the colorful ribbons and bows... :)

Lunch at Machu Picchu

Jay and Christina are in town for Christmas visiting family, so today a group of us got together for lunch at Machu Picchu Restaurant a family owned Peruvian restaurant at four-corners in Collegedale. After lunch Jane11, Er!c and Todd went for a short bike ride up the "Biology Trail" behind SAU, since the bikes were still on the bike rack from our Sabbath bike ride.

Sabbath Bike Ride

On Sabbath afternoon we took our new bikes on their very first official trail ride. After picking Todd and his bike up, we headed over to Harrison Bay State Park to ride their moderately easy 4.5 mile Bay Point Loop trail.

Early Christmas With The Pettibones

On December 7-9 Mark and Kristin came up to visit some friends from Guam, and since they were going to be in Berlin for Christmas this year, we decided to celebrate an early Christmas with them.

Our Christmas Pyramid

Here's a short video clip of our Christmas Pyramid in action. This is one of my most favorite Christmas decorations that we have, partly because it "does something" (besides just sitting there looking pretty) and partly because it involves fire. . :)

Merry Christmas

Cat Plans

Feel free to use the above diagram/plans to build your own Tofu cat, just let me know how yours turns out.

Early Christmas

Today (Sunday) we went and purchased our early Christmas presents -- two Trek mountain bikes. Woohooo! We have wanted to get bikes for a while and decided it was finally time. After getting home, we took them for a quick ride around the neighborhood even though it was about 35 degrees out. It was actually snowing while we were at the bike shop trying out different bikes, and it's expected to drop down to 25 degrees tonight, so we didn't ride for very long... :)

Saturday evening we decided it was finally time to decorate the house for Christmas so we got out the artificial tree, boxes of decorations and strings of lights. We also set up our new banana fiber nativity set from Kenya.

Pumulani

When we were both younger and lived in Malawi, we use to spend our holidays up at Pumulani cottage, which the church owned and rented out. We were both (Jane11 & Er!c) actually at Pumulani together at the same time at least once (possibly even several times) when we were little... I think we have some photos somewhere. . :)

So it was with both happy nostalgia and sadness that I saw pictures of the new Pumulani Luxury Beach Lodge.

Photo Gallery of Pumulani
www.Pumulani.com
NYTimes - 53 places to go in 2008
Pumulani construction photos

The above lodge is not in the same location as the old Pumulani house. This is one of the newer villas which is further down the hill, closer to the beach. At the bottom of the driveway is a huge baobab tree that all us kids use to climb and carve our names into.

One Christmas we (Er!c) were staying at Pumulani and went swimming & snorkeling out to "the rocks" (about 100 feet from shore) when we looked back toward the beach and saw a hippo coming up for air -- Hippos kill more people in Africa per year than any other African animal -- So we made a hasty retreat away from the beach to the nasty part of the shoreline just in time to see the hippo resurface out near the rocks.

If anyone else has any good Pumulani memories they'd like to share please post them in the "comments" area.

Happy 107th, Great-Grandma!

Last Friday (Nov. 30) was Er!c's great-grandma's 107th birthday, so on Sabbath afternoon we both decided to drive down to Jasper, Georgia and give her a surprise visit. We arrived late in the afternoon just after the church crowds had left, so had a nice uninterrupted visit with Great-Grandma & Grandpa (except for the above birthday well-wishing phone call).

Although she can no longer see, has a hard time hearing, and cannot walk without assistance, she is still mentally sharp as a tack!

We're not exactly sure how she ranks in the oldest-living-person-in-Gerogia category, but she's definitely up there! Here's what wikipedia has to say about the oldest living person.

Happy Birthday Great-Grandma!

Arthur's Wild Adventure

On Friday Sir Arthur took a trip to the vet for his little "snip snip" surgery. All went well, but that evening he was still tripping from the drugs. His eyes were totally dilated and he was acting very strange -- trying to jump and climb the chair & bookshelf, eat his kitty litter, dig to the bottom of his water bowl (containing water), attacking Tofu, etc... That night he completely cleared off a shelf of books in his drug induced haze. Kind of reminded me of any number of scenes from Fear and Loathing in Las Vegas. Here are a few more photos of our buzzed little kitty.