Merry Christmas and Happy New Year!

And, of course, I had a Christmas besides Yuletide. It was a nice but involved trip this year. It first involved seeing D's family for a week, including the three nephews and rambunctious small dog, all of which E loved, or at least tolerated because they had really cool toys (a relief; she burst into tears every time she saw Youngest Nephew last time we visited; either our efforts to socialize her since then have paid off or she is a year older, probably the latter). E learned from her cousins the idea that things under the Christmas tree might be Presents for Her that Require Unwrapping, thus leading to her trying to unwrap her grandmother's presents. I got conscripted into all the music at D's family's church, including my first bell-playing stint ever, and salved my conscience a bit for blowing off all the Christmas music I'd be doing had we not gone out of town.

The trip then involved catching the tail end of my dad's family's first family reunion since I was a teenager, which was certainly quite lavish (having been thought up and mostly organized by the most epicurean member of my dad's family). For tax purposes, all of us had to give presentations, which turned out to be much more interesting than I had anticipated (basically, my relatives are really cool and do lots of cool things -- speaking of which, my cousin is looking for an iPad programmer, if any of you know anyone who is interested in working for a small dubious startup -- dubious in the sense that I have no idea whether his business plan is viable, not dubious in the sense that I think it is not viable at this point). E is the only toddler in my extended family, as my cousins almost without exception fall in the ten-years-older or ten-years-younger categories, and was made much of and would have been relentlessly spoiled had she been old enough to understand the fuss that was being made over her. Unfortunately, my sister came down with the worst stomach flu she's ever had and had to miss it :(

The traveling was without event until we came back home, at which point we found all the flights, as far as I can tell, all up and down the West Coast had been canceled, except for the really big cities; fortunately, we were able to rent a car and drive home from the nearest big city. E. was a very good traveler, all things considered, and bore with fortitude the twelve-hour journey, though it did help that it was punctuated by shuttle buses, airport shuttle trains, and her absolute favorite, the escalator.