Christmas

Merry Christmas! Although I did not fly home to Oregon, I did get to spend the holiday with family: the Hall aunts, uncles, and cousins. I spent Christmas day at my aunt’s house in Philadelphia with my cousin Amity who I hadn’t seen for 4 ½ years, her boyfriend, and my uncle Scott. The Christmas Eve service was nice, but marred by too much incense and too slow of songs. I was the first “kid” up on Christmas morning which meant I got to finish decorating the little tiny tree. We had eggnog and my homemade orange break for breakfast – it’s not Christmas without them!

That weekend we took a road trip up to New England. First stop was Massachusetts to visit my cousin Jon (who I hadn’t seen in 11 years) and his family: we spent a fun evening at their house and celebrated Hanukkah with them – his two girls are 8 and 4(?) and I’d never met them before. Rita, the youngest, is deaf and she’s a riot – she was teaching us sign language and being very dramatic. We spent the night in the big old farmhouse in New Hampshire where Scott lives.

Sunday, we continued on our way to Maine and spent 2 days at my cousin Meredith’s house outside of Portland. I hadn’t seen her in 13 years and had never met her daughters, either, who are 6 and 4(?). We got to spend time with my aunt Lenore and her fiancée Bill while we were there, too. In the late afternoon we all went down to the shore. It was a warm, clear day (55 degrees in Maine in December??), and a beautiful view as the sun began to set.

Monday morning was spent sitting at the dining room table with one little girl on each knee as they drew and colored and played. It was lovely. In the evening, Bill, Lenore, Lark and I took the girls to a restaurant/bar in Portland where Bill’s son-in-law was performing. Sarah really didn’t want to go at first because she was tired, but after she’d eaten and woken up she had fun. By the end, she and Libby were both dancing to the music and didn’t want to leave. After taking them home we went and visited Bill’s house and then stopped at LL Bean on our way back to Meredith’s.

Lark and I left Tuesday morning and drove the whole 8-9 hours back to Philly in one day. It was a great trip, and I especially enjoyed being able to hang out with the children in a family setting rather than a professional one and give them hugs and hold them on my lap.