We see the Pacific Northwest Ballet’s Stowell/Sendak production of “The Nutcracker”. We’ve seen this many times over the years, but this year the PNB has decided to retire the production, so we go see it one last time.
While riding in the car through downtown Seattle, the girls spot a cab driver wearing a purple driver. This is pretty interesting to them. On long road trips, we play a game called “Rubberneckers” that requires players to spot various objects from the car: a gas station, a barn, a river, etc. The girls have made their own cards, and one of the most valuable is “Man Wearing a Purple Turban” — with bonus points if he’s driving a cab. So actually seeing a male cab driver wearing a purple turban is pretty exciting. Sadly, they cannot get the maximum points for this card, because the man wearing a purple turban is not giving a cab ride to President Barack Obama.
Jan and Rob Bearman sign the remaining legal paperwork to create Component Kitchen, Inc., and formalize their working partnership.
Jan’s turn to sign paperwork.
We host a small Christmas gathering at our house. A couple of families from Mt. Baker Park Presbyterian Church join us to make ornaments. Later, we walk down to Madison Park Beach to watch the Christmas Ships come by and sing carols. It’s pretty cold, and a bunch of the kids play a little too close to the lake and end up getting wet feet, which is all to be expected at this event.
“Aaahhh!” Jan and Liya do some Christmas shopping at a mall, and have some time left before they need to meet the rest of the family for dinner. They kill time at a Brookstone’s store, where Liya tries a foot massage contraption that tickles mercilessly.
The Frazer family invites us over for a family game night. The first game is something like the children’s game “Telephone”, only it’s played by drawing instead of speaking. The second game is Dixit, which is a favorite of our girls.
While playing, Liya notices that the Frazers have hung up mistletoe. She’s never noticed mistletoe before and asks, “What’s that?” Marc asks her, “Do you know what that is?” She ponders for a moment, and then ventures a guess: “Compost?”
Christmas burger. Jan’s family is gathering for a family reunion Christmas at a rented cabin in Sisters, Oregon. Grandma Lyn headed there two days ago with Liya and Bree, so today it’s just Jan, Angela, and Anya driving south. South of Portland, we get off I-5 several times in search of lunch, but since it’s Christmas day, nothing’s open. We finally find a McDonald’s that’s open.
We arrive at the cabin in Sisters in the late afternoon, in time for dinner and the opening of presents. Bree constructs a “Lego Researchers” set she received.
A group of us head into the small town of Sisters to visit a bookstore and the very popular Sisters Coffee Company. One of the highlights of this trip is getting to spend time with Leif, the 10 month-old son of Jan’s sister Skye and her husband Jared. Leif’s gotten pretty big since we last saw him in April, and is now crawling, vocalizing, holding a bottle on his own, and generally looking cute. The girls enjoy entertaining him.
We have a Thai lunch in Bend, OR, then stroll around poking into various shops. Afterwards, we make a short drive down the Lava Lands Visitor Center in Newberry National Volcanic Monument. Some snow on the short nature trail presents a minor challenge for the stroller, but otherwise it’s a beautiful day for a walk.
Leif (a.k.a. Leffalump) is bundled up against the cold.
Anya and Liya don’t join us for the hike (heading back to the cabin with Uncle Chris), but adventurous Sabriya is up for it.
The view across the snow-dusted lava plains to the mountains is beautiful.
Happy Birthday, Skye! Jan’s sister is 32 today.
Leif explores the mysteries of cake for the first time.
We play a family game of The Settlers of Catan, but make the tactical error for starting the game at 10:00 pm. By midnight, the game still hasn’t ended, and is finally called so we can all collapse in bed.
We have lunch in Redmond, OR, then continue to Smith Rock State Park. It’s a starkly beautiful place, a bit like Utah.
Skye and Lyn take Leif for a stroll along a paved trail that follows the Crooked River. They spot a family of otters playing and fishing in the river. Meanwhile, the rest of us head up the imposingly-named Misery Ridge Trail.
The teenager amongst us is very unhappy about the forced march up the trail. Perhaps that’s where the trail gets its name.
Liya checks out a hollow in a rock alongside the trail.
Bree at the top, with Liya and Uncle Chris in the background looking out over central Oregon’s high desert.
Before heading back down, we make a short walk around to the other side of the summit, where we can see a rock column called the Monkey Face. We can just make out a set of faint white chalk marks running up the side of the column: handholds used by rock climbers. Yikes.
Liya helps Uncle Chris prepare a dinner of handmade pizzas including handmade dough. The fact that we only have one pizza stone means Chris can only bake a single pizza at a time, but they’re fantastic.
There’s a fairly big snowfall, which inevitably leads to a fairly big snowball fight.
Before Chris has to head back home, he and Anya play one last game of table shuffleboard.