Bree gets her ears pierced. She’s the first of her sisters to do so.
Bree is playing the video game, “The Legend of Zelda: Breath of the Wild” again in preparation for the release of the sequel game in 2022. In particular, she wants to get better at the fighting portions of the game. Last time around, the fighting was too scary for her, so she left that to her dad and sisters to do.
She’s also working on mastering an obscure game move called a “bomb impact launch”, in which the player can launch themselves a long distance. This requires pressing a complex series of buttons with near-perfect timing, but after some practice she manages to do the move a few times.
Liya and her suitemates celebrate the holidays with a Secret Santa gift exchange. Liya’s pictured here in their suite’s common room with Sadie and Court.
Bree’s dufflebag has marker crossing out the name “Anya”, and the words “Wrong Miksovsky – Bree”.
Given the rapid spread of the Omicron covid variant, we make the hard decision to abandon our post-Christmas trip to southern California. We were really looking forward to seeing Angela’s brother Johnny and his family, as well as making to a short trip to Joshua Tree National Park, but it seems prudent to postpone the trip to some later date.
Angela conducts a candlelight Christmas Eve service at her church in Buckley. Someone once said that, at Christmastime, congregants are mostly looking for a service to “deliver the goods”, which this service does just fine. One notable change to the traditional carol lineup is, “O Little Town of Bethlehem”, which uses the normal lyrics over the tune from the rock song, “House of the Rising Sun.” This works better than one might expect.
Merry Christmas! Liya’s gift-wrapping becomes a little more elaborate each year.
We have a nice quiet Christmas at home with Lyn. The most notable gift is probably a Photoshopped portrait of our cats from Skye that makes them look like Edwardian gentlemen. But the exchanged gifts are dominated by books: everyone receives a fairly big pile of books from everyone else.
Bree whips up a giant batch of whipped cream so we can make our traditional dessert of ice box pudding. Bree eats a great deal of this.
Jan’s gift to Lyn was the new game “Poetry for Neanderthals”, essentially the game Taboo, but you can only speak in one-syllable words. The game comes with an inflatable caveman club used to bonk the speaker if they inadvertently use a multisyllabic word. We have fun playing. The game seems to be easier if you talk like a caveman.
Seattle gets a big early snowfall. We’re happy we don’t have anywhere we need to be today.
Angela has rented an apartment in Enumclaw so she can have a place to stay close to the church in Buckley. She’s furnished it with bits of furniture and things we can spare from our house.
Tonight Angela, Jan, and Liya spend the night in the apartment so they can get a jumpstart on a day of skiing at Crystal Mountain tomorrow.
Angela, Jan, and Liya enjoy a cold but clear day of skiing at Crystal Mountain.
Liya and Jan spot an odd glowing column of light: suspended ice crystals catching the sunlight. We decide that it’s a portal to another dimension, or perhaps to the past, but we can’t quite seem to reach it. Looking it up later, this phenomenon is called a “sun pillar” or “light pillar”.
On her winter break, Anya’s been busily crocheting cute little animals and other creatures.
Jan and his friend Will get together for their regular lunch, but given the prevalence of Omicron covid cases, they elect to eat outside at Ba Bar in University Village. It’s 32° out, and the restaurant staff has trouble getting their propane heaters lit in the strong, cold breeze. Jan and Will attempt to eat pho using chopsticks with gloves on, which only sort of works.