Christmas in MA and NY!!

We have had such a great time back east with our families (and one short day with our friends, but that's the previous blog). I've included a ton of photos, but there are even more in my (Julie's) Picasa album.

Jay arrived late because of the crazy snow storm that hit the coastal regions. This was actually odd, because he flew into Albany, NY where the storm did not hit at all!! But his flight was still canceled and he ended up spending about 24 hours in Chicago's airport. I would have been a grump, but he managed to pull through with an excellent attitude, as usual. Once he got to NY, we spent the night with my parents and had a fairly lazy morning the next day before driving to the Cape. It was such an awesome drive - because as we got closer and closer to Cape Cod, there was more and more snow. Check out the photo Allison took below of her house (the house that Jay grew up in).

There was a TON of snow and it was beautiful. I miss snow. Now that we live in retirement land in Anacortes, we get no extreme weather. So, it is nice to freeze our bums off and to bundle up for cold and crisp walks outside.

Here I am with Price, the damn cute kitten after one of those crispy walks outside in New England.

This shot is awesome. See the snowball in mid-air headed for Lee (Jay's sister)? There was quite the snowball fight on this walk.

It looks like the snowball fights have stopped at this point....

Here is Jay and Allison (his mom) trudging through the snowy woods back to the house

We spent Christmas Eve with Jay's family and then drove late at night back to NY to be with my family on Christmas Day. Here are the sistahs and the brother chillin' together on Boxing Day. Best present of the day? My parents are flying Christina out to see Jay and me in Anacortes in April!! We can't wait to spoil her rotten and take her out on some great walks, paddles, tulip-viewing, and maybe even skiing because Mt. Baker is still coated in snow then! We will have F.U.N..

We were treated to a visit from my uncle and his family, sans Lynn because she was sick. We had just returned from another crispy cold Upstate NY walk here.

Jackson

Henry

So, the Fredas gave Henry and Jackson some instruments for Christmas. After they left, they missed out because we had a FULL parade through the house, directed by the nuggets themselves.

The Barber-Just family just left today and I've got one more full day left here (sad) before I head back west to Anacortes and Jay (he had to leave earlier to go back to work) and our kitties. Life is good, Henry and Jackson were a riot and fun to hang out with for more than a few hours, and it has been great to spend more time with my family. Hope everyone has had a great holiday so far!!

Babyland!

We spent yesterday buzzing around RI meeting all the new nuggets that have been successfully produced by all our friends! PLUS - we have been able to hang out with a different kind of baby, a kitten! Allison and Jim (Jay's mom and her husband) got a little ball of energy and fluff and Prince, the kitten, is a riot.

Prince (not named after my favorite rock star)

Jay and Zachary Leeming

Mary Sparkles was very missed by Julie and Jay - so in addition to seeing KP and Justin, we were thrilled to meet their new son (Zachary) and give Mr. Mary Sparkles lots of love.

Jay and Justin

Kristina (KP) and Julie

Christine and Julie (and Shadow)

Ryan is almost walking!

Jay, Eric, little microEric (Kai!)and Jane

Now we are on the Cape with Jay's family and playing with Prince the fluff. I have plans to go for a jog in all the snow! The Cape really got dumped on with the big snowstorm and it's fun to see all this snow. We love snow. We head back to NY for 2 days with my family and then Jay is off to WA again. I'll stick around a few more days to spend some time with my sister and her family. Back home to WA on New Years Eve.

Best of Sydney

Well, because we were only in Australia for about 3 full days (while we waited for our flight to Indonesia), we stuck to Sydney for some exploring.
It didn't take me long to go through these photographs. I can't believe it has been 1 1/2 years since we were there, and I'm still trying to find time to go through our bazillion photos!
Anyway - here is a link to the best shots from Sydney.

http://picasaweb.google.com/globalscents/TheBestOfAustralia#

What's this leg coming out of me?

Really cute, I know....

A neat view of the Sydney Opera House with a storm approaching

I head back to the east coast tomorrow and Jay follows me on Saturday. Next post will probably be from a warm house filled with people we love and miss dearly.

If you didn't see the collage we made for our holiday e-card - here it is!! Click on it to see the big version!

The remainder of Banff/Jasper photos - finally!

Well, because my grades are submitted for the community college, you would like to think I have gained my life back. No such luck - with only 5 days left before I leave for NY I have a TON of stuff to do in order to be ready to teach again. But I'm really missing my hobbies, so I am refusing to work for three days. I have finally, after months, finished going through our honeymoon photos and uploaded all of them. You can find the link to these pictures here:

http://picasaweb.google.com/jdimond/CanadianRockiesOurHoneymoon#

I have big plans tomorrow and even tonight to go through the wedding photos from our friends Mike and Kelly. Then I'm hoping to actually put together a "best of" album from the wedding, we have nothing up on Picasa yet! This, I suppose, is proof to how much my life has been sucked away by this new job. No time at night to do anything but lectures and grading. Not my cup-o-tea. I'm all about work hard and play hard...but not work hard and work hard. Anyway - here are our Banff photos.... what a place!

View from the parking lot where we started on our sweet little overnight backpacking trip

Campsite on Glacier Lake

Jay got to do some fly-fishing and I got to gape at the gorgeous light

While we were sleeping an INSANE wind and rain storm blew in. If we had not been in the Canadian Rockies, I would have thought that there was a tornado coming. You could hear this gnarly wall of wind coming toward the campsite, we both started thinking about where to go in case trees started coming down! But, this wasn't necessary. Forget sleep though - the noise was intense. And when we woke up in the morning, we had gone from gorgeous blue skies to equally gorgeous dripping clouds blanketing the mountains. Perfect.

Crowfoot Glacier

Now we are in Yoho National Park - we rented a canoe and headed out on a paddle on Emerald Lake.
Neat view of the lake from our canoe

Cross country scraping

We headed up to Mt. Baker yesterday for some x-c skiing. It was a beautiful clear and cold day with great views of the surrounding peaks. After a bit of skiing from the upper parking lot of the Mt. Baker ski area, we went to another spot with these great views. The only problem was that the snow was crustier than month-old stale bread and we made lots of lovely scraping sounds. Just above the scraping, I heard Julie say at one point, "I just love the silence and solitude of x-c skiing". Isn't she wonderful?