holidays

This blog post was going to be titled "Christmas in Indiana" until I realized that I never put up pictures from Thanksgiving.

Here are some pictures from Thanksgiving!

At left, the feasters gather, soon to be joined by Jacob, Heidi, and Jonnali. We had a whole countertop of food, including turkey; excluding stuffing, lamentably. And with youthful memories of only being allowed a small glass or two of sparkling cider, we took advantage of grown-up freedom and guzzled nearly a bottle a person.




Then a month happened. Then we went to Indiana for Christmas!

We flew out during Seattle's epic snowfall, and were very, very lucky -- we waited on the plane for three hours through multiple de-icings, but managed to get ourselves to Chicago and not have to sleep in the Seattle airport like 3,000 other would-be travelers. One mother of a toddler shared her stash of cereal, another guy bought $100 worth of sandwiches, somebody had trail mix, and the flight attendants divvied it all up into cups and passed it around so that no one would starve.

Left: The view from our house the morning that we left. At least three more inches of snow fell while we were at the airport. Unprecedented for Seattle!
Center: Mmm ... dinner.
Right: De-icer to the rescue! Except for the part where they failed to de-ice the whole right side of the plane.




We had a wonderful time in Indiana, seeing Mom Galore for the first time since August and Dad Galore for the first time since -- well, he visited recently, but it was still nice to see him. It's been a long time since all these folks were in one place at once, and we enjoyed every minute of it: making Christmas crowns, playing toddler baseball, playing trivia at the bar, sleeping in, eating, laughing, singing, and just generally Miller-ing.













The immediate Galore family then spent a weekend in Chicago, where neither Brother Galore nor I had ever been (except for the airport). We ate deep-dish pizza and listened to blues -- then Mr. Galore, Brother Galore, and I flew back to Seattle. It was weird to fly back home and have the Parents Galore stay behind.

And back home again, Christmas was still not over: The Galore-in-Laws had visited earlier in the month and brought us our stockings, but we had yet to present our presents to each other. Mrs. Galore usually wraps her Christmas gifts in newspaper; this year, she upgraded to sheets and pillowcases. Longtime readers may recognize Al, who made it through a whole year to spruce up our home for a second time.



And hey, as long as we're here, we'll just finish off the year. After Mrs. Galore attended a taping of the NPR show "Says You," we bussed up to Everett to celebrate the eve of 2009 at a friend's bar. As the new year begins, we are so grateful to be happy and healthy -- here's to more of the same.