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Tag: Holidays | Christmas
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first christmas tree
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Christmas Tree 2009 -
knitting and snowing
two signs of the coming apocalypse: it’s snowing at the beach, and i’ve learned how to knit.
the weather down this way has been crazy. in the last month, we’ve had just as many days above 60 as we had below freezing. it’s rained, it’s typhooned, it’s snowed, it’s blizzard-ed.
i wouldn’t be surprised to see dennis quaid snowshoe by, murmuring about having to save Jake Gyllenhaal (tho, to be frank, i would toss Jake back and focus my attention on saving Emmy Rossum).
i digress.
the lady sparkler and i are spending the long weekend on the coast of Delaware with Lighting Chick Knits, whose sister happens to have a house out here with a spectacular view of the sound (pictures of the view on facebook).
much as her blog would suggest, Lighting Chick Knits, well, knits. and, being the Renaissance man that i am, I couldn’t pass up the opportunity to add another tick to my “wide, not deep” resume of skills, probably best symbolized by my musical skills (guitar, bass, piano, violin, and harmonica) or my interest in foreign languages (russian, arabic, spanish) — all of which i can “do,” just none particularly well.
and so it is with knitting … i am neither exceptionally good or exceptionally bad. knitting fits nicely into my need for immediate gratification, but my skills are no where near the point they’d need to overcome my internal demand for perfection.
we’ll see. so far, i’ve made it through 20 rows of a scarf, which is just enough to make smallishly-sized bookmark … which seems like a just reward for annihilating the last remaining shred of my masculinity.
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happy new year
so, it’s officially January now, and the lady sparker and i have yet to send out our (mostly) annual holiday card.
it’s funny. thanksgiving snuck up on us this year, as did christmas and now new year’s. i guess it’s only fitting that sending out the card snuck up on us as well.
so, it’s going out this weekend, but just in case yours gets caught up in some super aggressive spam filter, you can view the card online right now.
as for timing, we’ll do better next year … i *promise.*
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Photos: Christmas in Williamsburg, Virginia
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Christmas in Williamsburg, Virginia -
Photos: Christmas in Washington, DC
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Photos: Christmas in Washington, DC -
a (mostly) friendly Christmas competition
working in online fundraising, the fact that the end of the year is coinciding with the complete and utter collapse of our economy is casting a bit of a pall on what would otherwise be a festive time of the year.
this minor set back (alone) could have be taken in stride … but, when our philanthropy department neighboors started getting all up in our grill about how they were going to out “festive” us for the holidays, it was game on.
i mean, we can handle trying to compensate for the decline of western civilization, but to be called out for decorating supremacy was just a bridge to far.
we responded to this tyranny with resolve. we raided our collective attics, mobilizing all sorts of lights, ornaments, bows and garlands towards the decorating war effort (photos of the mobilization above).
but, in the end, it was over before it really even began … and philanthropy surrendered before we had the chance to get much past the “shock and awe” stage:
ok ok, you guys win this one. you really went above and beyond. I apologize for the trash talk and concede the title to you guys.
i’m a tiny bit sad they caved so quickly, because we had one more salvo of decorations we could have deployed had we needed the reserves to secure our merriment objectives.
i love the smell of trash talk in the morning.
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the most wonderful time of the year
well, the season has officially begun … the season of Christmas programming.we actually kicked it off over thanksgiving when special host jojo-pumpkin helped the lady sparkler and i toss out the ceremonial first “charlie brown christmas.”
we go into each year with a list of 60+ movies, cartoons and holiday specials to watch, and we are usually pretty happy if we make it through a third of them. this year sorta snuck up on us, so i’m thinking i’ll be happy if we get through even a quarter.
anyone up for a little, healthy christmas special-watching competition?
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musings: christmas wishes
as new year’s eve 2007 draws neigh, it would be a considerable understatement to say this year has been simply eventful. we have a new home, a few weeks in central america, and that whole wedding thing under our belts … and It has been our friends and family who’ve kept us sane in what has been a wonderfully crazy year.it’s easy for us trace our current state of happiness to the fabulous people who surround us, and so we want to take what time is left in 2007 to say thank you. with that in mind, may the very best of the season be with you this holiday, and may you experience in your life the joy, love and peace that you have brought to ours.
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![[Alexandria Christmas Parade, Alexandria, Virginia.]](https://theparkerfamily.org/wp-content/uploads/2008/12/3626666863_1db0d0382b.jpg)
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we started thinking through how we were going to fit one in the house back in October, and rearraged the furnature by mid-November. and then, come the first day after Thanksgiving, the lady spakler, baby sparklet and immediately jumped in the car and roared off in search of something tall, skinny and green.
finding a tree lot in DC is about like finding a gas station … they are around, everybody has their favorite, but you never can seem to find one when you are looking.
we started off looking in glover park, and the lot over there that we usually use still hadn’t opened for the season. we then drove out connecticut avenue to a stand i had last used in 2005 … only to find that the whole area had been plowed over and turned into a gas station.
by the time we crossed into maryland, we were feeling pretty good … because soon after we passed an SUV going in the opposite direction with a tree strapped to its roof like road kill.
and sure enough, after 15 minutes and trying two more “known” lot locations (from when i lived in bethesda, circa 1999) we finally found a lot that was open.
we bought the lot’s third tree of the season.
and, given how hard it was to find a christmas tree that was open, i’m guessing we bought the city’s third tree of the season as well. now we just have to dig out the hot chocolate maker, and we’re all set for the winter.