Kitten's First Christmas

Christmas has come and gone for another year. This was the first, of many, with the kittens. They were very excited and couldn't wait to dig into the presents under the tree on Christmas morning. They were very good this year so were rewarded with stockings filled with toys as well as a bunch of Christmas dinner ham later in the day. The kittens were extremely fond of their new toys that were stuffed with catnip. They slobbered all over them and everything else in their stupor.

Friday was spent trucking up to my folks in VT for Christmas with my family. This was a good day and we had great weather to travel. My mother prepared a big meal and we exchanged gifts with both brothers families and my parents. It was a good day and it was good to see everyone.

On Christmas day proper we were back at home. Cathy and I had an excellent day. We slept late and enjoyed a great breakfast of bacon and waffles in the shapes of ducks and cows thanks to the new waffle iron that my brother gave us. We then had at the gifts under the tree. We were both treated to many, many great gifts from Santa. As always, more than either of us need. My big gift from Cathy was an excellent new camera, which I will be learning to use in the near future.

Later in the day we saddled up on our 29er single-speed mountain bikes and did some local trail exploring. This included some stuff that we hadn't done in many years and were happy to find that it has been getting some more traffic and may become part of our local loops in the future.

When we got back home we were both starving so we dug into cheese, sausage and crackers that my other brother and his family gave us. That night for dinner, ham, mashed potato, squash and beans were all put together and laid out by Cathy for our Christmas dinner which was absolutely wonderful. The rest of the day was down time, relaxing, watching some Scrooged and A Christmas Story and winding down the day. All in all, another great Christmas, thanks to my wife and the kids.

I'm sad to see another Christmas season go by, once again so quickly. The hustle and bustle of modern life simply doesn't afford one enough time to really get into the spirit and enjoy the season the way that it deserves to be enjoyed. The distinct lack of snow this year didn't help either. That said, it has been a great week so far and we still have the rest of this week left as vacation. We've been able to do some great, low key, local, social MTB rides with good friends.

Right now we are in the midst of an honest to goodness blizzard. We are expected to get almost 20" of new snow out of this one storm. At the current rate and the projected length of the storm, I have no doubt that this will come true. Unfortunately, they have not received much snow up north, which is why we chose to stay south this past week. We had planned to go up top Maine today but with the storm, decided to stay local and deal with the snow here before going anywhere. This allowed us to get in one last MTB ride on the trails today, before there will be too much snow. The gears will shift into full wintertime activity after today and will include XC skiing and snowshoeing. I can't wait.