Merry Christmas & Happy New Year from San Diego!

(Above: Christmas lights and decorations found only in California--Surf Santa in a hammock hanging from two inflated palm trees!)

Hope everyone has had a wonderful Christmas! We have been out in San Diego since Christmas Eve and leave on New Year's day to come back to Virginia. We have had a great time with Ben's family--and have seen some great sights too. It was cool and rainy the first few days we were here, but it has now warmed up to the lovely weather San Diego is famous for--sunny, warm, 70s! Anyway, more later this week, but for now, here are a few shots of our trip! And happy New Year to everyone!

Above: Family Christmas dinner (grilled filet mignon, cranberry-feta salad, and potatoes--yum!)

Above: More very cute Christmas decorations (penguins) in a nearby neighborhood

Above: Sleepy Christmas kitty (Joey)

Above: Ben and me at Torrey Pines State Park, hanging on the rare "torrey pine," the nation's rarest pine tree breed found only here and in one other place in California.

Above: Beautiful sunset at La Jolla Beach

Above: I can't remember where this is, but it was a neat beach with all these cliffs that you could walk on (at your own risk...), and it was right next to Torrey Pines Golf Course, where the U.S. Open was held this past year.

Above: Hiking today at Mission Dam Trail (in Mission Valley, CA).

Above: The Presidio, which was a fort built to protect the San Diego Mission. It is such neat architecture!!

Colonial Christmas

We saw Santa at Colonial Williamsburg today! Took a lot of pictures, too, of the beautiful wreaths and decorations, and you can view them all here. (Note--It works best if you click on the first picture and then cycle through manually; if you do "slideshow," it makes the photos go so fast that they don't have time to focus clearly before moving on to the next picture, so everything ends up looking grainy/blurred.) This is our first time trying Picasa as our photo upload program, so hopefully it works for everyone. Let us know how you like it!

Praise God for Christmas

In all the hustle and bustle of getting ready for Christmas, it's easy to lose sight of the reason for the season. But the focus of Christmas is as the holiday's name suggests: Christ. Here is a good poem that was shared by someone at our church, and I thought it was worth posting:

Praise God for Christmas
By Joseph Bayly

Praise Him for the incarnation,
for the word made flesh.
I will not sing of shepherds
watching flocks on frosty nights,
or angel choristers.
I will not sing of a stable bare in Bethlehem,
or lowing oxen,
wise men trailing star with gold,
frankincense, and myrrh.
Tonight I will sing praise to the Father
who stood on heaven's threshold
and said farewell to his Son
as he stepped across the stars
to Bethlehem and Jerusalem.
And I will sing praise to the infinite, eternal Son,
who became most finite, a baby
who would one day be executed for my crime.
Praise him in the heavens,
Praise him in the stable,
Praise him in my heart.

December is the Best Month!

December is the best month - because of Christmas as well as my (Jenny's) birthday. However, December is also always a VERY busy month, which is why we haven't blogged in awhile. I thought it was high time to get the Thanksgiving post lower down and not up-front and center anymore, though, so here's a short post.

Yesterday was my 28th birthday (wow, I'm old), and I celebrated by being sick (sinus and ear infections). Yay. Fortunately, I was able to muster up strength to go out to dinner at the restaurant where we'd had reservations for several weeks. We went to the Trellis, which is probably the best (and, unfortunately, one of the most expensive) restaurants in Williamsburg. However, when I received my 8-layer chocolate cake ("Death by Chocolate," the recipe is called), I felt it was all worth it:

Over the weekend we went down to North Carolina to visit Susan (my friend from high school/elementary school). She is a doctor in the Navy and is stationed at Camp Lejeune right now, but she lives in the booming metropolis of Sneads Ferry, NC, about a half-hour down the road from the base. We had a great time seeing her even though I was sick (although, fortunately, I had a doctor on hand to diagnose me!). She showed us around the base, we went to the beach briefly (see first picture below), we went out to dinner in Wilmington at Macaroni Grill (see second picture below), and we bought and decorated a (very small) Christmas tree for her house. The tree is rather Charlie Brownish, but since she only had 9 ornaments to start with, we felt that it was just the right size (we later bought more ornaments and even a string of lights, so it ended up less Charlie Brownish from when we started).

(Onslow Beach, NC)


(Birthday Cake at Macaroni Grill--also chocolate--so it was an altogether chocolatey birthday this year!)

(Susan and me after decorating her little tree)

We'll try to blog again before Christmas, but no promises since things are so hectic. We're going to San Diego for the break, so I'm sure we'll have pictures and adventures to share when we return! Merry Christmas, everyone!

Thanksgiving in Atlanta

We had a great Thanksgiving in Atlanta last week! Here are a few pictures:

Matthew: The 2008 Turkey Carver

Daniel won the contest for greatest amount of food on his plate

Duke: Scrabble Assistant

Early Birthday Party for Me! (Mom's fudge was the "cake")

Opening presents (Matthew's was a 1,000-piece photomosaic puzzle of Charlie Brown and Snoopy, which looks very hard but fun!)