Merry Christmas everyone. I hope it was peaceful and fun ..  The four of us spent nearly the entire day together just hanging out which was wonderful. There is plenty of love  in this house and it fills me up. Once again the expectation of how hard a holiday like this can be are much different than the reality. This is our third Christmas since Sam’s passing.. and like everyday.. today had it’s joy and it’s sadness.. Several folks have asked me whether it’s ‘getting easier’..  I can’t say easier… It’s different.. but every day is different from  the next. I spent some time looking back over what I wrote over the past two chistmases.. Christmas 2006  was just a month after Sam died.. things were so raw and jumbled then.. Christmas 2007 seems much like today.

Today was slow and dreamy. The kids woke us at 7:30.. which is relatively late for a Christmas morning.. then we moved downstairs to check out what was under the tree…

Our first act was to light the lantern and candle  for Sam..   one of our new traditions.. We all held hands and invited Sam into our day. It was sweet and so sad…

Then like every day.. we have to move through those moemnts and get on living.. And we had lots of livign to do today.. 2 kids and 3 dogs were eager to open presents.

We had stockigns stuffed with stuff for people

.. and for animals… Including our bird Gabby that died in 2006.. we always get birdseed or suet for wild birds in that one.

Sam still has a stocking. this one was filled with 5  metal Samstones.

Then came time for Diane and I just to sit back and watch..   The boys took their time enjoying opening their gifts.

At the end we had a happy mess. One thing I noticed is that we’d all made things for each other.. Diane had made Gabe a verty cool scarf thing out of his old ski pants.. I made both boys electronic headbands like the one I where. Gabe made max a really cool movie that he’d writiten the music for as well. Gabe made me a set of his music mixes.   Max made an experience for all of us.. but more on that later.

We then wandered back to the kitchen.. Diane made us a wonderful traditional breakfast of crepes and fruit.. with the untraditional bit of left over ceasr salad thrown in for fun..

At that point the boys went up to Bolton for a bit.. while DIane and I took the dogs for a walk with Tim and his dogs.. It had rained quite a bit last night so we didn’t need snowshoes.. thoguh we stil had 6-8 inches of snow that made for tough goign in places…

Around 4ish we all gathered back at home.. It was tiem for Max’s suprise. First he cut up all sorts of foods, lemmons. limes, gretfruits. carrots, cranberries. olives, onions. ble cheese and beer.. Then he set out 4 glasses of water.. He had us each swish oem water around in our mouths.. then…/.

he gave each of us a small berry abotu the size and shape of a cranberry.. they’d arrived by FedEx yesterday packed in dry ice… but I had no idea of what they were.. He had us pop the berries in our mouths and chew them lightly for about a minute.. at the end of that, we spit out the bitter seed in the middle..

Then he invited us to tast the food.. I picked up a lemon and bit into it gingerly.. I was amazed. It was as sweet as maple syrup.. then I ate a lime  and a greapfruit.. all the same story.. these normally bitter frutis were as sweet as hone.. with no trace of sourness… at all !..It was unbelivable !.  The olives and cheese tasted like.. welll… olive and cheese.. but everythign that was supposed to be sour tasted incredibly sweet.   It turns out that these were miracle berries from West Africa. Evidently its  called ‘taste tripping’ in the big city.. luckily we have our cosmopliton kid to bring us a taste of medern cultre !

We had a quiet and wonderfull dinner around eight.. We lit the canlde for Sam and hepd hads.. then lit the candles for the 5th night of Hanukah as part of our polyethnic day.. then we dug into veggie shepards pie that Diane had made  Yum…

Our last official act was to help Gabe get set up to wax his board with his new waxing iron..   His board is now smooth as silk…

.. and I’m stugglign to stay awake. I’m goign to go to bed early. It’s been a wonderful and fulfillign day. Thansk to everyone who was thinkign of us this season. We are surrounded by love and   truly appreciate it..

Merry Christmas everyone. Merry Christmas Sam…
-me