Diane and I are at GabÉ’s… But GabÉ’s not. He still in Arizona. I just got off the river today after over two weeks on the Colorado river with his friends going down the Grand Canyon. A few minutes before we landed in Portland we got a text from him that he was off the river. It sounds like he had an excellent time. He’s flying back here tomorrow and Maks will meet us and will head up in the mountains for a couple of days. It’ll be nice to be together with the family.

Gabe did tell us that he has lots of stories… He did send us this one picture. Sounds like it’s a pretty good story.. .

OK… I’m falling asleep. Some more tomorrow.

Nite all, nite Sam

-me

We had a pretty slow day today… Boxing day I think they call it. Are we really tried to do today is pack for a trip out to Portland. Got some nice time just hanging out playing with the dogs… I got in some recreational programming. Now trying to get some sleep before a very early trip.

One funny story is that my friend Derrek Texted me today that he found a picture that he had posted on his Facebook three years ago and thought it looked a lot like me.… Remember this picture ?

It was a selfie I snapped when I was riding next to Berney one day on the way back to Burlington. Everybody said it was Bernie flying with Santa Claus and it became a Reddit meme about three years ago. Evidently Derrek picked it up and posted it.. And that was two years before we met.

Pretty funny !

OK… Got to get some sleep. Or tomorrow from the road

Nite all, nite Sam

-me

We walked today to a quiet and empty house… And is it strange as it may sound it was fun. After 30 years of doing Christmas With the kids… It was just us. Well… Us and the dogs

And we have so many great memories and some sad ones to around this day… But today was just today. That’s the way it should be. We missed having the boys here but we’re going to see Maks and Gabe later this week in Oregon… Sam we always mess

We took it very slow this morning. The only thing we really had to do was give the dogs their stockings. The funny thing is at one moment Hannah and Brit came by to say good morning… And we have we were out of the room for just a few minutes chai found her stocking Pulled it off the table.. And took it into the other room and started emptying it. She has done this every year of her 16 years. Somehow she knows which stocking is Hertz no matter how many are there… And she knew she had gotten away with something. It was so cute

So we gently pulled the stocking back and refilled it with goodies… And let both the girls go find theirs

We opened a few presents from each other including a nice vest for Diane and a nice sweater for me from my mom. (Thanks mom!)…



Then we went out to take the girls for a walk… I have course was wearing all of my Santa gear which was fun for the neighbors

Around 11 we got our gear on and headed to the Huntington site Camel’s Hump Middle School both of us have the end of some sort of respiratory bug… But we weren’t gonna let that keep us off the mountain. It’s become sort of a tradition… I think this is either third or fourth year to go up it on Christmas. This year there was very little snow but tons of ice. We were really glad to have our crampons on.

We made the summit in an hour and 30 minutes… Not our best time but still not bad for winter… I was cold up there but relatively still in very clear. We had a great views of everything. Even though we had passed quite a few people coming down the mountain (they like to be a Santa)… We were alone at the top



We hiked a bit down from the summit Where it was much warmer to have a quick bite of candy and some tea.

We got home safe and even though we are feeling great for doing the hike we were both pretty beat and feeling a little under the weather… So we decided to stay in tonight. Great choice. We still had to take the girls out for an afternoon walk. Glad we did because it was a beautiful sunset

OK… Time for another long winters rest…

Hope everyone had a good holiday. More tomorrow

nite all, nite Sam

-me

Not much at all star in here actually… We had a really nice and quiet day. This is the first time in 30 years we haven’t had kids around for Christmas… And It feels kind of weird… Not bad weird actually. Just kind of peaceful and quiet. We’re going out west to see both the boys at the end of this week…

We just had a great yoga and soup night… Dianne made pasta Faccioli. And we had eggnog with rum… Actually I had rum with a little eggnog in it 🙂

For now… We’re just going to settle in for a long winters nap.

Hope everyone has a great and peaceful holiday..

Nite all, nite Sam

-me