Yesterday was fun and peaceful. We started off with a socially distant walk with a bunch of our Richmond friends. We started at Brewster Pierce Elementary school In Huntington… Ideal place. Our friend Alison is there koch and as somebody who has volunteered in quite a few Vermont schools I think this is my favorite.… It’s nestled deep in the woods. Small family field. Our friend Gene who teaches there take us on a tour of their outdoor classrooms.

We then walked up through the new Huntington town Forest and up trap road back into the middle of nowhere

At 2 o’clock we got on zoom with Max Becky and GabÉ to finish off opening Christmas presents… With almost 8 hours on zoom on Friday we never actually got to the presents part

It was really nice and sweet. Lots of thoughtful gifts back-and-forth. But impressed me the most is that we all had made stuff for each other… I’m happy to have such a crafty family

Diane and I tried out one of our gift to ourselves which was a simple sushi making kit. It had some shaped bowls which I’ve never used before… Heart shaped sushi, pretty cool !

OK… Got to get onto blog about today

Nite all, nite Sam

-me

Happy Boxing Day everyone… I never figured out what boxing day was… But it was a big deal in England when we lived there.… We spent the day peacefully enjoying the light snow. We get out for a medium length hike in some of that area around Bamforth Ridge. We’re really enjoying may need some of the features that are out in the back country. Today’s goal was to follow “sheep shoot”… Up to its end… And then climb down a pretty steep gorge and cross over the top part of Gleeson Brooke.… There we discovered what we now call “upper Gleason falls”… Which was beautiful and really flowing due to the rain and snow melt. We had a few treacherous crossings of the creek… But it was worth it. We then came back on a trail we call “lower Gleeson”… These are all old logging roads or somesuch that haven’t been used in many, many years.

This evening we had a nice video catch up with our friend Vince and his sons… Then Diane made some more samosas… These ones were baked and really delicious.… I finish the evening off with a gift to ourselves. We had made puzzles of a painting that our friend Maly had done of our house back in 1999. We gave puzzles to the boys and my mom and one for ourselves. We started on it. It makes me wish that We hadn’t Painted so much of the house white :-)… It’s going to be a long thousand pieces

Nite all, nite sam

-me

Just wrapping up a very unusual Christmas day.… It’s a first of many ways… It’s the first one we’ve had without kids since they were born… It’s our first without dogs… It was over 60°F today And rainy.

But in many ways it was pretty normal. Diane and I woke up early and took advantage of the warm weather and headed up to catamount Trail. We went up to a small evergreen forest with waterfalls that are dogs… Particularly chai… Really loved. I took advantage of the warm weather to take a quick jump in the water. I couldn’t go too far because the rain and the snow melt it made things into A raging river

We did headed back home… And had a really nice zoom call with my mom

Several hours later the West Coast of our family started waking up… And we started together for a family day. Believe it or not we were on zoom all together on an hour from 1 PM until midnight with a variety of sitting around talking, cooking, opening presents, toasting and just hanging out. It was a really wonderful day. Not the same as being physically together but wonderful just the same

Max and Becky had made their own wonderful beef Wellington…

But they had given us a pointer to a recipe for samosas. We never made them so GabÉ made some on his side and we made them. I think we ended up eating them at 10:30 at night. They were so wonderfully good

We decided to eat them with mimosas because they rhymed



We just finished around midnight our time with a toast to each other, to Sam, grandma and grandpa Mariano,, my dad, Chai, satori…

What was funny is at the end of the day we still hadn’t made much progress on opening presents… We’re getting back together on Sunday to finish that off.

It was so nice to be able to spend the day together… Distance or no

I hope everyone else got to spend time with their loved ones and one way or the other…

Night, all, nite Sam

-me

Just wrapping up a very unusual Christmas day.… It’s a first of many ways… It’s the first one we’ve had without kids since they were born… It’s our first without dogs… It was over 60°F today And rainy.

But in many ways it was pretty normal. Diane and I woke up early and took advantage of the warm weather and headed up to catamount Trail. We went up to a small evergreen forest with waterfalls that are dogs… Particularly chai… Really loved. I took advantage of the warm weather to take a quick jump in the water. I couldn’t go too far because the rain and the snow melt it made things into A raging river

http://johncohn.org/base/wp-content/uploads/2020/12/img_4065-1.mov

We did headed back home… And had a really nice zoom call with my mom

Several hours later the West Coast of our family started waking up… And we started together for a family day. Believe it or not we were on zoom all together on an hour from 1 PM until midnight with a variety of sitting around talking, cooking, opening presents, toasting and just hanging out. It was a really wonderful day. Not the same as being physically together but wonderful just the same

Max and Becky had made their own wonderful beef Wellington…

But they had given us a pointer to a recipe for samosas. We never made them so GabÉ made some on his side and we made them. I think we ended up eating them at 10:30 at night. They were so wonderfully good

We decided to eat them with mimosas because they rhymed



We just finished around midnight our time with a toast to each other, to Sam, grandma and grandpa Mariano,, my dad, Chai, satori…

What was funny is at the end of the day we still hadn’t made much progress on opening presents… We’re getting back together on Sunday to finish that off.

It was so nice to be able to spend the day together… Distance or no

I hope everyone else got to spend time with their loved ones and one way or the other…

Night, all, nite Sam

-me