Good quiet day.. I’m trying to keep in the moment and keep my own spirits up. So far so pretty good. Had a few pretty soulful  moments through the day.. but I guess that’s to be expected.

Last night Gabe and I decided to go sledding at abotu 10.  If you’ve never seen it , we have a fabulous sledding hill in our backyard. It’s there because our then neighbors brothers truck managed to slip out of park and careen down the hill. It made it about 2/3’s the way down.. and it wasn’t coming back uo.. so the guys cleared the trees to let it doan.. and it’s been a sledding hill ever since..   It was fast and cold last night.. Gabe and I raced, made tais and tried to beat eachothers distance records in the snow.. It was a reeally good time..

This morning.. we all slept late.. DIane had a Yoga class at 8L15 this morning.. She did a restoritve session, very slow and meditative. just what I was looking for.

Diane’s friends surprised her by offering her a christmas Chai Tea party after the class.. It was really nice !

As we sat there afterward we started talking about Christmas tradition which lead to Chinese food, which lead to Stephanie telling us about her favorite Chinese place in NYC. She really likes this place called Wo Hop on Mott St right off of Canal.. She told us to go in there and order this tofu dish …   check it out !

We spent the rest of the day just puttering and cleaning.. getting ready for tomorrow.. very quiet..  Max and Gabe came back from the mountain at about 3. Soon after we headed up in to the woods for our tradition of decorating a tree for the animals. This year we chose a tree off the Catamount trail.

We took all of our stale backed goods, peanuts and birdseed

Then we toss them into the tree.. we had a bunch of stiff.. so it took us a fair bit to decorate the tree… (Note. Diane and I go back and collect the strings after the food is eaten.. so no litter’s left. )

We left a candy kiss there for Sam…

And we put a Samstone in the tree as we have these last three years..   It’s good keeping this tradition up.. I remember decorating a  tree outdoors right after sam died.. it was so hard. I remember it well. I have a picture form that time I look at frequently..

Now we’re getting ready to go out for dinner.. everyone’s doing pretty well.. keeping to ourselves and quiet. Things feel pretty good. The stockings are layed by the… uh.. sofa.. with care.. One for each of us.. including Sam.. as in all years past.

And even ones for the pets.. including Gabby who passed away in 2006  The spirits we love stay with us….