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
