Well, I did not expect to be away from blogging for over a month, especially after I finally managed to get everything here into at least a semblance of working order. Clearly, though, that is exactly what happened.
My life has continued to roil with chaos ever since the washing machine died, my computer crashed, and my hubby retired. “Highlights” include the sink stopping up over Thanksgiving, the heater breaking, followed both of our cars, one after the other (in one case I was drafted to tow the broken car home from where it had died in a parking lot 3 miles away), all of this happening within a period of about two weeks.
Then it was time to get ready for Christmas, which progressed fairly well, until I started on our annual Christmas letter, had it completed, edited and approved only to be defeated once again by Windows 8.1/Word 2013 when, at the eleventh hour I hurtled headlong into indecipherable weirdness involving not the insertion of photographs into the document, but the attempt to move them afterwards. Heaven forbid you should do that, because once you try it’s over. And since it was close to midnight the night before we were to leave for California, I had to give up and finish it after we returned.
First we went to San Diego, a whirlwind three days full of memory making.
Lily has grown so much! She’s walking, running, climbing, talking in full sentences… soooo cute! Christmas eve we spent on the beach in near perfect weather. (Click on the photo for a bigger picture.)

Who are these people? My husband, me, Lily, my son and his wife, their live-in housekeeper/ helper/friend, the two boys, their dog Joey and, of course, Quigley, barking as usual
The day after Christmas we headed up to LA to visit my 92-year-old stepmother who, despite her advanced years still skunked me in dominoes! It was great to be able to visit with her, but toward the end of the time we had to spend there, our late nights, early mornings and activity packed days caught up with us as we both developed what turned out to be either the flu, or one of the worst colds either of us have ever had. Not only were we coughing, sneezing, hacking and blowing, but we were completely exhausted.
We were twelve days recovering… all of which is why I haven’t been able to get a blog post up in almost a month!