Our first Christmas

It started with Pumpkin breaking into Zellie's food, even though we gave him an extra big breakfast...

I got a new game! We'll both play it, but I think I like it more. We both love regular Blokus and have wanted to try Blokus Trigon since we saw it being played at a Mensa games party.

And Pumpkin got a self-help book, even though cats don't need any help. He is such a tolerant kitty to let us put ribbons on him!

It was a great first Christmas! And it's even starting to snow in Virginia. The weather prognosticators are consistently bi-polar on how much we get, ranging from "a dusting" to "snowmageddon part 2"! I'm hoping for somewhere in-between.

The Snowflake Tree

My friends Kris and Kevin in Maryland have enough Christmas trees in their house to rival Macy's. My favorite is the snowflake tree.

Someone at Safeway has a sense of humor.

That's just too good to be unintentional.

Oh Solstice Tree...

I admit, not the best picture ever. But it's a pretty tree! I think lit Christmas trees are about as difficult to photograph as black cats.

We did have to move it out of the window because it was blocking all of our light. But it can still be seen from outside, so I can see it when I'm coming home from work. At this time of year, it's fully dark here by about 5.

I was interested in the effect of being both farther south and east of where I used to live, and it turns out that we get 20-25 more minutes of sunlight in the winter than our friends in Michigan, but we get it earlier in the day since we're farther east in the time zone -- so we'd have to get up awfully early to take advantage of it. Darn you, standardized time!