Jan's Journal

December 24, 2004

IT'S FRIDAY, MY FAVORITE DAY!!

Merry Christmas everyone!! It has been a busy week getting ready for the last minute stuff just before Christmas, but I am sure everyone else has been just as busy.

Last Friday, Dave and I drove up north to Seaside and spent the day doing some last minute gift buying at the outlet stores. We decided to see a movie, "Polar Express" which I would recommend to anyone over seven years of age. It is kind of scary in parts and so I don't think smaller children would get much out of it. There were only five of us in the whole theater so there is some advantage of going during the afternoon. After the movie, we drove to Cannon Beach and had a delicious meal at a nice little restaurant called the Bistro.

Saturday was party time! We were invited to a party at Deanna and Rick Hendricks' and enjoyed ourselves socializing with all the local folk. Rick is our newly elected mayor in this fine town. While we were at the party, one gal kept insisting that Dave looked just like Christopher McDonald, the actor. Well, she couldn't prove it by us, we had never heard of Christopher McDonald and let alone the movie "Happy Gilmore" that he plays in. We looked him up on the Internet and we don't see the connection. I guess we are going to have to rent the movie and find out for ourselves. Now you have to understand that this gal had been drinking a few of Rick's fine Hot Buttered Rums, so it may turn out that the resemblance between Dave and Christopher got stronger as the evening progressed!

Sunday we attended an open house at Dr. Reinhart's. This was given in honor of our "big" donation to the Reinhart clinic. I guess everyone gets an invitation no matter how large (or in our case, small) the donation is. Anyway, they have this beautiful home up on a hill between Nehalem and Manzanita. It has a spectacular view of the ocean on one side and the Nehalem Bay on the other. I decided that I would forego the view from outdoors because it was so windy up there.

The rest of the week I got all my gifts wrapped and was able to have some friends over for dinner. This is the first time that I can remember being able to relax and enjoy the Christmas season.

Dave and I were talking about how my sleeping pattern has changed since I have retired. I have actually been able to stay up later than 10:00 p.m. and sleep in until...well, whenever. I have been so used to having to get up at 6:00 a.m. all my life because of work, that "sleeping in" seems like a luxury. Maybe it's because of winter and it is still dark outside, but it is sure a nice.

We are getting together with our kids to celebrate Christmas. We'll drive to Leslie and Jason's on Christmas Day and met the rest of the family there. We have plans to bring Ashtin and Paige down here next week between games, but we'll have to watch the forecast. It looks like there's going to be snow in the Coast Range, and we don't want to be traveling back and forth through snow country with the grandkids.

We still don't have a way to get pictures up on this page. Hopefully by next week we'll have it figured out. Of course, next week we really don't know where we're going to be because of the weather, so I may not even get anything posted!

I hope everyone has a very nice holiday and you get everything that you wish for.