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Oh it is so painful to try to re enter your life after a vacation.  I want to swipe my hand over everything and have it all magically put away and in order.

But alas.

Christmas surrounds me still.  Except now it's completely disheveled because I've started putting things away and that always gets a lot worse before it gets any better.

An aside:  Emma told me yesterday that when she has her own house she's going to be a bit more of a minimalist at Christmas.  She said, "I love all of this, but it is a lot of work."

(She has always been smarter than I am.)

We went to Seattle.  It was wonderful.  Every last bit.  My cracked and bleeding hands healed, my hair was curly curly.  Everything was green and dark and gloomier than we remembered.

Here are some highlights (with pictures, of course--mostly stolen from other people, of course).

We went to the Sheraton downtown which has gingerbread house displays every year.  

We soaked up a little Seattle atmosphere at Pike Place Market:

Raelyn, Emma and Mark...one of those pictures where you take a picture when they're all looking at someone else for a picture.

We went to dinner to celebrate Geri's birthday:

Mark in his natural habitat:  eating

I bought Mark some new pants and asked him to go try them on.  Megan said, "You can come and model them for us."

Mark put Careless Whisper (boy loves 80s music) on his phone and came out wearing this getup:

You've got to be careful with some people when you ask them to model for you.

 We had lunch with these cute kids:

And laughed a lot with this crew:

We happily got to spend a lot of time with the Jorgensens too.  They invited us over for dinner and we played games with them a few times and Janet and I got in several hours of visiting and I'm pretty sure we could visit for a few more weeks (years?) before we felt like it was enough time.

I don't have any pictures of them.

Why don't I have any pictures?!?

Geri very kindly let us invite them over for New Year's Eve.  Adam did take a picture of these two beauties, hair and hearts and souls woven together.

I love those two girls together.

I also loved seeing this at midnight:

That's what you do on New Year's Eve.  You watch the Space Needle fireworks.

It all went by too fast.

My eyes are open in this picture.  Red. Letter. Day.

We loved being with Geri.  She is a very gracious hostess.  She spoiled us and fed us well and made our stay wonderful.

We went to church in our old ward and it made me happy.  I hugged a lot of people and talked to a lot of people, but not enough.  I could have stayed another three hours after church chatting with people.

I was doing very well with it all then Amy hugged me goodbye and she started to cry and the floodgates opened.

I love my friends.

We left the green algae and returned to the frozen tundra.  It snowed almost all day yesterday.

Re entry.  Not for the faint of heart.