santa, finding goggin and catching up

 it has been nearly 2 weeks and that is way too long to be away from this blog...my goal was to blog every 2 to 3 days...i sent out 150 christmas cards over two weeks ago telling people they could keep up with our lives here and yet i haven't updated...so let's see a quick snapshot of what we've been up to...my dad's birthday was the 18th...it was a drizzly stay-at-home day...we had a brief garage sale before the rain came...got rid of some big items, made a little money, sold (and consumed) coffee, cocoa and donuts...mainly worked on our house and hung out...later that week i went to my mom and sister's house for a couple of days...we did a little christmas together and ate at our favorite vietnamese place, adong...hung out with my friend staci while she made christmas cookies and the children played, visited with flor for an hour of meaningful conversation over coffee, yogurt with dave and the family...i made eight personalized calendars for manuel, his parents, his siblings and my mom and sis (i put a LOT of time into these...choosing photos representative of holidays for each month and/or a photo of the person who has a birthday that month...along with our family's birthdays/anniversaries printed)...we took a photo with santa a couple days before christmas (to guarantee we'd all be sick for the holiday...almost inevitably happens every year)...sea had written her wish list and even made one for her brother...they started singing christmas carols and santa joined in...here is sea with "ooh-ahh"...

sometime last summer sea lost her favorite stuffed animal, goggin...here she is about 2 years old showing him off...i thought we would never be able to replace this albino tiger/opposum like animal but this past weekend in ventura we found one at a thrift store! i literally yelled "GOGGIN!!" and started crying...i'll post a current photo of her with this new creature...he doesn't have his fur loved off yet...

here is a drawing sea made on a computer program of goggin:

that's about all i can fit in before running off so photos/details of christmas will have to wait...later today we will go to the zoo with some friends and then sea world with my sister tomorrow...