Christmas in Nashville

Again, I've taken an unintended hiatus.  Life just keeps intervening!  Well, the first part of my hiatus was intended and what I'll write about today.

We spent Christmas in Nashville with our adopted family, the Clinton-Selins.  Everyone should have an adopted family.  The extra love and support you get is amazing.  We were all happy to see Greta, Tatum (G's sister), Barbara (G's mom) and Uncle Jim (G's dad).  (Uncle Jim is called uncle because Willa first got to know him when he was traveling with Tatum and their cousin Cara, who calls Jim Uncle.)  We also got to meet G's Grandpa Larry (Barb's dad).

It would have been exceedingly crowded at the Clinton-Selin homestead, but we were lucky enough to stay at a neighbor's house who were away on vacation (in Key West with their Airstream. Jealous!).  It was a lovely house with a great kitchen, gas fireplace and lots of top shelf alcohol (it was too expensive to drink).  We were extremely comfortable, fed well, and generally spoiled. 

Sorry to say, we forgot our camera!  What I have are pictures that Tatum and I took with her camera on Christmas day.  We had no snow in Massachusetts when we left, but were "blessed" with it in Nashville.  It started snowing the evening before Christmas.  We got to catch it on our tounges as we walked from the C-S's to "our" house.  When we woke up, the yard was white!  Greta found out the chance of snow on Christmas in Nashville on any given year was 5% (from Weather.com; looks like Minot has a 75% chance and Westfield has a 60-75% chance).  I guess we picked the right year to find snow in the South.
Here's the walk from the Crimmins' (where we were staying) to the C-S's.

Christmas was a happy day.  I think we (meaning the kids) sped up the gift unwrapping quite a bit compared to what the C-S's usually did, but we had fun. 

Willa with Barbara

Nick opens his "Nick at Nite" bathrobe.  That's Tatum in blue scarf and Greta in black

 shirt.

Other people unwrapping is almost as good as unwrapping your own gifts.

Cal gets a soccer shirt.  His pants got wet in the snow, so they were in the dryer.

Cal the Cowboy

Greta and Cal open something?

Willa wore her cape and necklaces all day!

While we were in Nashville we went out with a high school friend of mine, JuLee Brand (can't believe it has been 20 years since I'd seen her) and friends in Clarksville.  There were many other people we should have seen, but I got social fatigue, so we spent a day at the science center and a day resting before heading home. 

My hairstylist asked if spending Christmas in a different place was strange, and thinking about it, I realized that the only non-strange Christmas would be one spent at my Mom's house.  That's Christmas to me, even though it has been a while since we all got together there for the holiday.   My kids have spent Christmas in 4 different places.  Maybe now that we own this house, we can start some traditions of our own.

I'm going to try to catch up the blog in the next week, so, never fear - there will be more soon.

We had a great time in Nashville, but missed you, though.