Following Bliss: December 2007

I know this is a seriously belated post. But if the airplane can be late to fly, can't I be late to post some pictures? We were going to use this picture for our Christmas card, but thought it might be too dorky. In the end, it didn't fit on the card, so we opted for the skiing pictures. Anyways, back to the rollout...we went backpacking in the North Cascades for the Fourth of July holiday and hemmed and hawed over whether we should go. In the ended I pushed Chris to go since he's put so many hours into working on this plane. We were pleasantly surprised, the whole operation was pretty cool. There were some glitches with parking and actually getting everyone into the factory on time (despite showing up an hour early, we were still 20 minutes late to the ceremony). There was a lot of blah blah about how great the airplane was, but when it came time to actually roll the plane out (or rather in), it gave me chills. Afterwards we were all free to walk around the airplane. We took lots of pictures and got to see a lot of people we knew. It was nice to catch up with everyone in a casual setting. The weather was really nice too. It was like a picnic, only with stale popcorn and water instead of hamburgers.

You can see my pictures in my web album:

787 Rollout

It's so much fun to have a Christmas Break. It's the one thing I really miss from school, that and summer vacation.

Chris and I are trying to start a rotation of one year in New England, one year with my family and one year for us. So this year we decided to just stay put in Seattle. I miss seeing my family, but at the same time, it has been so nice not traveling and being in town for the inevitable Christmas storms. We've been doing a lot of things that needed to get taken care of around the house (like blogging), cooking great meals (because our families gave us awesome pots for Christmas) and of course skiing. It's snowed 8-10 feet in the last two weeks. This has made for some sketchy avalanche conditions at times, but there has still been plenty of skiing (deep and oh so powdery) in the trees. The snow has been very light and I've had some of the deepest skiing ever this past week (even more than Hakkoda).

I love our Christmas tree. It's a little blurry, but you get the gist. We've been putting the stove to good use. Carmen (our second cat) really appreciates it because it's more comfortable to sit in front of the fire rather than on the heating registers!

Christmas Eve Chili! We had a growler of stout from North Fork Brewery (up near Mt. Baker) from the day before, so we decided to make a big batch of chili to go with it. We had to open up a gift a little early (Thanks so much Eric & Cathleen!) so we had a pot big enough to cook all of it in. That's a three gallon pot and you can see it's mostly full!

White Christmas in Seattle! We intended to go skiing, but slept a little too late (probably from that growler the night before!), so we decided to just hang out and cook a big breakfast. A little after that it started snowing, and pretty soon it was puking! It didn't stick around long, but it made for a beautiful Christmas walk!

Christmas Dinner: We put all our new Christmas gifts to good use. Mom and Dad brought us a fondue pot over Thanksgiving, so we had fondue for Christmas Dinner! So easy to make, and the pot heats nice and evenly on the stove. I think we'll be doing fondue fairly often now.

Enjoying a great time skiing on Mt. Catherine (near Snoqualmie Pass).

Chris put together a sweet video of us skiing on Mt. Catherine (up at Snoqualmie Pass), click on the album below to watch it.