Chris and Tricia's Anniversary, Part 2

The highlight for both Tricia and I had to be our Christmas night dinner. There were very few places open on Christmas, but Tricia had made a reservation at a place called The Alley Cafe. Although they called it a "cafe," something like "gourmet dining" would have been more apropos. We both had a multi-course dinner of salmon filets and Dungeness crab in Bearnaise sauce, with mashed potatoes, candied yams, salad, steamed veggies, a delightful Zinfandel Wine, all topped off with Apple Strudel. Is your mouth watering yet?

The atmosphere was great, but one of the neatest treats was when a European-style Father Christmas strolled in for a visit. Apparently there's one guy that does this once a year for the whole village, and we were just at the right place at the right time. His outfit was very fancy. He had a rich red-satin robe with fine golden embroidery, a forest green velvet overcoat, classic black belt, an intricately-carved wooden walking stick with a unique "mountain crystal" in the hilt. The crystal is so-named because when you look into the crystal there's a miniature mountain silhouette in the rock (quartz, we think). He wore a holly wreath on his head, and had some rich-toned bells that jingled as he walked. He really played the part well, and he had a real beard, not the fake-Santa thing. Here are some pictures of our wonderful dinner.

On Christmas Day Tricia and I (Chris) hopped in our hot-rod Cutlass-Sierra for our second anniversary get-away. After last year's disasterous anniversary adventure, this year's could only go uphill from there. And uphill it went! It was our first delightful anniversary, and it will be a tough one to beat.

We drove to Leavenworth, WA, which was inundated in about 4 feet of fresh snow, and it continued to snow another 8 inches or more during most of our time there. It was a winter wonderland, with a charming Bavarian-village imitation that far exceeded my expectations. Although the whole Bavarian theme is just a great tourism gimmick (it's not really a transplanted Bavarian sub-culture), they did it well enough to impress me, and I spent three months living in Bavaria. It was a lot of fun. The shops gave us plenty to do, and Tricia reserved a cute (but fortunately not cute ala "Precious-Moments" flavor) bed and breakfast that was smack in the heart of the Bavarian-downtown area. The B&B was pretty old, and each room was decorated with a quilt-theme. Here are some fun pictures from our time there.

One more....

Here's a bunch of Garden Valley Christmas photos:



















And last but certainly not least:

Last night Kari and I went down to the Seaport Village to take some night photos but noticed that it was a little foggy. Didn't get the pictures that we wanted, but these two kinda show you how foggy it really was.

Peanut laughing at a funny joke:

Karissa not really enjoying having her picture taken. Abby is oblivious.

And here we are yesterday morning in front of the tree...

Sunday night we drove around for a while in the cold and semi-wet, and finally captured a tree in its native habitat - the parking lot. It fills the house a bit more than last year's model. Well, more than any other tree we've ever had - separately or together.

The great white hunters return with their catch:


Rachel and Peanut wrestle for control.

Sorry for this awful picture, but I'm afraid it's the best that we got of our snow. If you can, picture our street as a winter wonderland... all the branches had at least four inches of snow piled on top and the streets were still bright and clean white. The day of this picture, the skies were the blue-est that I had seen in a while.

The office! We love how it turned out. Many thanks and expressions of gratitude to Mom, who helped me paint it these lovely shades of green.

I forgot that mom wanted to see what our dog "sugar" looks like. Or as dad calls her "splenda".

Kari & I on the deck after the frocking ceremony. (ask mom or dad if you have any ?'s with that)

"Presenting Aviation Machinists Mate 2nd Class Gregory R. Smith"..... AD2 Smith, G. R.

I will have better pictures later when I get my blues ready. Much better uniform!

Karissa had lots of fun making Cherry Wink cookies on Sunday with Grandma, Auntie Rachel and her mom. She took some to school to share with her friends for her birthday.