The Christmas season was fabulous this year. All of us who shared it continue to comment on how much we enjoyed it. I think it was a combination of some of these things: the excitement of decorating our first home, the time spent hanging out with family, the field trips and outings, the dinner with extended family, the rare Nashvillian white Christmas, and the unexpected church snow day that followed.
My dad and step mom drove up from Texas to hang out with us for almost a whole week. One of our first adventures was to visit the Tennessee State Museum. It's FREE - always! At first glance it appears to be a podunk museum with a few exhibits, but each turn of the corner reveals more and more rooms full of things to see. When you think you've finally come to the end, there's a sign that points downstairs to more exhibits. And after that there's yet ANOTHER sign pointing down to one last level. The more valuable stuff is on the bottom two levels. We know because we started to see suited men with those FBI ear cord thingies.
Some of the things we saw were: a mastodon skull and bones, prehistoric tools, a Conestoga wagon, a 200 year-old dugout canoe (that had been used for years by a local farmer as an animal trough), a printer's shop, a woodworker's shop, lots of Andrew Jackson memorabilia, a room of quilts (my favorite part!), a 3,600 year-old Egyptian mummy that was brought to Tennessee in 1860 (eeewww!), a portrait and landscape gallery, lots of artifacts and photos from the Civil War, and lots lots more. It will take us several more visits to see everything this museum has to offer!
My dad (machinist extraordinaire)
standing in front of a treadle lathe.
One day during my parents' visit we took a tour of Howard's work. It wasn't nearly as jowl dropping as the Google tour he used to give*, but he has a great office, wonderful colleagues and mentors, and challenging projects to work on. After the tour we had to try out Noshville, an authentic New York delicatessen (how authentic can it be if it's in Nashville?). At first glance, it reminded us of D. Z. Akins in San Diego, only a lot smaller. The cabbage soup rivaled that of D. Z. Akins, but we weren't too excited about the rest of our food. We'll have to try it again just to make sure.
On Christmas Eve we saw The Rockettes for the first time ever. The acts of the show alternated between The Rockettes and another coed team of talented dancers and singers. The precision of The Rockettes was astounding. The big surprise for all of us though was the final act, a full-on nativity scene with Joseph, Mary, Baby Jesus, lots of other folks, a real donkey or two, three real camels, and real sheep. Does their show always end with that scene or is that just an only-in-Nashville thing?
This is getting long (are you still there?), but I'm going to keep going while I've got momentum.
We spent Christmas hanging out around the house, staring out the windows at the white Christmas, eating lots of yummy fattening food, and playing games. We taught the folks how to play Quarto, a 2-person 3-dimensional game kind of like Connect Four. The most fun, though, was playing partner Skip-Bo. You're not supposed to communicate with your partner, but we found funny ways to get around that rule - or attempt to get around that rule. My favorite was the woodpecker finger tap next to the card that you wanted your partner to notice.
The Sunday after Christmas we had a church snow day - an official one enacted by the bishop, not by us ;o) My cousin and her family came over for dinner in the afternoon. We really enjoyed hanging out and chatting with them. I've seen my cousin more in the last five months than I have in my entire life! How fun to have family 15-20 minutes away!
My cousin (dad's niece), her husband and youngest son
The folks
My cousin's older son and Howard
*On the unofficial Google tour Howard would usually treat you to one of the free meals (breakfast, lunch or dinner!) and then show you all the cool stuff on campus (that's what they call it, campus): micro kitchens with free snacks and drinks of all kinds, napping chairs, Google-colored bicycles to ride from building to building, the doctor's office, the Google store, an occasional glimpse of the 7-person bike if it happened to be out and about, the replica of the dinosaur skeleton adorned with pink plastic flamingos, the first Google server, and lots more.
