Turkey Day

Bear goofing off before bed Thanksgiving evening. He's quite the ham.

Bear and Grammy take a hike through the woods (front yard).

Sledding is fun! The only time I saw him smile was while going fast. Otherwise it was just pure absorption. No expression unless you stopped.

Bear snuggling his dog just before the trip down to ID.

Typical Bear face. Grin that says "I'm gonna do something I know I shouldn't, but it will be funny."One trip done. We did a hurried trip to S. ID for Thanksgiving. For being so hurried it really didn't feel that way. There were all sorts of work conflicts so we couldn't take as much time as we would have liked. It was wonderful though. New snow was on the ground for sledding during absolutely beautiful days. Bear got a kick out of that. He's never gotten to play in the snow. He saw it last year but was a little young to do any playing or remembering it. We got to see some good friends of my family's that are up visiting from Australia. Tom finally got to meet them. Bear got some absolutely wonderful books from them as well. Mem Fox is a children's book author from Australia. Just adorable stories. I had a couple as a kid and loved them. Those and the ones by Graeme Base. Bear loves Anamalia.

Anyway...back to the topic of travel and holidays. We also got to finally meet my best friend's baby girl. What a cutie! I forget how little babies are. I got to hold her for a minute until she decided that I wasn't Mom, she didn't know me, and boy was she unhappy about it.:) Understandable. I still say she weighs about as much as a marshmallow. Bear didn't seem to have much of a reaction to her. All he was worried about was my friend's floors. He apparently didn't like her carpet, because he wouldn't come off the tile of her entry way. When we put him on the carpet he seemed kinda scared of it.????? The only thing I can think of is not only was it a new place, but he is also used to our wood floors with almost no carpeting in the house. That and the only ones we have are short fibers. My friend's carpet has a bit longer fibers. Who knows?

Bear did very well travelling. He wasn't too sure about our first night in a hotel. He had a tough time going to sleep. The next two nights were better though. By the time we are done with the next couple of months worth of travel he'll be an old pro and not even think twice. At least that's what I'm hoping.

A couple weeks from now at Christmas we'll be on our way to Seattle for the holiday. Good old airlines are making it so we have to drive home Christmas day. Such as life I suppose. At least it should make for very little traffic. Then it will be two weeks and we'll be off to Austria. We are thinking we'll break up the travel to and from a little bit. Instead of 24 straight hours of travel we'll split both ends into two or three days. No sense in spending forever on an airplane or in an airport.

During our Austria trip we are going to have Bear baptised. Well, Tom's mom is going to. We think it will be pretty cool to get baptised in an Austrian church. Neither Tom nor I is very religious, but it will be nice for Bear to have the ceremony. Especially if he ever decides he wants to partake of the Catholic religion. I'm kinda clueless when it comes to all of this. Besides my time in S. America I can count on one hand the number of times I've been to church. My family's idea was to always have our conversations with the Old Man of the Mountains actually in the mountains. Worked well for us, but leaves me kinda naive when it comes to religious traditions.:) At any rate it should be fun and a great life story for Bear. Omi will just have to walk Mom through the process.

I guess I'd better get this house picked up and get us un-packed and some laundry done. Oh, I'd better bake some bread too since I saw we were out. Busy day I guess. And I thought it wasn't going to be.