Still, I'm not quite ready to let go of the season's holiday magic. I lit a candle this morning that smells of Fresh Balsam, and the smell of Christmas trees is twinkling through the house, reminding me of all the pleasantries of the season. Tomorrow is a new year, but today I am reminiscing the highlights of my 2013 Christmas.
13 Top Christmas Memories from 2013
(ordered somewhat chronologically)
1. Pre-Christmas with the In-lawsEarlier in December my Husband's Brother, Sister-in-law, and our niece and nephew came to visit us. It was fun to get to show them our new home and play with the kids and their new pet ferret. Highlights from the visit include going to the Salem Riverfront Carousel, helping the kids make their own waffles for breakfast, and the Newport Aquarium. We watched the Sealions and Otters get fed, touched anemone and starfish, and watched as the kids wandered the gift shop with bright eyes. The Aquarium was also having its "Come Sea the Lights" Event, and the kids got to visit Santa, who was at the Aquarium among the twinkling lights. Before they left Salem, they got to open their presents. The whole family also got some silly mustache-themed gifts for fun.
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| Family at the Foggy Entrance of the Newport Aquarium. |
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| Nephew and Niece with Mustache Faces. |
2. Lords and Ladies Tea with the Grinch at Carmelle's Tea Room
Carmelle's Tea Room, located in the historic Reed Opera House Underground in Salem, Oregon, serves English-style high tea. Besides the tea itself, my favorite menu item is the scones, made complete with lemon curd, strawberry preserves, and Devonshire cream. There, I nibbled on petite tea sandwiches, sipped my pot of Scottish Caramel Toffee Pu-erh, and listened to the story of the Grinch being read in installments throughout the meal. When we were enjoying tea, the Grinch could be seen stalking up and down the hallway outside the restaurant, moving presents and holiday decorations in an attempt to stop Christmas from coming. He sang You're a Mean One, Mr. Grinch, and took pictures with guests who dared to get closer than 39 and a 1/2 feet. The event reminded me of having "tea parties" when I was a child with plastic toy cups, but the company and atmosphere was far from juvenile. It was a fun event and I hope to go back to Carmelle's soon.
3. Receiving Christmas Cards from Friends and Family
Getting Christmas cards in the mail is like having friends, all sealed up in envelopes, come and visit me in Salem. I love opening the mail box and seeing my name and address hand-written on a holiday-printed red and white envelope. The hand-written lettering is such a rarity and stands apart from the many advertisements and bills I usually find in the mail. Sometimes pictures are inside, sometimes family newsletters, sometimes a card, and I love them all. (I didn't send out Christmas Cards this year, partly because I just sent out change-of-address notifications when we moved, and partly because Christmas came too quickly this year. But I did pick out Poinsettia stamps at the Post Office, so I am ahead for 2014!)
In Silverton, the Oregon Garden put on their first annual Christmas Event. Since my grandparents live near there, we picked them up and brought them with us to share the experience. Once you enter the Garden, a holiday express zips you through the large grounds to the Rediscovery forest, where 150,000 lights have been wrapped around trees and set up in cheerful displays. Vendors selling handmade goods, such as soaps, ornaments, candles, and food, played Christmas music from their little huts as we walked through the lights. Favorite displays included a nine-foot leg lamp, lighted animal silhouettes of a fox, squirrel, and raccoon decorating a tree, and a candy-cane walk-through tunnel.
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| Candy Cane Tunnel at the entrance of the Rediscovery Forest at Christmas at the Garden |
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| Jason and I, a little cold, but warmed by the Christmas lights. |
5. Decorating Sugar Cookies
My younger sister always loved making sugar cookies; even when she was little and only had access to an Easy Bake oven she would bake them carefully, making sure they didn't get brown except precisely on the edges where they were meant to bake slightly darker than the rest. Jason and I came back to Idaho to be with my family for Christmas and when we arrived she was baking dough cut into snowflakes and pine trees, alternating between the dinging of the oven timer and the food coloring swirled in the frosting. When the cookies cooled, she let me help frost them. Dad came over and picked up a naked cookie, dipped in frosting, then ate it. I analyzed each bottle of sprinkles, determined to use each kind at least once for garnishing different cookies. We ate them after dinner with coffee, or randomly throughout the day as we meandered past the cookie tin.
6. Spending Time Working the Farm
There is always work to be done when you live on a farm, even at Christmas time, and true to form Dad was busy building a feed-and-shelter shed for the cows when we were there. Jason and I spent time helping with the feeding trough portion of the building. Dad would cut the 2x4 planks, spreading sawdust throughout the shop, and I would help haul the wood to the construction site. The scent of fresh-cut wood permeated the shop, a scent that is impossible to describe but is so precise it is almost more of an emotion than a smell. Libby and Lucy, the cows, hunker down by the old Russian Olive tree when the wind picks up, and I'm sure they will appreciate the shed, once it is complete.
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| My Dad and Jason under the partially-constructed cow shed. |
7. Winter Hike at Dierkes Lake
In Twin Falls, Idaho, near Shoshone Falls, is Dierkes Lake Park. I've spent many summer days of my adolescence here, swimming, picnicking, cliff-jumping, hiking, and even helping to paint the wooden stairs up the canyon cliff along the trail. In the summer parking can be impossible as so many people spend weekend days at the park. In the winter it is mostly deserted besides a few runners that come to pace the trails. We walked along the 1.7 mile trail around the lake, taking breaths of crisp air, taking in views of the icy lake and snow-laden pockets of shadow along the trail. I didn't realize how much I missed the the open Idaho sky until I was there, small and bundled-up, against the vast blue above me.
8. New Christmas Boots!
In a previous post, I mentioned that Hunter boots were on my list of wants for moving to rainy West Oregon. Guess who got lucky? This girl is giddy over her pretty "New Green" rubber wellies which were wrapped and waiting for me under the Christmas tree.
9. Christmas Puzzle
The day after Christmas, my Mom brought out a 1000 piece puzzle. I never new this before, but apparently I really like puzzles. Either I really like them, or I just think I do because my OCD kicks in when the picture is not put together and I feel an obsessive pull to find matching pieces and put them in place. We spent several days working on the puzzle, taking shifts sitting around it and looking at the pieces for shapes and colors to try and find a fit. "We must be missing pieces," we all kept saying, but then the piece would somehow turn up. By the time I left Idaho, we'd gotten about half way through. My mom sent me a picture of the completed puzzle yesterday. They finally finished it.
10. Spending Time with Friends in Boise
Before heading back home to Salem, we stopped for a day and a half in Boise to spend time with friends. Jason and I got to meet up with some basketball buddies. We ate sushi and then laughed the night away playing Catchphrase and Cards against Humanity. The next day I got to go on one of my favorite walks with one of my best friends along the Boise River. We saw a Blue Heron perched at the top of a huge cottonwood tree and we slid our way along the ice-covered path home before it got dark. For dinner we got to meet up with another friend, where we got caught up with current life events and spent much of dinner telling funny stories and pets and children. I already miss everyone!
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| View of the Boise River from my Walk Along the Greenbelt. |
11. Snow and Mountains
While nine hour drives aren't necessarily the most pleasant things, there are some great benefits to traveling over 600 miles in a day. It is interesting to witness how the scenery changes: Oregon rain forest, the rocky Columbia River Gorge, the flat wind-thrown Pendleton area, the sharp Blue Mountains, the Eastern Oregon desert, then the prepped farmland of Idaho, and vice versa. There wasn't snow in Salem, and there wasn't a full covering of snow at my parent's house in Idaho either, but we got to have a snowy Christmas, because we got to travel through parts that were blanketed in white.
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| Snow and Mountains in Motion. Picture taken from the car ride homeward. |
12. Hiking Multnomah Falls
On the drive towards home from Idaho, we stopped outside Troutdale to hike Multnomah Falls. It was a spontaneous stop, but it was a more pleasant spot to stop and stretch the legs than the gas stations we had been frequenting. We walked up to Bensen bridge, where the waterfall mist shifts from the stream evasively like smoke and spins around visitors in a cool spray. Once there, we decided to go the whole 2.6 mile round-trip hike up to the Upper Viewpoint, 700 feet up. Eleven switchbacks later, we finally made it to the top. It was definitely worth the hike.
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| At the top of Multnomah Falls. |
13. Getting HOME
One of our best friends created a thoughtful and personal Christmas gift for us. She decorated four letters, H-O-M-E, with maps as decoration for our new house. "H" has Jason's hometown of Riverton, WY on it, "O" has my childhood town of Kimberly, ID, "M" has a map of Boise, ID, where Jason and I met and spent our first year of marriage, and "E" has a map of Salem, OR. A day after we got back, I put up our present. Seeing it on the living room wall makes me happy to know that all these places live in our hearts and now literally on our wall, no matter where we are. Thank you, Tomi! After our busy Christmas season, it is nice to get home, sit on the couch, and drink a hot cup of tea together.
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