fig bread

Liesl and I made four loaves of our traditional Christmas fig bread today. We missed my mom, but I was very glad to have my helper.

 

We had an Avery family Zoom call for the annual reading of Twas the Night Before Christmas, watched Home Alone, enjoyed a delicious salmon dinner, and admired our overstuffed stockings and tree. Happy Christmas Eve!

Xmas week

We are so happy to finally be off from school and (mostly, kind of) free of work. The weekend felt like the beginning of Christmas.

Steve got inspired and put up even more Christmas lights!

We baked chocolate cake and Christmas cookies! (Gingerbread and sugar both.)

Our stairs were covered in packages - some shipped and some picked up curbside. We unboxed and wrapped and our tree looks very festive now.

And we finally got our holiday cards and were able to stamp and address them, ready to be sent out on Monday.

Food Drive

The kids' elementary school has held a holiday food drive every year since the school opened, 20 years ago. We deliver boxes of food right before winter break to three elementary schools in NE and SE Portland, where they are given to kids who rely on school breakfast and lunch for their daily needs. I organized it last year, coordinating parents, teachers, staff, and kids to gather nonperishable food, money (a classroom coin drive contest), and boxes, and to get the food packed and delivered. 

This year, because of Covid, things had to be very different, and so we decided to coordinate an online fundraising effort with which we would purchase grocery store gift cards. The community really came through; we raised $8750. On Wednesday, two of us went out separately and bought the cards; on Thursday, I drove around and delivered them to the elementary schools. It lacked a lot of the community building and joy that the boxed food drive brought, but I feel really good about the money we raised and the kids we are helping out.

gingerbread houses

Liesl and Arianna had a lot of fun after school today constructing and deocrating gingerbread houses. I picked up a bunch of extra candy to make the decorating even more festive.

 

Moulton Falls trail run

Anja and I have been regularly meeting on Sunday mornings to go for a trail run in Forest Park - 5-6 miles on the Leif Erikson, every week. The Leif is a fantastic trail with some gentle ups and downs, but we were starting to feel slightly bored. So on Sunday we drove (separately, because Covid) up to Moulton Falls in Washington to run 6 miles along the east fork of the Lewis River. The trail was graveled and wide and surrounded by moss-covered old trees; we could see the river far below us, rushing along with a high volume of water. 

After about 2.5 miles, we encountered a high bridge crossing the river. We looped down below it to take a locally very common photo of the gorgeous bridge, and then checked out Moulton Falls (unimpressive) and Yacolt Falls (much better) before retracing our steps back to the parking lot. It was a really fun outing together and I'm so glad we went.

O Xmas tree!

We got a Christmas tree on Saturday morning and had a lovely afternoon decorating it and our home -- stockings, Advent calendar, ornaments and decorations. It is very festive here now. 

Jasper was very interested in sniffing the ornaments on the tree.