December 26th – Happy Birthday, Uncle Sandy!! Christmas was wonderful, except that we didn’t get to talk to some of our family, even tho we tried. But the rest was excellent. First thing in the morning, the kids opened their presents. We are down to 2 gifts each, plus presents from Love Song and Gaia, which made four. And the kids were incredibly happy about that, since they thought there might be no presents. Low stuff is excellent, especially this time of year. Love Song (Kathy, Allen, Morgan and Wyatt) joined us for a big pancake brunch complete with homemade jam, cream, syrup and fresh strawberries. Delicioso! Then we had a little swim and took our potluck stuffing to Philo’s – a pizza joint and bar in town – where we joined about 100 other folks for an absolutely amazing turkey dinner with all of the fixings and friends too! The dinner was better than I could have made because there was so much variety. My boys had excellent manners, and cleaned their plates (several times). And Merle looked especially handsome, all cleaned up and shaven and smelling delicious. And the music was live, and Santa Clause even came. It warmed our hearts to see the Mexican children lined up out the door and down the block to sit on Santa’s knee and receive gifts from him – all donated by the restaurant and various individuals. They gave away over 500 gifts, someone said. That’s a lot of happy children! We plunked ourselves into our dinghy with full fat bellies, and raced Love Song back out to our sailboats to dream about the fun we had and how grateful we are to be here. Shandro was especially happy because he met a little girl tonight named Olivia, who adores him. He loves to be loved. We all do.
Love Song’s friends Doug and Chris arrived this morning. We will have some fun with them in the next week or so. Having visitors is so exciting!
Justin is supposed to join us as well, we hope, just after New Year’s, for surfing! That will be so excellent! And Ryan just told me on the phone just now that he might come down here at the end of March (if we are still here at that time!) so that will be amazing too!