First, let me wish a Happy Birthday to fiery_fox2 (yesterday) and scarlett_o (today). I hope both of you enjoyed yourselves in the birthday sense as well as the holiday sense, and that good things await you in the coming year. ♥

We did get back from our trip to Oregon Tuesday night, as expected, but I've been scrambling ever since and only online to post the Lincoln/Sara story yesterday for gatheringlight's birthday. This whole Christmas feels like scrambling, with getting everything ready to go north before Christmas (gah) and the Yuletide story, and then flailing around to finish getting Christmas ready at home. I was up until midnight last night doing the sooper-sekrit Santa thing, after baking cookies all night and juggling gifts between us/Santa because (*is a massive failure*) I somehow lost Lauren's stocking gift and one of her other Santa gifts got trapped in the mail that I had held until tomorrow (just in case we didn't get back in time). I have turned the house upside-down looking for that missing present, and it really bugs me that I can't find it. :(

The trip north: urgh. Our travel both to and from was safe and easy (right between massive storms both times), BUT we had a new variation on the problem of getting the family together in Eugene: my two sisters (and nieces) could not get out of Portland! Of all the things I never expected to go wrong, it was that the people that live two hours from my parents wouldn't make it. Portland got hit with massive snow, and there were chain restrictions for driving in the city and also parts of I-5 (snow-covered and utterly deserted when I peeked via traffic-cam on Sunday night). One sister took the precaution of parking at the bottom of her hill, and that still didn't help!

So, we had a wonderful time with my parents, my brother and nephew that also live down in California, and my brother-in-law that lives in Nevada (whom we've rarely seen over the last decade because my sister became estranged from us). Still worth it, but the kids were disappointed not to see their cousins (and so were we). My B-I-L unfortunately couldn't go visit his parents in Pullman either-- I-84 was closed in spots, and Eastern Washington was the same kind of disaster as Portland.

Having tuned in to the Interwebs late, I see that I've gotten some adorable v-gifts from deadbeat_nymph, deirdre_c, and janissa11. Thank you all-- those and your messages made me so happy!

I hope everyone else here had a wonderful Christmas or holiday season, and that the New Year will be a kinder and more competent one for all of us. :)