House Willis

Winter Solstice 2009

...just a quick entry to wish everyone a happy Winter Solstice. Once again we experience the longest night of the year - a particularly long night here in Washington. Fortunately, we just put up our new Christmas tree last night, and Toni and the kids decorated it today.

So why a new Christmas tree? Our old one was quickly balding. Over the past three years we've bought a tree from a church located on Issaquah-Hobart Rd. They're very friendly, the kids enjoy standing by the fire the church keeps going each evening, and the money goes to a good cause. This year we decided to go with a different type of fir (I can't remember the name of it). It had much denser foliage and really thin, short needles. Unfortunately, it didn't weather the last few weeks very well. Ornaments were literally falling off the branches because the needles weren't able to hold the hooks in place.

We went back to the church to get a new one yestereday evening, after our neighborhood Christmas party. They offered to give us the tree for free because they felt so bad about us having to replace the old one. We accepted their offer but donated the cost of the new tree to the church (I think Toni and I would have felt too guilty to take it for free, anyway). The new tree is a noble fir. The Christmas smell is once again in the house, along with renewed Christmas spirit. Fallon wrapped up a couple of her toys and placed them under the tree this morning for us to unwrap.

Both of them are enjoying knowing the secret of what someone is getting for Christmas. They keep telling me that they have a present for me but that I can't open it until Christmas. They especially like it when I beg them to tell me what it is or to let me open the present now.

On other fronts this solstice...

I've moved into my new office in our organization's new location at the Microsoft Sammamish campus (here in Issaquah) last week. My commute is now only about ten minutes. It makes a huge difference - one I didn't appreciate until the actual change.

There could be other changes at work too, but I won't go into those now until I find out for certain within the next month. I will say that the changes should be very good.

Porter and Fallon are eager for Christmas. They give us little hints (well, maybe not so subtle) on occasion to make sure that we know what they'd like. We love talking about what we're (I mean Santa) going to get them. We can't wait to see their faces on Christmas morning. Part of me wishes they'd never get older and that we could experience through them the pure joy of Christmas as they know it for many more years. There's something about the unadulterated happiness they experience this time of year. I can remember when this changed one Christmas growing up in Crestview - something I think everyone goes through. We spend the rest of our lives after that trying to figure out how to look at Christmas from a different persepctive so that we can recapture the feeling, but the closest we can ever come is by experiencing it again through our own children's experiences. It seems a bit somber as I write this, but the whole thing is really quite spectacular when you think about it.

Toni didn't make it into the graduate teaching program that she was hoping to enter at the University of Washington. She was very upset about it. However, it may work out for the better. There's a great graduate teaching program at the University of Seattle that she's looking into now. It costs quite a bit more and seems to be much more intense. We're trying to figure out now whether the all day Saturday for two years option or the every day of the week (except weekends) for a year option is better. We'll see...

Next Monday we fly to Crestview to spend a week with my parents and family. It's been three years since they've seen the kids so it'll be great to be back.

Hope everyone has a wonderful holiday season and a Merry Christmas!