[sharonpdx]

holiday highlights

whew... and what a holiday week it has been.

an impromptu holiday party hosted by Suzanne & Paul on Friday night ... so, so good to spend time with friends...

    

Christmas Eve at The Creek ... our first time at Cherry Creek Presbyterian, we both really enjoyed the evening and plan to return to this church again soon.

a Christmas Day surprise ... Jerod positively spoiled me ... I asked for a simple electric griddle (for making pancakes on Saturday mornings) and instead, I got this - and apparently they went like hotcakes (pun intended), he had to track down the last one in the area... what a guy... 

      

feeding my sugar-free-vanilla skim latte addiction ... my parents answered my Christmas wish in a big way with this treat... the folks at my local starbucks will miss me, no doubt, but i couldn't be happier... and how lucky am i to have a husband who ran out and picked me up some ground espresso, sugar-free-vanilla syrup and shot glasses the very next day? 

a lovely trip to Breckenridge today - a first for my parents and sister - what fun, showing them the town and reminiscing about our honeymoon there.  love this place: a quaint ski town with a Victorian flavor, great shops, gorgeous views... Jerod and I will be back at the end of January for the annual International Snow Sculpture Championships ... we stumbled upon the event in 2002 and loved it!  can't wait to return...

    

just one more full day with my family before they return to San Diego Friday morning ... it's never easy to see them go, we both so enjoy spending time with them. for me, their visit is truly the best Christmas gift of all. 

crazy

things are nuts ...

I am fortunate to have a solid three weeks at home after so many days on the road... (I measure my life in this way.  By the weeks in a row I am home. ) Yet the days have been filled with busy.  Returned to lots of work to catch up on and get ahead of, so I can fully enjoy the week-long vacation between Christmas and New Year's.  Evenings spent working, baking, shopping, spending time with Brian.   Spending time with friends.  We went out driving, looking at lights, on Monday... such fun.  A nice reminder of the joy of the season.

And this quote, to remind me as well, of the joy of living.

I like living.  I have sometimes been wildly, despairingly, acutely miserable, racked with sorry, but through it all I still know quite certainly that just to be alive is a grand thing. 
...agatha christie

may your lights, and your life, shine brightly this season. 

self portrait

I landed at Reagan National airport in Washington, DC after noon on Wednesday, Dec 7th; it was 2:30 before I arrived at Grand Hyatt.  I dropped my suitcase off in my room, grabbed my camera, and hailed a cab, heading straight for the Corcoran Gallery of Art .  I knew that, with all that was happening during the week of the NAEYC conference, this was my only chance to get there - and they would close in less than three hours. 

I've loved the Corcoran Gallery since my 1999, when my family and I spent Christmas in DC.  It's been a dream of mine to return to this small, intimate gallery, to stand outside it again and to take a leisurely stroll through.

There wasn't a lot that was leisurely about this visit.  By the time I finished photographing the architecture outside and stepped in, I had one hour to soak in everything I could about this wonderful place. 

Near the end of my visit, a museum guard I'd befriended pointed me toward a small room I hadn't remembered ... the Salon Dore.  It was almost five o'clock... the museum would close soon... but the windows that lined one wall and the mirrors that lined the others reflected the ornate architecture and rich gold colors so perfectly, so invitingly...  I sat.  I wanted to remember being here, being fully here, in the midst of the museum, enjoying the quiet murmurs of voices in the distance wondering why, exactly, Andy Warhol painted pictures of knives; listening to the sound of sharp heels on marble and wood floors; taking in the fading light outside; and resting, just resting, for a moment shedding the exhiliration of this visit and just resting in the museum I remembered.

That's why, despite the curious look from the museum guard, I snapped a photo, of myself, in the Salon Dore at the Corcoran Gallery on December 7, 2005.