This past week has completely flown by.  I put together a draft of our next research experiment, finished off my holiday shopping, and spent an evening building a collection of family photos to fill a cute little frame my sister found for my grandma.  I’ve met up with Leslie and her sisters and gone out with Colleen and Jon a couple of times, but mostly I’ve stayed home and visited with family.  Christmas was a day-long extravaganza that started with just the immediate family, then migrated to my Aunt’s house to see my dad’s side of the family, and ended with 30+ of my mom’s relatives coming over for dessert and drinks.  I think the photos speak for themselves:

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I can’t remember the last time we had the whole family together like that… with so many cousins, it seems there’s always at least someone missing (and aside from being home for a couple of weeks each December, for the last couple of years that person has been me).

So now I’m realizing that I leave in less than 48 hours, and sort of wishing that I was staying longer.  There’s no special someone I want to rush back for this year, and visiting with family has been pretty relaxing.  I’m still having plenty of teary moments when something around here reminds of when Twinkle was staying with us, but they’re finally starting to ebb.  Thankfully I didn’t take her to the nearest coffee shop, so I’ve had the ability to retreat there when being around the house has me a little too depressingly nostalgic.  Yesterday I hid out there for a few hours and tore through a book on audio engineering–at least when I get back, I’ll have some fun new recording projects to try in my home studio.

I was kind of hoping to have a chance to try snowboarding with my little brother Kyle while I was home, but I had research to work on when I first got back, and now the weather has turned all warm.  At the very least, I got to take some cool photos of him on a couple of homemade jumps in our backyard.

Kyle pulling a 180