And, We're Back

I hope you and yours had a wonderful Christmas Eve and Christmas Day. We spent all day Christmas Eve traveling to my father-in-laws home in Santa Paula. We got up there a little early thanks to the holiday-light traffic, so we stopped off in Fillmore and took a look as some of the trains of the Fillmore & Western Railroad, a local tourist railroad that gives special trips in the area. My wife's cousin works as an engineer for the railroad, and since I'm a bit of a train buff, I grabbed a couple of photos of their locomotives:

At my father-in-law's home he unveiled a truly amazing work of sculpture that has been something like 40 years in progress. Way back when my wife was still a kid some walnut trees were being removed near her home, and her dad and brother got one of the stumps for her dad to use as a sculpting project. Over the years he completed a masterpiece - a Spanish Conquistador carved out of a single piece of walnut complete with an authentic helmet complete with a repair from where a battle axe had gone through the helmet (the former owner undoubtedly didn't survive:
Removing the helmet you can see even more detail in the carving:
It's an amazing, museum quality piece.

We got home Christmas Eve just ahead of the strongest Santa Ana windstorm we've had all year. We were awakened in the middle of the night by the fierce winds and the sound of our Christmas lights banging against the house. We lost power for a few minutes around 6am but shortly after than things started calming down. It was wild for awhile.

Christmas Day we spent at home opening gifts in the morning and then spent the afternoon and early evening at my parent's nearby home. We ate too much as always, and given too much food and not enough sleep, we were pretty much done by the time we got home.



I imagine that most of you had similar experiences.