family

To escape the freeze-melt-freeze-melt fun of April in New England, myself, Alison, and Sharon decided to spend a few days exploring Amsterdam!

We made so many amazing memories…

The gallery above captures many of the general sights and sounds. Scroll down to see more including a day-trip to nearby Haarlem as well as some of the concerts, museums, and art installations we found.

Snow in early November is more than enough reason to break out the holiday decorations and a restored version of White Christmas. Here, Sharon fashions a bow topper while Bing looks on.

Although we’re not pictured, Wendell and I helped too. (Really, we did.)

Yeah, maybe we ARE a little early, but I think it just gives us more time to enjoy New England’s greatest season.

Enjoyed a wonderful visit with family (immediate and extended!) in the beautiful Blue Ridge Mountains.

A visit from Alison’s brother and his family means a trip to the Ice Castles!

This year Alison surpassed all expectations with the most incredible dinner in holiday history. Although the tastes and smells linger only in our memories, I was able to capture a few sights and sounds from this warm and cozy family meal.

The movie “White Christmas” played in the background as Alison conjured culinary perfection. Two of the three dogs posed for pictures. Zorro was a blur — he was hunting fallen kitchen scraps.

Dinner is served! (It tasted even better than it looked.)

Yesterday, Mom “helped” me with Vivian and Naomi’s Christmas presents. Translation: she figured out what to do, how to do it, and actually did it. I cleaned up. That’s help I can get behind!

Apparently, Vivian has been enjoying taking her pillowcase off every day, filling it with her stuff, and hanging it on the doorknob. She also loves fleece and interesting textures. The idea: put it all together! (And the resulting idea was so cool we figured Naomi would need one too.)

The resulting pillowcases came out to be really fantastic. (So much so that I considered another one for myself.) The fur around Vivian’s pillowcase (the monkeys) is probably the softest thing I’ve ever touched, and Naomi got Chewbacca fur, which is obviously just plain cool. (We won’t tell anyone how the Star Wars pillowcase started life inside out…RATS SRAW forever! May the ECROF be with you!)

All in all, a very enjoyable couple of hours!

This year we enjoyed a wonderful Thanksgiving at casa Beaty/Broom. Wendell and Alison prepared a huge meal…

…Alison and Sharon shared stories…


…the turkey was carved…


…and a loving, laugh-filled dinner was had by all.