Happy Christmas!

Whatever is beautiful.  Whatever is meaningful. 

Whatever brings you happiness.  

May it be yours this holiday season! 

Christmas Eve we connected with the Colorado and Reno families via video chat.  Unfortunately the Florida family has no computer but this morning we got photos via email of the gang when they finished opening their presents.  Late today we chatted by phone with my sister in northern California and did a video chat with Roger's sister in Michigan.  It was nice touching bases with our loved ones and made the holiday very nice - it makes it almost like being there!  Thank goodness for technology!

We spent this afternoon at a movie  - a kind of tradition for us.  We started doing it when the kids were teenagers and we would go see the latest James Bond release or some other similar movie.  As the kids have moved out Roger and I not always spent Christmas afternoon at a matinee- mostly because there just aren't that many movies out there that are of interest - but we do go when we can find something of interest.  We were lucky today that a film we did want to see was playing fairly close by.   We saw "The Imitation Game."    We both think it is an excellent film with an outstanding performance by Benedict Cumberpatch as Alan Turing.  

There really hasn't been much happening of late.  Maggie is our entertainment most days.  

We gave her a bowl with some remnants of tuna salad yesterday at lunch time.   The bowl doesn't have a rubber bottom like her regular dish so she ended up chasing it all over the floor as each lick pushed it further away from her -  until she figured out that she could hold it down with one foot while she cleaned up the leftovers!

  The Dog's Life is never an easy one!

When we sit outside and she gets bored,  she decides she needs to go inside and retrieve her ball.  She climbs the stairs and then stand there until someone notices and opens it.  We then wait while she retrievs her ball and comes running back out.  We are her servants!  

Then, she rolls the ball to us and if we don't immediately pick it up and throw it she stares at it as if it's going to move on its own.  She will stare a ball down for about two minutes - never taking her eyes off it.  She then starts looking up at us and then back down at the ball (not moving her head or changing her stance) until we humans slowly figure out what she wants and then we tap our hand on our chair.  Then she runs and grabs the ball and brings it to us, depositing it in our chair for us to throw.  She will play this game ad nauseum.  She definitely has a one track mind when it comes to chasing the ball.  

She is often quite willful and when she decides she is done with her walk and ready to turn around and go home she plops her little butt down and goes no further.  

After a little coaxing, which didn't work yesterday afternoon, she turned around facing the way she wanted to go and looked back at me with those big brown eyes defying me to go further.  The only thing that then got her moving again was "OK, Maggie, let's go home."  She hopped up and with all of her energy pranced home with an "I won, again" expression on her face.