Merry Christmas!

Our second Christmas in the Pacific Northwest with the Chisholm/Fujimoto gangs was wonderful. It would be impossible to report on all of the festivities in the past 11 days, but here are some highlights:

• Dad Watson's: We met up with some Puddle Jumpers (LT's soccer team) and McDonald for beers & Capt. Neon burgers.
• Never Ending Story: Staring EMILY CHISHOLM, so friggin' wonderful to see Em in action again. If you are in the Seattle area, you must see this play at the Seattle Children's Theater. Bravo EM!
• Epic Drive to Redmond: Laura gets the MVP for this drive since she had the stomach flu and was sick the entire 10 hours. Honorable mention goes to Dave and Amy for being awesome with Hayden and for driving.
• Christmas eve snow: Sledding, snowball throwing competition and our rendition of a luck dragon in the snow. It was so great to play with Hayden this entire trip -- he is an absolute joy and is too cute to describe.
• Christmas: Advent wreath, countless candles, yummy meals, Night Before Christmas book reading, hours after hour of football, mountains of toys for Hayden and the other grandkids. And we cannot forget the fireworks. Thanks to Henry, this is a consistent edition to our Oregon visits -- he believes it is necessary to celebrate all holidays with fireworks, even Flag Day!
• Excellent fun-filled family visits: Chisholms, Andersons, Chambers, and Huckes
• Drive back to Seattle: Calm and relaxed, and for you East Coasters, we used chains on our tires to get through the snow on the mountains between Central Oregon and Seattle!
• Joshua and Laura Day: Of course, we spent a day going sailing on Lake Union with a boat borrowed from the ever-growing Center for Wooden Boats and rock climbing at Stone Gardens, where we first met.

This trip was great because we spent a lot of time lazing around and laughing. And, really, isn't that the point?

Thanks to all of you who helped make this trip wonderful for Laura and me. If our paths did not cross this holiday we still want to wish you a very happy and blessed season.

Happy Birthday, Scott!!

So this is another birthday where you are too far away for us to properly celebrate with you. What this means is that I still owe you a night on the town in Philly, where we reenact our night out in Chicago, which I won't get into in this public space for obvious reasons and because there is a picture of my mother in this post.

Happy Birthday!

love joshua and Laura....and Shanti

16 Months

Can you believe we have been married 16 months now?

It's wonderful.

Finito ... until January 22nd!

I'm done with my first semester of school. Yippy! Although hanging out with the cat all day isn't a bad gig.

Game night

Fact #1: Game nights are always fun.

Fact #2: Game night when we play Curses can get out of hand.

Fact #3: Capturing how much fun game night is in picture form is both awkward and nearly impossible.

In the picture to the left, Kaitlyn is dancing with her arms, yelling like a drill sargent and has to act like she is in an earthquake every time Joshua speaks. Joshua, below, is constantly giving himself bunny ears and playing the electric guitar. Somehow all of this is super funny to us. I spent most of the evening laughing so hard that I was crying, which was a mess because my wrists were "super glued" to the top of my head and I had to speak like I had golf balls in my mouth.

Next game night, you will have to join us ... especially because Matt (unfortunately not pictured holding his nose and operating on a sponge carrot) brings really good cheese and crackers. And Sarah (above on the left) has an amazing falsetto.

Welcome Home, Soldier!

After a chunk of time in Afghanistan, Patrick has returned to the States. Hooray!

Now with more awe-worshiping ability!

Dear World,
You can now post comments without having a blogger ID name and password. Just click on the "Comment" button below. After you write your comment, choose "Anonymous". It would be nice if you signed your comments. Although, if you want to go unnoticed, be our guests. Obviously, we will quickly delete any snarky or rude comments, so all the weirdos out there just shouldn't even bother.

Feel free to comment on anything and everything. You can even go back to old entries and comment on them.

Honestly though, who are we kidding by calling them "comments"? We should be frank and label it "praises" or "accolades" or "wow, Josh and Laura are amazing-isms." Right?

Thank you,
The Management

Shanti Update

Things Shanti Has Stopped Doing:
* Jumping on our eating surface to bat the food off my fork.
* Sleeping on the dining room table every night.
* Attacking feet.

Things Shanti Does Now That Are Awesome:
* Sleep on my lap as I work on the computer.
* Bat pens off the coffee table. (Believe us, the venom she feels against pens is awesome.)
* While standing on the floor, she can put her paws on top of the dining room table and almost do a pull-up trying to get a view of the table top.

To thank our wonderful kitty who is growing up into an awesome cat, we dress her up like a reindeer.

Winter Coat Time! And the Death of the 'Stash

Here at Casa de Chisholms, we celebrate the little things. Like the official switching from our fleeces to our winter coats! Doesn't get better. The other day we decorated the house -- ornaments hang from the chandelier and the ceiling fan due to our noticeable lack of tree (next year, next year ...) -- and went out for a drink to celebrate the occasion. May not seem like a big celebration but, for us, it was perfect.

Unfortunately, folks, this is the last photo you will see of Joshua's mustache. It died in a fit of frustration at how much it obstructed the eating process -- "och, that hurt" was a common theme as the mustache tried to be consumed along with dinner. While I loved the 'stache for the first five months, by month six I missed seeing my husbands lovely smile (*ahhhh*).

That mustache first joined us when we were visiting Seattle in July.

It stayed for our first anniversary.

It helped with the house rehab and move.

It stayed for an entire rugby season, a community action, a few tennis matches, a birthday and visit, the creation of four povitisas, a hockey game and a football game.

(Not pictured, a high school reunion, multiple family functions and meeting everyone from the Geography Department ... yup, all those people think that Joshua is a "guy who has a mustache." Pretty funny stuff.)

We went through a lot together, but it was time ... knowing Joshua, I'm sure we are moving into another stage of wonderful hair creation.

This morning, after a few beers, Brian and Joshua headed off into the crummy weather for Joshua's first professional football game: Eagles vs. Seahawks! They gave me their best Eagles fans impression and it went something like this:

Brian and Bridgette got tickets to for Joshua for his birthday. When they finally got home this evening, it seems like they had a great time. An avoiding-cops-and-hanging-out-with-professional-hockey-players good time.

Recently framed and adorning the walls

Birds These Days

Her Majesty's Booty

By Justin Hillgrove (Seattle artist)

Giving Thanks 2007 Spectacular

We always have lots of lovely people over for dinner, but we often forget to take pictures of the entire crowd. This is probably a good thing because who really posts blog entries about what they do all the time ... except for everyone who lives in Seattle and us, I guess.

Anyway, even though we have no photographic evidence of it, the weekend before Thanksgiving we had a lovely dinner with some of my Whelihan cousins -- David, Michael and Alexis -- and also Brian, Bridgette and TBD. Mike and Alexis were able to visit with us for the weekend. What a great couple, easy guests and a fun time!

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This year’s day-of-eating-too-much was wonderful. Brian, Bridgette, TBD (the non-born baby), Charlie (the teen-angst dog), Joshua and I spent the long weekend with my parents in Carlisle among the fall colors.

We were able to enjoy a wonderful (and traditional!) meal together with one of the student from Dickinson College, John Paul.




Celebrate Mom’s 35th birthday!




Watch Flicker (TBD) push on Bridgette’s belly.

Eat mass quantities of the povitisa Joshua made last weekend.

And play with the dog in the backyard.

All in all a great weekend!

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EDIT: I cannot believe that I forgot some of the other exciting activities!
* BOWLING
* Hershey Bear's Hockey
* and 9-ball in the basement ... although when Joshua beat Dad and I two games in a row, while still calling the balls by the color instead of the number, I'm not sure what that should be called.

Camden Action -- Community Policing

Last night, Camden Churches Organized for People (CCOP) held its first big-league action since Joshua started working for the non-profit. Well over 900 individuals from Camden showed up to share information with Anne Milgram, New Jersey's Attorney General . While she didn't agree to the demands the community made regarding the appointment of some key police positions and the implementation of community policing, the meeting ruffled a lot of feathers ... which, remember, is a good thing in community organizing work (tension = putting pressure on elected officials to do their job).

"Milgram says Camden won't hire new police leaders", New Jersey's Courier-Post

The 35 empty chairs in front of the panel of speakers represent the 35 homicides Camden has endured this year. Each chair was labeled with the names and ages of the victims.

In a presentation by CCOP community leaders, it was reported that last year Philadelphia had over 400 murders. It was noted that if the crime rate per capita in Philadelphia was as bad as Camden, the city would have lost over 700 individuals last year due to homicides. This is an astounding figure -- more than two a day! The fact that such a relatively small city like Camden has such a high crime rate is disheartening.

Most of the meeting had great energy and, of course, included some group songs about marching. All great revolutions include songs about marching!

Even though many people left the meeting feeling frustrated that, once again, Camden's needs are being ignored, this is when Joshua's job gets interesting. Taking that frustration and turning it into more action is not an easy job, but an exciting one!

Appalachian Trail in November

We didn't take pictures during our backpacking trip this past weekend. But these are photos I found online of the area where we hiked -- near Allentown. Photos can never seem to capture the bright, beautiful colors of a Pennsylvania fall, but you get the idea. If we took the pictures, we probably would have focused on the little bit of SNOW we saw and how going to bed around 8:30 p.m. on Friday and Saturday nights is the thing of CHAMPIONS!

Halloween continued (ZOMBIES!!)

Halloween Decorations

Shanti is on first watch of the pumpkins tonight. She will be done at four bells.

Our house decided to help with Halloween decorations by masquerading as a leaky roof. It was an excellent costume. So real, in fact, we are stuck with it until it is fixed. Awesome.
But since we don't really bother ourselves with such trivial matters, let's see more of those pumpkins! (l-r: Emily, Joshua, Laura)

WAR Memorabilia

Patrick gave us some awesome gifts from Afghanistan!

Look at the emblem on the tee-shirt we received. No one in South Philly is going to mess with us now. We may not even need to wear our brass knuckles all the time now. Gosh only knows it makes typing difficult.

Thanks, Patrick! You are the greatest. 55 days and counting .... and some crossed fingers that 55 days is a true estimate, which is difficult to do with the brass knuckles and the typing and all, let us tell you!