The Deeds

Aunt Gina showed us some land that our family owns.  Well, owned.  We think the county might have taken it back, since we haven't payed taxes on it in 125 years or so.  We think probably one of us is pointing at it.

Winning at Christmas

Christmas may be about family, but Christmas day is about presents. That box has a hand-made robo-patterned snuggie in it, and hell yes.

It's also possible to win at Christmas. For instance, Joanna won at Christmas by making me the perfect snuggie. Baby Interrobang won by getting this home-made quilt from Lisa:

Auntie D won 'most clever' for her gift of a subtle hint for Dad:

Matthew and his family won for coming from the future:

Dad won by asking for memories for Christmas, we all won for giving them, and Toshia won for putting them together for us.

And we all won for food.

Hospitality

Andrew and I drove down to Jackson to visit Lisa, Cynthia and Matt. They took us to a waterfall, made us vegetarian food, and greeted us in the driveway with beer Matt brewed himself, poured from a tap he made himself out of a still-functioning computer.

Zillions of Diltses

Did I ever tell you that story about my brother? Did I fail to make it clear which one of these three I was talking about?[The one in the middle is my dad.]  Oh, that's not a great picture of Simon.  Here he is with a Martini made of chocolate and Marshmallows, FTLOG: And anyway, brothers don't make up nearly half of the Diltses these days:

Andrew is the one sublimating between my mom and Joanna.

Spasiba Tovorisch!

Mom read my chocolate prune post and liked the idea. Tatiana read her nostalgic comment and had her mom send two whole bags of two different varieties of chocolate-covered prune all the way from Moscow.  Mom likes them both.

Homonculography

Joanna learned something new about her place of birth today. She saw a bunch of people at the airport doing this:Matt explained that the distinctive shape of the lower part of michigan leads everybody to point to their hands when they describe where they live. If you live here long enough, you don't even need two hands:

Scenes From a Family

Simon puts his real-life drumming experience to good use while Matt sings.

Andrew tries to avoid photo evidence that he has ever in his life played Rock Band.

Simon, who hosts a nature show on a South African wildlife television channel, uses a gift his fans sent him to hide from Papparazzi.

Big Family

A couple more of us arrived in Alamosa today, so Simon took us on a tour. He gave us an idea of what his typical days were like: